veerserif
Member
Well, after months of hemming and hawing, I've started my first ever planted tank. But I'm facing some challenges due to lack of supply and long delivery times due to lockdown... hoping for a turnaround.
Tank: Aqueon 29gal (~98L), 30" x 12" x 18" (76 x 30 x 45cm)
Light: Finnex 24/7 Planted+ HLC (6 hours on ~60%, 2 hours on ~10%)
Filter: Aquaclear 50 HOB
CO2: None for now. As of Jul 7, even if I wanted it, I couldn't buy any kit.
Ferts: Aquarium Co-op Easy Green (all-in-one macro + micro fert), 3ml once per week; 3ml Easy Carbon (1.5% glut) every other day, per instructions.
Substrate is mostly Seachem Fluorite Dark, with some fine sand to the right as a future corydora sandpit. I used Seachem Flourish root tabs in the substrate. The hardscape is a mix of smooth river stones, black lava stone, a piece of spiderwood and a piece of Malaysian driftwood. I then added a grab bag of botanicals: catappa leaves, a mix of seed pods, and some banana stem.
Right after scaping...
Just after planting.
The first round of plants I used were:
- Assorted bucephelandras (Kedagang original, mini coin, red blade, black pearl, brownie blue)
- Anubias barteri var. coffeefolia
- Rotala coin leaf
- Alternathera reineckii
- Staurogyne repens
- Marsilea hirsuta
- Cryptocoryne lutea
- Najas indica
- Hydrocotyle leucocephala
- Christmas moss
Unfortunately, as you can see, a lot of the plants came in pretty banged up in transit. Nearly every node on the guppy grass was brown, I threw out half the pennywort because the stems had gone brown and melty, the Christmas moss was more brown than green, and the AR started shedding leaves pretty much immediately. That, plus some amateurish planting techniques, meant that over the next few days, the rotala and s. repens also started merrily shedding leaves, stems, and sometimes just whole chunks of rhizome...
Two days later.
I planted the bits that looked OK, floated the pennywort to get it more light and CO2, then more or less left everything as is and hoped they'd make it. Meanwhile plenty of tannins leached out of all the leaves, pods and wood. On top of all this, due to a lot of conflicting advice on cycling tanks, I'd added ammonia... then after another four days of reading, rereading, trying to track different arguments and understand different points of view, I did a 50% water change and a trim of all the very leggy stems. I tossed all of this first batch of guppy grass: none of it had recovered inside of a week, I wound up with far less than I started, and everything that was left was extremely fragile, breaking apart, and still as brown (or browner) than the day it arrived. Didn't matter if it was floating or planted.
Which brings us to today. No more added ammonia, only fertilizers and a bit of liquid carbon going in from this point on. What gives me hope is that all the faster-growing plants in the tank are sending up new buds: the very mangled s. repens has tiny leaf buds, I see small m. hirsuta leaves, the pennywort is recovering nicely and most of the rotala has new growth. The AR is doing surprisingly well, with lots of new leaf nodes sprouting at about the same pace that it's shedding old leaves. I'm trying to get my hands on some salvinia minima and some replacement guppy grass/bushy fast-growing background plant, but supply shortages and shipping delays means that it's all a bit up in the air.
If you've made it this far... I'm pleased to announce that the only truly thriving inhabitants of my tank are all of the snails that hitchhiked on the plants! There's 2tbsp of crushed coral in the filter just for them, since I have very soft water (1 dKH and 3 dGH out of the tap). I spotted 1 bladder snail on day one, and naturally, by day 7 there's at least six, and a bonus baby ramshorn. I suspect they (and the liquid carbon) are the reason I'm having very little algae, only a light dusting of brown diatoms here and there and the fungus growth on the driftwood. In keeping with the title of this journal, every single one of them will be named Snail Zissou.
Hopefully I can come back in a week and have a heartwarming update of how all the plants made it. Fingers crossed 🙂
Tank: Aqueon 29gal (~98L), 30" x 12" x 18" (76 x 30 x 45cm)
Light: Finnex 24/7 Planted+ HLC (6 hours on ~60%, 2 hours on ~10%)
Filter: Aquaclear 50 HOB
CO2: None for now. As of Jul 7, even if I wanted it, I couldn't buy any kit.
Ferts: Aquarium Co-op Easy Green (all-in-one macro + micro fert), 3ml once per week; 3ml Easy Carbon (1.5% glut) every other day, per instructions.
Substrate is mostly Seachem Fluorite Dark, with some fine sand to the right as a future corydora sandpit. I used Seachem Flourish root tabs in the substrate. The hardscape is a mix of smooth river stones, black lava stone, a piece of spiderwood and a piece of Malaysian driftwood. I then added a grab bag of botanicals: catappa leaves, a mix of seed pods, and some banana stem.
Right after scaping...
Just after planting.
The first round of plants I used were:
- Assorted bucephelandras (Kedagang original, mini coin, red blade, black pearl, brownie blue)
- Anubias barteri var. coffeefolia
- Rotala coin leaf
- Alternathera reineckii
- Staurogyne repens
- Marsilea hirsuta
- Cryptocoryne lutea
- Najas indica
- Hydrocotyle leucocephala
- Christmas moss
Unfortunately, as you can see, a lot of the plants came in pretty banged up in transit. Nearly every node on the guppy grass was brown, I threw out half the pennywort because the stems had gone brown and melty, the Christmas moss was more brown than green, and the AR started shedding leaves pretty much immediately. That, plus some amateurish planting techniques, meant that over the next few days, the rotala and s. repens also started merrily shedding leaves, stems, and sometimes just whole chunks of rhizome...
Two days later.
I planted the bits that looked OK, floated the pennywort to get it more light and CO2, then more or less left everything as is and hoped they'd make it. Meanwhile plenty of tannins leached out of all the leaves, pods and wood. On top of all this, due to a lot of conflicting advice on cycling tanks, I'd added ammonia... then after another four days of reading, rereading, trying to track different arguments and understand different points of view, I did a 50% water change and a trim of all the very leggy stems. I tossed all of this first batch of guppy grass: none of it had recovered inside of a week, I wound up with far less than I started, and everything that was left was extremely fragile, breaking apart, and still as brown (or browner) than the day it arrived. Didn't matter if it was floating or planted.
Which brings us to today. No more added ammonia, only fertilizers and a bit of liquid carbon going in from this point on. What gives me hope is that all the faster-growing plants in the tank are sending up new buds: the very mangled s. repens has tiny leaf buds, I see small m. hirsuta leaves, the pennywort is recovering nicely and most of the rotala has new growth. The AR is doing surprisingly well, with lots of new leaf nodes sprouting at about the same pace that it's shedding old leaves. I'm trying to get my hands on some salvinia minima and some replacement guppy grass/bushy fast-growing background plant, but supply shortages and shipping delays means that it's all a bit up in the air.
If you've made it this far... I'm pleased to announce that the only truly thriving inhabitants of my tank are all of the snails that hitchhiked on the plants! There's 2tbsp of crushed coral in the filter just for them, since I have very soft water (1 dKH and 3 dGH out of the tap). I spotted 1 bladder snail on day one, and naturally, by day 7 there's at least six, and a bonus baby ramshorn. I suspect they (and the liquid carbon) are the reason I'm having very little algae, only a light dusting of brown diatoms here and there and the fungus growth on the driftwood. In keeping with the title of this journal, every single one of them will be named Snail Zissou.
Hopefully I can come back in a week and have a heartwarming update of how all the plants made it. Fingers crossed 🙂
