My 20G Planted Tank

[callisto9]

Not using Purigen. No more snails for me until I can figure out what the problem is. The problem seems to lie in my 20G tank though - they were fine in the 6.6G tank before I moved them over.

 

[callisto9]

Fine-tuning my camera skills by taking an online class, of sorts.

Got two (for starters) banded kuhli loaches today at the LFS. I am glad I didn't get the black ones and waited to find banded ones. They are so cool! They are smaller than I thought they'd be, but-oh-so neat!

Here's some pics from today:

The smudge on the glass is brown algae or diatoms. It's so gross. Hard to scrape off.

Love this little dude:

Banded kuhli loach:

Female peacock gudgeon:

The kuhlis again:

 

[callisto9]

Still battling diatoms or some sort of brown/orange crud on my Brazilian Pennywort and on the front of the tank. It's back on the rocks again, too. And I'm getting even more white fuzz on my manzanita branch. I don't know what's happening or what to do about it.

Rivercats mentioned nerites. I'll pick a few up this weekend. My apple snails are in a separate container now.

It's odd that my tank is getting worse-looking and not better in terms of plants.

 

[Rivercats]

Tanks go through various phases and I promise it will mature and get balanced. My big tank didn't get like that overnight. It went though diatoms, various algae until I got my ferts, lighting, and liquid carbon amounts right. It takes time and patience so don't get discouraged, it will get better and truely it's not as bad as you think it is. We are alway our own hardest critics.

 

[callisto9]

Tanks go through various phases and I promise it will mature and get balanced. My big tank didn't get like that overnight. It went though diatoms, various algae until I got my ferts, lighting, and liquid carbon amounts right. It takes time and patience so don't get discouraged, it will get better and truely it's not as bad as you think it is. We are alway our own hardest critics.

Thank you. I do get frustrated easy!

 

[callisto9]

Got three nerite snails today to help out with the algae problem. Then I started reading about them and learned they can drop bazillions of eggs and become a real eye-sore. *sigh* I almost got a few assassin snails, but the lady at the LFS said assassin snails could eat nerite snails.

The kuhli loaches seem to be doing really well. I like them a lot.

 

[Kimlafeiet]

Callisto9,
Your tank is beautiful. What led lights are you using? I am considering my first planted tank. Also, price (apx) and where you got it

 

[CorallineAlgae]

I've never really seen nerite eggs in any of my tanks. It shouldn't be a problem. Even if you see a few it's better than algae. Plus snails are cute in their own way.

 

[Borderlesscott]

Just removed 3 of my 7 Nerite snails due to laying eggs, they appear as white lumps on the decor or glass, in my case it was all over the bogwood - loads of them, and they do look worse than algae and tough as hell to remove. Thankfully it looks like I've removed the right ones after a long process of elimanation.

 

[Rivercats]

Just removed 3 of my 7 Nerite snails due to laying eggs, they appear as white lumps on the decor or glass, in my case it was all over the bogwood - loads of them, and they do look worse than algae and tough as hell to remove. Thankfully it looks like I've removed the right ones after a long process of elimanation.

I must have wierd nerites as mine rarely lay eggs and when they do if they are on the DW they easily pop off using my long handled tweezers. Plus they seem to dissolve pretty quick.

 

[callisto9]

Callisto9,
Your tank is beautiful. What led lights are you using? I am considering my first planted tank. Also, price (apx) and where you got it

Thank you! I am not using LEDs. The original hood this tank came with had LEDs, but they are not great for growing plants. I have one 15W T8 bulb. 8000K full spectrum daylight bulb. Understanding what kind of lighting I needed was kinda hard for me, but this helped:

Tips for a Successful Planted Aquarium | Aquarium Fish Forum

If you're asking about the price of the lighting, the replacement hood and light was about $35 at my local fish store (LFS). I had to replace the entire hood. This is the hood I have:

Aqueon » Fluorescent Deluxe Full Hoods | Products If you get a standard-sized tank, it should be easy to get a replacement hood and light.

I've never really seen nerite eggs in any of my tanks. It shouldn't be a problem. Even if you see a few it's better than algae. Plus snails are cute in their own way.

We'll see how it goes. Most of the reading I did, people had eggs and lots of them. I like the nerites so far. I miss my mystery snails though. Two out of the three died and I still don't know why. I'm starting to wonder if it was lack of food. Whenever they were out roaming around, they got bumped and touched and would always hide back into their shells. I have isolated the last one in a one gallon jar and he's doing better, so I'm starting to think that might have been the problem. Nice thing about the nerites is that not much of them is outside the shell even when moving around the tank.

