55G planted South American themed planted tank journal

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cobfreak

AC Members
May 1, 2010
385
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Cumberland, MD
I've been getting help on here in various threads for the 55 gallon tank I've been getting up and running. I've decided now would be a good time to start a journal thread related to the tank and its progress.

This is my first attempt at doing a planted tank from the start, so it's been, and will continue to be, a learning experience.

Setup information:

Tank - standard 55 gallon tank, 48" x 13" x 21", approximately.
Substrate - 80 pounds eco-complete
Filtration - One Penn-Plax Cascade 1000 with spray bar, one Penn-Plax Cascade 750
Heater - Stealth Pro, can't remember the wattage right now
Lighting - DIY light hood made from 2 shop-type lights from Lowes. Overall that's 4 T8 32watt 6500K bulbs. They are very close to the water and provide a good bit of heat; probably too much. I plan on raising the hood in the future.
Stand - unfinished DIY stand, 33" high.

This isn't (yet) an actual biotope of any sort, though that was sort of the plan. I may head more in that direction later, but for now it's just going to be South American fish and whatever plants I put in there. Part of the issue so far is that I was going to stick to South American plants but i've found that I need to get more plants in there ASAP to try to fight some algae issues.

As of this writing the livestock is 8 bleeding heart tetras, three long finned black skirt tetras, and 4 Schwartzi's Cories. Future livestock plans continue to shift around, but right now I think it'll be 1 to 3 angels and 1 to 3 dwarf South American cichlids of a type as yet to be determined.

Right now the planting is pretty random. I'm gradually scaping it, but so far am not very happy with anything. More on plants later.


Here are a couple of shots from early on, around July 12 or 13:



Here are pictures from this morning (July 26.) In these pictures the plants, from left to right, to the best of my (limited) knowledge, are Water Sprite, Mare's Tail, narrow leaf Java Fern, aponogeton crispus, spiral vals, jungle vals, Amazon Sword, moneywort(?), another amazon sword, and anacharis:



The water coloration is odd and interesting; I think it's in part due to the algae/diatom problem I'm still in the middle of dealing with, and in part due to tannins from the driftwood. The piece of wood is from the woods on my property, and was soaked for some time in a bucket outdoors, but I think it's still giving off some tannins. I've also got carbon in one of the filters to alleviate some of that.

Plans for the near future: more fish, DIY CO2, and a black background. I REALLY wish I would've painted the background first during the long period that I just had the tank sitting around, but alas I didn't. So now I'm not sure how I'm going to do it, whether I'll find something to tape on there or... something else.

I think that covers everything. Thanks for reading. More to come.

:feedback:
 

RazzleFish

AC Members
Oct 28, 2009
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Looks great so far!
 

dundadundun

;sup' dog? ;woof and a wwwoof!
Jan 21, 2009
4,295
2
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S.E. PA
progressing nicely.
 

lookit

AC Members
Jun 9, 2009
563
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OK
Looking good so far! Best of luck with your future endeavors.
 

cobfreak

AC Members
May 1, 2010
385
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0
Cumberland, MD
New plants

I received a package today from fellow AC'er Jerzguy containing some plants I ordered from him. All very nice. I was in quite a hurry in planting them, and hadn't planned out where I was going to put them before getting them. Also I really had trouble dealing with the baby tears, which I still don't think I did right.

The "funny" thing is that I made a big order of plants from sweetaquatics this weekend. When I get those I am going to have nowhere close to enough room I don't think. I will be removing the anacharis, but beyond that I'm a little stumped.

Here are some pictures. Are any of the baby tears planted anything close to correctly?




baby tears:


blyxa japonica:


dwarf sag?


rotala (behind water sprite):



I also started messing with DIY CO2. There's another thread for that somewhere.

Any critique of how I planted things let 'er rip. As far as the scaping... like I said, I was short on time, just trying to get stuff in there. Don't know exactly when/how I'm going to get things "right", but this isn't really it yet.
 

fishycat

needs more wiggle.
Dec 9, 2009
2,926
0
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Hawaii
Nice load of plants! That Moneywort is not, looks like Rotala Indica... Moneywort/bacopa monnieri is more like a single stem with leaves growing across from each other versus spiral. And it stays a bright green, no red.
 
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