Hey. First off I want to thank everybody for the awesome information on this site. Everything I learned was from here. Basically I was a complete newb 4 months ago and now I have a somewhat cool planted aquarium thanks to you guys!!
I don't remember all the names of the plants, but I do remember that I currently have rotala indica (sp?), giant hygro, an amazon sword, some java ferns and glosso. I have 3 other kinds of plants that I don't remember the names on.
I use the yeast and sugar co2 method. I also dose (all seachem) excel, flourish, potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen once a week. I used to dose twice a week but I have brought it down to once because it vastly improved my thread algae situation.
My tank is a 20gallon. I have a rena filstar xp1. My filter goes in this order, course sponge, fine sponge, ceramic rings, crushed corral and then a micro sponge filter. I also have 65w of compact flourescents at 6700k.
I apologize for my poor quality pictures, but i think you will get the idea.
Lets start 4 months ago.
This is the tank newly cycled on July 8th. I went with the planted cycle and it worked out great for me. Even though it is not recommended for a newb, I was careful and it worked great. I originally had a hygro difformis as you can see as well as something else in the back I ended up not liking.
Here is the tank on July 29. Less than a month later. The Giant hygro has gotten much bigger. I didn't realise it was going to grow so fast. At this point I was also getting tired of the fake rock. Although the fish absolutely loved it, I really hated having something fake in my tank.
This is August 12th. Now this is more like it! Got rid of the rocks and added some drift wood. Much more natural looking. I also trimmed everything and moved some stuff around. I also got a few new plants as you can see. I'll tell you what, that hygro difformis on the right that you see... That is probably the trimmings of 1/5 of what it turned into. That thing got huge and fast! I'll leave it in for the time being.
Here is September 20th. Hygro difformis got too much for me. I just ended up throwing it in the trash. I just got too big too fast. The plants you see here are my final configuration of plants. Man that rotala indica really grows nicely, and also looks beautiful where it gets the most light! By far the rotala indica is my favorite plant.
Here we are on September 26, only 6 days later but I gave everything A good trim. I think my Dwarf Gourami got really mad about the trim this time. He had made a huge bubble nest in the rotala indica. Oh well, he can make another in a few weeks.
Here we are... November first. I completely forgot to take pics all October. Oh well. This shot is a couple days after a trim. The rotala was so tall that the pieces from the far left and far right were touching in the middle. I'm really liking what my tank has become. Maybe in a couple more months I'll have a great glosso carpet.. I can only hope!!
I'm welcome to any suggestion and open to any questions!
Thanks so much for looking!!
I don't remember all the names of the plants, but I do remember that I currently have rotala indica (sp?), giant hygro, an amazon sword, some java ferns and glosso. I have 3 other kinds of plants that I don't remember the names on.
I use the yeast and sugar co2 method. I also dose (all seachem) excel, flourish, potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen once a week. I used to dose twice a week but I have brought it down to once because it vastly improved my thread algae situation.
My tank is a 20gallon. I have a rena filstar xp1. My filter goes in this order, course sponge, fine sponge, ceramic rings, crushed corral and then a micro sponge filter. I also have 65w of compact flourescents at 6700k.
I apologize for my poor quality pictures, but i think you will get the idea.
Lets start 4 months ago.
This is the tank newly cycled on July 8th. I went with the planted cycle and it worked out great for me. Even though it is not recommended for a newb, I was careful and it worked great. I originally had a hygro difformis as you can see as well as something else in the back I ended up not liking.
Here is the tank on July 29. Less than a month later. The Giant hygro has gotten much bigger. I didn't realise it was going to grow so fast. At this point I was also getting tired of the fake rock. Although the fish absolutely loved it, I really hated having something fake in my tank.
This is August 12th. Now this is more like it! Got rid of the rocks and added some drift wood. Much more natural looking. I also trimmed everything and moved some stuff around. I also got a few new plants as you can see. I'll tell you what, that hygro difformis on the right that you see... That is probably the trimmings of 1/5 of what it turned into. That thing got huge and fast! I'll leave it in for the time being.
Here is September 20th. Hygro difformis got too much for me. I just ended up throwing it in the trash. I just got too big too fast. The plants you see here are my final configuration of plants. Man that rotala indica really grows nicely, and also looks beautiful where it gets the most light! By far the rotala indica is my favorite plant.
Here we are on September 26, only 6 days later but I gave everything A good trim. I think my Dwarf Gourami got really mad about the trim this time. He had made a huge bubble nest in the rotala indica. Oh well, he can make another in a few weeks.
Here we are... November first. I completely forgot to take pics all October. Oh well. This shot is a couple days after a trim. The rotala was so tall that the pieces from the far left and far right were touching in the middle. I'm really liking what my tank has become. Maybe in a couple more months I'll have a great glosso carpet.. I can only hope!!
I'm welcome to any suggestion and open to any questions!
Thanks so much for looking!!
