30 at 3 weeks AKA 30 gallon the battle begins.

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Troy H

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jul 4, 2004
Messages
18
Location
Ames, Iowa
I set this 30 gallon "cube" up three weeks ago, it's an Oceanic.

The filter is a Fluval 3 internal, lighting is provided by two 65 watt "Fluorex" floodlights (currently buiding a pendant to retrofit with them) and CO2 is provided by a Milwaukee SMS122 pH controller running a Milwaukee MA957 regulator, the reactor is Hagen "ladder". The substrate is 3" of Flourite, I dose weekly with Flourish and Flourish Iron only.

I planted the back of the tank with ambulia and moneywort, other plants include ludwigia replens, ludwigia arcurata, sunset hygro, an amazon sword, a compacta sword or two, two aponogeton crispus, dwarf lily and sagittaria subulata. I basically planted everything where I wanted it, and aside from dosing and feeding the fish, I haven't done squat to it, figuring I could prune everything into shape once it all settled in. Then I got busy with other projects and before I knew it, in two weeks the ambulia had over run the entire tank almost choking everything out and depriving pretty much everything of light.

So I chopped out the majority of the ambulia, leaving the base stems, and after a week pretty much everything but the ambulia took off leaving me with this, although the ambulia is starting to come back. I figure once I get enough new growth out of it, I'll plant the top trimmings and remove the old base stems. t this point, I'm going to start pruning the ludwigia and hygro to try and guide it away from some of the plants that are still being deprived of light.

30_b.jpg
 
I keep looking at the Ludwigia and thinking it's so cool, how can I cut it ! It really is just a beautiful plant and it's so healthy looking. I'm halfway tempted to let it ride and see what develops, but the corner in the front where the dwarf lily is really needs to get some light, maybe I can remove the lily and put something else in that can compete with the ludwigia.
 
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