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6ft Shallow "ish" tank

Looks great, I love all the emersed stuff it’s very effective. Also, what the bigger unusual looking yellow fish?
 
Looks great, I love all the emersed stuff it’s very effective. Also, what the bigger unusual looking yellow fish?
Thanks, being a shallow tank i wanted to give it another dimension above the water level, will be seeing if the submerged plants will grow out of the water too.
The yellow/orange fish is a sail fin molly that my wife took a liking too.
 
Have been just watching the tank settle only livestock additions have been 10 ramshorn snails and 6 amano shrimp, mainly monitoring my emersed growth stuff to ensure that it is settling and all seems well, the pothos and peace lily have developed new roots and the fern is not showing any growth signs but is also not showing that it is doing poorly.
I found whilst out and about the red stalked plant that was growing on a wall, it has a small rhysome and it looked so nice i decided to stick it the upright wood trimming any stalks that were in the water and i intend to water with a spray bottle and the moisture naturally sucked up by the wood. It was only whilst stepped back admiring my handiwork when my wife asked what plant it was, my reply "i dont know but looks nice tho" to which she replied "how do you know it isn't poisonous" very good point !

Any plant gurus out there that have an id for me ? It is planted in a way as it is not in direct contact with the water but would be wise to know what it is.
I will post in plant id too
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OK, time has come have started to develop some algae and the plants seem to have slowed growth, daily dosing ferts and placed loads of root tabs when I set it up and plenty of light ( probably not helping my algae) so thinking CO2 is going to be the way to go.

Question is how to go about it I have set up pressurised co2 before but what would people recommend for a long shallow tank ?

Equipment on tank
I have a FX6 with standard duck bills on the left and a Fluval 206 with a spray bar on the right.

Options that I can see are

Intank glass diffuser- but not sure given the shallow depth there will be enough time for co2 to be dissolved into the water and also regarding the length of the tank making the co2 flow from one end to the other

Inline diffuser- can connect to the fluval 206 but hoses too big on the fx6

Inline reactor- attached to the fluval 206, have read Zeus tank build where he used the EF2 add on filters.

My other maybe overkill option would be x2 intank glass diffusers at each end of the tank
Have attached a photo of the whole tank showing the outlets from the filters and scape.
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Hi
I will personally try to increase plant mass first before going the CO2 route as I didn't see any CO2 demanding plans on your list in previous posts.The tank is relatively new and not very densely planted. Its early days yet and you haven't really given it a chance. Some floating plants should be very beneficial in your case.
What ferts are you dosing and how much?
What algae you can see?
Also not sure how your filter outflows facing each other will be working with CO2 distribution you may have to rearrange them if you go that route. Not to mention higher levels of maintenance and adding another variable(CO2) to the equation you need to be on top of.
Regards Konstantin
 
Hi
I will personally try to increase plant mass first before going the CO2 route.The tank is relatively new and not very densely planted. Its early days yet and you haven't really given it a chance. Some floating plants should be very beneficial in your case.
What ferts are you dosing and how much?
What algae you can see?
Also not sure how your filter outflows facing each other will be working with CO2 distribution you may have to rearrange them if you go that route.
Regards Konstantin
Have got more plants coming, I have a lot of floating plants over the back behind the stump, the algae seems to be the green spot on the slow growing broad leaf plants and some string algae, regarding fertilizer I am currently using flora grow liquid fertilizer 80ml weekly and adding some extra flourish nitrogen as when I did a quick test my nitrate was undetectable I also removed some of my emersed plants as I think they were stripping the water of nutrients.
 
How is this going Andy?
Up and down, still struggling with algae on edges of slow growing plant leaves, but all plants have started growing well, you can see that have quite a bit of emersed growth from plants that are rooted in the substrate, my fern experiment seems to have settled and is growing well too. To combat the algae I have stopped dosing the water column and increased root tabs, adjusted the lighting intensity and now plants are growing across water surface this has diffused the amount of light too. We have guppy babies coming out of our ears in the small tank on the left, and my blue acara have laid eggs so hopefully some acara fry soon too.
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Looks like its growing in nicely mate! Fish look very happy too - they must love the space! I'm a big fan of spiking the substate and lean dosing in the water column myself.

Where did you get the tank of out interest? How much was it? Did you end up adding a second filter like you talked about in your first post?
 
The tank and stand came from aquariums4life was a clearance tank so was a little cheaper £1400 full optiwhite. I currently have a FX6 which does the main bulk of filtration along with the 25kg of alfagrog in mesh bags under the substrate, I have a fluval 207 with course sponge and just carbon and purigen to help with the tannins which I attached a spraybar on for surface agitation.
Think if I was to set up again I would have dirt in with the alfagrog to give more nutrients in the substrate.
 
Oh yes, I saw that one on A4L website - I thought that might be the same tank (though its still not marked as sold unless that had multiple!)

I was also considering a separate filter just for mechanical filtration, I think its a good idea actually!
 
Been a while since I updated, plants are slowing filling in, have resisted adding CO2 so far and the algae has gotten better think mainly as I have changed the settings on the AI prime freshwater lights.
The electric blue acara are getting bigger and consistently lay eggs but after a couple of days they eat them ?
Looks like my mystery snails have started to breed too as came home after a night shift to find the egg clutch attached to the emersed planting, will have to rehome any that hatch as have a few already.
I have removed some of the emersed pothos as I will be looking at getting some different plants that produce flowers to add a bit of colour, the pothos that I have left has now grown into the substrate and taken off, up the wall round the lighting cable and onto the shelf above.
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