Just removed 3 of my 7 Nerite snails due to laying eggs, they appear as white lumps on the decor or glass, in my case it was all over the bogwood - loads of them, and they do look worse than algae and tough as hell to remove. Thankfully it looks like I've removed the right ones after a long process of elimanation.

That's what I've read can happen. I'll be monitoring closely! I don't think anything can even eat the eggs, so they're just stuck there.

I must have wierd nerites as mine rarely lay eggs and when they do if they are on the DW they easily pop off using my long handled tweezers. Plus they seem to dissolve pretty quick.

I'll keep people posted, for sure! I'm happy to have snails in the tank again. Well, snails that aren't ramshorns. Man, that was a huge mistake to ADD those to a tank!

 

[bevoholic]

Very nice tank! Makes me want to rethink my 20g that I'm in the process of setting up.

About the nerites, I'm fairly certain the eggs will only hatch in brackish water and not fresh water, so you'll be ok with them.

 

[callisto9]

I'm starting to realize that several of my plants aren't doing well...they are dying out - anacharis, ludwigia repens, ludwigia paulustris, brazlian pennywort... They were big/healthy when I got them and there's half of them left, if that.

The anacharis just rots at the bottom, or sometimes mid-way up. Hardly any new growth.

I had TONS of ludwigia repens, but more than half of that has died off. It'll lose it's leaves at the bottom, but when I've tried to replant, it just rots at the bottom.

Ludwigia paulustris (red)... it's just gone. Must've disintegrated.

Brazilian pennywort - orange/brown algae on many of the leaves, stunted/slow growth.

What is doing well? Anubias, java fern and jungle val.

There's something off about my tank that's preventing plants from thriving in it. I have the lights on from 1pm - 10:30pm. I'm still only dosing 1ml Flourish Comprehensive. It almost seemed like my tank did better before dosing that stuff. Wondering if I should quit adding it. Or should I add more?

 

[callisto9]

Very nice tank! Makes me want to rethink my 20g that I'm in the process of setting up.

About the nerites, I'm fairly certain the eggs will only hatch in brackish water and not fresh water, so you'll be ok with them.

That's what I read, too - they'll only hatch in brackish, but they still leave eggs all over the place and it can look rather unsightly.

Thanks for the compliment!

 

[callisto9]

Here's a pic from today. I need more taller plants! Or I need my plants to quit crapping out on me!

 

[Coco1019]

Loving your tank!

I need to update my thread now that everything is moved over to the 55. I bought some julii cories the other day so they are waiting in my QT.

 

[callisto9]

Thank you for the compliment. Yes, yes! Update that thread!

 

[CorallineAlgae]

Honestly, I would up the dose of flourish to 1ml twice a week. What are your nitrates reading and if you remember, what were they just before the plants when downhill?

It could also be lack of light as the plants grew and started to shade themselves.

 

[Rivercats]

I ran across this some time ago and marked it from Aquarium Plants-Barr Report and you might find it interesting. It's pretaining to stem rot...

Tom Barr
01-31-2009, 08:32 PM

Here's the general idea behind what is referred to as "auto fragmentation".
Low nutrients, low CO2 particularly and low N, bad place to live.
Maybe current, maybe light etc, anyway, the plants break up in hopes of drifting away to a better place and regrowing, sort of like seed dispersal, but much faster and better to find new and better habitat.

Generally poor CO2, poor nutrients(easy to rule out light and nutrients).

Regards,
Tom Barr

One thing I noticed in all your pic's is your water looks pretty still. Do you have any slight swaying to your plants at all? I know the subject of planting stems indivdually and with proper spacing was covered awhile back but if your not getting enough water circulation in the tank and to the stems they aren't recieving as much nutrients that the water circulation would carry to them. Also have you thought about using DIY CO2 or the cheap glutaraldehyde like I use? Just throwing some thoughts out there.

 

[callisto9]

Thanks for the advice Coralline and Rivercats.

My plants at the bottom do not sway or move, that I can tell. I'll check tonight.

I don't do CO2 and *won't* do CO2. More work than I want to get into.

Yes, I did start spacing out my plants, but it hasn't seemed to help.

Rivercats, if you really think the nutrients you mentioned before would help, I'm definitely splurging for them next paycheck. I'm tired of wasting money on plants!