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Heavily Planted to No Plants?

With limited finds, I’d spend on plants rather than switch out the T5’s for LED - given the tank height of 64cm, you want high(er) watt, high intensity LEDs, which are much more expensive than the generic 0.2/0.3 low intensity LEDs often used in the lower cost LED tubes or LED units

As you’re running CO2, I’d focus on sufficient light for active plant growth in combination with sufficient nutrients - initially daily water changes can be the easiest way to reduce algae, encourage plant growth etc
Once tank is established with healthy plants, limited algae, then begin slowing the system down
 
Tom Raffield said:
I am going to 'try' to remove some plants slowly and in stages whilst doing a substrate vac at the same time to limit release of the nasties! I want to try and keep the eco-complete and gravel that I have already to limit the scale of the job.
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Slow and steady is fine
But
I find it easier/faster to just remove livestock, break down the tank, replace substrate and rescape/plant under damp rather than underwater conditions 😉
This also allows you to adjust hardscape, then step back and consider/reconsider placement, position plants more particularly etc

This takes me a full day but @Guest seems to manage within a couple hours (and couple (?) libations 😉)

(Of course substrate replacement would be more costly than just cleaning up what you have - if you intend to keep the EC/gravel, I’d still remove this and add a nutrient dense base layer such as Tropica Growth Substrate, Sera Floredepot, then layer the cleaned EC/gravel ... again I’d invest in this over a light replacement, T5’s grow plants very well, and have excellent visual aesthetics)

With livestock settled in suitable bin, tank can also be rescaped over several days, only once you begin planting do you need to be conscious of time/plant management - most new nursery grown pot or in vitro plants will be fine with damp, humid (eg “dry start” conditions), some recovered aquarium plants will also manage these conditions (though this is a bit more trial and error)
When handling submerse growth plants, leaf structure is much more delicate and sensitive to physical damage/drying damage
 
Tom Raffield said:
Light is always my biggest bug bear as I never know if I have too much or too little. It is not as simple as just cutting the time down
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With stock T5 lighting on this Juwel Vsion 260, too much lighting is very unlikely (especially given use of CO2)

I suggest running lights at maximum intensity for ~6 hours initially rather than limiting light output, you should see healthy new growth, once there is lots of new growth and plants are rooting, begin increasing light period to ~8 hours
If you want to view the tank in the evenings, I suggest adding a “moonlight” effect rather than extending photoperiod to 12h
If you have much ambient light in the room, plants will likely begin their “day” with sunlight timing rather than waiting on you turning on the fluorescent lighting ... so if plants have begun photosynthesis ~ 10 am and you begin your photoperiod at 4pm, plants may still begin winding down photosynthetic processes ~6-7pm
(if you plant some Rotala Vietnam H’Ra this opening and closing of the leaf is very apparent)
 
Ok, for the sake of cost I will opt for normal T5s for now. Managed to find some Juwel compatible 54w tropical T5s at 1 tube for £15 or 3 tubes for £30 delivered. Seems decent value.

Have a plant shopping basket containing crypt balansae, sagittaria sabulata and limnophila sessiliflora. Have some limnobium laevigatum on the way (soon) from a kind UKAPS member. Not sure if this will be enough or not. Might be ok if I can rescue some of my current crypts and all the java fern.

Need to really explore and consider this substrate issue next. Leaning towards full strip and rebuild but it does terrify for some reason! I want an underlying substrate which can be left indefinitely which I can then top with what I have lying around here.

As always, insight and views from you guys are invaluable, so thank you again!
 
@alto I had a look back at Tom's previous posts and the concensus was that co2 distribution was the common problem.

So is the complete strip advisable simply because of the opportunity to redesign the tank from the ground up? Or is there an issue with old substrates and algae?

I ask as I have low tech tanks that I tend to keep long term and tweek rather than do massive strip downs. But I am wondering if following your advice might help the BBA and light black fuzz algae that I've just become accustomed to on older crypt/anubias leaves.

Apologies for the hijack Tom.
 
alto said:
Did a quick look - can you link some 1047mm T5’s? (to fit the Vision 260)
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Hmm. Apparently not. I can find T8s to fit most, but not all juwel lengths. But none for juwel T5s. The article on James' site had tubes going into an over tank luminaire not a juwel tank.

I can confirm that the t8 590mm (sometimes called 2') cheap lamps fit the old rio 125. But it seems there's a greater choice of budget T8s than T5s.

Looks like for the T5s you're limited to aquarium branded tubes.
 
I like the rendition of the Arcadia Plant Pro T5 they seem hard to find though but l have seen them still advertised for Juwel .
 
Purchased my Tropica Aquarium Soil this afternoon in preparation for a full strip down of my tank and started to do a few large water changes to get everything ready.
I'll give the soil a couple of days head start to arrive and buy the plants too.
I will of course let you know how I get on with this project and hopefully I can end up with a tank I can be proud of (and less likely to muck up!).
 
My Tropica Soil is arriving today - I have 27L of the stuff inbound. I have also picked up some large filter bags to put some of the cleaned EC and gravel in to provide some height in my scape at the bottom. Not planning for the whole base of the tank to be covered in Tropica but will instead place it in the main areas I am looking for my plants to be situated.

Lighting is my next consideration. I got a bit excited at a closing down sale at an aquatic store today and impulse (very impulse and unplanned) bought an LED kit that I thought would fit. Error - it won't. So now I have a JBL LED Solar Natur and Solar Effect to move on if anyone is interested (85-110cm set)?

Having read about the JBL kit, I am quite keen as it sounds really cool but am unsure whether the low tech, low hassle tank I am hoping to achieve justifies the need for an LED setup whether it be a simple LED tube or a full on controlled system.

For simplicity I have found some T5 replacements (https://www.iquaticsonline.co.uk/sh...bs/juwel-54w-t5/54w-juwel-t5-tropical/#main-3) and am just trying to dig through the features and ratings to see if they are as good as the Juwel branded versions.

As yet haven't fully decided on my final call for the lighting. A continuing area is my plant choice which is building and i'm starting to make a basket at AquaEssentials.

As this project is beginning to get rolling I am keen for suggestions and opinions. I will of course update as things happen and hopefully provide photos.
 
Melll said:
Hi there,

How is it going?
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Hi Melll,

Lots has happened! I stripped down the tank and rescaped using old substrate and tropica aquarium soil. New easy plants went in along with salvageable old plants from the old setup.

I have a journal called Tank Reborn running so please do feel free to have a look and let me know what you think. Will add more photos today after a WC.

Yesterday I installed JBL LED Solar Natur and Effect for my tank replacing the two T5 tubes (I had an issue with a JBL set that were too small). Shout out to Pond Planet for exchanging the small set for me!! Great service. I also have the WiFi controller which I am trying to get my head around. I am running a default community tank lighting scheme from the controller which runs for 10 hours including an hour as sunrise and an hour as sunset. It looks lovely and has some gimmicky cloud, rain and lightning effects thrown in. Just hoping it will meet the needs of the plants but as I am going for low tech and low maintenance it should be sufficient.

Thanks for asking by the way 😀
 
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