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I missed this journal somehow. I love the emmersed planting on either side. Very nice..
I know someone else who is using the round leaved calathea too but new leaves are browning so not sure if it appreciates being submersed like others species.
Will keep watching this one
 
Thanks Al.
The round leaves calathea(forgot its name) is actually growing and has two new leaves and several out of the planter ready to open. The leaves are smaller than the original ones so far but it's seems to have adapted. It's planted only in hydroton pebbles because I think it's like the piece lilies and likes more flow/oxygen around the roots.
It's out of place there but I haven't decided where to put it as it can grow big.
 
I'm really enjoying this journal. Very nice, simple set-up. I'm always interested in low-tech set ups like this.

Wagtail platies are so under-rated! They look great.
 
Ha,ha, yes it was frustrating and I was totally ashamed of the tank but I couldn't help it. I am glad now I didn't hide behind the computer and took some pictures of the tank before and after. It serves to say one should have great patience with planted tanks. 🙂

Even the red Nymphaea lotus bulb that I thought was a gonner has just recently decided to grow a couple of leaves, still small but at least it didn't die as I thought. It's strange that it took so many months for it. I presume they have some sort of dormant period.
 
sciencefiction said:
Even the red Nymphaea lotus bulb that I thought was a gonner has just recently decided to grow a couple of leaves, still small but at least it didn't die as I thought. It's strange that it took so many months for it. I presume they have some sort of dormant period.
Click to expand...
Yeah,...the same thing happened to mine. I had completely forgotten about it when suddenly one day about 2 months later there were many new shoots. Then it just went crazy!!!🙂
 
The tank hasn't changed much. I was battling very high temperatures for the last month so the scaping was left until further notice. It seems the more I delay it the more it isn't going to happen. I can't help my lazy bum 🙂 I totally dislike some areas, especially the left side but due to the emersed plants overshadowing, the plants below grow slower.
But I've been cutting tons of stem plants which seem to be on steroids and I have been reluctuntly throwing them in the bin, which is a shame. The moss is overgrown and that's a PITA to trim. I tried one time and it flew everywhere. I have to try Tom Barrs approach with the scissors and the hose, but boys, those platies are so nosy they gather all around my scissors and the cories get buzzing around too when they sniff my hands inside the tank for some reason.

Anyway, some pics.

First some emersed plants. The calathea seems to be doing well, but it's grown so many leaves I don't think that small planter will cut it in long term. I had to trim it a bit, left just two of the bigger leaves.

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And on the other side the palm, peace lily and forgot the name of the third one to the left. Their roots are finding the way out from the planters and started growing straight in the water a bit, need a trim.
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The tank as of today. I should have waited for the stems to bush up again as I trimmed only recently.
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And some individual plant pictures I've taken:
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And the lotus growing and growing 🙂 It's a bit overshadowed there poor thing.
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Thanks everyone for the nice comments.
I feel I haven't done much to deserve them 🙂

All I've been doing is playing with the light timer and light distance when I think it's too much/too little light. The light at the moment is on for 9hrs, but the first 2 hours just one strip of light is running which is about 45W of LEDs, then all three come up for another 6.5hrs(135W), then last 30min again just one strip 45W. I've been twisting the spraybars up and down often because of the high summer temperatures to increase oxygen or if water evaporates much without me topping up I twist them down so they don't splash. And of course I've been removing ugly leaves or trimming plants. Despite it being a low tech tank the plants grow quite fast. I did manage to cloud the water once a bit when pulling out all the hydrophila from behind the wood to replace with other stems and since then I've been just lifting the plants and cutting as low down into the roots as I can without removing them fully from the substrate.

I am still trying to figure out a routine. So far water changes are irregular and mostly depend on evaporation and whether the TDS has risen or not, something like one every 2-3 weeks of about 30-50% depending on what I have time for. I haven't siphoned the tank at all. And I haven't needed to clean the glass or scrub anything. At the early stages there were minor diatoms after I moved in a big group of fish all at once which probably caused a sudden overload but that took care of itself. I've got a bristlenose pleco in there and I saw him dancing on the glass happily and the diatoms became history in a matter of days.
I've only cleaned the filters once for the entire period and that I did last week, not because I had a flow drop but just out of curiousity to check how bad they were. The filters have coarse sponges mainly and some bio rings on the bottom and they were almost clean. I have prefilter sponges on all and they've been cleaned every few weeks so I presume that helps. One of the 3 externals is a sand bed filter so it doesn't need any cleaning at all besides the prefilter.
.

I tested at some stage the Gh and Kh and that was stil about the same as my tap, 12 and 8 respectively so the soil I used did not alter any of my tap water stats. I happened to test the nitrAtes just once when I tested all my tanks and it was just about 5ppm and this was done long after I did the last water change.
I've put oak leaves and alder cones in there for the fish so that's making the water a bit yellow but I like tannins a lot. And I feed the fish daily quite a lot. There's about 40+ fish in there and about 20 cherry/rili shrimp which only got moved in 2-3 weeks ago. They seem to be doing well. I saw some of the females berried and they are now becoming braver and muching happily without hiding as much as in the beginning. They are used of corys because they grew up with them but the platies are a lot more predatory and would eat small ones if they catch them so I don't blame them 🙂

Thanks for reading guys. That's it summed up.
 
And just to add the glossostigma pictures I took the other day too. It's still spreading horizontally but very slow and the fish and snails uproot certain portions of it which if I don't replant, just suffer and die.
I figured also that the bacopa australis will grow horizontal if I cut the stem down to the bottom. I am not sure I've got room for it now because it has to grow over the glosso if I let it, but I will just try a small section to see how it goes and think about aesthetics some other time 🙂 Here are a couple of pics. My camera is sheer crap so I couldn't get a good quality ones:

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And for those of you that have patience to watch videos, I took a spontaneous one. This is a short clip of my baby fish eating mashed garlic with peas. I call them babies because the one's you'll see below are all generations bred and raised by me. The platies as you can guess are more of a nuisance because they just breed by themselves. The corys in this tank are kids of my initially purchased albino and gold laser corys which decided hybridizing is a greath thing. ...The parents are still at it all the time(in another tank 7 albinos and 6 gold laser corys) But my heart doesn't let them get separated because racism is not one of their flaws and they behave like a real love buch.
However, instead of swapping home bred corys for fish food or extra credit, I ended up having this extra tank for the duration of their life time at my own bloody cost 🙂, since hybrids are a no go to sell 🙂 I love them to bits though. And no offence but they are really healthy fish.

 
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