The Setup - 24/03/2009
Hi Guys,
As promised, sorry it's a bit later than expected, my fiancée had the lurgy so I had to look after her, then do a water change and re-plant the loose stems, but finally, after much waiting for plant orders to arrive over the last few weeks, here are all the details of my tank setup that I undertook last night.
Plant List and Kit
From Java-Plants:
- 20 x Small Helzine
5 x Crypt Wendtii
10 x Crypt Becketii
5 x Ambulia Aquatica
5 x Rorippa Aquatica
10 x Didiplis Diandra
5 x Crypt Nevillii
10 x Micranthemum Umbrosum
25 x Hairgrass
20 x Java Fern
2 x Hemicanthus Calichtroides Mats
From Aqua Essentials:
- 3 x Aquafleur Pogostemnon Helefri
3 x Aquafleur Hemicanthus Calichtroides
I also got some tweezers after reading that they'd be helpful planting and looking at tropica's very helpful planting video on their website and seeing just how necessary they'd be. As I was planting dry, other essentials for the planting were a water spray bottle for keeping the plants damp and a towel to mop up spills as I filled the tank.
The Planting
And, here's the bare tank with the hard-scape:
I wanted to create a carpet-effect over the right-hand foreground with sand in the front right corner, the wood would have a lot of Java Fern, Crypts would be around the base of the root and some larger plant behind the root. I also wanted to try and experiment with hairgrass as a carpet, this I decided to do in the front-left corner, so first I added the sand:
Next, the Java Fern, this I wedged in as I wasn't sure about it's placement just yet:
Then after spraying the fern down, I started on the Ambulia Aquatica and the Micranthemum Umbrosum:
This is when I realised that it might have been better to do the foreground first, when I started to put in the stem plants that were going to come in front of the Micranthemum Umbrosum, the Didiplis Diandra and Small Helzine. The stems had been laid down, but I had to move them to get a space to plant. After planting these, the HC, the pogo and the crypts the tank was planted:
I ended up with a little surplus, one Rorippa Aquatica has gone in my cube along with some of the HC sheet and one Pogo. The second HC sheet is unused and is currently sitting on my sand-patch recovering from it's ordeal from it's journey (that'll be put on the for sale/swap section later).
The Filling
So finally, the filling! At this point it was starting to get late, so there aren't any photos of this bit, I placed a side-plate on the sand and a little on the HC in the corner, then I balanced a round bowl on that and aimed the flow into the bowl, the shape caused the eddys to deflect upwards and nothing got disturbed!
I got to about half full when a minor disaster struck, the wood had been waiting for so long that it'd started to dry out and it started to lift from the substrate... Argh! I grabbed a large rock and rushed back to weigh it down, this worked but it was a little late and I had to replant all the fern and many crypts again as they'd been pushed free by the escaping tree-root.
Crisis averted I continued to fill the tank, primed the filter (which has been 2/3rds filled with Sintered Glass Eheim media) and started the Koralias, so much flow! From watching the CO2 bubbles I think the flow is somewhat like this pic:
The (initially) Finished Tank
Here's a pic of the tank with all it's plants in:
Lighting, CO2 and Ferts
Lighting was on a 12h day initially, but I've adjusted it to 10h day as per the tutorial, 11:30-21:30 with a 1hr period from 7am-8am to allow me to feed the fish, fertilise the tank and check it before I go to work.
CO2 comes from a JBL Profi 2, split to two ceramic CO2 diffusers below both hydor koralia pumps. I'm currently adding surplus CO2 to give the plants a bit more of a nice environment and to let them grow as quickly as possible before I add fish in. Once I get my bubble checker in the line, I'll start to dial the CO2 back a bit so that it's nicely lime-green coloured. The CO2 is on a solenoid and comes on 30mins before lights on and switches off 30mins before lights off.
Fertilization is at the moment done with TPN+ (5ml daily as-per tutorial article) but I'll be moving to DIY TPN+ (cheers Paulo for the advice regarding measurement) and a dosing pump in the near-future (when I get the pump wired up, and I can get some accurate scales to measure the chemicals out).
Currently doing daily water changes of 50% for the next week.
Here's a few more pics of the tank:
Dropchecker Yellow
Pearling HC
Finally, a pic from tonight showing the water is beginning to clear:
Hope you like the update, I'll keep you updated as to my progress and keep you apprised as to any algae situation if/when it occurs.
I'm not too sure about the Java Fern, it looks too big in the tank, might replace it with the narrow variety later on, and I'd like to try some christmas moss on the wood at some point. The big rock on the wood will be removed as soon as I think the wood's soaked enough to avoid it floating again.
I'm still learning, so if you think I've done anything wrong or you know of any handy hints please feel free to let me know.
Cheers,
Matt