Wallys first planted tank

[Wally]

Here's a pic of my first planted tank.It's taken 6 months to get to this stage but everything will be changing as I am upgrading the T8s to T5s in the next couple of weeks as I;m not happy with it.The stem plants are too lanky and I feel I have made do with plants I can grow instead of plants I want to grow

 

[Alastair]

Looks lovely. What are the dimensions, equipment etc 

 

[Wally]

Cheers Alastair the tank is as follows
Rena 1500x500x600 400ltr
2 Rena XP3 externals
2 1600lph Hydro Koronas
4 36 watt T8 Dennerle tubes(2 special plant,1 amazon day and 1 fish colour) with reflectors.
Aquasoil substrate
Co2 from fire extinguisher through a UP in line atomizer.
I am dosing Ei ferts from aquariumplantfooduk at their recommended dose as I am new to this planted tank lark and have a lot of technical stuff to learn

 

[Iain Sutherland]

Looks great wally, even with so many tall plants the lights look brighter than T8's. Will be interesting to see the evolution...

 

[Alastair]

Flow must be spot on then with both filters and the two koralia too lol. If you can't get round how much of what to dose give me a shout but it looks like its doing great with your current dosing.
Any plans for how your going to rescape

 

[Wally]

I want to replace the cryps in the middle of the tank with Pogostemon Helfferi and fit some Rotala wallachi in some where.I also want to replace the Polysperma and the Ludwigia with some sort of feathery cobomba type plant but I'm still looking for some that take my fancy..I want to get rid of the pennywort as well as it seems to do nothing for weeks and then take over almost over night.The look I'm going for is sort of a Dutch style amphitheater,tall at the back and sides and low growing plants towards the front in the center if that makes sense.Hopefully if I hard prune the remaining cryps with the extra light they will grow back more compact.The bacopa will be striped out and replanted so again hopefully that will be more compact and bushier as at the moment its quite leggy with lots of aerial roots.Oh and no doubt there will be the odd impulse buy

 

[GillesF]

Hi Wally

Your tank looks great, healthy growth too.

Don't forget that leggy growth (which I can't see in your picture?) is caused by low CO2 and increasing light (going from T8 to T5 for example) will only make it worse. More light increases the demand for nutritients so more CO2 should be injected. Make sure your system is capable of delivering more CO2 before moving towards T5. Plenty of nutritients will also keep algae at bay.

 

[Wally]

Cheers GilesF
I have come to that conclusion and have decided against the upgrade.I have improved the flow around the tank by repositioning the koronas and replacing the spray bars which I had previously drilled out to reduce flow.I am also keeping the plants below the surface so they do not block the light to the lower plants,hopefully this will improve the overall growth.Fingers crossed.

 

[spyder]

Tank looks great, bright and fresh.

Taking the scissors to those stems will help with lankyness, but they look ok in the pic.

 

[cheekycharly]

That looks class!

 

[Wallace]

Very nice looking tank, you should be very proud as its your first effort.

 

[markj]

great tank

 

[Balik1]

t5 s will make a great difference hope the change over works out fine

 

[Norbert Czarnecki]

Nice looking with healthy and bright plants

 

[Brian Murphy]

Looking really well ...... how have you got the hydor koralias postioned in relation to the spray bars and have you got the Up Atomizer one one or both filters?

 

[BIN578]

Stunning effort mate. If thats your first attempt then lookout IAPLC Can I ask what is the big crypt in the middle ? Its really tall and I want one hehe.