I wish I had started a journal on this tank when I first started it, but better late than never. As you will see my tank has gone through a lot of change in the past 2 and a half years.
This right here is my old 567 liter (150 gallons) tank. This tank ran for about two years before it stared to leak. I thought this was a great opportunity to get a bigger tank lol.
I ended up getting this 1200L tank. This is the tank when first filled. I was really unsure of how to scape such a big tank and was limited to what I had in my previous tank.
Fish in the tank now and a few plants as well. The tank right now is running on pretty low light and no CO2.
A little while after I found a deal on lots of amazon swords and thought they would be a good way to fill in the tank without spending so much money on hardscape. Also gave away the parrot cichlids as they would pick at plants too much and would really limit my choices. Somehow the Severum was very picky when it came to what plants he likes to eat. Unfortunately this limits my plant choices but he is everyone's favorite fish so I cant give him away.
Some time later I found an LFS with amazing prices on plants so I was able to fill in my tank a lot more.
A few months later this is what the tank looks like, I neglected the tank a bit before this picture so many of the plants disappeared, or shrunk down and got lots of nutrient deficiencies. However as you can see the plants that really thrived during this period is the giant Vallisneria.
2 months later I did a bit of maintenance and cleaning up of the scape since it was looking a little messy. As you can see the big amazon swords I once had shrunk down to tiny swords you can barely see due to not paying attention to the tank.
Two weeks later I was still a little unhappy with the scape so I trimmed the vals a little more and I added a few more plants to replace the shrunken down unhealthy plants. Little did I know trimming the vals this much would soon cause most of them to melt away. This is maybe one of my favorite versions of the tank, but the scape would not last long.
About 8 months later I decided to add CO2 to my system. Not much happened in these 8 months, plants went through a cycle of shrinking and growing due to my inconsistency. This was the tank on the day I decided to add CO2. This was on June 2022 a few months ago.
After adding CO2 I saw an explosion in plant growth, and I began to dose EI and doing 50% water changes. I became the most consistent I have ever been with the tank ever since adding CO2. The fast change each week in plants made the tank a lot more fun for me, and the success I was finally seeing made me enjoy the tank much more. Here is the tank one month after adding CO2. As you can see the tiger lotus grew to a monstrous size and the tiny amazon swords are much more visible now. Vallisneria also shooting off lots of runners.
About another month later and the tank has turned into a jungle. I have the most plants I have ever had without adding any new plants. The giant tiger lotus was trimmed and moved back.
A little over a month later I decided to clean the scape up a little and I added some rotala rotundifolia to the scape and got rid of most of the vals as some of them were getting up to 8 feet long...
About one month later I decided to upgrade my old cheap amazon LEDs to 3 Chihiro's WRGB II 90 pro. I was in love with how tanks looked underneath these lights so I finally decided to get the lights I've always wanted. This is the tank under the Chihiro's. I want to say this is the point were problems I already had started getting a little worse. Nutrient deficiencies were getting more obvious and I was starting to see an increase in GDA. I guess the lights were making problems I already had happen much faster.
This is the tank another month later, tank isn't doing too bad, but I am getting tired of the GDA. I did a lot of reading on this forum and the Barrreport and figured CO2 might be my problem. I increased my CO2 to more proper levels, reduced temp, and reduced light in order to reduce CO2 demand and make sure plants were getting proper CO2. Somehow during this time I was ignoring the obvious sings in my Brazilian pennywort that had new leaves that looked like they were getting bleached. Some with very dark veins while the leaves were almost white.
This is the tank today. The photo looks a little washed out from all the CO2 bubbles since I increased CO2 injection. My reactors are also very undersized and I plan on getting something much bigger. It was around this time that I made some a post asking about CO2 optimization since I thought CO2 was my main problem Optimizing CO2 in 1200L tank. More recently a few days ago I made a thread asking for advice on GDA Persistent GDA on plants. It seems the deficiencies in my plants are most likely iron (Fe) and maybe magnesium (Mg). I have relatively hard water so my plants do not have much iron available to them. I plan on adding Fe DTPA since I now know I need a chelator to prevent the iron from immediately precipitating from the water column. I also have a pH meter so I will be working on making sure my CO2 is at optimal and stable levels. I will receive the iron chelator in a few days and I will start dosing magnesium with Epsom salts today. I will soon update with how the plants are affected.
