elwaine
Aquarium Advice Activist
- Joined
- Nov 11, 2008
- Messages
- 174
6 week update
I've had an interesting time getting this Pico aquarium up and running. If you recall, I tried to cheat in the planting of HC. Instead of following Joy's advice (did anyone seriously think she'd give bad advice?) and planting individual HC plants, I decided to try planting clumps of HC that was still imbedded in rock wool. (I hate listening to the poor plants scream as I pull and tear them out of the rock wool.) So I removed the rock-wool-imbedded HC from the pots and then cut off 1/2 the depth of the rock wool. I then quartered each of those - yielding 4 clumps per pot. I planted the clumps directly in the Aquasoil Amazonia. In addition, I planted a couple of lava rocks on which HC was already growing. It looked real good, too:
But a week or so after planting, I began to experience a lot of die off of the HC. The roots were rotting. Curiously enough, the HC grown on lava rock was also dying back. I have a feeling they grow HC emersed, but I'm not sure. Anyway, this is how it looked a week or so after planting:
So I uprooted the rock wool imbedded clusters and carefully removed a bunch of individual HC plants, and replanted them in the Aquasoil (minus the rockwool). It's been 4 weeks since then and they are starting to look real good. They've greened up and are now beginning to thicken out.
I apologize for the haze along the bottom of the tank. It's GSP and I don't want to scrape it off until the HC has had several months to take root, for fear of uprooting the plants. I should have a a nice carpet of HC in a month or three.
New plants need to acclimate. It takes a few weeks before they do, and then they start to grow out. I'm not sure why I had so much die back. I can't blame it all on the rock wool because the HC growing on lava rock has no rock wool. One reason for the die back of the HC could be because I was having difficulty with my CO2 system for the first few weeks, and I was using relatively high lighting with a 14 hr photoperiod. High lighting and long photoperiods without good CO2 beg for trouble with algae growth. But what the heck. I love algae... right?
Well, my CO2 is now 30 - 40 ppm. I've cut back the photoperiod to 9 hours and reduced the light output a little by putting a very slightly frosted plastic film (Contact paper) on the light fixture's plastic cover. However, the hair algae keeps laughing at me and is growing quite nicely, thank you very much.
BTW, I discovered what Red Cherry Shrimp do when they know you are not watching them: they plant hair algae! They take it from one part of the aquarium and plant it all over the place. So I bought a few Amano shrimp because mythology has it that hair algae is the main diet of Amano shrimp. Maybe it's too early to tell (I have the Amanos for just a few days) or maybe my Amano shrimp are on a diet, but I see more hair algae now than ever before. - Two of my RCS are berried, so I've have even more algae spreaders in another few weeks.
I've had an interesting time getting this Pico aquarium up and running. If you recall, I tried to cheat in the planting of HC. Instead of following Joy's advice (did anyone seriously think she'd give bad advice?) and planting individual HC plants, I decided to try planting clumps of HC that was still imbedded in rock wool. (I hate listening to the poor plants scream as I pull and tear them out of the rock wool.) So I removed the rock-wool-imbedded HC from the pots and then cut off 1/2 the depth of the rock wool. I then quartered each of those - yielding 4 clumps per pot. I planted the clumps directly in the Aquasoil Amazonia. In addition, I planted a couple of lava rocks on which HC was already growing. It looked real good, too:
But a week or so after planting, I began to experience a lot of die off of the HC. The roots were rotting. Curiously enough, the HC grown on lava rock was also dying back. I have a feeling they grow HC emersed, but I'm not sure. Anyway, this is how it looked a week or so after planting:
So I uprooted the rock wool imbedded clusters and carefully removed a bunch of individual HC plants, and replanted them in the Aquasoil (minus the rockwool). It's been 4 weeks since then and they are starting to look real good. They've greened up and are now beginning to thicken out.
I apologize for the haze along the bottom of the tank. It's GSP and I don't want to scrape it off until the HC has had several months to take root, for fear of uprooting the plants. I should have a a nice carpet of HC in a month or three.
New plants need to acclimate. It takes a few weeks before they do, and then they start to grow out. I'm not sure why I had so much die back. I can't blame it all on the rock wool because the HC growing on lava rock has no rock wool. One reason for the die back of the HC could be because I was having difficulty with my CO2 system for the first few weeks, and I was using relatively high lighting with a 14 hr photoperiod. High lighting and long photoperiods without good CO2 beg for trouble with algae growth. But what the heck. I love algae... right?
Well, my CO2 is now 30 - 40 ppm. I've cut back the photoperiod to 9 hours and reduced the light output a little by putting a very slightly frosted plastic film (Contact paper) on the light fixture's plastic cover. However, the hair algae keeps laughing at me and is growing quite nicely, thank you very much.
BTW, I discovered what Red Cherry Shrimp do when they know you are not watching them: they plant hair algae! They take it from one part of the aquarium and plant it all over the place. So I bought a few Amano shrimp because mythology has it that hair algae is the main diet of Amano shrimp. Maybe it's too early to tell (I have the Amanos for just a few days) or maybe my Amano shrimp are on a diet, but I see more hair algae now than ever before. - Two of my RCS are berried, so I've have even more algae spreaders in another few weeks.