Pteronarcys

Red Ludwigia repens Echinodorus tenellus Pygmy chain sword Fissiden Fontanus Phoenix moss Hygrophila corymbosa compact Rotala indica Indian Toothcup Myriophyllum aquaticum milfoil Myriophyllum matogrossense red milfoil Microsorium pteropus Windelov fern Hydrocotyle sibthorpiodes variegated pennywort Cardamine lyrata Chinese ivy/Japanese cress Bacopa monnieri dwarf bacopa Bacopa caroliniana Lemon Bacopa Nymphaea lotus ruba red tiger lotus Fontinalis antipyretica willow moss Riccardia chamedryfolia Mini Pellia coral moss Bolbitis Heudelotii African water fern Limnophila aromatic Rice paddy herb Lobelia cardinalis Cardinal Flower Shinnersia rivularis Mexican oak leaf Pogostemon stellate Staurogyne repens

My tank is my Pprreciousss!!

Greetings!

Thanks. Been in Calgary for 5 years now. I am a teacher in the NE. Looking forward to meeting other people with similar interests.

Ya the gauge will show a decrease in pressure over time. Though these things tend to wait till your busy and when you haven't looked at the gauge in a few days. I am a teacher and during the year I often get home at 7 and then have a lot of grading to do or planning. It is easy for me to get swept up with stuff and let things slip. That or I see the cylinder is getting low but I can't seem to find the time to go get it filled because by the time I get out of work the places to refill are closed. I am not sure how much CO2 plants give off at night and how much this affects pH. I just know that when I run out of CO2 my tank goes back up to pH8 rather quickly. Though I am sure this all differs depending on the water you use in the tank (RO, distilled, tap, etc.). It is best to just do some tests when you first start setting things up.

I had ordered plants from ebay malaysia before. Took almost 30 days to arrive and most of it was dead. What wasn't died shortly after. How long was a shipment from Poland? If you have any good sites/contacts, I may be interested for future orders. Canadian orders are always going to be expensive. Canada has a smaller population than California. To make money here things need to be more expensive because there are less people to buy products. It is also why our shipping is expensive. If I had some reliable, cheaper sites/stores to buy from from other locations I would. I don't really know much about stores outside of Canada.

Pearl moss is what I meant to type

Anyone have these 2 mosses? I am wanting to attach various mosses to slate and have each piece of slate have different mosses.

Posted this on another thread, but might be useful info for you. While the other thread was about moss, these sites have plants as well... all canadian sites. I have ordered from each of these sites. Also check kijiji because there is often people selling plants locally on there. Here are some Canadian sites that sell it: http://www.canadiana...stock/stock.htm http://www.renasfish...ive_Plants.html http://angelfins.ca/...ath=28247_28258 http://www.theplantg...osses_c_97.html http://www.shrimpfev.../plants-plants/ http://www.tntaquatica.com/plant.htm http://www.aquaflora...sort_by=species (this says willow moss but looks like weeping, perhaps the same not positive) you have to contact the owner for orders.

Coolio. I am a teacher and will be back at work then. Planning on setting up an aquarium for my grade 5 class. Will be hunting for deals on kijiji to do so.

That last site I posted has the KH, PH, CO2 chart in it, but it has the colour coding backwards. Yellow is too much, red is not enough. Basically over 30ppm is too much and under 15ppm is not enough. There are some plants that can take carbon source directly from bicarbonate in the water and thus don't require CO2 injection. Plants are a carbon based lifeform and to grow they need more carbon. The only way plants can do that is by taking in carbon through photosynthesis. Since they are a more complicated life form than algae, algae will out compete plants if the plants don't have all the right conditions met for optimal growth. While you add CO2 don't have a lot of breaking of the surface water with powerheads and don't add O2 with a bubble wand during the day. Picture what happens to a pop can when you shake it up... all the CO2 releases quickly. A little rippling of the surface is fine. Canister filters are best because they take and return water beneath the water surface. Hang on the back filters create water falls and most CO2 is lost. Lastly, don't forget with CO2 that plants stop taking up CO2 at night and start to breath in O2 and give off CO2. It is part of what is called, the Calvin Cycle in plants or the dark cycle. So basically in a heavily planted tank, plants add to the CO2 at night and reduce O2 levels during the night. Without a CO2 controller, it might be wise to turn off CO2 at night and have oxygen added through a air pump and bubble wand. That way you don't get excess CO2 at night and have die offs.

