Re: [NANO]Nature's River **BIG CLEAN UP**
Okay, so i couldn't wait any longer looking at the dismal, algae infested tank so i got around to doing the BIG CLEANUP. So i'll start off with showing you what the tank looked like due to neglect and poor maintenance.
As it looked BEFORE by
Harry.R, on Flickr
As you can see from the picture, Most of the moss had died. I don't know what caused this but possibly the lack of light from my led's must of made it melt away. You can also see that my river had started to merge with the soil which i was expecting and it looks so ugly haha! Finally the worst part, the diatom algae all over the wood and some on the soil. This accumulated over around 5 weeks and makes the wood look terrible. SO, after sizing up my task i started to clean the tank starting off with removing the moss.
Moss removed BEFORE by
Harry.R, on Flickr
From this picture you can see that all of the moss has been removed. When inspecting the moss i only found a few shoots that where alive and salvageable, you will see in the next picture what i did with it. Okay so now i had the moss removed it was time to sort out that river and soil!
Cloudy AFTER by
Harry.R, on Flickr
In this picture you can see that i have sorted out the river and soil and made it as neat as i could, it is harder to do than it looks! I backed up the soil from the front to the back as a little had fallen down the 'hill' and also did the same to the sand. So now for the moss, as you can see, from all of that moss this is the only remains of it that where alive
BUT, i put them to good use by tieing them to the wood near the surface of the water to hopefully get a bit of light to them and get back the amount i had before
You can see that the river looks wider than before and this is because the moss before covered a little of the edges making it seem narrower. Also i removed as much of the algae from the wood as possible, but it hard to see due to the cloudiness.
Cleared up AFTER by
Harry.R, on Flickr
Okay so finally after 2 hours, the water cleared for a FTS. Here you can see the wood is looking a little cleaner than before. This tank is now ready for next week when i will be adding lots of plants and swapping that horrible inlet for a legit Eheim crook one , thank god!
Stay tuned