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#2

Hey Jordi,....🙂 Absolutely dreamy tank you have there. It's so crisp & clean. Even the cabinet looks awesome. Your time & effort truly paid off. The whole set up just blends in with your room too. It sort of gives a Zen like ambience to the whole thing,....if you know what i mean🙂
 
Hi all

New update. In one week the tank will have 3 months. I was tired of fighting against the Aquasoil falling into the foreground and to trim Riccia (what a mess!), so I decided to get rid of Riccia and to plant Eleocharis acicularis. The carpet was planted one week ago and seems to be alright. Nevertheless I have increased the bubble rate and improved the water flow in order to make sure it gets established.
Not very happy with the background, I guess I will need some more pruning to create a more compact group of plants. Maybe it is a bit early because the background has been trimmed only once, and very low. Next week I'll trim again. There was Limnophila aromatica and Rotala rotundifolia, and I have added some patches in the back and mid ground of Ludwigia, Proserpinaca palustris and Hygrophyla polysperma (don't know which variety, it has very narrow brownish leaves with black little strips. It can be barely seen in the center. Seen somewhere it was 'tyger', 'tiger '?). Hope this will improve the colour.

Cheers,
Jordi

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Hi all, the tank was trimmed a week ago and the aquasoil removed from the Eleocharis carpet. I also managed to control a small spot of BGA on the left foreground corner just adding a pinch or two of KNO3 on it and improving the flow. I had ordered a Koralia 900 and it arrived just when I was dealing with the BGA... so perfect,and yes, it disappeared in some days.
I also got some of these:

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I have to admit that white cloud minnows were not on my list (it was a familiar decision taken all together at the LFS 🙄) but after some days fed with frozen live food (and this weekend with some Daphnia collected locally) thay are gorgeous. There is even a female with a big belly!

Jordi
 
Hi all, I want to ask you a doubt: I am noticing a significant improvement with the Koralia pump resulting in more healthy growth. I guess it also helps having a stable co2 injection for 2 months... but on the background Limnophila aromatica and Rotala have some BBA on the leaves near the substrate. These are very old leaves (well, actually leaves from the very beginning when plants were introduced for the first time in the tank) and the BBA have attached to the leaves during the time I was adjusting the flow, ferts, pH profile, etc.

New leaves are healthy and algae free, but will BBA/staghorn disappear from the old leaves with this new healthier situation? I guess they won't probably because algae are also growing happily now with plenty of co2, good flow and plenty of ferts. I know it is probably a step back in my setup from the aesthetic point of view, but should I trim the plants next time very close to the substrate so I get rid of these leaves? It will be the third or fourth trimming, so I was going to trim at the redmoor level. Trimming so low would mean leaving the plants without a single leaf! Is it a good move?

Jordi
 
Beautiful tank Jordi. :clap:

I had a similar problem on some Ammania leaves near the substrate, I plucked off any affected leaves as soon as it appeared and squirted a bit of Easycarbo around there with the filter off for 10 mins. After a week of this with a couple of decent water changes it never came back.
 
Thanks James, did you trim the plants completely or just the affected leaves? If I trim only the affected leaves, will I have some new leaves growth on the base or will the plants become leggy?

Jordi
 
I have also removed the plants on the front sides to let the flow get these lower leaves in the background, and it worked. Now I am seriously thinking about removing the big redmoor branch going up on the right side, beautiful and interesting for emersed plants but really a pain for achieving an homogeneous flow... I have realized that it is actually a quite difficult setup for a newbie regarding flow, you know, all plenty of branches...

Back again to my question, I think algae in the already affected low leaves won't disappear by themselves even if the new growth is healthy and a hard trimming won't be worse, not worse than letting the algae grow.
 
As mentioned in the previous posts I was not very happy with some algae growing on some of the background plants lower leaves, and as usual, when you think there is no more room for improvement... YES, there was. I got rid of the big redmoor branch going up on the right side of the tank and it was like magic, everything seemed to work. The flow was improved and the background plants were trimmed to the ground to make sure no algae were remaining in the tank (so it has been like begining the background from scratch) and for the moment, some weeks later I can say that plants do very well. Healthy growth although not very fast. I still keep my 2x24w T5HO 40 cm above the tank... so low but safe 🙂
I will probably try to lower the light some centimeters.

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Cheers,
Jordi
 
Looks fantastic Jordi, love the view from above... You'll be asking for trouble lowering those lights when everything's going so well though!
 
James D said:
Looks fantastic Jordi, love the view from above... You'll be asking for trouble lowering those lights when everything's going so well though!
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Thanks James... well, to be honest I am not that brave 😳. I just lowered the light 5 cm (from 40 to 35 cm). Actually I cannot tell the difference, I hope algae don't notice it.

Jordi
 
Jordi that looks great, beautiful plant health and the fish look to be looking life!!

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk
 
Quick update...
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My first underwater picture, we (fish and me) had a fun time... until fish discovered that cameras cannot be eaten, then they just ignored me
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My favourite ones in the tank:
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Jordi
 
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