POTSHOT
Aquarium Advice Newbie
I somehow randomly came across this site while looking for info on growing freshwater plants. "Ziggy's corner tank: caught my attention. OMG - it was like reading a good book that you just can't put down. Took 3 nights to get through all the threads but really enjoyed following his progress.
I just started a FW planted tank after reading up on it over the course of 9 months. Finally dived in.
There are only two highly experienced and focused FW plant shops around both being about 50miles away. Two weeks ago I took a trip to one of them with one agenda - to get their recommendations for plants for a newby. Dropped a quick $160 and walked away with a handful of various plants, FW Master test kit and the entire FLOURISH fert. set. You can check out the list in my profile along with all the details of my set up.
Prior to this endevor, I had a 2yr old setup with a nice compliment of fish but the plastic plants just weren't doing it for me and the lava rocks while nicely set up were constantly covered with BBA. Then all of a sudden after picking up 5 more neons at the local Petco (bad move), my fish died off very quickly with some mysterious disease even before I could figure out what it was. So there was my opportunity. I cleaned out everything, trashed the pebble gravel and loaded up with 60lbs of eco-complete. Somehow my pleco survived and is fine today after several weeks. The tank cycled before starting my planting. Not knowing exactly what I was doing and on the recommendation of the plant shop, I just stuck them into the substrate randomly but did put the taller ones in the back.
One item I wanted was a nice piece of mopani which I finally found and it's been "soaking" for a week now to leach out the tannin.
Not knowing what to expect, I have some browning of some leaves and a little lower leaf rot but I have not paniced YET. However, I do need to understand what is going wrong or not right. The AA "family" looks to be just the right place for me to develop my knowledge. You folks are spread all over the world but "closer" than driving 50miles to get questions answered only to get a single oppinon. More heads are certainly better then one!
I will post some pics of my tank along with the areas of concern as soon as I figure out how and where to post them.
TGIF but it's pretty late so will continue later... just wanted to put some detail out there an say "Hi".
I just started a FW planted tank after reading up on it over the course of 9 months. Finally dived in.
There are only two highly experienced and focused FW plant shops around both being about 50miles away. Two weeks ago I took a trip to one of them with one agenda - to get their recommendations for plants for a newby. Dropped a quick $160 and walked away with a handful of various plants, FW Master test kit and the entire FLOURISH fert. set. You can check out the list in my profile along with all the details of my set up.
Prior to this endevor, I had a 2yr old setup with a nice compliment of fish but the plastic plants just weren't doing it for me and the lava rocks while nicely set up were constantly covered with BBA. Then all of a sudden after picking up 5 more neons at the local Petco (bad move), my fish died off very quickly with some mysterious disease even before I could figure out what it was. So there was my opportunity. I cleaned out everything, trashed the pebble gravel and loaded up with 60lbs of eco-complete. Somehow my pleco survived and is fine today after several weeks. The tank cycled before starting my planting. Not knowing exactly what I was doing and on the recommendation of the plant shop, I just stuck them into the substrate randomly but did put the taller ones in the back.
One item I wanted was a nice piece of mopani which I finally found and it's been "soaking" for a week now to leach out the tannin.
Not knowing what to expect, I have some browning of some leaves and a little lower leaf rot but I have not paniced YET. However, I do need to understand what is going wrong or not right. The AA "family" looks to be just the right place for me to develop my knowledge. You folks are spread all over the world but "closer" than driving 50miles to get questions answered only to get a single oppinon. More heads are certainly better then one!
I will post some pics of my tank along with the areas of concern as soon as I figure out how and where to post them.
TGIF but it's pretty late so will continue later... just wanted to put some detail out there an say "Hi".
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