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10 year 60cm tank... did some maintenance

Still loving this scape. It feels like a set from "the land that time forgot". I keep expecting little humans clutching spears to emerge from the undergrowth.
thanks... this is the sort of a scape for those with not enough time to do complete maintenance :)
 
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I finally hacked the R. Wallichii in time for this photo. And now the R. Blood Reds are overgrown.
I'm trying to figure what I can grow at the back of the tank that won't get blown away by the outflow from the rear Lily pipe (which also needs a clean - which is why overgrown stems are not such bad thing....). The S.Macrocaulon are still right at the back but they are so short, they can't be seen - if I let them can too tall, they affected by the waterflow.


Tank size
60x45x45 (12 cm substrate depth)

Soil
10 years old a lot of which has disintegrated

Ferts
APT EI 0.9ml/daily equal to weekly dosing of:
NO3 5.8ppm
PO4 1.89ppm
K 7.9ppm
Fe 0.22ppm +occasionally once a month 0.2ppm EDDHA-Fe ice cubes into substrate (didn't make ice cubes this week)
Mg 0.714ppm + 2ppm from Epsom Salts

Weekly addition of Starxcote (NPK with TE ) / Plantacote (NPK no TE) into the subtrate

Lighting
WRGB2 Front: 84%
WRGB2 Back: 88%
 
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Weekly update. No major changes. 30min of trimming.
Will be pulling out the E. Vietnam and E. Japan, splitting them and replanting. Will probably make a mess😅
The A.Pedicatella are looking better, which is encouraging in that I don't have to go 'super lean' for them to survive.
Photography wise, I also set the exposure a little bit darker - i think my previous photos their colour was washed out because of overexposure.
 
@erwin123 . I think what you have is different from walichii and probably Enie. this is the best I ever had my "wallichii" look. this was with the chihiros at 80-90% thats over 300 par! then I looked around forums and realised people with more dosing, less light, lower quality light had much better colouration from wallichii. I purchased my wallicihi from a seller on ebay emmersed, this time I bought a tissue culture of wallichii from tropica, hope it turns red!
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chihiros at almost max power and no dosing....
I also have bought some ammania gold, something new and pretty to stunt!
 
@erwin123 . I think what you have is different from walichii and probably Enie. this is the best I ever had my "wallichii" look. this was with the chihiros at 80-90% thats over 300 par! then I looked around forums and realised people with more dosing, less light, lower quality light had much better colouration from wallichii. I purchased my wallicihi from a seller on ebay emmersed, this time I bought a tissue culture of wallichii from tropica, hope it turns red!
View attachment 184782
chihiros at almost max power and no dosing....
I also have bought some ammania gold, something new and pretty to stunt!
thanks. I'm also suspecting that the plant was mislabelled (it was an emersed version). I'm planning to pay a visit to Roger Goh's shop and will hope to pick up 'real 'Wallichii and Tuberculatum! Good luck on the A.Pedicatella - but since you are dosing DIY and low K, you'll have a much easier time with it (I'm stuck with the amount of K in APT EI).
 
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Decided to document my (lack of) tank maintenance. I pulled out the E. Vietnam and E. Japan. The pieces on the bottom left have been replanted, the rest gets tossed into my scrap/compost bin. After removing the Erios, I realised that I had a rather large Rhizome of B. Theia that was 'buried' under the Erio - the Buce looks reasonably healthy but with a fair bit of algae so I had to fix that - though eventually I may move it to my low tech tank because the Buce simply isn't visible anyway once the Erios start growing a little bit.

R. Wallichii (or Enie) is way overgrown along with R. Blood Red. R. Macandra 'narrow leaf' is going to have to be thinned out. It has totally covered the AR Mini

I am going to visit Roger Goh's shop to pick up 'real' Wallichii, hopefully some M. Tuberculatum.. so rather than trim them now, I'll see what new plants I've got and pull out/trim whatever is necessary to make space for more plants!

I believe that the increased speed of growth is due to higher lighting, rather than reduction of water column dosing 😅
 
Nice growth! Your Ammannia Golden looks happy :thumbup:
Have you seen any changes in algae growth?

Thanks, I think its pretty much confirmed that A. Golden doesn't like overly rich water column dosing. The only question is 'how lean'?

Fortunately, I only had to reduce to 0.9ml APT EI a day, which is 5.8ppm NO3 weekly, so its not 'super lean'. Maybe if I reduced further A Golden would look even better but I also want to strike a balance so that the other plants also look ok.

My preference is to stick with all-in-one ferts for simplicity so I'm also glad that I can grow A Golden without needing to resort to DIY exotic trace mixes as its not so easy to find the chemicals in my country 😅

The amount of algae I would say is roughly the same... its on the glass and on leaves that are heavily shaded . I just scrape the glass every week during water change ...
 
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Weekly update.
Did a bit more trimming than usual to bring the overgrown plants under control. I dumped quite a bit of R Blood Red otherwise they get overgrown within a week. No time to trim the R.Macandra "narrow leaf" which is now in dire need of a trim and also shading lots of other plants.

As mentioned in another thread, I bought another bunch of R. Wallichii this time it was imported by the LFC from APC Thailand: Rotala wallichii
They are too small to be seen at the moment but after they are fully converted, I can compared them to the Wallichii in my tank. So far, their stems have turned red, which some say is Enie or Cambodia, but I'll wait and see if there's any difference from what I have in the tank. p.s. this photo was taken at the end of photo period so they are starting to close.

The more major update is that I moved a whole bunch of Buces into a tiny 2l tank, installed a usb pump for flow, and made space for E. Quinquangulare. This is my 2nd try. The first try, I had them in my tank, did a 72 hr blackout but they didn't survive. Hope to do better this time.

