My sincere apologies to everybody for the lack of response to this thread.
I am updating this thread as a form of closure to my first serious attempt at a planted tank albeit, it's late by almost 2 years! - I hope to share what I can remember about the initial wonderful experience and I am trying to startup again.
The tank flourished for the next 3-4 months and then family/work commitment got really hectic and I began to pay much less attention to maintenance as I was running off automated dosing pumps. However, the dosing tubes failed as the brass check valves clogged with sediments and I was not vigilant enough to notice until it was too late (weeks later).
By then I'd resorted to irregular manual dosing and that too came to a stop when the tank became difficult to salvage (unhealthy plants, algae), I just left it to grow with little pruning nor dosing.
Lights were greatly reduced and most of the hardier plants like crypts, nana continued to survive for a year until finally, I took the effort to decommission it recently.
What I've learnt from my initial experience:
1) There are alot of amazing setup guides out there, but in my opinion, too few hands-on maintenance of plants (e.g. carpet, rooting plant) for long-term scapes - I wish there were more!
2) I realised that fast growing plants with plenty of roots, start to cause significant of soil compression which is hard to rectify without uprooting.
3) Unwelcomed snails are a huge pain - I cringe thinking of them multiplying under the soil - despite my effort to sanitize my plants with potassium permanganate, they still survived and thrived.
4) Utricularia Gibba - another pest. Despite best efforts to remove them, they always come back to haunt me too - came free with Utricularia Graminifolia from local farm.
5) If I'm not careful pruning HC 'Cuba', the scissors may uproot the whole patch when I lift off.
6) Utricularia Graminfolia grows well tied to metal meshes, but it's just a temporary solution as they will float off though.
Sweetest moments:
1) UG (Utricularia Graminifolia) thriving. I didn't manage to get a full lawn unfortunately as I couldn't keep them rooted. I got half my tank surface occupied with a 1-inch thick mat though.
2) HC was surprisingly robust from emersed to submersed. Grew reallly fast and didn't melt at all.
I'm sorry I do not have any updated pics. I tried to search my computer but realised that I delayed taking update photos as things were progressing nicely initially and I wanted to do it when everything was perfect - which fell short.
I am attempting an almost similar scape with the same equipment and hardscape again because I feel that I did not complete my initial attempt and I hope the seniors can guide me along again when I have any queries I can't resolve.
Cheers!
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Alvin Koh
My sincere apologies to everybody for the lack of response to this thread.
Bookmarks