Questions, questions, questions. Beginner at work...

[|squee|]

E.Tennellus is short for Echinodorus Tennellus.

I'm not sure about your lighting issue then, because I have zero experience on big tanks like 4.8ft

Yes, more plants will be good. This will help stablise your system faster, and if you believe in the "plant growth retards algae growth" belief, then more plants = more plant growth = less algae growth. Takashi Amano, Tom Barr, PeterGwee will all tell you to plant thickly at the start. You see your tank pic above? Double or triple the plant mass for a good measure.

More quantity or more speices doesn't matter (this is according to how you want your tank to look like after all) as long as you pack that tank with plants, as though everything has already grown in.

[grey_fox]

|squee| thanks for the advise gonna head to the local aquarium after work (if it is still open but the time I am back from work) to buy more plants. Managed to locate the Echinodorus tenellus at Tropica those are the plants I have for foreground plants... Should I add more of them as they're planted pretty sparsely... will plant them and send upload the updated pic here soon.

[grey_fox]

Just when I wanted to add more plants, I noticed that my holland rams were make a small little shallow pit, next 10 mins they were laying eggs on the gravel... oh well..

[benny]

Just when I wanted to add more plants, I noticed that my holland rams were make a small little shallow pit, next 10 mins they were laying eggs on the gravel... oh well..

Oh. Congrats! Do keep us updated! It'll be fun to see the female caring for the fry.

Cheers,

[grey_fox]

Hehe yeah guess it'll take 36 hours or more for the eggs to hatch?

[StanChung]

I'm sorry, I forgot the wattage of your light source. Was it 15W? However, from the picture, it seems that you can at least try E.Tennellus or common mosses. Doubling the light will of course give you more range of plants.

I'll leave the penetration of light issue to the pros. For such a big tank, frankly I'd consider a MH (metal halide) lamp set. Penetration will be no issue, and you'll have lots of light. Downside is, they're damn hot and consume much electricity. But for a big tank, it's justifiable imho. I'd get a chiller to go with the light if I had your tank.

mh light doesn't seem to be hot...esp if it's a 70w bulb.
au contraire they save electricity for the intensity greyfox...
the colour temp is crucial as it looks drab for fish. this is inherent characteristic for mh bulbs. the nicer coloured ones are more expensive.
a combo with warm tone fl will make colour looki nicer for fish and red plants.

mosses and tennelus are good suggestions. mosses can be tied onto rock or glass or wood. just choose those that stick well like java, sg, xmas, taiwan...
keep the temp below 28c. 25-28c is a good range.
agree with everybody that you need to keep more of a kind than get collectoritis immediately! ha ha i guess we all start like that! i was and still am!

surface skimmer is to be stuck at inlet of one of your canisters. useful in taking out the lipid film...and also floating debris. seems like a fixture in all my planted tanks. not planted ones have overflow...ha

good luck on the fishies!

[grey_fox]

Hey standoyo,

Am aiming to group up more similar plants but since the Ram just laid her eggs, I won't be able to do anything yet. =\ but more or less get the idea now

Just a concern to me, mosses should not have strong water flow pointed towards them even though they're tied down? Would this affect its growth, etc?

[|squee|]

Too much will mean mechanical stress for the plant, but for mosses you can have average water flow on them imho.

[grey_fox]

Hey |squee|,

Thanks for the advise Appreciate it. Will redirect the spray bar however I personally think its too powerful =\ can really see the dirt being blown around (which kinds of frustrates me).

Also, another question on my mind is this.

Let's say the tank has established itself and if I intend to re-scape the entire tank by adding more gravel + more basefert, re-positioning and addition of the plants, driftwood, etc. Would this be advisable?

Problem is that I already have fishes in there (so far 0 casulties after 1 1/2 weeks) and I believe that more or less the bacteria has (or is already growing) in the tank and filter media. How should one approach with such a task?

I noticed seeing in the other threads that a lot of re-scaping is done (other AQ members) but would like some advise on the measures I can take to do the re-scape, and have a quick kick-start of the bacteria back into the tank with a miminal lost of fishes :P (if possible).

I've got quite a few ideas on the re-scape and since the tank I have is 4.8ft, there's more than enough room to create the ideal scape.

As for my light issue, I will be retrofitting T5 lamps in =\ hopefully this will be strong enough to penetrate through all the way to the ground of the tank.

[|squee|]

You have to look into your dirt issue imho, if dirt is flying out of the outlet you have a problem somewhere. Check your filter media and arrangement.

If you intend to do that, it's fine but it's practically like restarting the whole tank's "ecology".

The rescape you mentioned imho is what I call a major rescape. So what I'd do is:

1) Remove everything from the tank, driftwood plants fish and put them in buckets of water (water from the tank) seperately.

2) Drain the tank (if you can save more of the original water, all the more better) and do your armageddon thing on the tank.

3) Plant thickly this time, as thick as you can. Plants are cheap in Singapore. After making minor adjustments and all, fill up the tank about 1/3.

