Hello folks. It's been a busy few days and I now finally have a chance to catch up on my journal.
Here goes... sorry it's quite long!
I raised the height at the back slightly with a row of mesh bags of pea gravel. Then I added a layer of aquatic pond soil, mixed with coarse sand and a small amount of pea gravel, also contained in mesh bags. I wanted to prevent the cap and soil mixing when I inevitably have to move any wayward/badly placed/shade loving/monster triffid plants and reduce the risk of releasing soil into the water column. I know from previous experience I'll have a small panic attack everytime I move anything otherwise!
The capping layer is approx. 5 cms of coarse Unipac sand (a mix of Fuji and Samoa). I did add some of the darker sand to the rear of the tank, hoping to add a sense of shadow and depth, but hadn't banked on how much the frosted background would reflect the light and may as well not have bothered...
Despite soaking my oak branches for two months, glueing them and tying them to themselves and gluing to the rocks they still floated. Annoying, but not the end of the world. In my dry test run the branches had sat quite firmly in place, but I found that besides the annoying floating they also rolled forwards. Instead I have temporarily used some slate I had to give a little interest to the left side of the tank, whilst I think on what direction I want to go in next. The random sprig of pintatifida sticking out of it is covering up a hole where I'd screwed it to something as a weight previously!! The main hardscape is a lovely piece of Corbo wood.
Planting - it doesn't look that full in the photo, but I have the following plants in the tank (thank you Aquarium Gardens):
2 x Hygrophila polysperma
2 x Hygrophila Siamensis 53b
2 x Juncus repens
2 x Anubias nana
1 x pot of Pinatifida in vitro
1 x pot of Anubias picolino in vitro
1 x pot of Bucephalandra red
3 x Lutea Hobbit
1 x Hydrocotyle leucocephala
2 x Hydrocotye tripartita
1 x Limnobium laevigatum in vitro
1 x Helanthium tenellum Green in vitro
A few random Hygrophila from another tank
I have to say at this point that I absolutely HATE planting teeny, tiny tenellum Green. It's a fiddly, spikey little devil and it takes an age to plant an entire pot and it then rewards you by floating at will.
On day two I moved the Anubias to more shady areas and pushed the leucocephala into a hole at the top of the Corbo wood, so it would float on the surface and give extra shade.
I've prepared a couple of riparium plants. Just need to fashion some hangers with the plastic coated horticultural wire, which arrived in the post today.
Lighting - Fluval Aquasky 2.0 21w. Initially set at 30% white, 20% green and red, 3% blue. Dawn 1 hour, daylight 4 hours, dusk 1 hour. I'll start ramping this up in a few days/weeks, but with the frosted background looked mega bright to me at any higher than 30%.
Dosed a general fertiliser on day 2 at 50% recommended rate. I'll lightly dose over the first few weeks. Am basing the dosing regime on any new growth on the plants and using the condition of the Frogbit as an indicator of nutrient levels.
Current filtration - 1 x Aquael PAT Mini and 1 x Aquael Turbo 500, which is making everything sway gently. However I've always used an external filter in the past and am hating the clutter in the tank, so have just ordered a Oase Biomaster Thermo 250. Figured this will be fine as actual water volume is only 150 litres on account of the deeper substrate and dropped water line. This gives me six times turnover per hour.
Water changes 50% daily so far. Why, oh why did I not buy a pump for water changes years ago????? Loving the Eheim 1000.
Now 9 days in I have no algae other than the expected diatoms on a few surfaces and plant leaves. There is a bit of white fungus on the Corbo, but that should disappear quickly enough, as it had been soaking for a while. I think I just jetwashed off the biofilm, so it's going back through the whole process again. I have added an MTS and a few Ramshorns to assist.
The Anubias and the Frogbit are flowering - yay.
Please feel free to give me thoughts, pointers etc. I've kept tanks for years, but usually only have fine gravel with a little loose soil under it, root tabs, polysperma and Amazon Swords. The whole planted tank is new to me!