my 75 planted

since im part of the familia her at USAfishbox, i think its time i put up a pic of one of my tanks.
its a 75 gallon planted with t-5 2x54 HO
it has 3 discus, a betta and 15 cardinals so far there are other fish in the pic , but they were transfered to another tank
for flora its mostly low light plants
crypts;
wendtii/bronze
retro spiralis
mi oya
usterian,
ozlet sword
blxya japonica and auberti
creeping jenny
ludwiga repens
sunset hygro
e. tellunus
hygro augusafolia
ans some other new plants which i forgot the name of.




the kid in the pic is one of 4 kids i own;-)
he always around when i take pics of plants or my tanks.

Great looking tank! and great looking kido! Might have to ask you some questions once I actually get a planted tank set up. My wife wants one. I had one going but took it down when we moved last.

dude! that thing looks sick!!! way to go!!!!!

very nice

thanks for the kind words.

very nice tank

It looks great but I tend to use sand in my planted tanks, it works much better than gravel. It also looks like it would be a pain to clean.... But it looks great!
What kinds of fertz do you use? CO2? Lights?

Good job on the tank! I'm jealous of your lights, too bad I'm broke to buy new ones!

so the lights are from catalinaaquarium.com, they had a sale so now all 3 tanks have them.

I have a canister filter from there.... its like an ehim knock off.... I still haven't figured it out yet....

alan j t wrote:

so the lights are from catalinaaquarium.com, they had a sale so now all 3 tanks have them.

Were they expensive? I found a 48" t5 4 bulbs for $125 including shipping. But I think it's a ghetto brand

fern, i tried sand but my fish are pooping machines, and it bothered me alot seeing the sand all dirty
ill post a pic some time soon.
a 50# bag cost me like 4 bucks at home depot, so it wasnt a major loss.
it now has mostly aquariumplants.com substrate and gravel/flourite mix.
and plant jobes(NPK sticks).
i use pressurized co2 difuse it thru a ceramic disk
it sits under a koralia2 power head
EI for ferts. w/ dry powder fertilizer
the light are actually 4x54, but i only use 2x54. growth was waaaay too much, so i toned it down.

these light have 5 yr warranty on there ballast. american made.
not many other light have a warranty besides 90 from defect.

if your looking for a good lamp but decent price, fishneedit.com.
they have external ballast on there t-5 lamps. so once the ballast kicks the bucket
you dont have to replace the whole lamp.

I never use just sand, there is a bunch of random stuff in and on mine, small pebbles, gravel, shell, rocks... Helps to break up the look of it.
If my kids bring home a cool rock that passes the tests it gets a good long soaking and washing and They tell me where they want it in the tank. Same with shells and bones.

i tried the shels but they slowly disnigerate.
this guy i worked with gave me a box of shells from FL., very cool looking stuff, bit slowly hole were apperaring and they got bigger and bigger.
i guess i need the shells with the glaze on them.

so im going to try my hand at the harder stems again.
it seems like i have everything dialed in now.
i did before but with the newborn back then and stuff like that it kept me away from the tanks alot.

stems like this were cool

I have a whole bunch of those... I can never remember what they are called but they grow very nicely for me, I only started with one.
Yes shells dissolve over time, that's how they raise your PH. But I have brichardi in my planted 75g so I want some of that.
I have never had to do any of the fancy stuff in my 75g I just started it out right and put some flourish excel in when I think about it.
I may be interested in any spare plants you may have after I get my sump up and running, it will be heavily planted kinda like a slat water refugium.

nice tight looking tank

Nice looking tank. Are you using Co2 planting system?

thanks ghoulish-chaos. whats a co2 planting system?

http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsUS/ctl3684/cp18478/si1431681/cl0/redseaco2prosystempaintballdeluxewsolenoid


Something like that...

ya, somethiing like that.
i bought a regulator of e-bay, and a tank from air/gas when i first started.

now i have multiple regs and co2 tanks!
im hooked!

im sacramento now and going to buy some fish tomorrow morning.
pics coming soon.

nice tank, you got a jungle growing in there.

thanks, thats what im shooting for.
im not really good at aquascaping.