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Beginner second aquarium (Low-tech Jungle)

When making wood sink, I boil it a while and then quickly immerse it in very cold water. When heated, the internal air expands and some of it leaves the wood. Then while cooling, the air shrinks and water is sucked into internal lacunae.
Works for me. Some people report that reverse course works as well. The point is in changing the temperature, in both cases.
Beware that boiling the wood makes the container dirty.:p
 
Tank looks great, algae looks loke brown diatoms and as for the melt cut the affected leaf or leaves off as plant will be using lot of energy trying to repair it, cutting it will force new fresh grown.

Thank you very much, I have taken your advise and snipped it off.

Hi all,


Agreed that looks good and the algae looks like <"filamentous diatoms">.

The Echinodorus leaf looks like it was an old leaf (at the outside of the leaf rosette?) and yes, chop it off.

cheers Darrel

Ahh thanks I didn't realise that's what it was.
Tank looks great. Shame about the floating wood. I like the arrangement with the extra piece myself as it adds balance. You could try weighing it down in the tank with a rock until it sinks.

I agree, it's been sitting in a container with a rock holding it down for a while now so hopefully it will be ready to sink soon.
When making wood sink, I boil it a while and then quickly immerse it in very cold water. When heated, the internal air expands and some of it leaves the wood. Then while cooling, the air shrinks and water is sucked into internal lacunae.
Works for me. Some people report that reverse course works as well. The point is in changing the temperature, in both cases.
Beware that boiling the wood makes the container dirty.:p

Interesting, I'll try that technique thanks!
 
When making wood sink, I boil it a while and then quickly immerse it in very cold water. When heated, the internal air expands and some of it leaves the wood. Then while cooling, the air shrinks and water is sucked into internal lacunae.
Works for me. Some people report that reverse course works as well. The point is in changing the temperature, in both cases.
Beware that boiling the wood makes the container dirty.:p
This is insanely brilliant, ive only just soaked it, going to try this for future tanks!
 
Tank has been doing well, only small issues a lot of algae on some of my plants (picture attached). I've lowered my light schedule to the following:
12:00 - 1%
13:00 - 15%
14:00 - 40%
18:00 - 40%
19:00 - 15%
20:00 - 0%

I'm hoping this relatively low light schedule will help, I'm only dosing around 1.5ml TNC Complete everyday. Any other suggestions? If not I guess I could buy an Amano shrimp...even though this doesn't deal with the actual cause heh.
 

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Hiya
So it looks like you'll get 6 hours at 40% intensity. I'm a real beginner, but it may be worth sharing my recent experience which was not great after turning my lights down to six hours - slow steady plant melt over a period of months. Following a recommendation here, I'm now back up to 12 hours a day at lower intensity than before and after a few weeks the plants are starting to bounce back nicely.
I seem not to suffer too badly from algae in my tank (famous last words), and what I do get seems to be eaten by my pleco (my rather larger equivalent to your Amano shrimp option!).
I seem to have relatively high nitrogen, so am dosing TNC Lite at the moment and watching how much I feed the fish.
 
Hiya
So it looks like you'll get 6 hours at 40% intensity. I'm a real beginner, but it may be worth sharing my recent experience which was not great after turning my lights down to six hours - slow steady plant melt over a period of months. Following a recommendation here, I'm now back up to 12 hours a day at lower intensity than before and after a few weeks the plants are starting to bounce back nicely.
I seem not to suffer too badly from algae in my tank (famous last words), and what I do get seems to be eaten by my pleco (my rather larger equivalent to your Amano shrimp option!).
I seem to have relatively high nitrogen, so am dosing TNC Lite at the moment and watching how much I feed the fish.

Interesting, thanks for the input, I'll continue to change things slowly until I have some success :)
 


Here's how the tank is looking at the moment, it's been doing really well. I've ordered some things for it, I'm going to add CO2 so got a Strideways Pro Plus regulator, I'm ordering stuff and then I'll be re-scaping it, going to try to do it using the existing wood/rock that's in there as I don't have unlimited funds sadly.
 
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