Anything I'm missing?

[imahawki]

OK, I have my tank setup, have a bout 20 smallish fish in there (35 gallon hex) and have the plants in. I'm dosing 2x a week with not quite a capful of flourish and I have flourite substrate and abotu 5 strategicaly placed flourish tabs in the substrate. I just got my light ordered, a 40w so I have right around 1wpg which my goal was to go low light. I've had several of the plants in there for a while with the stock 15w bulb and they were growing so I think they will do really well with the 40w bulb.

I have about 5 clumps of micro swords that are actually starting to spread, so I assume that means they are doing well. Then I had 3 creeping charlie plants and they kept dropping leaves like mad but were getting new growth on the tops. I took that to mean they were not getting enough light down low which prompted me to finally get the right light but they were too far gone so I took them out. I replaced them with 4 plants, 2 of each kind but I dont remember what they are called. 1 sends up stems about 4"-6" (now at least) and it is very feathery and dark green. The other is dense, lighter green and has leaves that are very oblong and small. Each leaf is about the size of an unshelled sunflower seed. I'll try to get pictures but if anyone has links to a site with tons of plant pics I could point them out.

Any way, the question is, am I missing anything?

 

[imahawki]

OK, one of them I'm 90% sure is Camboba.

 

[imahawki]

The other I'm 90% sure is Rotala.

 

[bman]

Are you suppling any CO2 or adding any excel?

If not one, then the other from what I've read. In my 20 long, I use excel daily, and my light as around 2.5 wpg. Not heavily planted, but still have a good amount in there.

That's all I can think of.

 

[imahawki]

How much excel were you dosing daily? I'm doing it 2x a week.

 

[bman]

I dose 2ml every day, as well as 1ml nitrogen, and 1ml of potassium.

During weekly pwc I dose 10ml of excel.

Through my research, I found some people dose excel every day.

Since I have a horrible memory, I choose to do it every day so I won't forget. It's part of my morning feeding ritual:

Feed the fish
Squirt ferts
Feed the dogs
Feed the Iguana

Drink Coffee.

It's all about the end result, drinking coffee.

I also figure if I dosed excel every other day, on the off days the plants may be deficient.

HTH

 

[Zezmo]

http://www.tropica.com/default.asp
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/?
http://www.sfbaaps.com/
http://www.plantgeek.net/
http://www.aquatic-gardeners.org/
and this one, IMO, is a must have for the planted aquarist...
http://www.lucidcentral.org/keys/appw/
Download the free player, and get the Aquatic Plant key. It allows you to interactively identify your aquatic plants.

These links can help you identify plants or get other info

 

[travis simonson]

Cabomba and Rotala will likely require more than 1 wpg to do well. It sounds like they're doing OK right now so you may get lucky You can always leave your orignal light over the tank along with the new one to give you about 1.5 wpg.

Zezmo - nice links! I've wasted a lot of time browsing the SFBAAPS site

 

[imahawki]

I cant use both lights at the same time due to the extremely limited amount of space I have over the top of the tank due to the fact that its a tall hex tank. I'll have to see what 40 watts does for me and I havent gotten the co2 hooked up yet either. Hopefully they will both help.