Lisa_Perry75 said:
Hey Sam,
Hope things have improved for you?
Lisa -x-
Hi Lisa,
Good to see you back on here
Well I did a complete strip down and changed the substrate for fresh, unsoaked akadama, then planted it with blyxa and HC, around 5 weeks ago. This was followed by a period of little to no CO2 and the whole take got covered in brown algae. This killed most of the HC and the blyxa didn't fair that great. I added some ottos and nerites snails and they are finally getting on top of it. I added some more HC but its once again not doing very well, although the blyxa is going ok.
I really dont rate akadama, although I did get it to work in my nano once, it just seems to need months to get settled (whatever 'settled' actually means, and it must be a similar principle to tropica substrate?). I should have just bitten the bullet and got a decent substrate, aquatics-online do EC pretty cheap, esp for a large tank. I have promised my wife I'll leave it alone for another month or two, but unless there is a radical change it'll be another strip down and substrate change.
I did at least rearrange the rocks, which I have to say I'm really rather pleased with
I have also changed to 100% tap as its on the low side of hard hardness (14dGH), as I was fed up with changing the water and the recent lack of rain put an end to my use of rain water. I've also got nice hardly cherry barbs
which as Jimmy says are an underrated fish IMHO.
Looks like the blyxa will survive but its not flourishing, the HC only time will tell.
I have a mature java fern in there that's doing well
it loves the CO2.
Sam