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Show off your Aquarium!

Judas Priest said:
There are no fish in it yet. We are still having problems with the plants not wanting to grow.

We tested for Fe tonight and it was at 0.0. We just added some iron fertilizer.

I´ll post pics when things are going good, and we have fishies :)
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Do you have a plant light for your tank?
 
I have no idea. It´s complete aquarium from Juwel, a very respected company. It has two LED light strips.

We measured iron again tonight, and the value is a bit higher, but still very low. We don´t have way of measuring CO2 yet. There is a table where you can determin the CO2 value using the PH and carbonate hardness values. According to that table, the CO2 value is also very low.
 
Judas Priest said:
I have no idea. It´s complete aquarium from Juwel, a very respected company. It has two LED light strips.

We measured iron again tonight, and the value is a bit higher, but still very low. We don´t have way of measuring CO2 yet. There is a table where you can determin the CO2 value using the PH and carbonate hardness values. According to that table, the CO2 value is also very low.
Click to expand...

It seems counterintuitive, but the fact is, unless you are adding CO2, that chart is of no use! If you are adding CO2, then it's meaningful.
How are you measuring Fe? IME the cheaper test kits & strips are pretty useless for iron. I ended getting a Lamott Labs kit for ~$90 which gives consistent results at the low concentrations we want (<.3ppm Fe; .1ppm is adequate. >.4 or .5 becomes toxic to fish)

If you have enough light intensity and small amounts of basic minerals + a very little NPK, plants should be happy. You can't trade photoperiod for photo intensity. If your lamps aren't the right chroma and intense enough, you may have trouble growing many popular aquatic plants. (but you may be real successful with algaes)

PS: if you have no fish yet and you're adding CO2, don't worry about concentration much yet. If you do have livestock, optimal is 15-35ppm CO2

Good luck!
 
Nothing but trouble until now :(

Since the plants are not doing well, and I measured the iron in the water and it was under the recommended level, we added liquid iron fertilizer. Well, the water got VERY cloudy after that, and it got so bad that you can´t even see the back of the aquarium :(

So today we replaced about 80% of the water and saw that the gravel is FULL of those stupid fertilizer balls that we put in for the plants at the start. We even used much less than the recommended amount. If I mix up the gravel a bit with one hand, it´s WOOSH, instant cloud of **** :(

Tomorrow, I´ll drain ALL the water and remove ALL the gravel and rinse it, and refill the tank.

Man, this was supposed to be fun :(
 
I suggest that when you restart the tank, don't worry at all about adding stuff. Cleaned substrate, (duh!) fresh water, and LOADS of stem plants. Add light and let go, let god.
The universe seems to have much expertise in how to grow things :)
 
Well, today we removed all the plants, gravel and water, and rinsed the gravel thoroughly. It took a couple of hours, but it had to be done.

Here are some before and after pictures. The water is now only slightly milky, but that´s just because of the fresh water and all the movement that was done.

I´ll post more when we finally get some fish :)

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PS: the reason I suggested loading the tank with fast-growing stem plants is that until it gets really established, which can take months, the excess plant mass will help get the bio-system established while preventing algae growth.
Fish nerds tell me that the stems will out-compete the algae for nutrients. Seems hokey to me but it seems to work.
 
I have no idea about plants. They all look the same to me, and are green :) Or so I am told; I´m color blind :)

I think my wife has lots of fast growing plants in the tank.

edit: My wife says ALL of the plants are of the fast growing kind :)
 
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Thanks :) My wife isn´t happy with how the plants are growing, and she wants them arranged differently. But first they just need to grow.

We are now slowly and carefully adding liquid C02 fertilizer.
 
NO2 is getting high now, as expected. We´ll be changeing some of the water tomorrow. The plants seem to like the CO2 fertilizer , and seem to be doing better :)
 
Anyone have one with local/native fish? When I was a kid, the old man and I put together one with Bluegills, Minnows, and Crayfish we caught. I was thinking of doing it again.
 
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I wonder about some bigger native fish in my pond but I'm afraid even sunnies would wipe out my minnows.

When I was kid I put a couple small sunnies in a 20g tank. It wasn't a good thing. I think the water temps got too high in a house with no AC.
 
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