Latest Setup - Please comment

[Georgeer]

Latest setup with low maintenance plants like Java Fern, Windelov Fern, Moss, Hair grass, Echindorus Tenellus, Vallisneria americana.....

http://www.arofanatics.com/members/g...anceplanttank/

[FND]

Beautiful!! Pleasing to my eyes. Maybe you can add some red plants to be the centre of focus. Just a thought.

-FND->

[juggler]

Neat! Should look even better when matured.
BTW - what is the plant in the right half behind the hair grass? I notice some holes in the leaves, is it?

[budak]

looks pretty good...... with a little more growing out, it should fill out nicely.....maybe you would like to share your tank history and maintenance/fert regime????

For my own low light (1.5WPG) tank, I am glad to say that a regime of 30-40% water changes fortnightly coupled with dosing of 5 mg/l NO3, 1 mg/l PO4 and 30-40 mg/l K (with micros), with half dosage of macros and micro in the week when i don't change water, AND ample CO2 appears to be keeping BBA under control, and even remission.

[Georgeer]

Hi Juggler, those are the Tenellus (emmersed) I posted in the forum asking for help when the holes started to appear and I suspect was caused by Otos.
The submersed tenellus is taking form sooner or later now and I think the real culprit was a Malayan Trumpet snail which I eradicated few days ago. The MTS was quite big at the size of about 10mm, must be feeding on those emmersed tenellus leaves and had grown to such huge size.

[Georgeer]

Hi Budak, I use Dr Malek's AquaGrow liquid fertilizer and dosing Potassium Sulphate once a while. Also not forgetting root monster for the lily as recommended before in the forum.

Also some compound fertilizer recommended by Gan at $30 a bottle, this is something new and I am still testing the effect.

[juggler]

hee... I thought they were some kind of lace plant.

One more comment about the setup: The Hair Grass needs high light to grow nicely whereas the slow growing Java Ferns may not. How do you balance that? I suspect you E.tenellus may overrun the Hair Grass in future. E.tenellus is less light demaning than Hair Grass.

[Georgeer]

I agree totally with the mixture of the high light demand plants and the low light demand plants balancing might get "rojak" sooner or later once the plants started to grow. I take the chance the moss might simply stop growing since the tank average temperature is about 28~29 degrees.

Besides, some of the older batch hairgrass are already showing browness and I am not so sure if this is natural behaviour or something is wrong.

At the moment, I have 6X18W 2 ft FL. The lights are more concentrated in the middle section of the tank. I had turned off 2 tubes just not to burn out the moss tied at the tip of the driftwood.

[checkerboard]

Actually, I have no problems with hairgrass in low-lights.

They are pretty hardy plants. May grow a bit slower only, but should be ok, so if you are patient, then it is fine.

I kept my previous lawn of hairgrass, but converted o low maintenance, low light (72W for 240 litres). Keeping crypts, bolbitis, narrow leaf java fern,
doing pretty fine, hairgrass no sigh or any problems. So if i were you, i would not be really very worried.

just my 2 cents

[Georgeer]

Thanks for sharing your tank info. I am more relief now to keep only 4 pieces of FL on, which I think it is also better to keep the temperature down since less heat emitted from the balast will be reduced.

[Metallic Sardine]

Hi Georgeer,

Following up on the other thread (Low Light Plants) and read up on your tank specs and think it is pretty cool! Maybe I should get rid of that silly undergravel filter and select some plants similar to yours!? hehehe....copy cat....

On the ballast issue, what I did was to modify the lights a little. Take the ballast out of the light box and replace the wire that goes from the ballast to the light tube to a much longer one such that you can get enough length to mount the ballasts from all your lights on a separate wooden board. Hide the ballasts mounted wooden board (for aesthetics sake) and you would have brought the heat source away from the surface of the water. Works well for me as neatness of wires can still be easily maintained and heat from the light tubes is quite minimal.....2 cents worth...

Cheers,

MetaSard

[Georgeer]

Thanks Metallica Sardin, your suggestion noted. My tank is in an enclosure cabinate. The doors of the cabinate are always opened so as to allow more air flow but that spoilt the overall look of the cabinate.

Will try to find do time one day to move that balast to the lower deck of the cabinate.

[Georgeer]

Btw, Metallic Sardin, under gravel filter is not so good for plated tank as the subsrates will get suck underneath the filter and the plants might not get the nutrients. Remove those under gravel filter and just simply layer the bottom with base fert then with sand on top. The effect is better.