Well, to start with, I've been using liquid fertilizers from Seachem for a few weeks now. Flourish, Excel, and Potassium are the ones. The plants seem better, though I think the hornwart was sucking up everything I put in there. Figures, I guess. I had to remove alot of it today, because it had gotten so dense.
The planted thing has really started to "work", meaning the plants have kept the nitrates low and taken care of clearing up other things in the water. I still want to get a canister filter, but I may just wait 'til xmas for it, as my plants are doing most of the filtering for now. The HOB filter I have is mainly for mechanical & bio filtration, and of course water movement.
I made a stupid mistake with one of my java ferns last time I did a water change. I left it out of water too long while I was siphoning, and its leaves shriveled like paper and it released its grip on the rock I had it on. I put it back in the tank and its still green, though its leaves were pretty damaged and the snails took care of that for me. Right now, it has little left of its original leaves, but the rhizome is intact and some of the stems are green. The other large fern is fine, although I want it to get much bigger. I also have a few baby ferns that came along.
Another thing that happened while I was away, came as a complete surprise one night I was watching the many snails in the tank. I noticed a cone shaped thing moving about, like a horn of a unicorn. I pegged it as a malaysian trumpet snail, but checked online to make sure. As of this writing, I've seen tiny miniatures of the one adult I spotted. All the snails I have in my tank have been so helpful, more so than one might think in a planted tank. Interesting to watch too. The other night I saw almost all of them in a bunch together, like they might've been devouring something. I have seen them do this when fresh veggies were left uneaten on the gravel. There's almost no algea in my tank.
Just an update on what's going on with me
...~Angela
The planted thing has really started to "work", meaning the plants have kept the nitrates low and taken care of clearing up other things in the water. I still want to get a canister filter, but I may just wait 'til xmas for it, as my plants are doing most of the filtering for now. The HOB filter I have is mainly for mechanical & bio filtration, and of course water movement.
I made a stupid mistake with one of my java ferns last time I did a water change. I left it out of water too long while I was siphoning, and its leaves shriveled like paper and it released its grip on the rock I had it on. I put it back in the tank and its still green, though its leaves were pretty damaged and the snails took care of that for me. Right now, it has little left of its original leaves, but the rhizome is intact and some of the stems are green. The other large fern is fine, although I want it to get much bigger. I also have a few baby ferns that came along.
Another thing that happened while I was away, came as a complete surprise one night I was watching the many snails in the tank. I noticed a cone shaped thing moving about, like a horn of a unicorn. I pegged it as a malaysian trumpet snail, but checked online to make sure. As of this writing, I've seen tiny miniatures of the one adult I spotted. All the snails I have in my tank have been so helpful, more so than one might think in a planted tank. Interesting to watch too. The other night I saw almost all of them in a bunch together, like they might've been devouring something. I have seen them do this when fresh veggies were left uneaten on the gravel. There's almost no algea in my tank.
Just an update on what's going on with me
...~Angela