10 gallon planted

[MC1973]

Let me know what you think!

 

[fort384]

I think once it grows in, most of your rockwork is going to be covered in ground cover .

But, I like simple planted tanks with only a couple species of plants. What are you trying to grow? Can you tell us a bit about what you are doing as well? Lighting, ferts, CO2 (I see you must be doing DIY?).

 

[MC1973]

I think once it grows in, most of your rockwork is going to be covered in ground cover .

But, I like simple planted tanks with only a couple species of plants. What are you trying to grow? Can you tell us a bit about what you are doing as well? Lighting, ferts, CO2 (I see you must be doing DIY?).

Hey! So I have a ton of other tanks that I emptied out, I'm trying to just do planted now with shrimps rather than fish because my plants always got destroyed and the heaters would always skyrocket my electricity.

So this tank is a 10 gallon, I'm trying to grow giant hair grass (you can see a few strands coming out, I trimmed the rest to get cleaner strands) and I'm also trying to grow the dwarf hair grass which is easy to see. I might stick in another rock on top of the rocks I have and try to get anubias off the rock.

My lighting is 2x28Watts at 5500K, couldn't find CFL that were in the 6000's at home depot
I have fluorite and also I'm doing Hagen ferts with Fluorish Excel. I'm doing to do the liquid fert dosing every other day until it gets more established and then maybe I'll do it everyday. I'm doing half the recommended dose of excel everyday. My CO2 is that Hagen CO2 kit with the ladder, I have 2 of them running currently. I know it's a rip off and DIY is cheaper, but I think petsmart was discontinuing them because instead of the regular $40 price tag, it was on clearance for like $7 so I said what the heck it's cheap I'll buy it!

The Hagen CO2 mixture was crap though, it only lasts like a week and then stops bubbling. Western family dry active yeast with pure white cane sugar lasts me like a month and a half when mixed with warm water.

 

[fort384]

Yeah their little packets are crap. Definitely better to just DIY... I used to have one of those canisters back in the day though, and for $7 you can't go wrong. Saved yourself an hour of DIY time on the cheap.

Hairgrass looks great as it grows in. I had a hair grass shrimp tank for awhile that I loved. With weekly trimmings, it was easy to keep manicured, and it was nice and thick like a lawn:

I think you will be close enough on the lighting, though if you can find some 10000K instead of 6500K or 5500K you might be more pleased with the color. I find the 5-6000K bulbs a bit yellow for my tastes.

Definitely keep us abreast of your progress! With your great planting job it will grow in in no time, especially in that substrate.

 

[MC1973]

Yeah their little packets are crap. Definitely better to just DIY... I used to have one of those canisters back in the day though, and for $7 you can't go wrong. Saved yourself an hour of DIY time on the cheap.

Hairgrass looks great as it grows in. I had a hair grass shrimp tank for awhile that I loved. With weekly trimmings, it was easy to keep manicured, and it was nice and thick like a lawn:

I think you will be close enough on the lighting, though if you can find some 10000K instead of 6500K or 5500K you might be more pleased with the color. I find the 5-6000K bulbs a bit yellow for my tastes.

Definitely keep us abreast of your progress! With your great planting job it will grow in in no time, especially in that substrate.

That's a pretty awesome tank! Looks like you were doing pressurized, I can't afford that right now and I'm not sure how long a 5 lb tank would last or the 20g or 88g tiny ones so I'm going to see my luck with the DIY for now. I want my tank to look exactly like yours haha.

I'm getting pretty good pearling though so we'll see how that goes. I'm thinking about either putting in some ghost shrimp or RCS. I heard RCS prefer warmer water though, so I might go with the ghost.

I also do about 12 hours a day on the light, so hopefully that's going to do some good too.

Yeah the packets were crap, the expiration date was past also which kind of pissed me off but whatever haha.

