I did a water change on my 29 gallon display tank and some of my crypts melted!  I didn't do any bigger than normal of a water changes, so I'm not sure why they melted.  Will they grow back? 

I have been using the EI style of caring for my tank and my plants look amazing!  I really like it.  Infact, my plants are growing really fast, I need to trim some of them every week.  Stem plants seem to show the most affects with EI, but my swords and crypts are looking better than they ever have as well.  My swords have no little holes in them, like they often used to, and my crypts are incredibly full.  I also love having pressurized CO2.  Its nice to kind of hook it up and "forget" about it.  I really like the layout I went with for my 75 gallon.  It looks good and so far the pygmy sunfish really seem to like it.  It has many like bushes of plants and then some slightly open areas between.  One side is sort of thicker planted.  Kind of like the edge of a forest next to a meadow with bushes in it was the look I was going for, and I think I got it fairly close.

I picked out a few nice peices of wood for my tank a couple days ago, and ordered plants from a variety of sources.  Mostly from my local store and also from hobbyists from various sites that have trading forums.  Hopefully it will look good once I get it all set up:)

I ordered quite a bit of HC cuba, fissidens, a couple rotala varieties, anubias nana "petite", a couple of crypts (I forgot which ones exactly at the moment), alternanthera reineckii, and a couple of kleiner bar swords.  They should all be arriving over the next few days.  

The Idea . . .
I want to have a low growing carpet plant to cover any open areas of the tank.  I want to have a jungle area to the backa and one side and then amongst the carpet plant I want some "bushes".  So I kind of want it to look like the end of a jungle turning into an open plane I guess. 

Plants
Plant I am considering include HC "cuba" for the ground cover plant, for the jungle side I think I might go with some bolitis ferns on wood and a sword of some kind and some stem plants.  I was thiking of using a few different rotala cultivars.  For the "bushes" I want to use stem plants to keep the look tied together.  Should I use the same kind that I use in the jungle area or a different kind?  I may place a few rocks in the open area and leave them bare.  On any wood that is in the tank I am going to grow fissidens on it.

I have all my supplies to set up my 75 gallon as a fully planted tank:)  I have my substrate, my lighting and I got my pressurized CO2 stuff!  WOOHOO!!! 

I'm very excited to be getting this all set up.  Pond season is coming to an end so I will have time to focus more on this tank, and my blue rams. 

I decided to go with aquasoil amazonia II with the powder stuff to go over the top.  I am going to start setting it up on friday night:)

I need to start looking into plant choices, so I will be back with plant questions:)

 

 

Has anyone had luck growing hornwort planted?  I know it doesn't grow roots but I have heard of people planted it into the gravel and it growing.  Every time I have tried to do that the bottoms just rotting and it went back to floating.

I got my light for my 75 gallon tank's eventual tranformation into a high light planted aquarium.  I got the nova extreme 4X54 watt HOT5 light fixture.  Its awesome:)  I plugged it in and it is very bright!  The tank won't be converted for awhile, but I can start buying things as I can afford them:)  Next up is to get a CO2 regulator.  I think I am going to buy from here: http://www.bestaquariumregulator.com/co2.html.  I have heard a lot of good things about the ones from there.  Then I need to decide on substrate.  I really like aquasoil amazonia from the amano line, but it is kinda expensive.  I am trying to decide between that and aquatic plant soil from the hard ware store.

I took a trip out to Buffalo today to go to Fish Place with one of my friends.  I got some more plants.  I got a little lily, some more bolbitis fern, and didiplis.  The lily and the bolbitis are for my 60 gallon tank and the didiplis is for my 2 gallon killi tank.  I am having some problems with my 2 gallon, most of my dwarf baby tears died off:(  I think I may need to try something different as a ground cover plant.  A little bit is left alive so I will give it some time to see if it grows or not.  We will see how the didiplis does.  Normally it is used as a forground plant from what I have read but the tank is so small it should work for the background.  In the store most of it did not look so great, but this bunch still looks ok.   I think I need to add CO2 to the tank, so I am going to add some DIY CO2 and see if that helps the plants.  I have been using flourish excel but  maybe its not enough for the plants by itself.

A Need For More
The goldfish tank was looking pretty lack luster.  The only plants inhabiting the tank were java fern attached to driftwood.  It looked nice, but the tank was missing some variety, and some tall plants to fill the upper portions of the tank.  Julie and I decided the tank could use some sprucing up and we decided on amazon swords, since I had a plethora of them coming from a mother sword in my tropical planted aquarium.  The next step was to figure out how to get them in there adequately. 

Pot Them! 
 Our goldfish tank does not have a suitable substrate for plants, it has large river rocks in the bottom.  This was a problem.  Amazon swords need to have a good substrate to send their large root systems into, to secure them down and to get nutrients.  A need fueled an idea . . . Pot Them!  We headed out and got three 3" clay pots, making sure they had not been treated with anything.  I rinsed them several times in hot water to make sure there wasn't any residue on them that would adversly affect our beloved goldfish.  Then I set to work.

Potting The Swords 

The first step was to get some gravel and put it in the bottom of the pots.  I filled the pots about half way at first.  Then went some Flourish Tabs I had left over and I nestled them into the gravel.  I put one tab per pot.  Next, another thin layer of gravel over the tabs.  By the end of this the pots were almost 3/4 full of gravel.  

Then I had to get some plants.  We only needed 3, and I had many to choose from.  Because we want these to be background plants, I wanted to find the 3 biggest and healthiest looking plantlets.  First I cut the runner off of the mother sword and then inspected the plants and picked out the ones to use.  I cut those off of the runner.  Once they were cut off I trimmed any damaged roots and then wrapped the roots into a little ball to help keep them from getting damaged during the planting process.  I then nestled them into the gravel in their prospective pots and filled the pots up the rest of the way with gravel, to hold the plants up.  The end result was 3 nice looking amazon sword plantlets in some nice looking clay pots.  

Once the swords get big, they will be repotted into larger pots.  Now hopefully they will grow well provided the goldfish don't eat them!

I set up a 2 gallon Killi tank and I am making it into a planted tank.  I origionally had purchased a 13 watt light from lowes for the tank, however after doing some reading this is not enough to keep most plants.  I was under the impression that at 13 watts over 2 gallon that would be more than enough light.  However there is a minimum light threashold that plants can tolerate.  As tanks get smaller they need more 'watts per gallon'.  So, I ordered a Mini-Freshwater Aqualight Compact Fluorescent Fixture.  It is 18 watts.  Hopefully that will be enough for the plants that I want to grow.  If it is not, then I'm not sure what lighting option I will use as the tank is not very long.  I was looking at the Current USA Satellite Dual 2X18 watt 12" Power Compact, but it is longer than my tank.  I don't want excess light going out into the room.  I supposed I could make something to block the light, or bounce it back into the tank.  Hopefully the mini freshwater aqualight will work, since I already purchased it!  It should be here monday.