First installment of pictures, I will likely be posting a lot of them for a while as I attempt to grow the
poshest stems and maybe fail in a spectacular fashion.
The noodles have been busy all night making sure I havent cut any corners when I planted things, fortunately I seem to have passed the inspection and have very minimal amounts of floating plants swirling around in the tank this morning.
Before:
After:
Collectoritis - It could strike anyone
So lets take a tour shall we
Ive tried (to the very limited best of my ability) to plan ahead a little bit. The Cryptocoryne "Queen Vandom" is in the front left corner, and I figured she could have company by Cryptocoryne "Purpurea" behind her, this crypt is supposed to grow around 10 cm tall if I remember correctly. There are a few "plant refugees" crammed in there with them, I needed them out of the way and this was one of the few available spots. Hydrocotyle verticillata shouldnt grow too tall as long as it gets decent light, and ill make sure it doesnt drown out the "Queen Vandom". For most of the new plants I ordered invitro, time will tell if this was a horrible mistake or a decent choice. I didnt want to deal with pests and invitro offers a lot of bang for the buck if the cups are filled. Ive never tried Cryptocoryne invitro before, does anyone know if they are more or less prone to melting this way? The invitro pots had an absolute ton of little cryptlets, there is no way I need this many plants
I just want a few of each preciouses, so that they are mine, mine, my precioussss
ahem Sorry 'bout that.
The Limnophila sessiliflora is kept on as a buffer plant, my tank feels extremely vulnerable having an absolute truckload of delicate invitro plants and not a lot of mature growth to fall back on. I had to sell off some portions of the older plants, there was just no physical way to keep everything, even with optimism set to 5000%.
Behind the Purpurea is Rotala rotundifolia 'Orange Juice' and 'Pink' respectively. Ive wanted OJ for a long time, I like the slightly fatter leaves it has and the color isnt painful to look at either. My last bouts with Rotala didnt end so well for the Rotala, but conditions should be more favorable now so fingers crossed 🤞
This Rotala rotundifolia 'Pink' that I have ordered is supposed to be a different variety than 'Ceylon', which also is traded under the name 'Pink'. Dont you love trade names.. so accurate
Anyway my 'Pink' also goes under the name 'Rosa'. Ill probably refer to it as Pink/Rosa going forward because I dont like contributing to confusion. The difference between them is said to be "Under same conditions it has thicker stems and grows more upright, while 'Ceylon' has a tendency to grow upwards in loose, wide spirals." Ceylon also has darker stems.
Ill need to make sure they are not too shaded by the Bolbitis behind them, I think I should maybe pull the whole planting a bit further forward together with the Purpurea, maybe kick out a few plant refugees to make more space.
Javafern in front is the new Microsorum pteropus 'Petit', should be much like Tropica's 'Narrow' but stay smaller. Buce leaves directly behind it belongs to Buce "Dark Achilles", two decent submersed leaves now. The veining has become more faint and the leaves are bluer. Some of the new Riccardia sp. "graeffei" is shown here glued to the wood, the main difference between this one and regular Riccardia chamedryfolia is that this one has wider "branches".
Drop checker color in picture is right at lights on, which is not the target color. As most of us know the drop checker works on a delay, often quoted to be 1-2 hours. Although I would like to know exactly what delay this one has. I might do tests on it later to find out. I assume the delay also varies slightly by design. I think I heard decreasing the amount of fluid in the drop checker can make it respond a bit faster, so I will try emptying out about half and see what happens, unless anyone objects.
Drop checker last night right before CO2 solenoid turned off:
1 hr after gas on this morning:
2 hrs after gas on:
3 hrs and lights on full no picture.
4 hrs after gas on:
5 hrs after gas on missing, was walking the dog
6 hrs after gas on finally approaching end of day color:
Im kicking myself for not getting a picture of the drop checker right before gas on, and a good closeup right at lights on, I will do better next time
But this seems to be obviously insufficient, doesnt it? Either the drop checker is reeeally slow or I really suck at this. Given the historical facts I tend towards the latter.
