75 gallon planted tank ~4-8-12~

Thanks for the wonderful comments everyone

I am using sandblasting silica sand as the substrate in this tank. But I have used playsand in many tanks and I have liked it. I really like the look of it. Just be aware that the sand is totally inert so if you have rooted plants you will need to add some root tabs as fertilizer. The other thing with playsand is that it compacts fairly easily and it can go anoxic on you if the sand bed is to think (> 4"). You can combat this by either poking it with a chopstick to aerate it or you can add malaysian trumpet snails. These guys are like earthworms of the planted tanks.

haha like I said in my SW tank thread, I absolutely love FW tanks but as a SW noob I have been blown away with the color and variety that a reef tank has.

 

Lots of pictures in this update I am pretty happy with where things have progressed.

Current FTS:



left:

middle:

right:


Things are going well, I did a minor rescape yesterday. Moved some plants around to make room for the new arrivals. I cleaned up the central opening to make room for the staurogyne repens. It is growing well and I hope to fill up the middle part pretty quickly.



I had some left over HC from my 2.5 gallon tank so I decided to add it here to see if it would spread. It is just temporary along with the small patch of hairgrass until the S. Repens goes there.



I also added some HC in a crevasse in the stump, I am curious to see if it will root and spread. I also have some anubias and creeping jenny that is growing in the crack as well. And i have some moss that rooted all by itself on the top and is slowly spreading.




i added some ludwigia repens in the back. Should fill in nicely. to make some room I moved the hygro alternanthera closer to the stump. I also plan on replacing the vals on the left of the stump with the hygro alt.




Here are some pics of the current state of some of the plants:

A. Reineckii - very slow growth but atleast it isn't completely covered in BBA like it used to be


L. Aromatica - the new growth has no color to it. Wondering if I should try to reduce the nitrates. I have alot of osmocote pellets on the substrate from replanting making it difficult to limit my nutrients. i have stopped dosing nitrates all together to see how that affects the growth. The L. Repens - arcuata and rotala rotundifolia are both growing really well but lacking color as well.





The hygro. alt. is growing nice and tall and givign some shade for the anubias and java fern. The fern has really started to grow nicely for me..finally.



The hygro difformis is looking good, but the bacopa is getting algae on the lower leaves. I may have to move it out into the open a bit more so that they are not shaded.



My lone pogo erectus is growing really well as well.



shot of an angel:



Once the l. aromatica grows more I am going to trim and try to faze out the sunset hygro.



So that is where my tank is at the moment. This tank has turned into a natural pseudo-dutch style tank...if that exists

My next goal is to just get everything to fill in and try to get some reds out of my plants.

 

wow, awesome tank! i never really cared much for planted tanks before, but yours just got my attention!

 

Your tank is looking beautiful! Keep up the good work .

It reminds me more of an Amano style than a Dutch style.

 

Looking great, if reducing nitrate does not work dose iron. BBA is killed by glutaraldehyde. A dose of 3X what Seachem recommends with Excel is the ticket.

You can use Aquariumplants.com's pellet fertilizer if you don't want to use liguid fertilizer.

 

thanks

Clonefarmer: Thanks for the compliment I was definitely going for a natural look like amano's but his tanks usually don't have as many stem plants. I wanted to showcase the stem plants like in a dutchstyle, but I am not OCD enough to keep it so clean haha.

2in10: I started dosing metricide about 2 months ago when I cam home from vacation to find a field of BBA over everything (my co2 tank ran out while I was away). I aggressively spot dosed all the problem areas as well as with hydrogen peroxide. It worked wonders. Now I am dosing the recommended amount daily and that has def. kept the BBA in check.

You can see in this pic, some of the reddish BBA on the wood that I successfully irradicated, you can also see some untreated BBA on some of the rocks. I haven't had a chance to kill it yet, but atleast it isn't spreading



As for the reds, I am dosing CSM+B and chelated Fe at twice the recommend EI dosage, so I am fairly sure that that is not the problem. I have been reading abit on the subject and it seems that the reds come out when the plant is abit stressed. Limiting nitrates has been shown to lead to increased reds in the plant growth. Of course I do not think it is that simple as it is probably a combo of things, since I have seen examples of red plants where Nitrogen is not limited.

 

Yeah, some interesting reading for the reds. Red BBA is dying BBA IME. Congrats on the successful elimination. 2X of the metricide sounds about equal to 3X Excel if I remember the formulations correct.

 

my motto for bba...once its red its dead

 

pardon the stupidity, but what is BBA?

 

BBA = Black Brush Algae



This pic is from a very good write up at plantedtank.net...

Essentially it is caused by insufficient/unstable CO2. Once established it can be very difficult to get rid of.