55 Gallon, Planted

My 55 Gallon planted tank. Non-CO2 (although soon to be), T-5NO lights, Rena XP-3, power head, eco-complete substrate, EI dosed fertilizers.

12 neon tetras, 5 harquelin rasboras, 1 albino bristlenose pleco, several otos, nerite snails, 2 gold viel angelfish (not in pic), endler guppies, and ghost shrimp.

Very nice! Eventually those endlers are going to end up as angelfish food. I've tried!

Nice!

Gorgeous set-up! Bill in Va.

Very nice :)

Julie

That is a beautiful setup!

I lost the last of my Endler's to my angels as well - get some more rasboras and set up another tank for the Endlers - I sure wish I had saved mine. Do you know where your Endler's came from?

Very beautiful planted tank!

You guys make me want to set up a tank and try to plant it!

Thanks ya'll. As everyone knows it can be hard work setting up an aquarium of any sort and it's nice to know people like it.

Not like LOVE IT!

beautiful :)

Awesome tank!

Great looking tank! for no co2 you have some really nice plant growth. How long have you had the tank setup for?

nice looking tank. do you know what plants are in there

Super nice plants!

very nice....

strikingthematch wrote:

Great looking tank! for no co2 you have some really nice plant growth. How long have you had the tank setup for?

Thanks, No CO2, but I dose seachem excel, but recently started dosing metracide 14 which contains the same basic chemical (glutaraldehyde) as excel. It's around $20 for a gallon compared to excel at $30 for 2 liters and excel contains 1.5% glutaraldehyde and metrecide contains 2.6% glutaraldehyde. I've had the tank set up for just under a year. At one point my plants started dying so I learned quickly about dosing fertilizers. I trimmed it down a good bit because of BBA algae after that picture was taken.

alan j t wrote:

nice looking tank. do you know what plants are in there

Sure do. Here's a list. They all are growing well with my setup, but would grow faster and look better with CO2 injection.

anubias- narrow leaf, nana, and minima
Madagascar lace
Balansae
cryptocoyne parva
java fern
micro sword narrow leaf
ozelot sword (red and green)
retrospiralis
spiralis
red melon sword
tiger lotus
water sprite
bronze wendtii
kliener prinz
echinodorus compacta

Thanks, No CO2, but I dose seachem excel, but recently started dosing metracide 14 which contains the same basic chemical (glutaraldehyde) as excel. It's around $20 for a gallon compared to excel at $30 for 2 liters and excel contains 1.5% glutaraldehyde and metrecide contains 2.6% glutaraldehyde. I've had the tank set up for just under a year. At one point my plants started dying so I learned quickly about dosing fertilizers. I trimmed it down a good bit because of BBA algae after that picture was taken.
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Thats very nice about metrecide honestly has never heard of that before but sounds much more reasonable price wise. I started with excel when I first started my planted tank and it always worked well for me. I went to injected CO2 and a DIY diffuser and that really helped my plant growth and then I got the same BBA problem you had haha. After that I redesigned a few things in my tank and upgraded to a canister filter. I started injecting the CO2 into the inlet pipe of the filter and the output into a submersed spray bar. After that things just took off, my plants pearl the last 1/2 to 1/4 of every day.

Good to know you already have your hand in ferts because when/if you go injected you will need to rely on what you learned. When I started my tank needed no Phosphates (some in local water) I added them maybe once a month now this last week I dosed them 3 times! haha only .5PPM each time but compared to when I started they really suck things up now. As a great side note once the plants take off the algae really gets turned down. I can go nearly two weeks before I see any real hair algae on the glass and the plants grow fast enough that they never have any besides a few of the fine hair ones which my gouramis and SAE take care of rather quickly.

Best of luck!

Nice tank. Is the plant on the left Water sprite. Fyi you can throw all the CO2 ferts. and special soils at the plants but if you don't have enough light plants won't grow. You have plenty of foot candles and your plants look good. Example on light. If you have a lsrge oak tree. You can throw all the ferts. and H2O and your lawn is very thin or won't grow. Many years ago before all the fancy soils and CO2 you could grow plants ust fine. I'm not against the new stuff but LIGHT is the key.

Dr. Who wrote:

Nice tank. Is the plant on the left Water sprite. Fyi you can throw all the CO2 ferts. and special soils at the plants but if you don't have enough light plants won't grow. You have plenty of foot candles and your plants look good. Example on light. If you have a lsrge oak tree. You can throw all the ferts. and H2O and your lawn is very thin or won't grow. Many years ago before all the fancy soils and CO2 you could grow plants ust fine. I'm not against the new stuff but LIGHT is the key.

Light is what starts the whole process but just remember that more is not always better. There is a balance to be maintained, in other words you can have this thing sitting next to the sun and it may want to grow but without the correct nutrients and something to inhale (CO2 during the day) it might grow a little bit nothing like it could. If you do a search online for HLS (High Light Syndrome) it is a good read. In short if you have the steady CO2/Fert supply to support really high light systems then go for it but too many people get these 400+ MH systems and wonder why their plants just won't grow and why they have tons of algae! It is all a balance act that is fairly easy to maintain once you get the players to cooperate but until then it can be a pain.

I try to only change one variable at a time. If I add more CO2 I leave the lights exactly the way I had them just to see what it does and so on. That is the fun part of this experimenting !

you have an amazing tank!!!!!! its awesome

cool stuff, i went co2 and wont ever go back.

strikingthematch wrote:

..... There is a balance to be maintained .....

THAT is the key - balance - light and nutrients, and how available the nutrients are to the plants. Algae is extremely opportunistic and is able to gobble up nutrients from the water column more efficiently than many other plants. With the right ratios of light to nutrients (including fish - their waste is consumed by the plants and the plants' waste is consumed by the fish) the plants take off. I have had tanks where I have to add nitrate because the plants consumed it at such a rapid rate. CO2 often makes this process easier, but the Excel has a similar action. I had a sudden and unexpected mass fish die-off a couple of years ago and I'm positive it was due to an accidental overdose of Excel, so I have been pretty careful with the stuff since then.

Being old enough to have made the transition from old school methods to modern planting soils and dosing equipment, I have to say it can be done either way if you pay attention to what you're doing.

TankGirl wrote:

That is a beautiful setup!

I lost the last of my Endler's to my angels as well - get some more rasboras and set up another tank for the Endlers - I sure wish I had saved mine. Do you know where your Endler's came from?

I picked up the endlers from someone who had too many in his tank.

Dr. Who wrote:

Nice tank. Is the plant on the left Water sprite. Fyi you can throw all the CO2 ferts. and special soils at the plants but if you don't have enough light plants won't grow. You have plenty of foot candles and your plants look good. Example on light. If you have a lsrge oak tree. You can throw all the ferts. and H2O and your lawn is very thin or won't grow. Many years ago before all the fancy soils and CO2 you could grow plants ust fine. I'm not against the new stuff but LIGHT is the key.

Yes that is water sprite. Very fast growing and it would cover the whole tank if I didn't trim it down.

Balance is the key when it comes to planted tanks. It can be done but it is difficult. The most common mistake is having too much light or too long of a lighting period. Everything must be taking into consideration. Light, bioload, fast or slow growing plants, water chemistry, fertilizers (micros and macros), substrate, current, CO2, ect.......the list could go on. For lighting I chose to go with 56 watts (2X28W bulbs) of T-5 Normal Output and it has done very well with my setup. I could use T-5 HO but I would have to suspend the lighting many inches above the tank to keep from getting too much light.