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You can also do the opposite, instead of turning the co2 off at night, turn an air stone on with a timer to gas off the co2.

Pull your Java Fern out of the gravel cause that will kill it. Attach it to a rock, driftwood, etc. with cotton thread and the thread will rot away while the roots attach. If you have a screw in bulb fixture, put in a couple compact fluorescent, the spiral type. Two 13 watts should be more than enough. Try to find something between 6400k - 10 000k. If it is a fluorescent tube, try to find a plant grow type bulb. Flourite is inert like most gravel. It may help with iron a bit but it tends to get better with age as debris gathers in it. I like it, and use it in all my tanks, but it's doesn't do much. I've used Seachem products but now use dry ferts. Excel is a carbon supplement. It works well but don't overdose it. I would use the same dosage and not add extra on water change day. People tend to melt plants doing that. Flourish can be nice but you'd only need a few drops a few times a week. Do lots of reading and you can quickly see why everyone (including myself) killed plants before they did some research! Try out: the stickies at the top of this forum plantedtank.net aquariumplantcentral.com

I use the planted tank forum. People collect Manzanita around Cali and Arizona and sell it at good prices. Decked out my 90 and had some left over for my 75 for $150 and considering it's usually $20-30 a branch and I got about 20, that's pretty good.

Mine haven't arrived yet but I'll let you know when they do. I was gonna put a few nano packages in the auction as well.

If you run it with plants only while you mess around and fiddle it's easy. I'll try to go over everything as cut and dry as I can. Going pressurized is truely awesome. Amazing plant growth and it helps many of your algae problems. You want your target ppm around 30ppm and it's easiest if you have a drop checker. The hard part is getting your bubble count set so that the levels are good during the day and not too high at night. You usually have a air stone run at night to gas off extra Co2, or a solenoid on a timer to shut if off before lights out. Lights are tricky. Everyone uses the watt per gallon rule and think they need way more light than they really do. IMO the WPG rule is garbage. With T8s and PC is could be accurate on a mid size tank, from around a 20 high to a 90 gallon. But with T5HO, MH and LED that people are using quite often these days, on many setups, one watt per gallon could be lots of light. For example, my 90 gallon with 24" of height has two 54 watt T5HO hung 8" above the rim and I can grow most stem plants at the bottom and every low-med type plant. High light stem plants may not do too well down by the substrate. I consider my tank low-med at the substrate and high light for the surface. It's a tall tank to the light varies greatly depending on the depth. On a 30 gallon I would recommend something like a 2x 24w T5HO. A 2x39 watt may work but you would want a fixture where you could individually control the bulbs because you would probably need a very short photo period, or else run one bulb at a time. Possibly two for a mid day burst for a few hours. You should fiddle with the height and possibly raise it up to get full coverage of the tank, as well as take the edge off. These bulbs are bright! Many people, myself included, have run into many headaches regarding light. More light should be the last thing you get, not the first. Most people go through this cycle: More light, more algae, add fertz, more algae, add co2, add more co2, back to balance. You should Be running co2 if you want to have high light, fast growth. I personally think co2 is great even with low light. It's just all around awesome and helps you find that balance more easily. Dosing can be tricky. It can also be easy. I EI dose which is a method that pretty much adds as much fertilizer to the tank at all times so that the plants have more co2 than they can use, more fertz than they can use and the lighting is the only growth limiting factor. You have to make sure you don't overdose to unsafe levels for the fish, but there are people who have ball-parked the measurements for you. If CO2 or fertz are the limiting factors you can easily run into algae problems. You will find that a properly balanced tank is one of the cleanest you'll ever see. For example, I have scraped my glass once in the 8 or so months my tank has been running. If you want to go the low tech route, you will want a little less light, and you can dose the same way, but with much smaller amounts. Low tech tanks can be very rewarding and also very low maintenance. It's nice not having to trim every few days. At the same time, I have always found that starting with a couple plants and adding to it slowly can be troublesome unless you start with less lighting and fertz as you go. I always try to get as much plant matter in the tank from day one. It tends to help with algae as well. Without the plants to compete with, the algae will grow where there is not much competition. What I'm trying to say is your lights and fertz have to be balanced to the plant mass in the tank. If you are going to dose somewhat erratically, I recommend making a flourish like mix with dry fertz, or just Seachem product themselves and follow the recommended dose and tweak it as needed. I've found that excel is nice (but DO NOT overdose. I don't recommend the after water change dose. Too high), and in Calgary water I usually have a potassium deficiency. So I've usually used those in conjunction with flourish complete. I used to toss in iron every once in a while cause the plants colour right up. I started with planted tanks at 14 in 2004 and I have not found a new favorite yet so I definitely recommend giving it a go.

Metricide I believe is about 2.7 times stronger than excel.but the active ingredient is the same. The solution I would be getting is lab quality, 25% strength. To understand the strengh, 120ml of this stuff makes the 2L of excel strengh solution. Strong stuff. I believe it would be more cost effective as I would only need one bottle shipped and since its liquid, the equivalent amount of metricide would me more to ship as I would need to ship about 80 liters of it. I think I can essentially get everyone a multi year supply for pocket change.

No. glutaraldehyde is essentially what excel is. I would get a super concentrated mixture of it at dilute it to excel strengths in distilled water. The chemical itself can be pretty dangerous until it's diluted down.

