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Critique my hardscape Critique my hardscape

Thank you for your replies, I will have a good go at monitoring the pH, this will have to wait till the weekend when I can spend the time on it.

I am surprised that the plants are so reliant on C02 in such early stages considering all my plants were either easy or medium difficulty. Mainly because I have had better success with no C02, ferts and low light. Which makes me think that there is more to this than I have managed to discover yet.

At least I can take experience from this and learn from what has been a bad experience. Every cloud and all that!
 
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Guys I think I may have figured at least half the problem.
As this is a built in back filter I was initially worried about turnover hence bought a larger more powerful powerhead to replace the standard one. For this to fit I had to drill a larger hole for the outlet to sit out. Once I realised that it was too powerful I went back to the original. Not thinking I did not plug the hole right away and have a 5mm gap around the filter outlet, this is obviously going to minimise suction through the filter and actually sucks the tank water through it.
I feel rather silly as this was so easily overlooked and has cost me a great deal of time and money.

I am fairly confident that this is the main culprit in my failed attempt. Do you guys think this would/could be my main concern?

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I will post a video this evening so it makes more sense

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Warts and all. Please ignore the algae it is maintenance day.



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Wasn't too bad just looked a lot worse from that video, cleaned up well actually, dosing liquid carbon as well to help defeat the algae.
 
Everything that you're experiencing is normal with a new set-up especially if you have a decent light and CO2. The melting of plants is normal as well since they were mostly tissue culture... I've never really had anyone tell me that all their tissue culture plants made it so I wouldn't fret about that. Buce are notorious for melting as well - even if everyone tells me they are so easy I believe it to be a complete lie haha (I still love them anyway). The algae from the video you see is because of high lighting and excess nutrients - I had the exact same happen several times. The best thing to do right now IMO is to stop dosing, manually remove as much algae as you can, reduce lighting by an hour or two, maintain CO2 and do water changes of 50-75% every 3 days and remineralize each time to about 4-6 gH. This will bring your tank to a state where the water is super clean with minimal algae spores. When your plants aren't growing well, you have lots of food in there - what's going to use it? Algae. When your plants start growing and you notice them taking off, I would start dosing then... it's always an experimentation but I hope some of this might help!
 
Happy New Year all!

Been a busy holiday for me but managed to get the setup cleaned up.
I manually removed as much algaea as I could, did a 90% water change and misted everything with a diluted solution of liquid carbon. Did a great job on the existing plants. I added some Rotala rotundifolia and a couple of 'supporting' plants. Sorry for the bad pictures.

As you may see I have added a small clean up crew RCS and Otto's.

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Good luck with this algae bloom...
Unfortunately, i had my worst experience facing this type of algae. Looks like synedra i dont really know but its so fast that you clean it and it is back the next morning.
This is because of excess light and excess fertilization.
It took me like 3 months to understand what feeds this and control it but i never get rid of it 100%.
What worked for me is to reduce my ferts to minimum and cut down my light.
I guess you should follow the same things. Reduce your light as much as possible, reduce ferts to minimum dose and increase co2 as much as it possible without being toxic.
I was doing water changes everyday for 1 month. 50% everyday , mechanical cleaning with an airline hose , timming etc etc. I will never forget this lol..
Not all the tanks are same so i hope for you to be luckier than i was!!
Great scape:)
 
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Good luck with this algae bloom...
Unfortunately, i had my worst experience facing this type of algae. Looks like synedra i dont really know but its so fast that you clean it and it is back the next morning.
This is because of excess light and excess fertilization.
It took me like 3 months to understand what feeds this and control it but i never get rid of it 100%.
What worked for me is to reduce my ferts to minimum and cut down my light.
I guess you should follow the same things. Reduce your light as much as possible, reduce ferts to minimum dose and increase co2 as much as it possible without being toxic.
I was doing water changes everyday for 1 month. 50% everyday , mechanical cleaning with an airline hose , timming etc etc. I will never forget this lol..
Not all the tanks are same so i hope for you to be luckier than i was!!
Great scape:)
Thanks for all the info Fred

I have been looking at the scape thoroughly tonight and dare I say, to my delight I can see no algaea only mere remnants, the difference is night and day from Thursday when I attacked it head on and today.

I will post a video shortly.






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Hi all, sorry for the late update, busy Christmas holiday and first week back at work.

It is good news I'm glad to say!
After doing some heavy maintenance and a large water change or 2 I am getting good progress. Plants that were hanging on the last thread appear to have overcome it and all plants now seem to be thriving. Here it is now before I do a trim and replant, add some more crypts, darwf sag, anubias' and buces.
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Please excuse the bad phone pictures and floating plants (top left).

I will post later after maintenance

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Small photo update taken on my phone.

Any thoughts on what red, pink or purple plants I should add? I need a tall and bushy stem for the back right hand corner to replace auxiliary plant and maybe something like ludwigia mini super red or another red epiphyte for the main pieces of wood left and right of the tank.

Anyway here is my view from the sofa
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Matt

With your photography practice makes perfect. Re you presentation top RH is that a RED Traffic Light there as it's acting like one it's extremely distracting it would certainly help in your presentation if it was removed.

Its starting to get that semi wild look you have a few choices now a 50% semi wild, full wild or a very neat and tidy trimmed Aquascape.

Keith:wave::wave:
 
@Matt Havens , although the last update to this thread was almost two years ago, I've just read though it and can recognise and sympathise with your journey ;). I was wondering how this scape looks today, as it looked quite impressive in the end?
 
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