sup42

Have a look at trade me right now , there is someone selling off a range of tank sizes with stands in bulk e.g 36 forty liter tanks with stand poly etc

Certainly Do , I'm in central Auckland. It must be the old tank hey. I like that shape.

It's early days still very much a work in progress and A learning curve for me but what I've found so far supports both your ideas. I started with ten tall plants , cut most of them into sections just long enough to get a good inch or so stem to bury in the sand. Some grew taller within a matter of days / first week. Absolutely you will get new separate plants. Some of those first cuttings when they floated up accidentally had good new root growth starting. It has been pain staking , at the start everything just grew upward , that was a bit disapointing. I re cut them quite agresively when they were tall enough to make two plants , I read that the more you cut them and the closer you plant them together the more they compact and stay low ( see the plants on the left of that photo , the new growth when planted close has smaller more compact leaves and they have much closer inter nodes too ). So maybe it is working. The idea of the thread is to test the lights with that plant specifically instead of assumung the PAR values of a $12 Lamp and $3.50 bulb are very high just because the theory says it should be.... So I will keep taking pics every couple of weeks. As for the tied down one , I read a lot of people just take those mother plants and bury the heads, seems to work so far. I envisage that the first month or two will involve lots of cutting and replanting to force the plants to carpet. If I had my time over I Would plant the first batch as closely together as physically possible and not worry about spread initially, Just have a 'bush' that I add onto over time / let the plant grow out too. In a perfect world the shop ones would be super compact when sold.

I got home from work at midnight about a month ago and someone had left a tank sitting on the footpath with stones in it.....a wee eheim box filter, a broken Heater and gold fish flakes. The eheim was still working. I filled it with water and found a small leak in one of the sump holes the previous owner had siliconed. So I re sealed it roughly and put together more of the twelve dollar clip in desk lamps from Bunnings and rigged up three with 24wt CFL tubes. Here's a diary of progress to date : The three headed monster Up and running , testing high light on Experiment on the cheap with DIY CO2 Using baby tears as the subject Two weeks of Bunnings Lights , tied down baby tears getting more compact. Cuttings thickening up into a carpet steadily too. Thanks to the random neighbor who got rid of their tank. Daltons aqua mix seems to go very good all in all...gotta say i'm thrilled with it for the price and results.

By the Way an easy to grow / fast growing stem plant would have to be Hygrophila Polysperma. Really hardy plant , great for new set ups , versatile to the max. Trimming and replanting the tops gives a really nice bushy look. Growing it along the Substrate or just letting it spread across the surface gives you the 'all in one' uses of this plant. Cuttings are easy to strike. It is a cheap plant to buy a lot of. Truly the best plant I've had any experience of in terms of quick reward for effort and a confidence builder for new plant gardeners.

Thanks Caper , I'm onto tank four now......will post some pics of the other tanks when are fully set up

In Cyber I will always be 42. In reality i will be able to mark the passing of time by my username :slfg:

Sup : Short for What is up. 42 I am 42 Nothing Esoteric about it other than perhaps it is an ethnocentric thing.

Supasi I read that thread with the inputs from 4x4 on the CFL par measurements. Very very interesting. I've been trying to grow a nice little ten gallon tank using those principles. The True measure in the case of my little experiment will be if the bunnings lamps manage to grow the HC into a carpet i painstakingly planted last week by using a combination of cutting ten long stems From Four Seasons petshop in Glenn Innes into individual cuttings and also tying some of the plants down using those plant weights to see if a tied down Mother plant out performs the cuttings

+ 1 They do a good Job and as for the visual aspect that's all in your head. If you befriend them and intentionally take a liking to the little buggers they just become a part of the natural world imo

Could be a thread starter. ' WTB breeding pair of plastic Pararubbercus "

Then you are doing better than the team of Dutch Scientists that tried to adapt it to Immersed growth and failed. :thup:

ah of course, Thanks for that, so i can stop waiting for half my Ottos to go belly up phew !

My favorite chestnut is all the Bog plants Animates sells. All in all HFF is pretty good , but they are doing a roaring trade in Alternhera Rubra, I got caught out by the spiel ' high lights and CO2 will help" They might as well be selling Lettuces as under water novelties No amount of CO2 and highlighting will keep this plant alive immersed for very long. I hope the aquarium trade stops this snake oil. I threw a pile of money down the drain on this and purple waffle and so many more blatant rip offs.

I have six otos between two tanks ( four in one an pair in the other ). Lots of Info on the net about why they die after around a month or so of being introduced to the tank. The capture method is to blame. Some fish collectors use toxins to stun them in the river including cyanide since they are so tricky to catch. My guess is that after a month they go into organ failure from the toxins , pretty rough. Most experts suggest you will have around a 50% die off rate , if they survive the 1st month you are home and hosed.