My 40G planted tank

Not as long as I thought it was going to. I'll tell you one thing, It is a lot easier to plant a tank when it's empty and everything isn't trying to float away on you. I'd say I spent about 2 hours on it. I am only half way done with the planting thought. I am still waiting on 2 separate plant orders [banghead]

I am also planning on moving a couple of plants that just don't seem like they are in the right spots.

I had to buy yet another filter too, because my eheim 2213 just isn't strong enough when hooked up to the hydor inline heater. So I bought a eheim 2217 and should get it next week. I really hope it gives me the water movement I'm looking for. So I'll have the eheim 2213 the 2217 and a hydor karolina (sp?) power head. The extra 2213 will probably go on my 29g bowfront that I haven't mentioned buying yet. That brings me up to 6 tanks if you count my grow out tanks, so just a slight case of MTS

 

Just got back home after being gone since Friday. I think I have way too much light because everything is growing like crazy. I need to trim again. I also have a lot of brown algae in my substrate right now. I think I'm going to reduce my photo period by a half an hour, see if that helps.

 

Dawn-

I haven't been running my lights on full. I had been running an 8.5 hour photo period with the lights on full for only the last hour, after the plants really start pearling a lot.

I am now running an 8 hour period with no burst from both lights.

I am not really worried about the algae because this is a new tank and usually there is a little algae at the beginning. I just finished up a second dose of peroxide and most of the algae is dying back. It is only growing on the substrate where there are no plants. I would love to finish planting but I am still waiting on my plants to come it.

For fertilizing I am using the EI method of dosing with dry ferts. At first I was using half the recommended amount of phosphate and then I switched to a quarter amount. It seems there is a bit of it naturally in my aquarium, probably from the organics in my substrate. I am now adding no additional Po4 and tonight it is at 2ppm and hopefully after wc tomorrow it will be at or slightly under 1 ppm. The excess Po4 is probably the cause of my algae , although there was some growing on the substrate during my dry start grow out phase. The uptake of nitrate by the plants has been really good. On Monday after full dosing, nitrate was between 10 and 20ppm. After 2 days it is at 5ppm.

Right now I am dosing 3x a week after I do a 50% wc. I am still trying to figure out the uptake rate of the plants. The really hard part is I ordered plants from 3 different companies and I am still waiting for 2 shipments to finish planting. After I finish planting and determine the uptake rate I will dose 6x a week via automatic dosser, and only do 1 50% wc a week.

For the most part the tank is very healthy and beautiful. hopefully the driftwood will stop leaching tannins soon and I can pull the carbon out of the filter and have crystal clear water. I hate brown looking water, no offense to you black water aquarium lovers.

 

After looking at the pictures I took of my aquarium I have been thinking of doing some changes to my hardscape. It's funny because it looks so much different in person than it does in the pictures, but the pictures game me some ideas. I have not fully decided if I am going to change anything at all at this point, mainly because changing around your hardscape after planting is a major pain. It would mean moving things around, that I know fit in the places they're in now, to places they may not fit and have to be moved back. It would also involve up-rooting some plants and replanting. LOTS OF WORK.

The first pictures is what I had envisioned when doing my original work. The green areas are where the rotala sp green should fill in when grown. The yellow areas are lighter color plants that will be in front of the rotala. The red area is some red plants I haven't yet planted, and the blue area is not planted at all yet but would be some tall plants. I was thinking of leaving just a little bit of the background open above the top of the triangle looking rock pile. With this plan it would be easy to cover up the filter intakes, cord for the power head, and airline tubing.

The second pictures show the changes I am thinking of making. Nothing too drastic. I am thinking of switching the 2 pieces of driftwood in the background to form a triangle, a tried and true aquascaping concept. I would of course plant accordingly, with taller plants on the left sloping down to the right. I would have a more open background on the right. If I do this it will be trickier to hide all my equipment. I would have to move my filter intake to the left next to the other one. I would have to move my 2 airlines and pollen glass diffusers closer together and thus making them less effective at distributing co2 throughout the tank. I don't even know where I'd move the power head.

Wow after writing all that I am very hesitant to change anything. The bigger piece of driftwood may not even fit in the back. I am going to have to think about this one.

If any one has opinions I'd be glad to hear them.

 

Thanks for the input. I am leaning towards doing nothing.

 

It's looking okay. There are a few thing I want to change. I am really not happy with the look of the HM, it just grows too tall. I am probably going to replace it with HC soon.

My third plant shipment, or really my sixth, if count buying form forum members, should be here soon. After planting the new stuff, the tank will finally have every inch of substrate planted. I will post pictures just as soon as I get my lazy butt to the store and buy batteries.

 

I have been very busy today. I got my order from aquariumplants.com in today. I ordered all crypts: spiralis, retrospiralis, lutea, walkerii, becketti, and wenditii green. I think they will fill up the last of the space.


I pulled all of the Hemathius micranthemoides off of the rocks in the center of the tank and replanted with HC. I took all of the Micranthemum umbrosum out of the tank because it wasn't doing very well, not sure why.

I trimmed the glosso yet again. I am thinking of getting rid of the glosso completely. It just keeps growing tall and I am not sure if I have the patience to train it. I kind of got it by mistake anyway. I got it confused with Marsilea minuta. If I end up getting rid of it I will post it in the trading post and there will be lots of it.

I will post some pictures tomorrow but I have to warn you the tank looks kinda chaotic at the moment. I am sure it would look great after the crypts fill in.

 

I forgot to mention that I finally got tired of the guessing game with the API phosphate test kit. Got my self an elos test kit and I like it so much I might switch all my test kits over to elos. They are about 30 bucks for each kit so I will probably switch over slowly.

I found out that my phosphate level was low, so I will start dosing PO4 again. I was at .25ppm. Might be the cause of my slowed growth and algae.

 

Here are some new pictures. As you can see my background plants are just started to grow taller than the rocks. They look a little thin but I think they will fill out once I start using both sets of lights. I think I need to up my fert dosing as well.