antwan

Red pine, green pine, Hemianthus micranthemoides, heteranthera zosterifolia, rotala rotundifolia, rotala macrandra, bacopa caroliniana.

The joys of a high tech tank :lol: About a week or two ago I lowered the lights and increased how long they were on for by a couple of hours, all in the same day. Big mistake. I got a biiiig outbreak of green, black beard, and brown algae. On Friday I got an FX5 and a new reactor and there's already a noticeable difference in water clarity and the response from the plants. I put the lights back to their original height and they are now on for 9 hours a day. (New 10,000k bulbs too! They are nice, much whiter). Tomorrow I will do a haul-over (good deciding this at the end of the weekend eh?) and remove any leaves with algae, give the pieces of wood a nice clean, and rearrange slightly. Perhaps I'll lower the lighting to 6-7 hours a day til it starts pumping again too. If anyone in Christchurch has any spare cuttings of fast-growing stems let me know I need sponges!

get the exact same regulator off ebay for around $80 less

Someone had a shovelnose, and had pictures on here a few years ago. Came in as a syno I think.

Up to you really. My 6 footer is out by about 4-5mm and its a bit annoying but not too bad. It just depends if you want to look at the uneven water level all the time. Personally, I would fix it. Doesnt take much time and looks nicer having an even water level. Always remember with big tanks: its much easier to do this stuff at the start while its empty, without 100 odd kgs of sand, driftwood, plants etc.

Organism has them, they're in Ilam. They're cheap too.

I have plenty of driftwood here in our pond. You're welcome to stop by when it's not raining and go wading if you like.

I think the powerhead will work better than just a ceramic diffuser, because the powerhead will at least blow the CO2 around the tank. I had a ceramic diffuser underneath a powerhead in my tank which worked really well, but I had a constant mist of tiny bubbles throughout the water column which wasn't very nice to look at. Inline reactor all the way!

Sorry if you've mentioned before, but how are you diffusing the CO2?

Nice! Had you done a water change that day though? Or are they still pearling every day? My plants always over-pearl after a water change.

The regulator I got just fit straight onto my bottle but if yours doesn't fit I don't think it would be difficult to get attachments to make it fit.

Thanks, I got this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/CO2-regulator-magnetic-solenoid-valve-aquarium-220v-/260764926770?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb6cd0332

ebay and http://www.fish-street.com are good places too

Yea, I'm aware of the pups around the base too, but the seedlings are a challenge.

I snipped off one of the flower buds today and opened it up to have a look. I think I did it a bit prematurely because the seeds weren't very yellow, but I'm an impatient person. Here's some photo's: I like this photo, it looks like an alien mouth It had a very sticky liquid holding it all together I got most of the seeds out of it and whirled them through my tank to see if I get any pup plants growing from them. If not it doesn't matter cos there's a few more buds heading for the surface. I will leave them to see what they do.

Can you please post pics of the tank you have these over when you have them set up? I would like to see what the plants look like under them. I think the tank looks a little too yellow under the 6700k ones I have at the moment.

!drool:

that's pretty sweet!

Flourish does the whole range of fertilisers, but they are pricey; you can get N,P,K, and Iron all separately, and then trace (comprehensive) and excel. The link at the start of the thread is a good place to get the dry ferts, you can either add them to your tank dry, or mix into a solution. Iron chelate is what you get for the Iron macro. Obstacle, give your plants a while (a week or two) to realise what's going on with all the new ferts/lights/CO2. After they're used to what's going on they will start going nuts and pearl every day. A drop checker is a handy tool to see what your CO2 levels are, and are cheap as chips off ebay. I wouldn't add the excel yet, you could maybe add it in a couple of weeks if you don't see any difference in growth rates

Red lotus' have been going on Trade Me lately for $15 with a $20 buy now. That's where I got mine, it was huge too.

I got some Crypt. walkeri from Organism, I like it. Also got 8 Columbian tetra's which are schooling nicely around the tank. I'll keep buying more every now and then until I'm happy with the school size. Had a deal for a cheap FX5 filter but looks like that has fallen through now :evil: so another thing to save for...

nah they won't eat them

Yea that's a green lotus. The red ones we get in nz look more like this.

They let the ones in the blue barrel go too. All the larger ones they found they released.

Good idea, I have sand in my tanks too. All depends on your preference really.