5ft Disaster (1st attempt), In with the new (2nd attempt)

[jackychun218]

Hi all

My plants arrived today. I ordered them through Pets @ Home who made an order with Tropica for me. After a bit of confusion in the store, I managed to come away with 90% of the plants that I ordered and paid a good price so not too bad. Plants all look healthy, only problem being that I forgot to state on my order that I wanted potted plants , so I've ended up with 14 pots of 1-2 grow and 8 potted plants.

I had a planting plan which I think I'm going to stick to, but it looks like I'm going to have to wait a fair amount of time for the 1-2 grow to grow in and catch up with the potted plants.

Plan to start planting in the morning. Any tips on how to stop 1-2 grow floating from nature soil when I fill ? obviously fill v.e..r.....y s..l...o.....w.......l......y

Any benefit to be had by running CO2 24/7 for the first week ?

Also removed the styrofoam and replaced with rocks

Cheers all

Paul

Hi Paul,

To prevent the plants from floating up during planting, you should only fill in the water level just few centimeters above the substrate and use tweezers to plant it.

Take a look at this link for more details.

 

[Paul195]

Got the plants in and filled the tank today. Only spot of bother was that the largest piece of wood floated and disturbed a few of the the surrounding plants and substrate, so I have now tied some rocks to it to keep it down. It was in my previous tank so I assumed it would be ok, but it has been exposed to the air for two weeks. Just a question of trying to get the substrate back into place and tidy which is probably going to be a PITA. Oh well, a learning experience!

I have the filters and heater running, but haven't switched on the CO2 yet as I'm off to bed soon and don't have time to play with drop checkers and bubble rates tonight. Does this matter if the plants don't see any CO2 in the first 20 hours of filling ? I do have some Excel, should I just dose some of this in till tomorrow?

Cheers all

Paul

 

[AnhBui]

I have the filters and heater running, but haven't switched on the CO2 yet as I'm off to bed soon and don't have time to play with drop checkers and bubble rates tonight. Does this matter if the plants don't see any CO2 in the first 20 hours of filling ? I do have some Excel, should I just dose some of this in till tomorrow?

Cheers all

Paul

It is okay to have no Co2. I have never experienced Excel, however I do dose after setup at the first water change

 

[Paul195]

Hi All

Here is the tank on day 3:

Here was my detail of final planting arrangement:

I did 50% water changes on day 1 and 2. I have now raised the light unit by about 6 inches which is running on 6H period. My drop checker is green and after PH and KH test at 10pm just before CO2 goes off, KH is 6.5 and PH is 6.8. On the chart this equates to 30.9ppm CO2 so I think I'm in the right ballpark with CO2 ?

Nutrients wise I started dosing full EI (macros on day one, micros on day 2) but now scaled that back to only half EI dose.
Currently seeing some algae appearing on back glass , a few black spots on the leaves of the Limnophila Hippuridoides (can't be sure that they weren't there when I got them tbh) and a few of the leaves of the Echinodorus Tenellus are a bit yellow.
Other than that the other plants seem fine and some have grown a fair bit already !

Plan to do another water change tomorrow. Any suggestions as to why algae forming already on glass and some leaves funny colours, and next steps ?

Cheers

Paul

 

[Manisha]

Looks lovely, I'm sure will look lovelier when grown in! Not much use me, but should you increase your photoperiod gradually one the first few weeks to allow the plants to adapt & can utilize the light most efficently?

 

[Tim Harrison]

Wow very neat and tidy...good luck, I hope it's a great success.