Fishperson
Aquarium Advice Addict
I haven't been on AA in a while, so this is just a recap of what has happened to my tank:
It is a 10 gallon, with a finnex fugeray 20" and a fluval 105 filter on it. The light is on for 8 hours a day and I dose PPS Pro daily. I have eco complete substrate with flourish root tabs under most plants. I'm running pressurized co2 at around 1-2 bps. The indicator is greenish. It's been set up for a while, I think around 2-3 months. There was never anything in there as far as fauna goes except for an otocinclus for a month or two and then 8 RCS for the past few weeks.
This is my problem. I'm moving in a couple of months and that would be an easy opportunity to exit the aquarium hobby. I don't really have many other hobbies so I would like to keep this one, but my plants just won't grow well at all. Here are all the plants I've had:
- Ludwigia Repens: It grows okay but none of the leaves are even remotely red, and pretty much the entire bottom 4 inches is leaveless.
- Cryptocoryne Parva: This plant is surprisingly doing well. It is super slow but all three are still alive and even one sent off a runner. No problems yet.
- Water Wisteria: Something weird happened to this one. It went from that strange oak-leaf looking leaf, to a normal, oval leaf. That's what all the new growth has been anyway. They old leaves are beginning to die off. All in all I still can't complain, but it still is weird.
- Cryptocoryne Wendtii "Mi Oya": Really not growing but not really dying. Minimal melting at first. Quite strange.
- Java moss: Its only been in for a few weeks but its grown just a bit. Overall not too bad.
- What looks like Limnophila Indica or some other Limnophila, or maybe Ambulia: It's been doing quite well, but only been in for a few weeks. No problems yet.
- Staurogyne Repens: This one has done really well. It's just grown straight up, fairly quickly, with minimal algae and no melting or tearing.
And those were the successes.
- Hygrophila sp. Bold: Didn't grow at all, just rotted away until I took it out.
- Cabomba: Didn't grow much until it eventually grew a bit, towards the top of the tank. It lost all but the top two inches of its leaves though.
- Hygrophila Corymbosa: Melted off immediately (probably grown emmersed), and still hasn't grown back at all.
- Hydrocotyle sp. Japan: Literally no growth after 3 weeks, just some leaves turning brown or melting.
I just don't know what I'm doing wrong.
Any advice would be appreciated. If I could run a well maintained tank without excessive algae (which I kind of have), with plants that don't die immediately, god forbid actually grow, I would continually and forever keep fish and plants. But I can't. So I probably won't.
This is really my last attempt at a planted tank at least. I may try shell dwellers in the 10 gallon if this fails, but this is pretty much my last attempt. I've pulled out all the stops and spent well over $300 on this tank, and its just a pile of...
So any advice would be amazing, any obvious things that I'm doing wrong would probably be helpful to know about.
Thanks!
It is a 10 gallon, with a finnex fugeray 20" and a fluval 105 filter on it. The light is on for 8 hours a day and I dose PPS Pro daily. I have eco complete substrate with flourish root tabs under most plants. I'm running pressurized co2 at around 1-2 bps. The indicator is greenish. It's been set up for a while, I think around 2-3 months. There was never anything in there as far as fauna goes except for an otocinclus for a month or two and then 8 RCS for the past few weeks.
This is my problem. I'm moving in a couple of months and that would be an easy opportunity to exit the aquarium hobby. I don't really have many other hobbies so I would like to keep this one, but my plants just won't grow well at all. Here are all the plants I've had:
- Ludwigia Repens: It grows okay but none of the leaves are even remotely red, and pretty much the entire bottom 4 inches is leaveless.
- Cryptocoryne Parva: This plant is surprisingly doing well. It is super slow but all three are still alive and even one sent off a runner. No problems yet.
- Water Wisteria: Something weird happened to this one. It went from that strange oak-leaf looking leaf, to a normal, oval leaf. That's what all the new growth has been anyway. They old leaves are beginning to die off. All in all I still can't complain, but it still is weird.
- Cryptocoryne Wendtii "Mi Oya": Really not growing but not really dying. Minimal melting at first. Quite strange.
- Java moss: Its only been in for a few weeks but its grown just a bit. Overall not too bad.
- What looks like Limnophila Indica or some other Limnophila, or maybe Ambulia: It's been doing quite well, but only been in for a few weeks. No problems yet.
- Staurogyne Repens: This one has done really well. It's just grown straight up, fairly quickly, with minimal algae and no melting or tearing.
And those were the successes.
- Hygrophila sp. Bold: Didn't grow at all, just rotted away until I took it out.
- Cabomba: Didn't grow much until it eventually grew a bit, towards the top of the tank. It lost all but the top two inches of its leaves though.
- Hygrophila Corymbosa: Melted off immediately (probably grown emmersed), and still hasn't grown back at all.
- Hydrocotyle sp. Japan: Literally no growth after 3 weeks, just some leaves turning brown or melting.
I just don't know what I'm doing wrong.
Any advice would be appreciated. If I could run a well maintained tank without excessive algae (which I kind of have), with plants that don't die immediately, god forbid actually grow, I would continually and forever keep fish and plants. But I can't. So I probably won't.
This is really my last attempt at a planted tank at least. I may try shell dwellers in the 10 gallon if this fails, but this is pretty much my last attempt. I've pulled out all the stops and spent well over $300 on this tank, and its just a pile of...
So any advice would be amazing, any obvious things that I'm doing wrong would probably be helpful to know about.
Thanks!