Also I was considering throwing in some lace rock but I felt like the grey color of it didn't go very well with my black fluorite :/

I have an empty 55 gallon and an empty 30 gallon just waiting for some love haha, also I have an empty 10 gallon, I might try that to experiment in a smaller tank with HC. My larger ones I don't want to spend a ton of money on new light fixtures so I might do a low light anubias tank. Can you imagine the entire bottom of the 55 gallon covered in anubias? That would be insane and expensive too lol, they run about 6 bucks a rhizome around here

 

[MC1973]

Yeah their little packets are crap. Definitely better to just DIY... I used to have one of those canisters back in the day though, and for $7 you can't go wrong. Saved yourself an hour of DIY time on the cheap.

Hairgrass looks great as it grows in. I had a hair grass shrimp tank for awhile that I loved. With weekly trimmings, it was easy to keep manicured, and it was nice and thick like a lawn:

I think you will be close enough on the lighting, though if you can find some 10000K instead of 6500K or 5500K you might be more pleased with the color. I find the 5-6000K bulbs a bit yellow for my tastes.

Definitely keep us abreast of your progress! With your great planting job it will grow in in no time, especially in that substrate.

Hey also, what kind of plants did you grow in that? Did you have any problems with the hair grass overtaking other plants and making it messy? Also what did you do when the other plants rooted into your hair grass lawn? Was it a pain to pull it out and try to cut it, like did it mess with your lawn?

 

[Coursair]

RCS can handle cool temps fine.

 

[fort384]

Agreed - no heater in that tank and you can't seem em in the pic, but there are probably 150 rcs in that tiny tank .

It isn't hard to keep everything sorted if you trim it weekly. In that pic, there is hair grass, rotala w (it doesnt look so hot in that pic but I did have a lot of luck with it at different times), and blyxa japonica.

 

[MC1973]

Agreed - no heater in that tank and you can't seem em in the pic, but there are probably 150 rcs in that tiny tank .

It isn't hard to keep everything sorted if you trim it weekly. In that pic, there is hair grass, rotala w (it doesnt look so hot in that pic but I did have a lot of luck with it at different times), and blyxa japonica.

I might have to get some shrimp then. Did you ever have a problem with shrimp eating your plants? Do you think I should wait until the plants are more established before getting shrimp? I was hoping to get them early so I didn't have to deal with an algae problem, but I was thinking I might have a problem with the plants getting eaten and then the leaves turning brown after.

How long should I wait to trim? I heard you're supposed to wait until you see runners to trim, and with the way I planted them like so, I'm not so sure I'll be able to distinguish runners from planted lol. I was going to wait a couple of weeks to start trimming though.

Also with hair grass, does it turn brown at the ends if you trim it? and is there a right and wrong way to trim?

Thanks!

 

[fort384]

Mine never turned brown. It grew about 2-3 inches a week. And no, the shrimp never ate my plants in any of my tanks. You might want to let it grow for a month or so before pulling the scissors out. I just used stainless steel scissors and made like I was givin it a haircut

 

[MC1973]

Mine never turned brown. It grew about 2-3 inches a week. And no, the shrimp never ate my plants in any of my tanks. You might want to let it grow for a month or so before pulling the scissors out. I just used stainless steel scissors and made like I was givin it a haircut

That's what I was thinking haha. And 2-3 inches? That's freaking fast! Before I gave my giant hair grass a complete cut down I think it was doing about half an inch a day under high light and CO2. If I keep up my regimen how long do you think it will take to carpet in like that? If I wanted a nice lawn do you think pressurized CO2 is mandatory?

P.S. I was thinking either shrimp or a fish that would do well in really cold water. I think the water is at like 60-65 depending on the time of day, do you know any small fish that would do well in this temperature? That would also not uproot or eat any plants? The tank is filtered by the way, I keep it running to generate good water flow so the plants get all the nutrients and there is no dead spot anywhere.

 

[fort384]

hmm, that is pretty cold, even for RCS I would say.

Not sure on any fish that would work out ok in those temps... maybe danios, but the tank is a bit small for danios.

This tank had a really powerful light on it, so everything grew quickly. It took maybe 3 months to go from 1 start of hair grass to the lawn.

DIY CO2 on that size tank should be fine... pressurized or DIY, it is all about your concentration in the water, and as long as you keep it consistent at around 30ppm, you will be fine.