Finally, I did some trimming and replanting of A. Pedicatella, (the replanted stems at the back not so visible) but since I take a photo every week, I can show what 1 week of growth (or lack of growth) looks like. The bottom stem shows that you must not shade Pedicatella or it turns green? They are really light-loving plants. Time to upgrade to double WRGB2 Pro? :cool:🌞
 
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View attachment 185540

View attachment 185539



Weekly update.
Did a bit more trimming than usual to bring the overgrown plants under control. I dumped quite a bit of R Blood Red otherwise they get overgrown within a week. No time to trim the R.Macandra "narrow leaf" which is now in dire need of a trim and also shading lots of other plants.

As mentioned in another thread, I bought another bunch of R. Wallichii this time it was imported by the LFC from APC Thailand: Rotala wallichii
They are too small to be seen at the moment but after they are fully converted, I can compared them to the Wallichii in my tank. So far, their stems have turned red, which some say is Enie or Cambodia, but I'll wait and see if there's any difference from what I have in the tank. p.s. this photo was taken at the end of photo period so they are starting to close.

The more major update is that I moved a whole bunch of Buces into a tiny 2l tank, installed a usb pump for flow, and made space for E. Quinquangulare. This is my 2nd try. The first try, I had them in my tank, did a 72 hr blackout but they didn't survive. Hope to do better this time.

Finally, I did some trimming and replanting of A. Pedicatella, (the replanted stems at the back not so visible) but since I take a photo every week, I can show what 1 week of growth (or lack of growth) looks like. The bottom stem shows that you must not shade Pedicatella or it turns green? They are really light-loving plants. Time to upgrade to double WRGB2 Pro? :cool:🌞
nice quinquangulare:cool: i should be getting some soon. my tropica wallichii has green stems though. leaves are orangeyy green still. my other 'enie'has red stems and yellow ish leaves.
pedicellata looks great, should be benefiting from nh4/urea in the root tabs along with lower K.
 
Looking fantastic I gave up on my golden the BBA won out. I couldn't get the plant health to get it to recover.
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I think its clear from the number of posts on the internet along the lines of 'help my A. Golden is stunting' ' that it really is a tricky plant, I hope my experience with it will provide useful data to those trying to grow it. It clearly isn't as perfect as some photos I've seen, but I do not have the 'perfect' softwater parameters that it seems to require... my water is more like 'good enough' (Gh6, Kh 3-4), whereas I've read of some using nearly 0 Kh to grow this? Also, because I'm 'stuck' with the N-P-K ratios provided by APT EI, I can't experiment by trying to lower the K dose.

While I fully appreciate that someone like Tom Barr can grow it with EI, its clear that I couldn't. Here's a repost of an earlier pic under APT EI dosing. You can see stunting in about half the stems.... so you could ask: can't I just cull half of the stems that stunt, and keep the nice ones, and hope they grow sideshoots that don't stunt. I tried that but I still have stunted sideshoots coming out of stems that were unstunted... so there is no guarantee that an 'unstunted' stem will produce 'unstunted' sideshoots.

So if you want to learn how to grow it under EI, I'm unable to assist you - but if I had the resources (I dont have RO water), I would run an experiment to test whether reducing kH/gH would help the plants unstunt even if I maintain the APT EI dosing. (i.e. whether there are 2 methods to growing the plant
"moderately soft" water+ leaner dosing
"very very soft" water+EI dosing

If you want to learn how to grow it with Lean(er) dosing and root tabs, maybe this journal can give you some ideas if you are planning to use an all-in-one fert 😅

But if you are planning to DIY your ferts, Plantnoobdude is dosing a DIY formula with low K and Urea - I'm watching his journal closely because some have claimed that A. Golden prefer low K in the water column, so his low K dosing might well promote ideal growth!

In the meantime you could try to grow other types of Lythraceae, especially those the 'prefer' softwater like R. Macrandra. If Macrandra start growing like weeds in your tank, I think introducing A. 'Golden' into the same tank should not be an issue. Actually I hear that R.Macrandra variegated might even be more challenging than A. Golden.... (someone will no doubt say that R variegated grows like weeds in his tank)
 
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One of my CO2 cylinders ran out (I have 2 cylinders) so I went to the LFS to send my cylinder for refilling and will get it back next Tuesday. In the meantime, the "man in the van"delivered this to the shops, so I got one! Regular Pantanal didn't like my leaner dosing so I'll give Meta a shot as its supposedly easier?
 
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I remember when meta was being sold for like 50 a stem when it was first introduced lol, like all stem plant weeds the price goes down rapidly at that. same with samolus. but buce, erios, etc, keep their value. awesome plant find and interested in seeing how it does compared to the pantanal.
 
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Overgrown and overcrowding has resulted in my shaded plants becoming unhealthy. I guess the time has come to reduce the number of types of plants and not try to stuff too many species into a 60cm tank. I am doing a little bit whenever I have some time and should be able to create more 'space' to allow plants to grow without too much overcrowding/shading. I'm hoping the Erio Q. will be successful this time!
Meta is at the back of the tank, still converting, I tossed a few Wallichii stems to make sure they were not blocking the light to the Meta.

The R. Macrandra plant mass is still a work in progress (I've yanked out one huge stem and tossed it.. which explains why there seems to be a gap in the plant mass, will continue working on it). And whats with the Blood Reds.. overgrown in 1 week.... :)

As for my lighting, I've gone to max Reds all around. Both WRGB2s are at 100% Red, 85% Green, 90% Blue. I wish I could run my tank cooler but all I can manage is 25.5-26C

The algae is happy (all that algae on the glass :cool:)
 
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