I figured I’d start a journal here now. This is post beginning, the tank was setup May 11, 2014. So starting at July 8th, 2014.
Specs
30”x30”x13” standard glass cube ?frag? tank (equivalent to around 50gallons)
Lighting: 2 30” finnex planted plus, 1 finnex original fugeray (started 1 month with the 2 planted plus only)
Filtration: SunSun I believe 303-b, uv sterilizer does not work, rated for 75 gallons I think
Co2: cheap unknown to me regulator, atomic gla largest diffuser, feeds into the filter intake
Substrate: ada Amazonia (2 9l bags), ada Africana (2 9l bags)
Water: pure ro water reconstituted w/seachem equilibrium
Fauna:
Pair japan blue endlers
Some royal blue tiger culls
Plantlist:
Some of these are single stems, looking to be propagated
Syngonanthus hybrid
Syngonanthus belem
Syngonanthus manaus
Syngonanthus madeira
Syngonanthus lago grande
Tonina fluviatillis
Tonina fluviatillis lotus blossom
Eriocaulon japan shiga
Eriocaulon aussie type II
Eriocaulon sieboldanium
Trithuria blood *****
Eriocaulon parkeri
Ludwigia tornado
Ludwigia senegalensis
Ludwigia North Carolina
Ludwigia …. pantanal
Rotala Mexicana goias
Rotala pearl type?
Rotala Mexicana green
Rotala Mexicana bangledesh
‘monte carlo’
Elatine hydropiper
Rotala macrandra green
Rotala macrandra japan red
Alternanthera reineckii variegated
Buce brownie red
Lileaposis Chinensis 'Maryland'
Some key tips on how I was successful:
I must of tried like 5 times or so and failed each time with algae or plants melting. Well, try try and try again, I gave up many times, wasted a lot of money, but passion to grow the syngonanthus plant alone kept me coming back.
First off if your gonna use ada Amazonia then you must do water changes. Water change is a must anyways, I believe in low tech and high tech, high tech being the greater amount. I did almost daily water changes in the start. Ammonia leech may or may not melt plans but it will cause algae, which nobody wants unless its that red algae.
Pack as many plants as you can in there
O2, Co2, get this right and it will solve most of your issues, I didn’t need to fertilize the first month or so on, diffusion method is vary important too. You can blast a glass diffuser and all the bubbles are going to do is rise to the surface with less diffusion rate. I’d suggest not adding fish right away so you can really mess around with the co2. Lots of flow is a good thing, keeps o2 levels up and mixes the co2 in the water level too. Proper mixing is important when doing a co2 tank.
Photoperiod, start off with 5 hrs a day, make sure you don’t get algae(it can get bad very fast), plants will do fine, then when the system is ready you can really up your lighting period
Start off with lower light, you may have a lot higher light then you expect.
Learn to trim, plant. This will keep things neater and not let your tank get too overgrown(I am guilty of this). Propagation? Trim a sideshoot and replant or however a plant produces, do it fast and you multiply that plant fast.