evercl92
Aquarium Advice FINatic
Four days ago, I pulled all my plants out and did a complete swap of my substrate. I went from about 50/50 'natural' gravel and eco complete to 100% soilmaster select. It was difficult to judge how much I actually needed, as the water became quite cloudy as I put the SMS in the tank. This is even after I rinsed it to what I thought was pretty good... apparently not. I rinsed out my Eheim 2028 daily from sunday until today, which gradually went from mud to a fine silt. I placed filter floss in there yesterday, to clean up remaining particles.
Four days later, today, the tank is clear enough to plant my plants (I didn't want plants blocking flow of the filter any more than they had to, and I didn't want SMS debris on the plants). I had to leave the driftwood pieces in there the whole time, I don't have a container tall enough for them. The remaining plants stayed in a rubbermaid container.
I personally love the way it turned out, though I think I may have used a bit too much SMS. I ended up using about 80lbs, and got about 4-5 inches of depth.
Before:
After, with just driftwood:
After some planting:
Some more planting:
After I was done planting, then came back in a couple hours:
And my (I'm pretty sure) male FFF
Four days later, today, the tank is clear enough to plant my plants (I didn't want plants blocking flow of the filter any more than they had to, and I didn't want SMS debris on the plants). I had to leave the driftwood pieces in there the whole time, I don't have a container tall enough for them. The remaining plants stayed in a rubbermaid container.
I personally love the way it turned out, though I think I may have used a bit too much SMS. I ended up using about 80lbs, and got about 4-5 inches of depth.
Before:
After, with just driftwood:
After some planting:
Some more planting:
After I was done planting, then came back in a couple hours:
And my (I'm pretty sure) male FFF
