LightingBamboozled
Member
So here are my plans.
I've had a C.250L tank that's been fish first plants second for 2.5 years and I'd like to give the plants a little more love. As I started to put these plans together some unavoidable things have put delays in them to at least the end of the month if not early June.
It's roughly 150cm x 40cm by 39.5cm internally. There's an inch or so of inert large sand/small gravel. No real hardscape (some synthetic hollow roots hiding intake pipework, a synthetic through cave and one block of lava rock) other than driftwood.
Stockwise its Cherry Barbs (Succesfully breeding), Neon Tetra & Lemon tetra as the main community. Some Silver Flying Foxes and Bristlenose pleco as the bigger fish and then Amanos, Bamboo shrimp, zebra nerites, onion nerites and malaysian trumpet snails for inverts.
Plantswise
Filtration is two Tetra EX1200's returning via one spraybar along the length of the tank and the other vertical spraying along the front of the tank. Lighting is two t5 HO 80W bulbs with reflectors about 12cm above the water (over the perspex lids) for 10 hrs per day. CO2 injection is a CO2 art inline diffusor leading to the vertical spraybar but one of the first changes I aim to make is to switch that for a reactor because I'm tired of the tank being bubbly during the day and also I have a huge ramp up time. Just bought one off a fellow forum member. Have some plans to modify it but want to try it stock first. Quick disconnects arrived today so I'll rig it up so I can swap it in and fiddle but put the diffuser back in if it goes tits up once I've got some time at the end of the month.
Fertiliser wise I add about 8ml of 2 hr Aqurist APT 1 for micros daily and generally don't dose macros. Recently, after large water changes I've been adding some Flourish Nitrogen because I noticed the frogbit would look unhappy if I did big changes. So that's the second thing I'd like to change is getting fertiliser balanced right for healthy growth although the goal isn't rapid growth, just healthy leaves on all the plants and not encouraging new algae outbreaks. Currently I get a bit of green spot on slow growing leaves and some patches of glass. And another softer green algae occasionally on the glass. AR and Hygrophila are the two plants that suffer most. Water sprite occasionally drops leaf tips as it gets crowded. I've never made my own but I'm pretty good at maths and comfy with chemistry but no idea where to start on that.
The other change I'd quite like to make is a bit of structure to the tank. Things have been thrown in kind of willy nilly. There's no sense of Aquascape. I'd like to start to bring some structure to things to make a more attractive visual. No idea where to start on that, nor what order to do things in, nor what I want the final result to be if I'm honest.
Well, once I get started I'm sure there will be 100 disasters and hence the journal.
Enough words, more pictures.
Closer shots
And the all important Frogbit Index (This image is a little washed out relative to real life because of the brightness of the T5's.
And some parameters. pH 7.4 dropping to 6.6, kH 3.5, gH 8 ish, phosphate 4 out of the tap, Nitrate ~15, Temp 23.8C
Edit to Add Water Report details
I've had a C.250L tank that's been fish first plants second for 2.5 years and I'd like to give the plants a little more love. As I started to put these plans together some unavoidable things have put delays in them to at least the end of the month if not early June.
It's roughly 150cm x 40cm by 39.5cm internally. There's an inch or so of inert large sand/small gravel. No real hardscape (some synthetic hollow roots hiding intake pipework, a synthetic through cave and one block of lava rock) other than driftwood.
Stockwise its Cherry Barbs (Succesfully breeding), Neon Tetra & Lemon tetra as the main community. Some Silver Flying Foxes and Bristlenose pleco as the bigger fish and then Amanos, Bamboo shrimp, zebra nerites, onion nerites and malaysian trumpet snails for inverts.
Plantswise
- Valisneria sold as Spiralis but I think it's americana,
- Hygrophila Corumbosa 'Siamensis 53B' that's never grown well
- Lobelia Cardinalis mini that grows as dense bushes although it gets a little GSA
- Eleocharis acicularis mini which is going slow
- Dwarf Sag which I thought had all died but recently started spreading among the eleocharis
- Marsilea hirsuta and crenata forming a loose carpet at the shady end
- Java Ferns that were doing really badly and then recently have sprung to life all over the tank
- Java moss, that gets nibbled to hell by the SFFs
- Water Sprite that's growing like a weed
- Limnophila sessiflora that grows well int he light and leggily in the shady end.
