20 gal Planted Tank Journal (with Pics)

[Purrbox]

For fishless cycling you need to make sure that you are adding enough Ammounia to ensure that the bacteria has something to feed on and doesn't die off. I would keep adding 1ppm of Ammonia everyday, especially if the Ammonia is dropping to 0 within a few hours. The only time that you don't need to add more Ammonia is at the very beginning when there isn't enough bacteria present to convert the Ammonia to Nitrite, and the Ammonia level remains steady. Since your Nitrites dropped since yesterday things are looking good to be at the end of your cycle soon.

 

[PrettyFishies]

So I took the advice of adding ammonia daily, the nitrites are still at .3 - so we are being patient. The problem I think we are experiencing now is the Nitratehosphate ratio. We doubled up on the dosing of nitrogen - starting today and achieved 7.5 ppm with 10mL of Seachem Nitrogen. I added 10 mL more for today's total of 20mL - And I added 10 mL of Phosphorous (aiming for 1.0 ppm) I'll test again tomorrow and see.

The phosphates are now .375 which gives a current ratio of 20 ppm, but yesterday it was 5:.2 or 25:1.

Any advice?

 

[czcz]

Increasing PO4 is perfect. Suggest you try to maintain at least 1.0ppm for high light. Your N uptake should increase, so adjust dosing if necessary.

I'd skip one day of Ammonia dosing. If NO2 drops to 0 after a day, I'd add fish, fwiw.

 

[jazz1180]

We're considering addding Ludwigia inclinata to the tank... any special requirements necessary for keeping it healthy?

 

[czcz]

Nope. As long as you two keep up what you're doing, you should grow L.inclinata great. You can propogate it like R. rotundifolia: chop it up, bend it over, or just plant and trim the tops as you please.

When you get around to L. "Cuba" (Ludwigia inclinata verticillata var "Cuba") it gets trickier. Should give the leaves a lot of horizontal space to spread out, and propogate it from side shoots. More demanding plant of CO2, nutrients, and light.

 

[PrettyFishies]

Nitrites are ZERO!

Absolutley Fish here we come! (www.absolutelyfish.com)

 

[PrettyFishies]

So, we purchased our first residents last night.

2 Red Hi-Fin Lyretail Swords - 1 Gentleman, 1 Lady
3 Otocinclus
3 Red Cherry Shrimps

All were acclimated for about 45 minutes and are doing great. The otos started cleaning immediately. Once the swords got comfortable, with the tank and each other, they even started eating some of the hair algae in the tank from off the dritwood.

We use a 1W lunar moonlight so we can watch them during the night. That actually seemed to make the male sword more confortable. This morning, they readily ate flake food.

Next up will be a school of 6 Cardinals, 4-6 Julii Cories, 3 more otos and 3 amano shrimp - later we'll get 2 German Blue Rams, more shrimp and more tetras - lastly a golden nugget pleco.

What can we use to supplement the otos and the shrimp? Should I drop a shrimp pellet for them?

 

[czcz]

FWIW, I use veggies and Hikari bottom feeder wafers (mine do not eat algae wafers) for otos. Shrimp eat whatever food they get their hands on. The cories and other fish will love shrimp pellets, but you probably don't want them to get a taste and preference for shrimp I think you'll be gambling with cherries and the larger fish. I think it is unlikely babies will survive with such high fish stock, even with dense planting.

 

[ct67_72]

looking good. sorry to hear about your luck. some how Im fortunate to have quite a few small stores near by, one inperticular that has a huge plant selection (10 tanks) so its not hard.

 

[azn_fishy55]

Just hope you got at least one male and one female shrimp because when they start breeding,you'll get lots of shrimp.They are very good at algae cleaning,and once they get older they get this nice blood red coloration,which is also attainable by lowering the temperature below 70F.

 

[PrettyFishies]

We picked up 3 more Otos and 4 Amano shrimp today. Those suckers are big and fun to watch. I guess we'll see about teh cherries. Had a hard time finding Julii cories and cardinals. GBR's are on order form the LFS.

 

[PrettyFishies]

We are proud to present our new inhabitants - Lady Guinevere, Sir Lancelot, The Oto 5 and the 3 shrimpmen... We lost 2 shrimp today

Question: Our PH remains at 7 - I unsuccessfully tried to add 2 2L bottles of mix, but they fizzled out. Now, as soon as we added Co2, the riccia perked up. Soon after the Macrandra was added, we obsered new growth at the top. With a KH of 4, our Co2 is 12 ppm - lower than the goal of 30 ppm. Should we worry about raising the level of Co2 or not worry since the plants are responding?

