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Aurora Aquatica


I'll try and take some this evening, will just be phone pics. The job took a lot longer than expected and I started later as I had to go to Royal Mail on the way home and pick up another package of bits from Aqua Essentials. I was still working on the plants when my girlfriend came round, so I finished the job while she did some work, but then I had to get dinner sorted and we didn't eat until something like 9. Pics were not a priority, steak and a nice glass of red was :D
 
Ok, some pics.

New Limnophila H. stems. They were all bent over last night after planting, pleased to see they are all stood up and reaching for the light today, positive signs already.

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The Alternanthera after its tidy up and replant.

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And the Ranunculous. The two really tall bits at the back are emmersed that came from the propagator, so tall they hit the cover, so moved them in to the aquarium.

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My Hygrophila Siamensis seems to have put out new leaves just above the substrate on one of the stems.

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All the stems have fresh growth at the tops, just this one that has growth top and bottom. Is this just leaves or is this new stems that will grow here?
 
I want to try and increase growth in some of my plants that seem to be doing very little like the Hydrocotyle, so I have increased the light a little this evening. It's been at 20% for 5 weeks now, so have pushed it up to 30% but kept the duration at 6 hours. I'll try that for a week and see how things go.
 
In my experience L. Hip takes a good while to get comfortable and then takes off growth wise. It also seems to melt if there's not enough co2 and I found it to be very pale without enough iron.
 
In my experience L. Hip takes a good while to get comfortable and then takes off growth wise. It also seems to melt if there's not enough co2 and I found it to be very pale without enough iron.

Yes, that's an interesting point about the CO2. Tropica list it as being a plant that will grow with low CO2 but medium light. I did some searching around and reading up on other peoples experiences yesterday and found quite a few people say it needs good levels of CO2. My drop checker is right down next to it and its green, so fingers crossed. When the in-vitro stuff melted my CO2 was unstable, now its on 24/7 I hope to have a better chance with these more established plants. They look happy, they were all sort of bent over and floppy after planting, but by last night they had all perked up and were standing straight up reaching for the light.
 
Good news! My new toy is arriving today! I have quite a few things on this weekend, but should have time to play around with it tomorrow after I have washed the girlfriends car. It is a TMC Easi-Dose 2 pump master! It has taken Charterhouse a few days to get it in stock, but I will be collecting it from DPD this evening.

http://www.charterhouse-aquatics.co.uk/tmc-easidose-programmable-dosing-system-master-p-16151.html

I also got the Bubble Magus tube holder, it arrived in an earlier package, it is a bit bigger than I expected from the pics so rather more obvious on the top of the tank than I had hoped. I guess they are better for Marine systems where you hide it on the sump, but it appears to be a good quality item, very solid and durable, does the job.

http://www.charterhouse-aquatics.co.uk/tube-holder-for-bubble-magus-dosing-pump-p-10008.html

I already have two of the 1.5 litre containers:

http://www.charterhouse-aquatics.co.uk/tmc-easidose-dosing-container-litre-p-16131.html

Looking forward to having this set-up with 1.5 litres of EI ferts in the containers, I can then happily go away on holiday without worrying about ferts. Also means there is no chance of me forgetting during the week.
 
I'm a bit disappointed with Fish Keeper Scotland aka Maidenhead Aquatics in Aberdeen. I was in just over a week ago and they had run out of Amanos, spoke to the lad and he said he would ask the guy that does the ordering to put them on the next order and that orders come in Tuesday. I called in tonight to check what they had with the intention of getting some on Saturday morning. Turns out they didn't get any on the order that actually arrived today and they are now doing international orders so they will only get fish every two to three weeks.

I usually go after work and the guy that seems to be running it is never there, so I'm going to call in the day tomorrow and see if I can speak to him and find out the score. Not sure if he couldn't get them or my request just didn't get to him. Either way, a three week wait for the next order seems a long time! I guess I'll have to try and find them elsewhere.
 
Ive had a similar experience with a MA store near me. Took almost 3 months to get amanos in for me


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Ive had a similar experience with a MA store near me. Took almost 3 months to get amanos in for me


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's annoying as they had a load in when they opened, they obviously sold loads but haven't got them in again. Apparently someone went in there two weekends ago and bought the last 37 in one go. I'm guessing I'm not the only planted guy going in there!
 