- Alternathera Reineckii pink that's been just barely clinging to life since February
- Limnobium Laevigatum and Salvinia Auriculata floating over 1/4 of the surface to create a shady end
Filtration is two Tetra EX1200's returning via one spraybar along the length of the tank and the other vertical spraying along the front of the tank. Lighting is two t5 HO 80W bulbs with reflectors about 12cm above the water (over the perspex lids) for 10 hrs per day. CO2 injection is a CO2 art inline diffusor leading to the vertical spraybar but one of the first changes I aim to make is to switch that for a reactor because I'm tired of the tank being bubbly during the day and also I have a huge ramp up time. Just bought one off a fellow forum member. Have some plans to modify it but want to try it stock first. Quick disconnects arrived today so I'll rig it up so I can swap it in and fiddle but put the diffuser back in if it goes tits up once I've got some time at the end of the month.
Fertiliser wise I add about 8ml of 2 hr Aqurist APT 1 for micros daily and generally don't dose macros. Recently, after large water changes I've been adding some Flourish Nitrogen because I noticed the frogbit would look unhappy if I did big changes. So that's the second thing I'd like to change is getting fertiliser balanced right for healthy growth although the goal isn't rapid growth, just healthy leaves on all the plants and not encouraging new algae outbreaks. Currently I get a bit of green spot on slow growing leaves and some patches of glass. And another softer green algae occasionally on the glass. AR and Hygrophila are the two plants that suffer most. Water sprite occasionally drops leaf tips as it gets crowded. I've never made my own but I'm pretty good at maths and comfy with chemistry but no idea where to start on that.
The other change I'd quite like to make is a bit of structure to the tank. Things have been thrown in kind of willy nilly. There's no sense of Aquascape. I'd like to start to bring some structure to things to make a more attractive visual. No idea where to start on that, nor what order to do things in, nor what I want the final result to be if I'm honest.
Well, once I get started I'm sure there will be 100 disasters and hence the journal.
Enough words, more pictures.
Closer shots
And the all important Frogbit Index (This image is a little washed out relative to real life because of the brightness of the T5's.
And some parameters. pH 7.4 dropping to 6.6, kH 3.5, gH 8 ish, phosphate 4 out of the tap, Nitrate ~15, Temp 23.8C
Edit to Add Water Report details
Parameter | Min | Mean | Max |
CaCO3 (mg/l) | 112.73 | 129.01 | 136.93 |
Ca (mg/l) | 36.33 | 42.84 | 47.56 |
Total Hardness | 45.09 | 51.60 | 54.77 |
Chloride (mg/l) | 13.28 | 20.69 | 28.09 |
HCO3 (mg/l) | 34.09 | 60.67 | 94.42 |
Mg (mg/l) | 4.21 | 5.33 | 6.09 |
Sodium (mg/l) | 11.51 | 14.73 | 16.36 |
Sulphate (mg/l) | 59.49 | 72.46 | 81.16 |
Aluminium (ug/l) | 3.900 | 7.586 | 14.844 |
Ammonium (mg/l) | 0.014 | 0.016 | 0.024 |
Antimony (ug/l) | 0.160 | 0.162 | 0.176 |
Arsenic (ug/l) | 0.121 | 0.156 | 0.19 |
Boron (mg/l) | 0.013 | 0.015 | 0.018 |
Cadmium (ug/l) | 0.018 | 0.021 | 0.027 |
Chromium (ug/l) | 0.170 | 0.193 | 0.352 |
Copper (mg/l) | 0.004 | 0.035 | 0.095 |
Cyanide (ug/l) | <5.500 | <5.500 | <5.500 |
Conductivity (uS/cm 20C) | 261 | 296.079 | 360.1 |
Fluoride (mg/l) | 0.062 | 0.148 | 0.340 |
Hydrogen Ions (pH units) | 6.8 | 7.157 | 7.5 |
Iron (ug/l) | <5.200 | <21.127 | 242.34 |
Lead (ug/l) | 0.065 | 0.131 | 0.553 |
Manganese (ug/l) | 0.280 | 0.970 | 11.941 |
Nickel (ug/l) | 1.475 | 2.124 | 3.134 |
Nitrate (mg/l) | 1.500 | 2.933 | 5.980 |
Nitrite (mg/l) | <0.003 | <0.003 | <0.004 |
Sodium (mg/l) | 11.511 | 14.731 | 16.361 |
Sulphate (mg/l) | 59.493 | 72.456 | 81.162 |
Total Organic Carbon (mg/l) | 1.4 | 2.29 | 3.4 |
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