Ya I started planted tanks with yeast CO2 systems in coke bottles. Slowly over the years I have grown in technology and getting better gear. It definitely didn't happen all at once. I also made sure that things I spent money on were on sale, or I got at discounts/used store credit. Many stores will give you credit for plants and if you have good growth, each time you trim you bring in the trimmings and get credit. This often paid for all my fish food, ferts, and went towards buying new gear. Most LFS don't have proper set ups for plants and quickly their plant stocks look like crap. They like when people bring in nice looking plants and usually offer credit. Though depending on the store they may not give credit or it will be negligible. I am off topic (I tend to ramble). The regulator I posted does not need a needle valve. The digital bubble counter acts as a solenoid and it is built into the regulator. Simply attach it to the cylinder and set how much bubbles you want and your good to go. Other regulators the needle value acts wonky with lower pressures as the cylinder is close to empty thus dumping the rest of the CO2 quickly. This causes the CO2 concentration to jump very high (100ppm or higher) and lower the pH quickly in the span of a few minutes. Even if you are just using a bit of CO2 like you said, dumping quickly will gas the animals and kill them off. I used to work in a neuroscience lab as a research tech and one of my jobs was to gas the mice we didn't need with CO2. They were dead in 20sec. I hated doing that. Though if you keep check on the pressure in the cylinder and refill it before it gets low, then you are golden! I discovered this aquariumplants.com regulator when researching CO2 dumps that had happened twice to me and was the second time I had lost all my fish and shrimp (I was quite frustrated). Sometimes you get busy and don't check pressure daily and come home from work to see a tank full of death. Not a good feeling. Many small funerals to attend around the toilet bowl. Since I got that new regulator.. never had that issue again and I recommend it to anyone that uses CO2. I purchased my cylinders from them too (even though they are american company). I like having the second one ready to switch because refill place is on the other side of the city from me. Seems all the CO2 places that will let non commercial people come to fill cylinders are down in the industrial area of Calgary. So if you get the regulator and cylinder, all you need from there will be pH test kit, KH test kit (or alkalinity test kit), air tubing, plastic bubble counter (to see how many bubbles per second), and some sort of diffuser. Some people use air stones that are designed for CO2 that creates tiny bubbles, others like ones that trap the bubbles and they go back in forth in a sorta maze to increase the time the bubbles are in contact with the water to dissolve. You can also attach the air tube to a powerhead and this causes the bubbles to be broken up into small bubbles in the powerhead current. If you have issues with the plants here is a nice chart to let you know what might be wrong with them. It also gives you lots of info on CO2 in plant tanks http://richardbrown81.hubpages.com/hub/co2-in-a-planted-aquarium

Raise crystal shrimp in that and put xmas moss on the wood. You would be the largest dealer of shrimp in North America probably! Then you can go scuba diving to catch them. or put sharks with freakin lasers attached to their freakin heads in there and become Dr. Evil!

check kijiji seems to be lots of tanks and stands people are selling. Probably find one that fits the dimensions of your tank

So I got an email from Tim Burton, founder of Aquaflora. If you have ever ordered from them, you probably got the email too. If you haven't you might have seen their plants in clear plastic cups at LFS's over the past few years. Anywho, the email was about a kickstarter project he is starting. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4612189/oco-the-worlds-first-co2-meter-for-aquariums He has made a CO2 monitor or controller (two different models) that reads the amount of dissolved CO2 directly and if it is the controller, it will then control your solenoid to ensure you have the magic 30ppm (or other desired level if you set it to that). It calibrates by taking the known CO2 concentration in the air (there is a forum somewhere where Tim or the engineer who is designing it describes the difference between ppm in water and ppm in air and why they are measured differently by weight or as a percent of total volume of atmospheric gases). The controller has the option of a remote probe and the monitor has the probe built into the device and the device sits on the rim of the tank (adjusts for rimmed or rimless tanks). While I am not a fan of a device sitting on the edge of my tank, especially since I use a wooden hood, the controller seems cool. While I already own a pH controller and use various means to read dKH and determine how much CO2 I have in the tank by using charts and whatnot, if this gadget works the way it says it does, then it will simplify things greatly. No more testing KH or having to worry about pH levels and looking at charts and getting ball park figures. I can just set it at 30ppm and let it control the CO2. Though I would probably still use my pH monitor to ensure there isn't huge pH changes, but there shouldn't be if maintaining 30ppm CO2 the pH should be constant (well some swinging as the solenoid turns on and off). I can use my gear on a new tank or sell it. I was one of the early pledges for this. If it doesn't go through then I am not out any money because it doesn't charge you what you pledged until the time is up and it is successful. If it isn't, your pledge isn't processed. Curious what others think about this? I personally hope it succeeds. I know some people don't like products that simplify the hobby because it takes away from the learning process and mastery of the hobby. Though I look at it as if more people get into plant tanks because it has been simplified, the more access to plants there should be through trading plants, more start up/online companies, and the prices from plants will become lower. Not to mention newer plants may come into the trade and be more readily available.

I wouldn't mind checking out a CAS meeting and figure out if I would like to become a member. It would be nice to meet others with the same hobby as me here in Calgary. Especially if they are into planted tanks. I see on the site that it is usually second tues, but then it says "except July and August." Does this mean there are no meetings for these months, or that they are on a different day other than the second tuesday?

