windeindoiel

Does anyone know where I can buy planting scissors and planting tweezers? It would be handy to have some.

I have 4 4' strips running over the tank, I like it because it lights the tank pretty evenly. And I don't know if there's different types of T5's or what, because we were going to buy some different ones, then we got talked into these ones... maybe Albert is just a good salesman lol. If you have high light but no source of carbon for the plants you're going to have an algae problem. I have the big bottle for CO2 and all that and it was pretty pricey (but funner than a pop bottle) but I don't know if all that is necessary. This tank is an upgrade of my 25gal where I was running 2 T5 bulbs and dosing with flourish excel and that was working fine. And this tank is a 90 gal, although there's only about 60 gallons of water in there.

Well back in the day before I knew anything at all about plants, I thought it would work to drill holes in the stump and plant plants in the little holes, and make some other holes as little caves, so that is why there's holes in the stump lol. I filled most of them in with java moss but the moss came out of that one so I decided to just leave it. The lights are those new I think T5's or something, they work fine for reefs from what Albert at Gold's tells us. I'll ask Lyder and get back on exactly what they are. And we're doing CO2 injection, and fertilizing with Flourish Comprehensive Supplement for the Planted Aquarium, and I put those little flourish fertilizer spikes in the gravel. Oh and on the bag of gravel it said it was for planted tanks, and under the gravel is a layer of peat moss (with egg crate on top to hold it down). And like I said I turned 2 of the 4 lights off, but I think I'm going to turn them back on because I don't want growth to slow down. I suppose when the plants have taken over I won't have to worry about algae anymore anyway, so I might as well keep that process going speedily.

Thanks everyone. Lol yes the log finally sunk. Oh and Lyder made the background, it turned out pretty good. I'm excited the tank is done and taking off good.

Ok just set this up 2ish weeks ago. I didn't bother posting a pic of it after the first couple days, because it took about a week for all the plants to settle in, and the pictures look the same... except the first day one is cloudier because of the gravel.... I figured after half an hour of rinsing, even though the water was still coming out chocolate colored, it was rinsed enough. :P Anyways, then I have the picture I took today (end of week 2 of it being set up) to compare the growth. Which is crazy. I've turned 2 of the four lights off as of today to try to get the algae under control a bit, hopefully it doesn't slow the plant growth down too much. Anyways, this is my new planted tank. After one week of being set up: After two weeks of being set up:

Ok so finally my pride and joy is all set up. It has the nice DIY textured background (turned out quite nicely in my opinion) and the big tree stump in the middle. And all my plants are arranged sort of how I want them, they have to grow to fill the tank out a little but I think it's coming along pretty nicely. Except that I have about every species of algae you can think of growing all over the tank. The cyanobacteria is just taking over, covering the log, the gravel, the plants... The lime green stuff that grows in little tufts on the plastic hardwar stuff is actually kind of attractive, if it covered all that unsightly plastic I wouldn't be upset. But I'm so frusterated at all the algae growing all over the place! :cuss: -01-

Well eventually the higher plants will be able to outcompete the algae, and that's when the algae will be gone. Getting more plants might help. But manual removal is a good idea too, especially if it's growing on leaves. Otherwise with all that light and nutrients in the water, algae is going to want to grow. But as I said once the higher plants get going you won't have algae problems anymore.

Some fish like to snack on them, but I've also heard they like to take down baby fish. If you have no baby fish in that tank I guess it's up to you. If they start getting out of control you might want to do something about them though.

Well I used to have major algae problems (which I'm revisiting in my newly set up planted tank) of all types, but once I started a regular dosing schedule and had a lot of plants in the tank the algae was totally gone. So I recommend keeping with the CO2 injection and dosing ferts, when you see the algae remove it, and give it some time. Also if algae eaters are an option that might be useful too. My otos ate the algae I think but my amanos seemed to enjoy cleaning up stray blood worms more than eating algae.

Well I admit I have them in a heavily planted tank, but usually when my little fish die I have no idea where they went, I never find a body. Oh except the weird black crusty thing I found while dissembling my little planted tank that I assume is a dwarf puffer that died about 2 months ago.

Well I'll admit I'm usually not much of a dog person, but that puppy is just too cute!

Cool, I love crabs (the nice ones anyway :P). Hope you enjoy them.

Aww pufferfish, cowfish and boxfish make me happy for some reason too. :P And that's really cool, definately something I could impress guests with.

Well mostly we want to figure out what a "standard" sump should be, for overflowing purposes and that.

What is the normal size a sump should be in relation to tank volume? Like the standard that most people use? Thanks.

Yikes, I hope you get your money. After this long I'd definately start seriously getting on his case.

Well right now my lizard is in the freezer because we were waiting until the ground thaws enough so we can bury him. Otherwise I've frozen fish when I've wanted to dissect them to see if I could find some internal parasites, but I couldn't get my hands on a dissecting kit so that didn't work out.

I'm sorry to hear that Christian.

Anemones will sting people, but their sting isn't very powerful so it just feels like they're sticky.

Glad to hear everything went ok. Yeah after having to take some air hose off I definately wouldn't want to have to put some on, poor rays.

Ok I think I'll go with a fire eel then, I like the look of them. Do they grow fast? I don't see big ones for sale very often and when I do they're pricey, so I'll probably have to buy a little one and grow it out a bit.

Yeah I was thinking fire eel... Do you think it would go for the sand though? Or hang out in the rocks... although tufa is pretty sharp and I don't think an eel would like that much. But I'd be pretty irritated if it just took up in the rocks or driftwood. And I agree that bichirs likely eat snails. That tank was overrun with MTS before I put the bichirs in, and it took a couple months but eventually I couldn't find any more snails. I added some trapdoors to hopefully clean up any uneaten lost in the rocks food, hopefully their size will keep them safe.

I bought some from Pisces a week ago, and they had lots.

Those don't seem to last in that tank, I think someone's eating them. And I think my bichirs would find a horseface loach delicious, which is my main problem with trying to find a sand sifter. :P

Ok so in my 200 gal I have 3 15"ish bichirs and a bunch of bala sharks and rainbows. The tank has an overflow and the return pushes all the sand into a big pile that covers about half the tank floor about 4" deep. It's not really a big deal that the sand only covers half the floor because that half is open swimming space, and the other half is piled to the top with tufa and driftwood. But I worry about the deep sand bed that just sits there gathering anaerobic bacteria. So can anyone think of a fish that would work in that setup and stir up the sand every now and then? I was thinking if I could get my hand on an eel that was big enough to avoid being eaten by the bichirs (and not eat them either), but would an eel prefer the sand or the rock? Because if it's just going to hang out in the rocks the whole time that wouldn't help. I was also thinking about cichlids, but are there any big enough that sift sand and will play nice with the balas?