Last night I made some pretty big changes to the photoperiod, I had been running it at 10 hours "low tech style" but I am too nervous about nuking these new baby plants, so I have set it to 6 hours to be safe. Gas now turns on at 09:00, light starts the 30 minutes ramp up at 11:30, full light intensity at 12:00. Gas turns off at 16:00, light starts 30 minutes ramp down at 18:00, ending at 18:30
So I am injecting CO2 ~3 hours before photoperiod, but the drop checker is still teal when lights go on
I need to get a good overview of the ph profile, probably should have bought a ph meter before I went and bought all these plants but theres no instant gratification in that is there
Low light intensity, please save me from my poor life-choices!
Theres no use chasing the drop checker around, because of the delay and the uncertainty it wont tell me much more than "CO2 was at this level at unknown point".
I can do a poor mans ph profile with a liquid test, but I doubt it will be anywhere near as accurate as a proper ph meter.
I will get one, im just delaying because of the price. Everyone seems to say the budget ph meters are a much riskier choice than a budget TDS meter, so I dont want to buy cheap and then have to buy an expensive one later on anyway.
Back to the plants shall we;
I hit the BBA on the wood with some glutaraldehyde yesterday, not sure if it killed it off, I didnt let it sit for as long as last time before rinsing it off. The Bucephalandra "Black Ventii" have been loosely attached to a stone, which in hindsight is way too big and takes up a ton of space in the tank. Im not wanting to disturb it again for a while so I will just have to live with it until it puts out some new growth. Excess stems from the Hygrophila polysperma is elegantly shoved into the foreground as buffer plants.
Crusty pic of center back showing Cryptocoryne spiralis 'Red', Tonina fluviatilis, Ludwigia bla bla bla 'Pantanal' and then 'Cuba'.
Spiralis 'Red' was also invitro and had a ton of plants. My first choice was Spiralis 'Tiger', but it was out of stock.
Im really hyped about the Tonina, its soo beautiful, I hope it will find my 3 kh acceptable as some have suggested it can.
Out of all the posh stems Tonina is the one I am most excited about, followed by the 'Golden' Ammannia.
Right side of tank, im going to have to make sure H. polysperma doesnt shade its neighbors too much, if it gets too rampant I can move it away for a while until the babies get going. To the right of it is Ludwigia sp. "Marilia", this plant is said to be a vigorous grower, so I think it can work ok in the corner. Sorry about my filter intake, its absolutely manky (excellent british word btw) and I will be cleaning it today. The infamous Ammannia pedicellata 'Golden' is to the right of the Buce "Black Ventii". Hoo Boy I hope it doesnt die on me. It can stunt if it wants to, just not die so badly I need to aquire it again, please and thank-you. Lastly Myriophyllum 'Guyana' is to the right of the Pogostemon helferi. I think midground can be a good choice for this and it will be good to have some bright green to balance out all the colorful collectoritis stems. I realise the squares I allotted for each plant doesnt look the most natural. I will try to adapt it to a more natural look in time, but for now my main goal is just not killing them all, aesthetics can come later.
The shrimp have gotten all of the normal Hydrocotyle tripartita and a few oak leaves to hide in, and it seems to have improved their comfort immensely. They were prone to start doing stress laps around the circumference of the fry ring when the light was brightest, and now they are relaxed and plucking away at the plants instead. I dosed the last medication on monday and did a waterchange on tuesday, and there has been no reappearance of parasites since then. The molting rate of the shrimp has gone way down and all molts look clear of eggs. Im very tempted to let them back out again today, I could use their help picking at algae and any plant leaves from the invitro plants that have broken off.
In addition to the photoperiod changes, I have increased the light intensity somewhat as well. I know I said I wasnt going to for a while, but I just cant afford to replace these plants if they die, so im going to go with what I think is the safest route. The new settings should theoretically be well within safe limits given that my water has a ton more CO2 than it used to, so a small increase in light should not tip CO2 demand over the edge, and will make it a bit easier for some of the very light hungry new plants (Cuba, Pantanal, Golden). I set the same intensity on both bars, and went for 30 % red, 6% blue, 25% cool white, 30% pure white and 25% warm white. The ratio was chosen based on a scaling down of the "Planted" preset that comes with the light. I hope that the ratio represents a good spectrum, although my trust in manufacturers is generally low.
Im sure ive forgotten something but I need to get this post wrapped up and plant the rest of the plants