This right here is my old 567 liter (150 gallons) tank. This tank ran for about two years before it stared to leak. I thought this was a great opportunity to get a bigger tank lol.
I ended up getting this 1200L tank. This is the tank when first filled. I was really unsure of how to scape such a big tank and was limited to what I had in my previous tank.
Fish in the tank now and a few plants as well. The tank right now is running on pretty low light and no CO2.
A little while after I found a deal on lots of amazon swords and thought they would be a good way to fill in the tank without spending so much money on hardscape. Also gave away the parrot cichlids as they would pick at plants too much and would really limit my choices. Somehow the Severum was very picky when it came to what plants he likes to eat. Unfortunately this limits my plant choices but he is everyone's favorite fish so I cant give him away.
Some time later I found an LFS with amazing prices on plants so I was able to fill in my tank a lot more.
A few months later this is what the tank looks like, I neglected the tank a bit before this picture so many of the plants disappeared, or shrunk down and got lots of nutrient deficiencies. However as you can see the plants that really thrived during this period is the giant Vallisneria.
2 months later I did a bit of maintenance and cleaning up of the scape since it was looking a little messy. As you can see the big amazon swords I once had shrunk down to tiny swords you can barely see due to not paying attention to the tank.
Two weeks later I was still a little unhappy with the scape so I trimmed the vals a little more and I added a few more plants to replace the shrunken down unhealthy plants. Little did I know trimming the vals this much would soon cause most of them to melt away. This is maybe one of my favorite versions of the tank, but the scape would not last long.
About 8 months later I decided to add CO2 to my system. Not much happened in these 8 months, plants went through a cycle of shrinking and growing due to my inconsistency. This was the tank on the day I decided to add CO2. This was on June 2022 a few months ago.
After adding CO2 I saw an explosion in plant growth, and I began to dose EI and doing 50% water changes. I became the most consistent I have ever been with the tank ever since adding CO2. The fast change each week in plants made the tank a lot more fun for me, and the success I was finally seeing made me enjoy the tank much more. Here is the tank one month after adding CO2. As you can see the tiger lotus grew to a monstrous size and the tiny amazon swords are much more visible now. Vallisneria also shooting off lots of runners.
About another month later and the tank has turned into a jungle. I have the most plants I have ever had without adding any new plants. The giant tiger lotus was trimmed and moved back.
A little over a month later I decided to clean the scape up a little and I added some rotala rotundifolia to the scape and got rid of most of the vals as some of them were getting up to 8 feet long...
About one month later I decided to upgrade my old cheap amazon LEDs to 3 Chihiro's WRGB II 90 pro. I was in love with how tanks looked underneath these lights so I finally decided to get the lights I've always wanted. This is the tank under the Chihiro's. I want to say this is the point were problems I already had started getting a little worse. Nutrient deficiencies were getting more obvious and I was starting to see an increase in GDA. I guess the lights were making problems I already had happen much faster.
This is the tank another month later, tank isn't doing too bad, but I am getting tired of the GDA. I did a lot of reading on this forum and the Barrreport and figured CO2 might be my problem. I increased my CO2 to more proper levels, reduced temp, and reduced light in order to reduce CO2 demand and make sure plants were getting proper CO2. Somehow during this time I was ignoring the obvious sings in my Brazilian pennywort that had new leaves that looked like they were getting bleached. Some with very dark veins while the leaves were almost white.
This is the tank today. The photo looks a little washed out from all the CO2 bubbles since I increased CO2 injection. My reactors are also very undersized and I plan on getting something much bigger. It was around this time that I made some a post asking about CO2 optimization since I thought CO2 was my main problem Optimizing CO2 in 1200L tank. More recently a few days ago I made a thread asking for advice on GDA Persistent GDA on plants. It seems the deficiencies in my plants are most likely iron (Fe) and maybe magnesium (Mg). I have relatively hard water so my plants do not have much iron available to them. I plan on adding Fe DTPA since I now know I need a chelator to prevent the iron from immediately precipitating from the water column. I also have a pH meter so I will be working on making sure my CO2 is at optimal and stable levels. I will receive the iron chelator in a few days and I will start dosing magnesium with Epsom salts today. I will soon update with how the plants are affected.
Last edited:
