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Lisbeth

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  1. I am so happy with my tank right now, so I thought I'd share. I've had some ups and downs, but now the tank is 8 months old and has stabilized a lot. Everything is blooming. Specs 10 Gallon Light: ADA Aquasky 451 Eheim 150 canister filter Eco-Complete fine grain planted substrate Dosing with API C02 booster + API Leaf Zone + DIY root tabs Plants Limnophila Aromatica Bacopa Monnieri Eleocharis sp. "Minima" aka dwarf hair grass Hemianthus micranthemoides (Kind of want my entire tank just this because the colour is so gorgeous) Inhabitants ~40-50 fire red shrimp of various grades; I'm looking out for even more red ones.
  2. I gave up! Just kidding. :3 My tank is at ~6 months now and is doing great. I've been doing DIY CO2, root tabs, and dosing macro/micro nutrients. My macros are currently out of whack though, so I've got a small bit of browning going on, as well as bits of algae that I'm trying to keep on top of. Anyway, here is my plant explosion. I've had to trim things quite a bit. Overall I'm quite happy.
  3. I wish I could help you out with more of your questions, but I consider myself still a RCS newbie despite having them for a couple of months now. Anywho, in addition to what's already been said about the ADA substrate... I had a similar die off when I migrated my shrimp and had (what I consider to be) perfect, cycled, water conditions. It looked like a few of the shrimp were dying due to bad molts and it was really distressing. In my case (and also maybe yours if it isn't the substrate), I believe it was the gH that was too high. If you're also using plain 'ol dechlorinated Calgary tap water. I ended up getting a TDS metre because I found it was easier to measure in addition to kH/gH testing. Anyway, through slowly changing out water with filtered stuff, I brought down my TDS from 300+, to where it sits now between 170-200. Doing that completely halted my die offs. As for feeding... I have a population of probably 50+ now. I only feed them once, sometimes twice, a week (I may have to up how often I feed as my numbers increase and the babies get larger). I also have a fully planted tank that they seem to graze endlessly on. I try to only feed them what they can manage to eat in an hour. If it's still there after an hour, then I take it out. So far I've been rotating between feeding them a couple things: blanched cucumber which they seem to love, 1/2 of a topfin algae thin, a pinch of omega one slow sinking veggie micro pellets, and today I tried a pinch of Hikari shrimp cuisine, which they went wild over.
  4. That is really neat! Where did you end up getting your mesh when you made yours?
  5. I do have a heat gun at my disposal, so maybe! I'm mostly worried about getting mesh that is both small enough, and high enough quality that tank water won't mess it up.
  6. Does anyone have any experience with stainless steel filter guards? I'm currently using a sponge filter, but it takes up a lot of space and also gets grunge-y quite quickly while in my planted tank. I'd like to replace it with something smaller, but also still safe for shrimp fry. I've seen a couple people in the US using stainless steel guards that seem to be made out of really small mesh that then just slides over the intake pipe. They look really nice and easy to maintain. Has anyone used something similar, or know if something similar is sold locally (or even in Canada)? Thanks!
  7. Also good advice. I don't want to do too much too fast, specially since the majority of my plants seem to be doing mostly alright. My mosses (which were frozen solid) have been bouncing back these past few days too. I was pretty worried about them, but they seem to be doing much better. However, my Java Fern, and Asplenium Normale (both of which were frozen), are likely going to end up croaking. C'est la vie. Anyway, I drip acclimated a couple of shrimp to the tank today. They've been having a fun time exploring and grazing on absolutely everything.
  8. Thanks so much! I wasn't expecting to end up with such a monster light (or even planning on doing many ferts outside of root tabs originally), so it's been a lot to take in. I'll be sure to grab some Excel and add that to my routine, although Metricide looks like a way better deal for people with larger/more tanks. Maybe someday. So for macronutrients, I'd be looking at regular N/P/K. I imagine that my tank will end up being low on N due to the high light, so Potassium Nitrate is at the top of my list (which should take care of some of the K as well?). Probably also P because this is likely to be a shrimp only tank and they have low bioloads. So much to take into consideration when you would like to grow things other than just algae, haha.