I feel I may have made a mistake with using Crypts in the back left of my aquarium. I wanted something that would be taller than the mid to foreground but lower than the stems to create a transition.

As you can see from the pic, the Hygrophila I added is super tall and the S. Repens is growing well. The tissue culture crypts are growing, but so slowly that they are just not going to keep up with their neighbours and I'm ending up with this low corner patch.

I'm not sure where I could move them and also heard they might not like being moved. I'm considering replacing them if anyone has a suggestion of something more suitable to fill that gap?

I'm also tempted to ease them forward and put something taller behind if that might work?

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I'm sure with my patience levels that I made a poor choice with the Crypts, so I'm definitely looking for a new option for that corner. Something that will grow to mid height, reasonable growth speed and that won't mind being a little shaded by the Hygrophila next to it.

I've increased light intensity again tonight, it's just over a week since I went to 30%, seen improvements in growth on the Echinodorus Reni. Have increased to 40% this evening, will leave that for another week then see how things are going.
 
Today I set up my TMC Easi-Dose 2 pump master, had a few snags, but all seems to be working ok now.

The first issue was the pumps wouldn't prime, they seemed to drag the silicone tube through the pump, but not lift and liquid from the containers. I had seen a YouTube video that said most dosing pumps can have issues due to them being sat stationary so long in the box, so I dismantled both pump heads, made sure the hose was good, freed up the movement and rebuilt them. Both worked fine after this.

Second snag was that air seemed to be getting in at the connection point to the dosing container. It seems that it's not adequate to push the tube in until it clicks then apply the clip, you really have to push it down hard.

So, here's my setup...

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And the bubble magus tube holder...

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I was hoping that I could set these alternate days, but that's not the case, you just set the dose and then which hours you want it to run, so it can run 24 times a day, but it will run every day on the hour for every hour you set it.

I set both pumps to 10ml and tested, the macro pump gave me exactly 10ml, the micro gave me 11. I need about 75ml a week of ferts, do the micro pump is left set at 10 and the macro has been set to 11. I'm running the macro 7 days a week at 1700 for lights on, the micro runs 7 days a week at 0500 to space macro and micro dosing apart by 12 hours. I should end up with 77ml of each per week so that's about right. My only concern is the Sunday morning micro dose might get lost with the water change on Sunday morning, but I can manually dose a little extra if needs be.

I'm setup now with a litre of macro and a litre of micro, should last a while!
 
Observant people will notice the drip on the left hand outlet side of pump 1! Bugger! That happened with pump 2 earlier but thought pump 1 was ok, seems not! It's easy fixed though.
 
I've had a few issues recently, but think I know where I went wrong. I was away on business for a few days last week, was confident all would be well as nothing to feed yet and the dosing pump was set up. Unfortunately I returned home Friday to find one Microsorum plant was ruined, all the leaves were damaged. The other plant next to it was half damaged, half ok. I suspect that my mistake was mixing my ferts directly in the dosing containers, then setting up the system and priming straight away. I suspect that the ferts in the tubing were not fully mixed and it was further osmotic damage as I had last time I mixed ferts with manual dosing. The tube holder is exactly in line with the damaged plants so I am sure that was the problem. I have read that Microsorum will come back if you cut all the leaves back to the rhizome. I therefore cut all the leaves off one plant and half off the other and will see if it comes back. If not, I really like my Anubias, so will fill in any gaps with more Anubias at a later date once my stems are established for better shade.

On a more positive note, sticking with 6 hours but upping to 40% has had a good impact on some plants that were hardly growing. My hydrocotyle is now making progress, the Echinodorus Reni is putting out new leaves regularly and gaining height and the Limnophila h. has put on a couple of inches since planting.

I didn't remove the Crypts yet, but they don't seem overly happy. I've really not had good luck with tissue culture. My alternanthera reinecki mini is stationary, it's going nowhere.

The ranunculus is filling in and the S. Repens is also growing well. Trimmed more of that and replanted tops at the weekend. Also trimmed a couple of the Hygrophila stems which have now started to grow a double stem from the point they were cut, tops were planted and are growing too.

Pics to follow from the phone.
 
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Hydrocotyle finally going places!

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Echinodorus Reni and the Limnophila H. doing nicely.

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The rather sad looking Crypts with some melting leaves. Probably going to replaced with something else.

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