My 45 Gallon Slate Tank

Well, did some more poking around in the tank.. its really starting to take off.. I've never had plant growth this fast before. High light, CO2 and lots of ferts seem to be doing this tank wonders. The major algae problems are almost entirely gone, and the minor algae seems to be stable. I just need a "lot" more shrimp I think to clean the plants (I will be adding "tons" of shrimp in the next month).


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I've also added a 10 gallon tank under the main display, this will be one of the breeding tanks for shrimp. There will be no fish in it whatsoever. The tank has the back and sides painted black to hide the wood of the stand, and is lit with a 55 watt CF bulb mounted in the stand itself. I don't have a reflector for it yet, but thats tons of light for a small tank anyway so I'm not too concerned about it.

I set up one of those Hagen CO2 kits in this tank too, as I couldn't get my pressurized rig to distribute CO2 evenly between the two tanks. This will do for the immediate future, and I will supplement the tank with Flourish Excel too so there will be enough carbon for the plants.

I haven't figured out what I want to do "plant wise" with this little tank, so its currently just packed full of Wysteria that I had laying around in another aquarium. I took some glossostigma cuttings from the 45 gallon and put them in here too, so we'll see how that does.
 
Very nice, thanks for the update!
 
I kinda wish I was a fishy right now so I could swim around and explore it :P
 
Well things have definately bounced back. The glossostigma is filling in the empty areas very quickly, cuttings I've added to the left have filled in the area with more of the shape and texture I was trying to acomplish..

I need to prune the moss back.. but there are so many baby shrimp taking refuge in it I'm reluctant to thin it out right now... I might cave though because its looking ratty and needs some serious shaping.

Had a brief (4 day) outbreak of BBA, but its dead after a Flourish Excel overdose. I finally realized what is going on with the tank... My CO2 reactor is behaving sadly below par. I can't disolve CO2 fast enough for the plants, and if I crank it up any higher then it is the reactor simply becomes airlocked and bubbles get sucked into the filter (which is noisy, and makes the tank full of bubbles). I'm going to invest in a nice glass diffuser as soon as budget allows for it.

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You can see some of the dead BBA in the moss here.... Its why I want to prune the moss so bad...

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The right side is bouncing back pretty fast, and will need some pruning and reshaping within a couple of days. I"m just waiting for the broken stems to put out a bit more new growth before I replant them.

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Some of the moss growing out of the water on the left....

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My enormous riccia mass floating on the right side..

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And a nice rotalla stem...

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Well I went at the tank with my scissors again. I started to tackle the moss problem. First of all, the moss was covered in dead algae and I was worried that the top layer might block out too much light from the stuff below. Secondly, it had started to grow really "stringy". I've thinned it out now, and started to shape certain layers into mounds.

On the upside, there are so many more baby shrimp then I realized.. I must have seen at least 50+ ranging from 4mm-8mm..

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Here is the center piece of driftwood. My algae eating crew is doing a great job of scouring it clean. Every surface in the aquarium is clearing up, but this piece of wood has undergone the most dramatic change.

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Here is the center piece again, but looking to the left over the massive chunk of moss growing around the slate and wood. The rams have claimed this side as "their's" and will defend it vigorously. There has been a lot of chasing, but thats it... Nobody has any damaged fins or tails, the displays seem to be just that.. Showing off...

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And here is just another shot of the moss...

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This is just the first stage of shaping. I wanted to get the basic moss groupings defined, but I wont get into the hardcore shaping untill these groups have filled in a bit more.
 
Abosutely great!
 
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