I found a source for the active ingredient in Flourish Excel and if I can get enough people interested I could offer 2L bottles of mixture for $5-10. I will have to test it on my own tank for a few weeks first but there should be no issues as it would pretty much just be generic excel. I was at the LFS today and a 2L bottle of excel was around 35 bucks so the savings are substantial. Let me know if you are interested. Thanks, Justin

I am very, very interested!!

I got my rocks at the petland in crowfoot, by chapters. They are individually packaged in plastic. But I wouldn't count on that price. I didn't clear them out cause I had the majority of it and I wasn't about to lose my price if a manager walked over. I also got 5 pounds for 10 bucks at big al's but they only had the two rocks I bought and they didn't know what it was or how to price it. They don't even have a bin for it. I told them it wasn't lace rock because that's what they thought it was. I'm getting about 40 pounds in from the states in a week or two and I might make up some nano packages, but its not cheap. Probably 6 bucks a pound. Ill have to see.

I'm trying out the fluval substrat stuff for shrimps. They also have the plant type but I don't really know if there is much of a difference. It could be a marketing ploy. It is really similar to the ADA stuff or aqua soil or whatever. It's kinda like granules of soil that slowly breakdown to muck. They HC and hairgrass was the aquaflora stuff in the little tubs. They have some above the nano tank displays but also above each of the plant tanks on a little shelf way at the back. Check every plant tank cause you have to kneel down for some and that's where the good pickin' is. Check literally every tub for the best and greenest batch and try to get there after a shipment before they brown. They seem very pricey but they cover a lot once broken up.

The 5 gallon pails are what most people use. A 10 would be pretty heavy. I can't get lots and lots of 5 gallon pails from work. They were used to house dill pickels, so they need a good rinse and they smell pickly for a while, but it's mostly just vinegar and I've used them with no troubles. As many as you want for $Free.99. I do like plant clippings...

I have a 5.5 iwagumi started recently. I got HC and Dwarf Hairgrass from Pisces. It's the aquaflora stuff that's in little cups. The stuffs grown emmersed so it's perfect for a dry start. The two cups would be enough to nearly completely fill the edge and I had a bunch of scrap left over. I found seriyu stone at petland of all places, but expect to pay for it. They messed up for me and charged me $4/kg cause they couldn't find any other pricing but I wasn't arguing. Dry starts IMO are far superior. Easier to plant (waaaaay easier), the plant settles in better and throws down a better root system and it spreads much faster. I've read that HC can be planted to ideal ways. One is individual stems (good luck) which fill in more quickly but is less dense, and as little plant nodes or little bunches; probably around .5cm around. The second method should spread more slowly but apparently in a nicer, denser way. Once you flood the tank you have to giver with the CO2. Same goes for direct underwater planting. They plants are often grown emersed when farmed and when you throw them in water they are prone to melting, hense why many people lose it when they come home with it. That reason as well as it's not an easy plant to start with. I really would recommend trying it without CO2. This is what it should look like freshly planted as a dry start after hours of hell with tweezers. I can remove the pic if you don't want it in your thread. It's a terrible pic anyway, but it gives you the idea. Hope it helps!

These are my tanks. A 75 with mbuna and a 90 planted. I have to scape it but the general layout is staying the same. I've been collecting plants and they are just scattered about. Please ignore the mess!! Thanks for looking.

Your plan picture looks good. Are you planning in injecting co2? I don't know from experience but I've heard the once you fill the tank you want to run high levels of co2 and apparently that helps to prevent the hc from melting. You may have trouble all around without co2. You should look into it more so you don't fill the tank and wipe out your hard work!

I don't know if I agree with the water changes. I do 50% weekly. It's overkill but I like to reset my tank every week to start fresh with nutrient levels. Once a month will allow nutrients to build much to high if you don't know exactly what you're doing with dosing. Co2 addition has very few negative effects and usually only helps more than hurts. From my own experience I would say too much light is usually the #1 cause of algae, followed by nutrient imbalances or excess. You're light isn't that high. Probably around low light at the substrate and medium high up. I would have 2x39 for a high light setup on a 50. I find everything goes more smoothly for me if I add as many plants is possible from day one, don't have too much light (I think you are good there) and co2 addition is nice. The excel should be fine though. I would remove all the algae you can by hand. More plants ups the competition for nutrients and ideally, the plants win over the algae.

What is the "aquarium beautiful" contest?

I used target pool filter sand. It was clean enough not to rinse (as it's made for a filter) and it a nice, natural tan colour. You can also get pool filter sand in white but I believe it's hard to keep clean.

I would try out a few lighting options to see what seems to work the best. The stock lights might be fine for many of the low light plants such as anubias, crypts, java fern and moss, etc. I would be weary of the sword as it might get to large for the tank. Instead, I would see if you like any crypts, or maybe some hygro that you could easy trim back as it gets too large. You might have too much co2. You could easy have co2 levels that are too high in a small tank. Do you have a drop checker? You use them to determine if the co2 levels are approximately correct.

I've been thinking of trying a planted African cichlid tank and so far it seems that anubias, vals and java fern are the best. The vals you might have to put in a pot that the fish can't mess with. I've also read that many of the fish don't actually eat the plants but graze on the algae growing on them, just like they do the rocks. So supposedly they look like they are eating the plants when they really aren't. I don't know for sure though, I don't have any personal experience.