My 3 feet Planted Tank

[kachang90]

This is my 3 feet planted tank. It is about 1 month old. Please leave comments as to how I can improve the setup. Thank you.

Planted Tank.jpg

[benjaminong88]

hi care to share setup? you should start pruning your back ground plants to get them more in shape because they are kind of messy

is that HC in foreground? wait for them to spread and your hairgrass too i am sure your foreground will look great.

[wongce]

2 types of rocks?? Imho, single type of rock looks better. I understand the pain of searching for nce rocks though...haha

As what benjamin highlighted, The background plant seems a bit messy

Its best if you can let us know the tank parameters like substrate,lights etc

[Shadow]

Try to make left and right scape as one piece. Currently you have 2 separate scape, rock scape on left and wood scape on right

[VSGenesis]

I think I get what Shadow is trying to say.

Make it such that the DW and Rock are one with each other. One focal point. Two focal points you are having right now.

Oh those plants, how often do you trim them anyway? Hehe. sure to be a mess when you trim trim.

I wonder, with all the trimming, it goes into the dustbin. Can we use them and put into normal pot? Let it decompose. You know for my chilli plant outside. Seems like a waste to just throw it out. Hmm..will hamster eat that? LOL. Nevermind, I don't want to kill my girlfriend's pet.

PS: What I write is just an opinion. Not to offend or to say I am better. I am learning day by day too. So I hope you don't mind.

[felix_fx2]

why plant hairgrass one side the other plant glosso. IMO gather some courage and mix them.
vivipara should need a small trim if not it will out grow pretty fast, i think some folks "comb" them before taking picture.

[kachang90]

Thank you everyone for your encouraging feedback. I was also thinking about pruning the vivipara at the back. However, I am afraid that it would become messier since they will start sprouting in all directions. Combing does seem like a good idea though. Guess I will have to be careful not to uproot them.

As for the rocks, I spent a few weeks at Sea View (Seletar) trying to find nice rocks. I wanted a mix of sizes which i could not find. In then end, I ended up smashing the rocks to get them into different sizes. Only thing is, the rocks are of completely different colours on the inside.

Like what bro Shadow said, it does seem like I have two scapes going on. The reason was that while researching for my scape, I was quite attracted to the Iwagumi Setup. However, I also wanted to use a DW as a main feature. In the end, I tried to combine both to see how it would turn out. I am still waiting for the Parvula to grow properly. Seems to be taking a tad too long. To answer bro Felix's question, the reason why I planted to Hairgrass on one side and Glosso on the other side was because I thought it would be more defined. Actually I never thought about mixing them. Seems like an interesting idea to experiment with. But The glossos tend to grow lower, so if the Hairgrass grows, it might block the Glossos from view and then eventually the Hairgrass would also look patchy? Anyone has tried mixing them before? Maybe can share your opinons.

And so far I have not trimmed the plants yet! Hahaha. The reason is because I wanted to look at how the tank takes shape before deciding on trimming and changing the scape.

Lastly, the tank parameters are as follows:

3 x 1.5 X 2
Substrate : UP Aqua Soil and H.E.L.P (mixed them because the UP Aqua soil does not come in microbeads)
Filtration : Fluval 405 set at maximum flow rate.
Light: 4 x 39w T5 lamp (Aquazonic)
CO2: Set at 1bps

That's about it I guess. Thanks everyone for your valuable opinions and feedback.

[felix_fx2]

Bro,

Thou i never used vivipara before, the few who have quoted "it's a real pain to trim vivipara" .
Some mixing will product nice results, depending on which of the foreground take more area. Something good to know that the famous Amano also utilizes mixing of foreground in some of his scapes.

A good pointer the good folks passed down to me about trimming, take note of the growing speeds of the different plants and use it to your advantage.
E.g: Hairgrass tends to grow more sprouts if you trim some of it.

BTW: 1BPS kind of low to me.. most folks even myself will say 2.5-3 (mostly will say 3) ...can wait and see if anyone else gives feedback about it then decide. and have a great weekend

[kachang90]

Hi Everyone,

I trimmed the Vivipara over the weekend and like what some of you said, it turned out into a mess. I now have bits and pieces floating around and clinging on to the mosses. Probably trimmed it wrongly too. I have also increased my bps to 3 bps and trimmed the parvula at the front. Keeping my fingers crossed that it would grow more runners subsequently.