Word of caution with DIY CO2, don't get lazy with the mixture changes. I would rather have no CO2 than wildly fluctuating CO2... which can happen if you go too long between mix changes.

 

[MC1973]

hmm, that is pretty cold, even for RCS I would say.

Not sure on any fish that would work out ok in those temps... maybe danios, but the tank is a bit small for danios.

This tank had a really powerful light on it, so everything grew quickly. It took maybe 3 months to go from 1 start of hair grass to the lawn.

DIY CO2 on that size tank should be fine... pressurized or DIY, it is all about your concentration in the water, and as long as you keep it consistent at around 30ppm, you will be fine.

Word of caution with DIY CO2, don't get lazy with the mixture changes. I would rather have no CO2 than wildly fluctuating CO2... which can happen if you go too long between mix changes.

Thanks for the advice! I had some guys at the LFS say that RCS may not do well at that temp and they're more categorized in the tropical so I'm not sure. I heard ghost shrimp can go all the way down to 50 though.

That's pretty good growth for 1 patch! Did you get the potted kind that was grown in wool? Check out these pictures! The only reason I was able to do such a good job was because they came like this in the bag so all I had to do was separate them out and plant them (didn't have the tweezers so I used chopsticks). I am horrible at planting wool plants because every time I end up tearing the plants up trying to get them out.

How many watts did you have over your tank?

Also what is the downside to fluctuating CO2? (assuming there are no living creatures in the tank). I've been trying to find a cheap drop checker but I can't seem to find one, and I'm pretty sure the paper indicators that go on the side of your tank inside aren't too reliable :/

 

[fort384]

Oh that is a cool way to get it. The stuff I bought was in wool, and a pain in the butt.

The downside to fluctuating CO2 is increased algae growth, where as high/steady CO2 is actually an algae prophylaxis assuming your other parameters are balanced. BBA just loves bad quality CO2 injection.

eBay is your best bet for a cheap drop checker. I would send you one as a have a bunch of them, but I don't have any extra bromothymol blue, so it wouldn't do you much good.

Here is one for about $5 shipped... it is coming from overseas so it may take a few weeks, but better than buying one for $40 in the states (FYI my dumb butt owns a $40 ADA glass drop checker, and I have about 10 of the chinese knock offs, and there is no difference except a slightly different shape).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CO2-glass-D...plies_Fish&hash=item3a6d7ef3e7#ht_5265wt_1202


EDIT: Oh, and the light was 27W PC light on a 5.5.

 

[MC1973]

Oh that is a cool way to get it. The stuff I bought was in wool, and a pain in the butt.

The downside to fluctuating CO2 is increased algae growth, where as high/steady CO2 is actually an algae prophylaxis assuming your other parameters are balanced. BBA just loves bad quality CO2 injection.

eBay is your best bet for a cheap drop checker. I would send you one as a have a bunch of them, but I don't have any extra bromothymol blue, so it wouldn't do you much good.

Here is one for about $5 shipped... it is coming from overseas so it may take a few weeks, but better than buying one for $40 in the states (FYI my dumb butt owns a $40 ADA glass drop checker, and I have about 10 of the chinese knock offs, and there is no difference except a slightly different shape).

CO2 glass Drop Checker PH LONG TERM MONITOR fish tank test aquatic size small | eBay


EDIT: Oh, and the light was 27W PC light on a 5.5.

Hey thanks for the link! So do I have to inject the BTblue every once in a while? (like exchange it out?) I looked at the ADA one and then closed my browser because I was like $40 bucks? NO WAY haha.

Do you know if shrimp take care of algae or is it just in small amounts? I would assume they take care of the algae enough to get it off the plant's leaf pores but probably not enough to get it off if it's growing all over the tank side right?

And that's pretty high wattage for a 5.5. That doesn't even look like a 5.5 I thought it was a 10 haha, I guess it all just depends on the camera angle.

 

[fort384]

To make a drop checker read accurately you need to also either buy or make 4dKH solution. I think you can get a bottle on eBay for 5 bucks.

You add a few drops of BTB each time you change the solution in the drop checker. It fades over time... I change mine maybe every 6-8 weeks.

RCS eat some algae but not on the scale of Amanos or anything.