 

[czcz]

Should still increase CO2 as long as the fish show no stress. This is a good time to mess with it as you're still in the honeymoon period before algae takes hold.

Spread out the glosso plantlets and let it fill in to form your carpet. Here's a good howto from a site that's now sadly offline. Planting it in clumps won't help it spread efficiently, or buy much time before you have to uproot and thin it out, anyway. Easy to grow it tall around the rocks if you want.

Better to spread out R. macrandra as well, with enough space between stems to let light reach all the leaves.

Your R. rotundifolia growth looks very healthy!

 

[PrettyFishies]

Well, we lost another Amno this morning. Yesterday when we lost two, we realized that teh filter was left off all day after feeding. We tested everything and found the nitrites had increased to .3 ppm. I'm guessing that is the problem? We tested this morning and the nitrites are back to <.3

 

[fastfly48]

Wow! fantastic tank!
I've just been flicking through the pictures...
Looks amazing! just one quesion if I may though...
How did you get that green carpet like plant to stay atached ON TOP of the round rocks? did you just tie it on with fishing wire?
Anyways, brilliant tank! I'm soooo green! super duper.
cheers.
Ry.

 

[PrettyFishies]

Thank you very much for the kind words. We are proud of what we've done, but looking forward to watching teh growth. As for the carpet plant - that's RICCIA FLUITANS - a japanese plant that can be hard to find and needs high light to grow. We attached it with green thread - you may want to use fishing line for something more permanent. Some say that you may need to remove it occasionaly and re-mount it. I don't know why, but, I'm no expert. It's a floating plant so you have to attached it to something

 

[PrettyFishies]

20 Gallon Project - UPDATED

So, we just got 2 beautiful GBR's last night. They are doing fine and exploring, but not eating from what we can see yet. We're keeping our eye on them. They join the community of 2 Hi-Fin Red Swordtails - Guenivere & Lancelot, 9 Cardinal Tetras - O'Ren Ishi & the Crazy 88, 5 otoclinclus - the Jackson 5 and 3 amano shrimps.

All the plants are doing really well including the Rotala Macrandra. The Red Tiger Lotus finally produced shoots and leaves. The Glosso is growing rather slow - We added a 2nd hagen Natural, upped teh KH to 5 and are being patient. Any tips?

Pics to come soon.

 

[WarEagleNR88]

Funny fish names!--looks good.

Photo tip fyi: turn off all your house lights/tv/etc and wait until it is dark outside. Then try taking a picture using only your tank's lights--be sure to have the flash off. If you have a tripod, use that if the camera has a timer so you take away the "shakes" everyone has when taking pictures. Usually aquarium lights are bright enough to get pretty good pictures without the flash.

You asked what would help with the glosso. High light and lots of dissolved CO2. Pressurized CO2 with a pH controller is an amazing way to keep that amount of CO2 right there. Macro uptake will increase and the glosso will explode in growth. But that's where it gets a little tricky--keeping your macros stable where you want them. If they get out of wack, the extra light and any offset macros will spawn algae like you've never seen--especially if Iron and PO4s get high. Unless you want to get complicated, I'd just recommend that you stick with what you've got going. Just be patient on the extra CO2, do water changes, dose ferts like normal. Try to keep NO3 at 15-20 ppm (unless you're in a contest trying to bring out blood colored reds!) and dissolved CO2 above 20 ppm. Give the glosso a couple of weeks to kick in. If you do this, soon you'll hate it because it'll grow like mad and take over your tank.

Good luck!--HTH.

 

[PrettyFishies]

20 Gallon Project - UPDATED NEW PICS

Okay, so a lot has happeened since my last posting. The fish are doing great, the plants look healthy (for the most part) - everything is good.

I finally rounded out the livestock with a purchase of 6 Julii Cories from Aquabid.com. Lst weekend, we added an L129 Scribble Pleco to the community. He's reclusive and I've yet to see him exploring.

Today was by far the most exciting day ever. Looking around the tank, we discovered what we think are Swordfish fry! Quite amazing.

 

[rich311k]

Congrats on the new fish and the fry. When do we get new photos?