On a side note, I just wanted to share my experience with green water. I had a bad case of green water about a month ago (after I came back from overseas). I bought a product from PetFran called 'Green Away'. This product was excellent in clearing the green water almost immediately. Within the 20 minutes the water was clear. The following morning, the water looked crystal clear although there were bits of algae clumps floating around. Sadly, I realised that I had 5 dead Congo Tetras too. about 3 days later, the water was turning green again. Desperate, I did a huge water change (almost 70%) and the following day did another 50% WC. After another week or so, again the water started turning green. So I did another 50% WC and changed my lighting strategy. Instead of lighting the tank for 8 hours straight, I changed the lighting to 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours at night (using a timing switch). It has been about 2 weeks since that change and the water is extremely clear. I am thinking of leaving the light hours unchanged. Do you think it is a good idea?

Thanks,
Navin

[yoyouyi]

Looks pretty

[Marlinsons]

I am also experiencing algae issue as well. I have those brown slimy type and is on the gravel top and wall. Once you wipe it off, it will break apart and starts to float away and land on something else and it grows from there. I am afraid to use chemicals as what you have experienced, it may kill my fishes.

So I started to pick up what slimy stuff I can see and start to lower the lights to 3 hrs day on and 4 hrs off 3 hrs on again. Total of 6 hrs lightinga day. So far so good. I will continue to monitor this further to see if this will affect my plant growth. If it does, I will need to re-think on the light approach again.

[Shadow]

siesta might work for some and does not work for many. Normally, siesta link closely to limited CO2 in water column. By breaking light ON time, its allow photosynthesis to slow down and CO2 to accumulate. You can probably see the impact when you have stem plants, you will see longer distance between nodes, you might also see your stem plants grow toward other light source like window.

[kachang90]

Oh ok interesting. Thanks for heads up bro Shadow. I'll probably try continuous 7 hours lighting for a week then. If the water stays clear, then I can continue with it. Will update you guys once I have tried that

As for Marlinsons, I read up on Brown Algae and it is said that too little light and oxygen causes a build up of brown algae. Also, Oto's apparently fancy brown algae. So if u don't have Oto's, can try getting a few to see if they are effective.

[Marlinsons]

Bro, have oto, maybe they are not hungry enough to start clear the algae. Reducing the lights seems to improve my situation now. Will continue doing that for the moment .

[tetrakid]

I had a tank which was filled thickly with brown algae on the glass and bottom and also on the plants and decorations.
Then I bought a few small Golden Algae Eaters, thinking they may be too small to eat much algae. But after only a few days, my tank is totally free of brown algae. And now I have a problem because these small algae eaters have no more brown algae to feed on, and they are now competing for Tubifex worms with my Cory Sterbais. Golden Algae Eaters look like albino fish. In spite of their diminutive size, they do eat brown alge like nobody's business. There is also a brownish color type known as Chinese Algae Eater.

Bro, have oto, maybe they are not hungry enough to start clear the algae. Reducing the lights seems to improve my situation now. Will continue doing that for the moment .

[Marlinsons]

I had a tank which was filled thickly with brown algae on the glass and bottom and also on the plants and decorations.
Then I bought a few small Golden Algae Eaters, thinking they may be too small to eat much algae. But after only a few days, my tank is totally free of brown algae. And now I have a problem because these small algae eaters have no more brown algae to feed on, and they are now competing for Tubifex worms with my Cory Sterbais. Golden Algae Eaters look like albino fish. In spite of their diminutive size, they do eat brown alge like nobody's business. There is also a brownish color type known as Chinese Algae Eater.

Thanks and will get 1 SAE to try it.

[tetrakid]

Some posts ago, I told about my small Golden Algae Eaters and how in spite of their small size, they cleaned up my tank in a few days. I also said that after they have cleared the tank of all the brown algae, they joined my Corydoras Sterbais whenever I fed them Tubifex worms.

But today, I realised that they were not eating any of the Tubifex but were only searching for algae. They have starved themselves to death and remained inside the bunch of Java Ferns.

So the next time I will only get one single Golden Algae Eater to do the job. After the job is done, it will be good to pass it to someone who needs it to clear their algae.

Thanks and will get 1 SAE to try it.

[Marlinsons]

Some posts ago, I told about my small Golden Algae Eaters and how in spite of their small size, they cleaned up my tank in a few days. I also said that after they have cleared the tank of all the brown algae, they joined my Corydoras Sterbais whenever I fed them Tubifex worms.

But today, I realised that they were not eating any of the Tubifex but were only searching for algae. They have starved themselves to death and remained inside the bunch of Java Ferns.

So the next time I will only get one single Golden Algae Eater to do the job. After the job is done, it will be good to pass it to someone who needs it to clear their algae.

That is great news for me. I want to have the brown algae to be under control. If the GAE can do the job, then I will try it out a well.

[felix_fx2]

They are very good when young. Abit slower when adults. They will still eat algae but a tad slower when larger.

I keep until they grow more then 3.5 inches then give them away, some bros will need them in tanks with larger fish.