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Personal Goals
Ok, here are my goals with my planted tank.
1. Happy fish, that are active, and happy to see me each day.
2. Beautiful plants that are soothing to look at (one of my favorite past
times, watching fish and plants)
3. Learning everything I can about the interactions of the different
chemicals that make the above happen.
4. Not too much maintenance, or money. (Don't have enough money to buy
everything name brand.
I think it is pretty interesting that when I am doing things right in the
tank, the fish are active and even breed. This to me is a sign of a pretty
healthy tank. I can not stand losing any of my fish, and each day I spend
an hour or so looking at each one and trying to make sure they are ok. On
the plant side, the hardest part was finding what would grow in my tanks.
I have one that is a gravel substrate that we fertilize with jobes sticks,
k2so4, flourish iron, and sometimes flourish. This tank runs 82-86 f,
(27-30 c), 7.2ph, and we have found the only plants that like growing in
this setup are ones with a rhizome of some sort, or a bulb. Onion bulbs do
great, swords do pretty good, apons of all kinds do good, if they can take
the heat.
Now in the 55 gal tank, it is a different story. I have a peat substrate,
with sand on top, and most anything grows great there. I do not add any
fertilizer, and my ph stays about 6.8. The plants there grow great, and
fast. I have Asian lilies, apons, swords, cabomba, and val all doing
great. Most anything I put in that tank grows, including the fish.
If anyone gets to this far down in this post, I do have a question to ask.
In the big tank mentioned earlier, 80 gallon, 7.2ph, 10ppm nitrates, .5
phosphates, 5deg kh, 8 deg gh, 86 deg f, filtered with a wet dry filter,
240 watts of light, 2 5000k daylight bulbs (GE), 2 cool white, 4 20 watt
grow lux bulbs, fertilize with s2so4, jobes, flourish iron, and every 3
days flourish. That was a run on sentence if I ever saw one. Oh well.
This tank is not growing like it used to. One of our apons dropped its
leaves and now is growing short leaves. The old ones were 12" long each.
Now they are 4" long. Some of the other plants are starting to curl on
the edge of the leaves, and the tips may be bent back on the leaf. Any
ideas? I know I am missing something, but not sure what. Any help would
be appreciated.
Troy