I would recommend getting a CO2 cylinder and diffuser. With a 90g dirted tank, you have lots of nutrients leeching out from the soil. If you have lots of light, you have 2 of the main components to a great planted tank. Without CO2 the plants will not photosynthesize as efficiently in comparison to algae. You will constantly have algae issues without balancing all the needs of the plants. Also have a good clean up crew: oto cats, nerite snails, and algae shrimp (if you don't mind snails that breed: ramshorn and Malaysian trumpet snails) . Stop with those if you want to keep small shrimp in your tank. If you don't care about shrimp, go with some other algae eaters like bristle nose pleco, sailfin mollies, and Siamese algae eaters. Mollies and siamese algae eaters will eat shrimp. For a 90g I would not use paint ball canister set ups. Those are mostly for nano tanks, like the fluval or ADA tanks. The larger cylinders are much better and last a lot longer. Here in Calgary I go to Recharge center to fill my tanks. I have an extra cylinder to swap out when the other runs out. Now getting into CO2 can be tricky. To get that magic 30ppm of CO2 you need to know your water's dKH (alkalinity or carbonate) and pH. I have the Hanna alkalinity digital meter, but you can use liquid test kits as well. I also have a pH controller that has a probe constantly in the water to read the pH. This also turns my solenoid on my CO2 regulator on when pH rises and off when it reaches a point a set it for. The more CO2 you add the lower your pH goes. Once you know your dKH you can look on a chart to determine what pH you need, such as this one: http://www.littlegreencorner.com/tipsdropchecker.html The kH of the water I tested yesterday was 7.8. Looking at the chart I can see that at a pH of 6.9 I will have approximately 30ppm CO2. Because Calgary water parameters change throughout the seasons (spring flooding/run off, adding more chlorine to counter higher bacteria levels, etc) it is good to test a few times a month for any changes. There is also a website for Calgary City that list water parameters and it updates them. I have the aquariumplants.com regulator that has a built in digital bubble counter. I can set how many bubbles per second I want added to the tank. I also have the CO2 running through a reactor on my canister filter's return line to dissolve the CO2 into the water, thus preventing lost CO2 bubbling to the surface from an air stone or other diffusing method. http://www.aquariumplants.com/CarbonDoser_Electronic_Co2_Regulator_p/co2.htm This regulator is great because with normal solenoids, when the cylinder gets low, they can release remaining CO2 in a cylinder quickly and gas all your livestock. This means all animal life is dead. Seen it many times with friends, at work, and had it done to my tanks. Since this regulator has a digital bubble counter, it can only release one bubble at a time. If it is set for 2 bubbles per second, that is all that will release regardless of cylinder pressure. When you first start using CO2 you want to lower pH to the ideal setting slowly over several days. pH is a logarithmic scale and going from pH8 to pH 7 is a huge shock to animal life. Most will die. If you over shoot and add too much CO2 livestock dies. That chart I posted earlier in my response shows the ppm of CO2 if you drop the pH too far. Going higher than 30ppm and fish/shrimp/snails start stressing and as you go higher, their is too much CO2 and they die. The other issue with CO2 (at least with tap water that is high pH like Calgary's pH 8 water) is that with tap water with high KH and pH, it is naturally buffered to want to be at pH of 8ish. This means if your CO2 runs out and you are not on top of it, the pH can change back to 8 once the CO2 has all left the water. Again large pH change=dead animals. I didn't have much issues with this in Houston when I lived there. Water parameters were close to 7pH and KH of 4-5. CO2 ran out there, parameters didn't change much. I have had a lot of trial and error, mistakes, die offs, etc over the years. But I learned from each. I bought books, read a lot online, made more mistakes, researched why things were happening, discovered new products, etc. While planted tanks can be easier if you do low light or use the "weeds" like elodea or use crypts, ferns and mosses, you start to get addicted and want more. Cooler plants, orange plants, red ones, lush carpet plants, etc. I have built up my aquarium gear over the years piece by piece. Upgraded bits. But the good thing is most of what I have now I will always have or they will last a long time. I hope I don't scare anyone off planted tanks. They are awesome and once you know what to look for and how to do it, its not that hard.

Hey everyone! I have been trolling this forum here and there for over a year. I am in Calgary. Been in the aquarium hobby for years and planted aquariums since $2005 when I was manager of an aquarium store in Houston, TX called Village Tropical Fish. I am originally from Ontario, but have moved around a lot since grad school. I had 6 fish tanks going when I was living in Houston for 3.5 years, but that was because I was manager and got things whole sale and took trimmings from plants at work. Currently have a 65 Gallon planted tank. I will have to take pictures of what it looks like currently. I will do that after I get in an order of plants this week. I have changed it around several times. I will post pics of what it looked like previously and pictures of other tanks I have had (but had to sell when I moved to Calgary.. sniffle) Just discovered I can't add pics because of size restraints. So I created a photobucket thingie http://s745.photobucket.com/user/rjpesq76/slideshow/My%20Planted%20Aquariums Hopefully that works. Ptero