well i not posted a while ago.
as you may know that the nano was in the AGA competition. however i not felt that i could win anything there, but was fun to try it. the judges gave useful comments.
in the meantime this was a while ago and when i captured the contest images, probaably because of the summer extreme brigh days and other factors, but i got a massive algae attack. had brush on the tree and on the mosses, had fuzz like algae on all my plants which really killed me. especially as i had too many plants there and the algae infected all my plants including the background ones too.
fight very hard with it for months. did several attempt to kill it. used easy carbo and pressurized co2 at that time with ADA fertilizers so i wondered why this all happening.
changed the flow direction, changed the diffuser position, decreased light period added a little more carbo a little more co2.... no luck at all.
a bit more than a month ago another round of changes happened as a last attempt on this battle:
- decreased the light now it is only 6 hours a day.
- co2 starts 3 hours before the light and last 1 hour after the light
- replaced nano diffuser as that was useless. did not provide really enough CO2 for this tank. so added in a larger one.
- changed my filter media. used eheim substrat pro before in my eheim ecco pro 130. fully replaced to ADA NACarbon did not worried about any bacterial colony as i use green bacter weekly anyways after water changes.
- added in 2 amanos (earlier they escaped).
the result in a month every allgae dissapeared. first the brush died off from the wood. used phyton git there to brush it. then hair algae disappeared from leaves but deep in the tank i still had a lot from them. plus on the Microsorum leaves i had this. The leaves cleaned up in a few weeks and the algae fully died. even the small brushes from the mosses.
with NA Carbon i got a crystal clear water. Where crystal clear really means crystal
i have bright white walls in my living room. but when i see my tank in front of the wall i do not see anything just glasses and plants
no color by fertilizers before the water changes, no color from woods, no cloudy water. nada
its hard to tell myself this is WC time as the tank looks so clear.
Added in a group of CRS and shrimps feels much better as the carbon cleans better the water.
I seen that amano uses this filter media in all his nano tanks which you can find on the aquajournal site. so that was the time when i wanted to check this. now after some time i can tell this is the best filter media for a nano.
you may need to replace it in every few months or so, but the result is shocking
and not the ADA guy speak from me now.
allright here is a few shots which i made today before the lights turned off.
the tank will be rescaped in january to an iwagumi one with manten stones as i was jellous by your tanks
so a few of the last moments on this scape. carpet was redone but i will not wait til its complete. so please forgive me i not cleaned up the tank, the glasses, did nothing just shoot some pics for you.
you can check these in high res on my flickr page.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/viktorlantos/