The last week has been one of much wondering. Should I have flooded? Should I have held fast and see through the DSM?
Nearly all the Crypts' original leaves died.
Nearly all the Swords' original leaves died, and none of those that remained looked healthy. There are at least three rhizomes(?) with no leaves at all.
A significant proportion of the Hair Grass has turned quite brown and when I've accidentally uprooted some clumps there has been little evidence of root growth. The brown may well be down the Diatoms which are blooming nicely.
(Interestingly, one of the places the Diatoms are most obvious is as distinct spots on the glass, and directly next to plants. I've read a couple of things on their possible causes in new tanks, but it strikes me that they are possibly related to something that the plants are expiring / excreting. Someone with more knowledge would be very welcome to baffle me with a little more biochemistry.
)
The upside is that having largely left the surviving plants to get on with things themselves,...
… many of the Crypts seem to have produced one or two small new leaves in the last week
Nothing dramatic, and a backwards step from when they arrived in the post, but it is progress.
… some of the Swords even have some new growth. Though the predominance of dying leaves makes for a depressing view of both ends of the tank.
And I really I don't want to depress myself by going back to look at the pictures of them when they arrived.
… the Hair Grass, although brown and fuzzy in many places, does seem to have become a slightly more vibrant green, though that may be uncommon optimism on my part.
Having partly flooded the tank, my mind has turned to “cycling” and since I'm new to properly planted tanks, research was needed. The consensus seems to favour heavy planting and just adding fish slowly, allowing the plants to clean up unwanted compounds.
Whilst I had planted the tank moderately, the amount of healthy plants remaining has been greatly depleted. So more plants needed to be considered. (To be fair, I had planned on adding Vallis when the tank was flooded (it would have just fallen over without water) so this was on the cards anyway.) My reading (and a couple of recommendations – thanks Faizal) got me looking at fast growing stem plants that absorb nutrients predominantly from the water column, rather than through their roots, and I liked the look of Wisteria (Hygrophillia Difformis). So 5 pots each of this and Vallisneria Spiralis were ordered, again from
http://www.plantsalive.co.uk
It took me about a week after the initial flooding to start testing the water for nitrogen compounds. (I know the likes of Ceg have little faith in this, especially with domestic indicator fluids, but I feel they are at least useful as a guide.) I have deliberately left some rotting vegetation in the tank as an ammonia source and thrown in the occasional bit of old fish food I had kicking around from my last tank. That said, I have never detected any significant concentration of ammonia / ammonium. I hope this is due to my use of second hand mulm to seed the filter and the delay in testing.
Over the first few days of testing the nitrites were constant at about 5ppm, but in the last few days have dropped to zero. All pretty much making sense, and all heading in the right direction.
The slight fly in the ointment has been the nitrates: it seems my tap water contains about 40ppm nitrates and in the tank they seem to have varied day to day, from 5ppm to 80ppm. I've been assured nitrates aren't an issue in planted tanks and the advice that made most sense was ...
Bobtastic said:
As we in the planted tank world happily add large quantities of nitrates why would free nitrates in the tap water be a concern?
... so I am not going to concern myself with this, but if it all goes wrong, I'm coming for ya Bob
But my interpretation is that by adding more plants, especially the like of the Wisteria, the nitrates may well fall.
Again I was initially impressed by the quality and quantity supplied by PlantsAlive – the bag of Wisteria was absolutely full ...
... though disappointingly the plants in 2 of the pots were significantly smaller than the other 3.
Unwrapping the Wisteria I was increasingly disappointed,
BUT I should add that this may be unjustified. Having had pretty respectable roots on all the other plants, all the Wisteria were just cuttings.
Thankfully it turns out I have some experience of stem plants from the few scraggy plants I had in my previous tanks, and realising how these plants self propagate, certain things made a little more sense. Stem plants, it seems, are called stem plants as that's pretty much all they are – stems with leaves and nominal root systems that send out runners. So ok, fair enough, I'm not going to grumble about lack of roots on the Wisteria, but I do feel that perhaps they shouldn't be sold as “pots”: the price wasn't significantly different to buying a bunch, but for those with little experience, I think it may be a little misleading.
That aside, I have ended up with far more Wisteria than I expected and I nearly threw some away.
The up side (jeez – it's really not like me to see up sides, and certainly not this regularly
) is that the smaller plants work well to add graduation, front to back.
The Vallis all seemed a good size, an average of 16” and would fit well with the height of my tank without much need for growth.
My initial experience of planting the tank definitely made me think that it was easier to do with no water in the tank at all. So I drained it completely, keeping as much of the water as possible in the dustbin previously used to soak the bogwood. I could have just chucked all the water away and started from scratch, but I estimated that as it is, filling the tank would equate to about a 2/3rds water change, and saw no benefit to a 100% change of water.
(The two chairs are there just so I could get inside the tank, and even then it's a PITA. (Who's stupid idea was it to have a tall tank?
)
The plan has always been to have the Vallis at the back, but I figured a “Vallis curtain” all the way across will look a little dull. The Wisteria is supposed to grow relatively tall, and I figured would fill the centre background quite well. Bearing in mind the quantity of Wisteria I've ended up with, the Vallis has ended up more densely planted and pushed further into the corners than expected. And with hindsight some more across the back will probably look quite good.
The biggest problem I've had with the Wisteria is stopping the stuff floating off. Google leads me to believe this is a common problem.
First I stripped off the lower leaves and just pushed bare stems into the substrate. Did that work? Ha bloody ha.
Second, and after a little help from Uncle Google, I tried trimming back the lower stems and buried a couple of the lower leaves. Success? See above.
There are two further options I shall try before I just let it float: using some cotton to tie a couple of stems together, in a “V” shape, in the hope that this will help the substrate hang on to them. And failing that I may well have some old lead strip from bye gone days.
If all else fails and I just leave it all to float, there is one concern: how much shade it casts over the other plants. But I shall address that if it becomes a problem.
What ever happens, having bought the Wisteria, I'm now not that keen on it aesthetically, so I suspect it may only be in the tank a (relatively) short while before it's appears on the Sale/Swap/Wanted board.
One other consequence of the large mass of Wisteria was that some of the Crypts had to be moved. I was a little nervous as the leaves are somewhat frail, and although they look unhealthy above the substrate, there are quite a few new roots starting to emerge. I really didn't want to trim these back and I am hoping I haven't damaged them when re-planing.
There is still some moss to be added, courtesy of a1Matt though I fear I may have messed up a little here. There is cotton in place to tie it to the shelf, as trying to thread the cotton through the (specially drilled) holes will be nigh on impossible without removing the shelf. Chaos! Unfortunately it seems the cotton is already getting fragile after a few weeks under water. I hope it lasts long enough to hold moss on, but we shall see. There will also be some going on the wood, but this shouldn't be a problem.
The remaining part of the equation is the Algae Crew. (I love that term
)
My initial plan has been for some Ottos, Amano Shrimps and Assassin Snails, with other fish TBC to follow. All very standard. The Ottos have been quite hard to find, but after some phoning around I think I have finally located some, albeit a little further away than I wanted. I shall keep an eye on the tank over the next week, just to make sure nothing goes wrong and then see about introducing some fauna.
But this does leave me with a couple of questions for the experts:
1) What would be good numbers respectively of Ottos, shrimps and snails to start with? (These will not be the stars of the tank in terms of quantity, but rather just to keep the algae in check.)
2) Would it be ok to add them all on the same day?
(A picture of the whole tank wil follow as soon as I've got the floating Witeria issue resolved.)
