Freshwater planted tank anyone?

[Frop]

I tried doing a planted tank but had no growth success so I took the stuff back to LFS and tore it down. Seeing the photos here, I want to get back to it haha

I never had much growth in mine but I never did anything to it. I literally just got into it this weekend trying to grow his dwarf baby tears. I know my dad has a 60 gallon and his stuff grows like crazy. He turned th CO2 off to stop doing maintenance.

Here was when we took some of his extra plants for our 30g cichlid tank. Half is fake (left side) and the rest is real (right side).


This was his 60gallon tank before he trimmed stuff.


And the 20gallon with the dwarf baby tears. They grow in his tank but super slow. They basically melted in my 20gallon. :/

 

[SBlisters]

I never had much growth in mine but I never did anything to it. I literally just got into it this weekend trying to grow his dwarf baby tears. I know my dad has a 60 gallon and his stuff grows like crazy. He turned th CO2 off to stop doing maintenance.

Here was when we took some of his extra plants for our 30g cichlid tank. Half is fake (left side) and the rest is real (right side).


This was his 60gallon tank before he trimmed stuff.


And the 20gallon with the dwarf baby tears. They grow in his tank but super slow. They basically melted in my 20gallon. :/

The "dwarf baby tears" is, IMO, basically impossible to grow without high light and added CO2. The harder the plant choices, the more maintenance.
If you're really interested, I suggest looking for a local aquatic plant society via FB.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

Have and ADA tank on the way to my business right now to set up two planted tanks. One will be low light low tech and the other the full blown CO2 and higher light with ADA soils. Looking forward to the experiments and the results. One tank will use Eheim and the other Tunze.

 

[Frop]

The "dwarf baby tears" is, IMO, basically impossible to grow without high light and added CO2. The harder the plant choices, the more maintenance.
If you're really interested, I suggest looking for a local aquatic plant society via FB.

Ya I'm expecting them to be hard. But I'm a little bored so I'm up for the challenge. He gave me a grid of 3x5" and they literally all floated away in about 3 days in my tank. When he first received them half of them died and grew back but my tank totally destroyed them lol...

I started running CO2 last night. And his were growing slowly with strong lights and CO2 so I know it will need everything I can throw at it. I've Been looking up online the last two days. I believe he needed more CO2 indicated because the plants were growing upward and the leifs were smaller. With enough CO2 they will grow flat and dense. Also I think he has an iron deficiency due to the plant being very delicate. Plus the hole in the leifs of other plants indicate a lack of potassium in his tank. There is another supplement I got to help the plants intake other nutrients.

My field advantage is I'm going to lower dGH to 4-5 with my RODI. I hear that's what they like. The lower dGH I hear helps free up some of the CO2 to be absorbed.

Also I plan to run the tank as cold as I can (70-74f). Since CO2 goes farther in those temps than it would at 80f since plant motabalism rises.

The light is probably a little under (40-45par at the sb). But I plan to upgrade that to LEDs. On that upgrade list is a new regulator so I can use paintball tanks and a CO2 reactor which will waste less CO2. Which means I also need a pump.... so then I'll be turning that 10gallon below into a sump.

I probably will buy this stuff over the span of two months. I still have a saltwater tank to maintain. But the fish are my intertainment.

 

[cb684]

My 300 gallons 5 years ago:



And now...

 

[taintstick]

What do you mean by water mill? It really depends on what's in the water. I've been thinking of checking my RO "waste" water stream as an option.

I found that lighting and substrate were the two biggest things to get right. Then you can pick plants that do well under your conditions. You LFS probably doesn't have a plant person. Check Aquarium Plants. com. They have lots of good information on their site (although it can be a bit tricky to find the information).

Watermill Express is the place. One of those that you just throw quarters in and fill up yourself.
Yea my LFS is not very friendly when it comes to planted tanks.
Thanks I'll check out the site!

 

[brandon429]

The mini scape, five inches tall:


This is the co2 scheme for the tank, I believe it's the first time this array is used for controlled half gallon co2 dosing thanks API :)

The tubes take six hours to empty after being filled w co2 paintball setup and solenoid. When the gas diffuses into the water it creates a vacuum that refills the tube with water for the next round during the photoperiod.

Each tube is a multiplier input for the gas, and it takes five tubes twice a day to properly gas half a gallon it turns out.



Co2 is such an awesome cheat. The Walstad setups that use a degrading organic component in the sandbed are great alternates to pressurized co2 as well

 

[hpimichael02]

Here's mine very basic ...

 

[thatsaltydogchris]

 

[ThunderGoose]

Hey, @thatsaltydogchris what's the pink leaved plant?

 

[thatsaltydogchris]

Honestly I'm not sure, it was one of the pre packaged petco plants

 

[thatsaltydogchris]

@ThunderGoose, if I had to guess I'd say rotala

 

[ThunderGoose]

Honestly I'm not sure, it was one of the pre packaged petco plants

Well whatever it is it looks like it's thriving in your tank!

 

[Rick.45cal]

Anyone who hasn't seen any of James Findley's planted aquascapes really needs to watch more than a few Greenmachine videos. Every single video is very well done. The aquascapes are masterful.

Here's a taste of James Findley's GreenMachine...


We need one of his "super tank" videos too...