  9. Sure thing! Tank specs: 10 gallon with Eco-Complete fine grain planted substrate and a constant temperature of 23 C. My light is an ADA Aquasky 451, which is rather overkill for what I was planning originally for this tank, but I'm learning to roll with it. It's currently on for 9 hours a day. I'm also using an Eheim 150 canister filter, so it has more than enough filtration. For ferts, I currently have some API root tabs (to be replaced by some DIY ones in the future), and I've been dosing with Flourish comprehensive a couple times a week. So far the Frogbit has been doing the best (understandably)! The Bacopa Monnieri is also doing really amazing (so many roots!), and so has the Limnophila Aromatica (it melted almost completely but now has a bunch of really pretty red-tinged leaves; it even seems to open and close with the light). My Alternanthera Reineckii is looking a little poorly, but I'm expecting it to come back. It was getting roots all over (probably because of my Flourish), so I ended up cutting it down some more and replanting sections. As far as the rest of the plants go: just, hmmm. Haha. A few of them I'm not expecting to live at all. A combination of not having Co2, potentially too much light for a couple, and the fact that a few of the plants I got arrived in a literal block of ice thanks to Canada Post messing up priority shipping. So I certainly realize that they're not all are going to make it. Like I said though, I won't be too heartbroken. Most of them were from a $20 "surprise me" grab bag. Survival of the fittest in my tank!
  10. The DIY route could be fun! I do have nearly a full jar of yeast that hasn't been turned into bread yet. The only thing I'd be worried about is maintaining proper regulation so I don't accidentally nuke everything. I did look at the Fluval systems, and yeah, those tiny disposable cartridges seems super wasteful. It seems like it'd be far more economical to get a 5-10lb Co2 tank and just get it refilled at a paintball centre every so often. I really like the frogbit. It seems to grow really quick. I think I have almost double what I originally started out with. It's likely that a few of the plants that I have are getting too much light, at least the ones that are doing kind of poorly. Either that or they're still melting. I can't really tell. So far I'm having the most luck with my taller stem plants.
  11. Yes. All of the plants! Although ah, this is another learning curve. I think I might end up springing for a Co2 system after all, as I've come to realize that I have a really strong light. So far I have (mostly in the form of small trimmings) Limnobium laevigatum aka Frogbit (the floaty weed!) Alternanthera Reineckii 'Rosaefolia' (red plant) Bacopa Monnieri (rounded leaves) Limnophila Aromatica (jagged leaves and red-tinged top) Microsorum pteropus aka Java Fern * Asplenium Normale * Marsilea Crenata aka Dwarf Four Leaf Clover * Taxiphyllum alternans aka Taiwan Moss Cratonneuron Filicinum aka Triangle Moss Aegagropila linnaei aka Marimo The ones with the asterisks (*) are the ones that aren't doing so hot with my current setup. Seeing how they were mostly all trimmings and I knew nothing at all about the needs of each plant prior to having them passed on to me, I don't feel too heartbroken over some of them potentially not making it. I have also come to the conclusion that Frogbit is the most adorable stuff ever. I could probably be happy with a tank full, just spinning about with the current.
  12. Really I'm just excited. I started my planted 10 gallon a month and some change ago, and for the past two weeks it has been giving me stable readings. Currently I'm experiencing a diatom bloom, and everyone is telling me that that is perfectly normal thing to happen at the end of tank cycling. I have such mixed feelings about this. One one hand, "Eeeew, brown algae" on the other hand, "Yay! This cycling thing actually does happen!" Now I get to figure out what all I'm going to stock with.
  13. Not yet... but soon! I only have a handful of shrimp in my holding tank (I think they're all males). I'm hoping to buy some more in the new year though for my new planted tank. So hopefully I'll be able to have little shrimplets too.
  14. Ooh, awesome! For the most part my plants were sticking into the soil without any extra assistance. I've got between 2-3 inches of fine grain eco-complete in my one tank (it's a little light, so that was probably part of my problem). When I tried to plant a thicker-stemmed Alternanthera Reineckii though, it kept on popping up no matter what I tried. Which led me to anchoring it down with a wall anchor. :P It's nice to know that people don't usually have many problems with things floating up.
  15. I know that some people use rocks, or various weights, or even end up planting entire pots. Being new and not really knowing what I was doing, I ended up improvising. I took some invisible nylon thread, lightly tied it to my stems, and then tied the other remaining end to a plastic wall anchor that people usually use for putting screws into walls. I pushed this anchor into the substrate with the plant, and viola, it stayed.
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