2 gallon planted tank

[Vernonplim]

Hi guys,


Decided to create a journal for my 2 gallon planted tank. Pls tell me what you think or maybe can offer some ideas for improvements. Thanks in advance.


Plants are HC, Glosso and Anubias nana. Running Co2 at 0.5 bps (roughly).


Initial setup: about 2 months.
Substrate: GEX brown & black coloured substrate.
Fauna: 1 Baby guppy, later none


Initially I had riccia tied to small stones placed in the foreground.

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Later I got bored with the look and decided to remove the riccia and replaced with glosso from another tank. Hopefully will carpet soon. But seems like the glosso is starting to grow vertical.


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Here’s something interesting. There’s one time I found some filamentous algae amongst the HC leaves, and blue-green algae growing on the empty areas on the substrate, this blue-green algae really stinks!
After a couple of unsuccessful attempts in ridding these algae, frustrated, I did 90% water change with chlorinated water (yup, you read correctly… chlorinated water), immediately within a day, the filamentous algae died and became white coloured strands. Within 2 days, the blue-green algae simply disappeared. Fantastic huh?


The side-effect is, after about 4 or 5 days later, I find my HC began to melt too, turning yellow and glassy transparent. All this while I didn’t treat the water with any conditioner. Guess the plants cannot stand chlorinated water, algae being the first to go. So I added Seachem Prime to dechlorinate the water and dosed FBL Ferropol and BW’s Growth, Essence K and Lush for 3 days repeatedly. HC seemed to be making a comeback now.. whew.. I thought I was going to lose the HC for sure. So far so good, algae free, after scanning every inch of the tank, super squeaky clean tank from algae.. LOL!

[Watcher]

Informative info. Thanks!

[amaninus]

Hi,

Is that a glass tank or acrylic tank?

Must these plants grow in glass tanks only?

[Vernonplim]

Hi,

Is that a glass tank or acrylic tank?

Must these plants grow in glass tanks only?

Hi amaninus,

Its a glass tank. These plants can grow anywhere, even in plastic containers as long as the conditions are right.

[Vernonplim]

Update:

Happy to note that my HC is coming along great. Managing the conditions in such a small tank is really interesting

[Vernonplim]

update: Glosso has finally creep and HC is growing superb. I'm so happy with this tank coz this is the first time ever I'm actually successful with HC after multiple failures. Finally! LOL.

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[Vernonplim]

[Vernonplim]

Anybody know when i should be trimming the HC? I heard that the whole carpet will float if left untrimmed for long time.

[magpie]

Is your tank kept in an aircon room?

[Vernonplim]

Is your tank kept in an aircon room?

I only switched on the Aircon whenever I'm in the room. With the aircon, temperature is usually around 26 Celsius. Without it, water temperature is 29-30 Celsius most of the day. So I guess it's still pretty much on the warmer side.


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[magpie]

Nice HC lawn. HC needs chilled water to flourish

[Urban Aquaria]

Anybody know when i should be trimming the HC? I heard that the whole carpet will float if left untrimmed for long time.

You can check the health of the bottom layer by just looking at them though the side and back of the glass tank, if you notice the bottom layers are starting to show signs of yellowing or browning, then thats an indication to trim before too much of the bottom layer really begins to melt.

[Vernonplim]

[Vernonplim]

See the top right hand corner, tons of small round insects swimming in the tank. Anybody know what are these insects doing in my tank and why are they there, and how do I get rid of them?

[Henlek]

Cannot see properly but most likely seed shrimps. I have these in my tank too, rather common and will mutiply very fast if you don't have fish to eat them, shrimp tanks often have these too. Came mainly from plants, they are harmless but yes not so nice to have too many. I usually siphon them out during WC to keep their numbers in check. There is really no other way to rid them completely unless you start all over.

[Vernonplim]

Cannot see properly but most likely seed shrimps. I have these in my tank too, rather common and will mutiply very fast if you don't have fish to eat them, shrimp tanks often have these too. Came mainly from plants, they are harmless but yes not so nice to have too many. I usually siphon them out during WC to keep their numbers in check. There is really no other way to rid them completely unless you start all over.

Thanks for the feedback. Guess the only way is to add some fishes.


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[Vernonplim]

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[mUAr_cHEe]

It is starting to look like it is getting out of hand. What do you think? Is this the look that you are trying to achieve?

[Vernonplim]

Lol! I have no idea what to do next. I never got this far with HC before.

How far should I trim it?


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[mUAr_cHEe]

You have gotten more far than me in HC. I just planted mine last week! And my last batch did not survived.

But from my research and understanding, you should trim it down to a level that you are comfortable with. You will know it is too late when you have your whole carpet floating in the tank.