The Operation was a Success - 25/03/2009
Just a quick entry today, the plants finally arrived last night (in really good shape) and I spent from 8pm-1:30am putting them in and filling up the tank (didn't get my water-changer built in time, it's a tedious business with buckets!). Looks like I got the order about right in size, although I actually think I overdid it on the HC!
As a result I've got one mat of HC (approx 10cm2) that'll be going in the swap section for some moss once I let it recover from the journey in my tank for a bit.
About 50% of the way through filling the tank, I did have a minor catastrophe as the wood had dried more than I thought and decided to float, taking most of my plants with it, so I had to try and hold it down with one hand, balance a plate on it (was using it to deflect the surge from the buckets of water), then rush to my leftover rocks for a counterweight and try and re-plant the scape.
It's now got a massive stone on top, and this'll probably remain that way for a week or two until I'm sure it's properly soaked again.
Equipment-wise, everything from the old setup still works, the new Koralia Nano's are really good and the flow looks great (you can see the flow crossing from each corner and the flow from the spray bar at the back tumbling it round across the top and down the front of the glass to the HC and pogo at the front.
I cranked the CO2 up as there's no fish in there at the moment (drop-checker showing a very yellowy-green at present) and the plants responded by pearling nicely this morning (I didn't count all the bubbles last night as those were "fake" pearling from the fill-up).
I still need to adjust the lighting period from my original setup (need to reduce the duration a bit), and I need to put the CO2 back on a timer along with the Koralias but I was rather tired by this point and decided sleep was a good idea seeing as I needed to be up at 6am!
This morning, still looking good, it's still a little hazy but clearing, I've had a few bits of plant uproot themselves in the flow, and I think this might be a continuing theme for a few days until things start to root and I've dosed 5mm of TPN+ (proper stuff initially, I'm going to do my DIY mix as soon as I can get more accurate scales (eBay I think)).
Not looking forward to the water changes this week, but it'll be worth it I hope!
Took some pics and I'll try and upload them tonight once I get a chance to process the RAW files.
Bye for now,
Matt