Psylant

If I'm heading up to the Cochrane area I may take you up on that. I'm almost never in Calgary anymore, let alone Cochrane though! Thanks

Unless you're going to have the tank seen from all sides, I would probably go over the top, as suggested by jvision. You can buy clear glassware for filter intakes/outputs if you're highly concerned about the look of it. You could also try a sump but I wouldn't suggest it if you're going to be injecting CO2. It will allow quite a lot of CO2 to escape.

Thanks to ckmullin for some plants I picked up today. Hopefully it will add a splash of color and some different heights of plants to the tank.

ive been running this set up for two years and have had minimal fish loss.... Test your water for ammonia nitrites and nitrates. If those come back with normal levels then your bio filtration is fine (and plants will help immensely with this part) Is there a lot of particulates floating in the water column? Detritus littered on the bottom of the tank? If either of those are true you may need more flow and MECHANICAL filtration. do i really need more than two water exchanes an hour? If your plants are happy, fish aren't gasping for air, and your bottom is clean, no you do not need more flow unless the fish you own prefer high flow. Is the fx6 a good filter? Yes What gains would i see with fx6. MUCH higher flow, ability to store more media than your 2217 Does more flow even mean better filtration? There are several aspects to filtration. Bio, mechanical, and chemical. More flow = more turnover = less settling debris... assuming that you have enough mechanical filtration to catch the debris after you suck it up, it should improve your mechanical filtration. I need some assistance as i got the bug to buy,not sure if should......

Thanks for the replies. My only experience with moss is java moss. It wasn't fun. I was unclogging my filters every day for about 2 months. lol I'll try to find another type of moss here on AA, along with Echinodorus tenellus and whatever else people can throw at me

I have had trouble getting moss to "stay" where I put it. It's always floated away and clogged filters. Advice on a type of moss and method to attach? A little bit.

Thanks for the replies so far! Keep 'em coming. I ordered a bunch of foreground plants from Poland via ebay this past fall. None of them made it . There was a bunch of that marsilea and it was floating all over the place. I bet I replanted it 20 times for each stem. I'm willing to try again though If I can find some. I think I had more trouble than I should've because I suspect the plants were grown emersed. I'll see what I can find for pygmy chains around here. I think you're right on your ID of the weed too after googling it. I throw out about 3-4 feet of it every weekend. It's unreal. I can try to flatten out the bottom. I might have to add a little more sand. There's dirt under there somewhere so I don't want to move it too too much. I can try to find a place to place all my stuff on the top but I have too much tank for how little space I have haha. I'll see if I can find any Echinodorus tenellus on here. Thanks for the suggestion. I like the way it looks and should contrast my large leafed plants nicely.

Hi everyone, This is my first real attempt at a community planted tank. I'm looking for any aquascaping or plant keeping advice that you feel might improve the look of the tank. I'm not going to get CO2 though so keep that in mind. I'd like to get some foreground plants but I haven't had much luck with them, so any recommendations for fairly easy ones would be nice. My fish always dig them out.... The cories go bananas if something disturbs the sand and they dig for a good 20 min. There must be something they like in there. It's a 90g tank and I have a Finex Ray II on it for lighting. The tank is dirted with pool filter sand for a cap. I dose a little liquid ferts (Excel, flourish, and iron) after my water change on the weekends. There are 5 or 6 kinds of anubias in there (flowering), java fern, an amazon sword, some type of bacopa, crinum calamistratum and natans (flowering), and some other plant that grows about 6" a day. Whatever it is, grows like a weed! Rotala? For fish there are many large rainbowfish, a few roseline sharks, a couple SAE, 13 various cories, and one bristlenose pleco.

Good advice ^ It's almost definitely your lightning holding you back at this point. Do be careful though when you upgrade. If you have imbalances in your water chemistry you'll have a crazy algae bloom.

What's your lighting, fauna, and tank depth?

There are some very nice tanks here. I agree with corrosionjerry in the above suggestions. All that matters is that you like it though! Here is my 90g low tech, dirted tank. The crinum natans and calamistratam look like they're about to flower too! (not seen in this picture)

My 450g 90g Planted http://i.imgur.com/Bhtbs4C.jpg

Use egg crate, or "light diffuser". Same thing.

Looks very nice. This makes me want to buy a CO2 setup for my 90g tank. Filter socks plugging up means they're doing their job. I wouldn't worry too much. Just keep rotating them in and out as they clog. I have to change the socks on my tank every 36 hours (they're overflowing at that point). I think I also read somewhere that Purigen isn't supposed to be fluidized? I may be wrong about that one though. If they were ramshorn snails instead of MTS I'd probably ask for as many as you'd want to give away. My puffer would love an escargot feast but the MTS are too hard for him

Won't you lose a massive amount of CO2 before it ever gets back to the main tank because of your sump?

Anubias is probably your best bet. It's very leathery and rigid. It must be tied down to rocks/wood so no worries about it being uprooted.

To further what geleen said... Too much/little water conditioner? Too hot/cold of "fresh" water? Possible that your substrate is too deep/undisturbed and released some nasty gasses? These are scenarios I can think of that are not disease related and would "test" fine.

I was using their smaller models on the rated glass and found they came detached too easily for my liking. They couldn't "squeeze" the glass well enough to really grind the algae off in my experience. I may do this, for the small amount of green dust algae I have. That stuff is amazingly resilient! Thanks for the tip.

Someone should phone them and ask about their aquarium/fish/plants.

Interesting information. I think mine were farmed as well, seeing as they came from Malaysia. Very, very small bulbs, about 5-10mm in diameter. They all seem to have survived the cold weather, but time will tell!

I have a large tank made by Bow Valley Aquatics. I was not the original owner of it. It's very, very solid, and incredibly overbuilt. It's not a high end built tank, (not polished, regular glass, etc.) but it's plenty nice enough for me. I would get a low iron glass in the future though if it were up to me -- particularly on 1/2" or thicker glass. They seem to be the cheapest custom tank out there, but there are other costs... haha. PM if you need to know more.

Thanks! Haha that's funny. I just bought a Magnavore magnet a few weeks ago because I hated how dirty my glass was. I made a thread here asking for recommendations

Another video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMPMbUAAYPQ

Do you mean flow, as in current, or as in aesthetics? Side note: I got up to Pisces this weekend for the 2nd time ever and they had some natans and calamistratum for $30 a pop. They were the most expensive plants there...

I would get another filter in conjunction with your AC70. At least the same size, or bigger even. "overfiltering" doesn't exist, as long as the water flow isn't too strong. It will improve your tank drastically in terms of ease of maintenance. Definitely +1 on what zoopkamol said as well.