4) Put the buckets of dirty water (dirty but they contain the bacteria) along with your fish to the tank. Fill up the rest of the tank. You might want to use products like Easylife Fluid Filter Medium along with your nutrafin cycle.

Good thing you thought of improving current equipment too. get good T5 sets, those with parabolic reflectors are better I think. Read up those T5 threads in the Equipment section (but I bet you've done it already )

A note however, your fish might not like the sudden change. Bearing in mind yours is a 4.8ft tank (its huge to me) you might want to reacclimatise your fish to the new tank. This will mean pouring most of the dirty water in and topping up the tank, and then using this method accilmatise the fish as if they were just bought from the LFS again.

No fish should die on the first week. Once you observe new growth on the fastest growing plants in your tank, add a bunch of Yamato shrimp to help with algae and dead plant matter clean up. This is good because usually plants will be adapting to your tank and shedding all sorts of leaves and whatnot, a good time for algae to grow.

On fertilisation, you can choose to start immediately, or start once you see growth on the fastest growing plants in your tank. I personally do it that latter way, but many others do it the former way too.

Good luck!

[grey_fox]

Hey |squee|

Yup read up a lot about the T5 lighting, I've called Razali from DeLightings and am going to send him the photos of my current hood so that he can customise it to fit the T5 lighting for me.

So much work, heh might not want to go through all of that. I guess I will wait till much later before deciding on a re-scape. Too busy with work also and other commitments to do that all over again. My water has cleared up a whole lot and apparently the Ram's little eggs are all gone probably the corydoras or other fishes ate it all up.... I have added more plants in and will upload the picture again. I know that I can added even more but will wait a while first.

Just to ask, what is or where is LFS?

[valice]

LFS stands for Local Fish Shop

[grey_fox]

Hi valice, thanks for the explaination of the abbreviation.

I just purchased a set of T5 lights from AquaMarin. Looks much much much brighter that the 4 x FL tubes I had...

[|squee|]

Good job! You really planted thickly haha.

[grey_fox]

hehe, can plant even more actually. :P

[grey_fox]

Hmm, come to think of it, the photo I took is damn badly taken... Will re-take the shot and post it back up... with the full view of the tank.

Don't really know how to use the Minolta Dimage A1 camera as it's my brothers'.... too cheem these digital SLR cameras...

[|squee|]

Try posting in the photography section, where benny, simon, loupgarou, lots others can help you.

[Goondoo]

Try posting in the photography section, where benny, simon, loupgarou, lots others can help you.

Try to take the picture at night, off/block all the lights except your tank's one, and never use a built-in flash.

Just want to point out about the MH lights consuming more electricity myth in your previous post. Be it 150w from T5, MH, FL or tungsten, they are the same when it reflect on your monthly bills. 150W is 150W

[grey_fox]

Thanks for the tip guys. Yeah, 150W would be 150W, how silly of me

[StanChung]

hi greyfox,

sorry to read this late. moved house over the weekend.
not advisable to add basefert at this stage. just add top gravel.

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mh is more efficient per watt. period. does not consume more electricity. au contraire. Goondoo is right to point out 150W is 150W. but 150W of MH will produce more light than 150W of FL. i can't say how much more as it depends on the bulb. so if you have tank that does well with 70W of fl lighting then forget about 70W MH. you won't save any money.
however if you have planted tank that uses 240W [6 x40] of fl lighting then you may consider switching to [1X150MH or 2X70W MH] + 2X30W fl [pink for colour] because mh does have it's advantages in power saving efficiency over ordinary fl only if you break the 70W threshold for your tank as there is 70W mh bulbs.

t5 VHO comes close almost equal with good reflectors. lighting engineer pointed this out in other forum.
i can't verify this because i don't have a lightmeter. anyway fyi, plants need light that's not seen to the naked eye too. so don't be fooled by a dim planted tank specific tube or a bright to the naked eye one.

so it's more of trial and error for you and me when choosing bulbs.
all the WPG[watts per gallon] measurement is for standard fl/pl bulbs only in 1.5ft high tanks. it is more accurate for tanks around 75l-300l. it is only meant as a rough guide and is highly inaccurate IMO. let your plants do the talking. they pearl[in high light] and grow well when their requirements are met.

for your tank a 2X70W mh + 2 X 40W or 2X30W is good energy saving option. but since you already bought the lights it's gonna be hassle to change the ballast and bulbs.
just be aware that higher lighting means greater care is needed to maintain balance to keep algae at bay. pretty unforgivable as rupert will tell you.

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there's lot's of reflection in bg. close the door or shoot at night with room lights out as goondoo pointed out.
if you have photoshop or iphoto or others. adjust the levels/contrast a bit.

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psst. that's erm either lazy planting of the HG[hairgrass] or no one told you how but...split it into clumps of 5 plants and 1 cm apart. you will be rewarded with nice carpet.