Attempting new substrate carpet

After work today, the girlfriend and I walked to the stream next to our apartment complex. I removed some sort of weed grass that grows emersed and submersed in the brackish water stream (at the edge). I wanted to plant this for a substrate carpet when I rescape my 20 gallon long. So I started the experiment today. I am using a 42 watt spiral cfl 6500k. The bulb is 19" from the substrate and the water level is 3.25". I dosed with flourish ferts and excel. I am also running a 150 gph power head which is covered by the rocks. The tote is 45 litters (11.8 gallons). The substrate is my homemade potting soil capped with white epoxy gravel. I will post the process on my blog later tonight.

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thankyou glabe. it was a lot of fun setting up and i always love a walk on the brackish stream mud banks. There is so much activity in this particular stream and is home to about 3 cichlid varaties, mullet, barracuda, guppies, crayfish, toads, and big salt water fish that swim inside to feast on misc fry and algae. At around 5pm (during late summer/fall) you can see all of the different fish swimming around looking for food or jumping out of the water to catch bugs.

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You are correct Jpappy they are all introduced. I have seen convict cichlids (further up stream), red zebra cichlids, and black chin tilapia. The black chin tilapia were introduced to increase the skip jack tuna population by providing a reliable and prolific food source. There are native fish still inhabiting the stream such as amaama (mullet), awaawa (milkfish), oio (bone fish & lady fish), papio/ulua (crevalle jack), 4 endemic goby and 1 indigenous goby. I am currently raising an oopu naniha (Stenogobius hawaiiensis) and amaama that I caught from this stream when they were tiny fry. The stream also has thousands of plecos that range from 6inches to 24inches.

The cichlids really see to thrive here ( i live in honolulu) the red cichlids stay further down stream closer to my house and the convicts like little protected areas up stream where heat is minimized due to denser canopy covering. I always seem to see the convicts in areas that are enclosed by rocks. The black chins like to be closer to the mouth of the stream and thrive equally in the sea water of the harbor areas. They are by far the most invassive and seem to kill off a lot of the native fish population. Amaama and awaawa were once very abundant.

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Just found this



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I just recieved my new aqueon 50/75 filter from amazon so i set it up on the 45litter tote and put some mollys in to start the cycle. Im glad that i strated this project becuase it has allowed for the new filter to be cycled before replacing the gravity filter on the 29 gallon. If i did not have this tote set up it would have been very difficult to cycle this filter as it is so huge. I decided that if the substrate carpet works out i will keep this set up as a breeding tank.

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