Thanks guys, I'm alot happier with how it looks now. Considering another carpeting plant though maybe some glosso or hairgrass, anyone got any ideas on what would look good? I would love to do a carpet out of anubias but am too impatient lol.

AWESOME job

Caper

Looking Good, this is my new a goal, a planted like this.

Cheers for the comments guys and gals.

Got the ph controller up and running and it works excellent! Even with this running 24/7 I have figured I will use less co2 then running co2 8 hours a day as it only pumps out co2 for 15mins every hour or so even less if I don't have much surface movement. Fish have never looked so happy and healthy since I have had them.

Next purchase is going to be a decent quality dosing pump to dose e.i. ferts. Probably get that next month if all goes according to plan.

Well ended up using a full tank of co2 within a few weeks, had a leak in my bubble counter grrr. Off to get it refilled now.

Stunning tank!!!!

ps: scuse the ignorance.. but what does having plants "melting'' mean?? :dunno:

It refers to when some species of plants start losing their leaves and they look like they are dying, usually happens when certain species are disturbed in some way. Happens with a lot of crypts and sword plants, they just take awhile to be re acclimated to the new water conditions and then come right. Hopefully.

Thought I had better post a quick couple of updated pictures, everything's going really good. Spent awhile today making a diy spray bar for the fx5 I recently got from David, a bit of trial and error and 3 trips to mitre 10 and I got it done lol.

this is the tank which you are just using sand and fert balls, amirite?

Sure is dude.

bangin. what kind of sand did you use? just stuff from the local hardware/garden shop?

Yeah man, plain old beach sand. Cost me $5 for about 100kg.

sweet, will use the same technique myself. do you add any other ferts?

Yeah, I started using valrays ferts off trademe originally then moved onto ei dosing once that ran out.

ei?

estimated index, heaps of info online about it.

there is. so you do 50% water changes weekly too?

sorry for all the questions. not new to planted tanks, but am new to doing it well. lol.

as i'm hoping not to have to do many water changes, i think i will have to cut right down how much ferts i use.

I usually do 2 25% water changes a week, only because I don't have a large enough container to store and heat water for water changes so have to resort to using the hose and with only 25% changes it only drops the temp by a couple of degrees. Sounds like you may prefer the Walstad method of planted tanks, from what I understand you only do water changes when evaporation forces you too.

yeah i am currently using the walstead method and it's going great.

am not using ferts aside from the flourite in the substrate. i think the plants should go fine in new setup if i do not add any ferts, just have fert balls and co2 with plenty of light.

It's all trial and error dude, took me this long to figure it out and finally got rid of most the algae, there is a little bit of green hair algae growing that took hold when I had to get my co2 bottle refilled but even that's minimal compared to the outbreak of bba I had about 2 months in.

:cophot:

Nice tank my man

Looking good. I hated when I had to refill the Co2 Bottle. I never did it straight away and the tank definitely paid for it :facepalm:

Wahoo, my red tiger lotus has sent out a runner and produced its first "pup".

Starting to consider turning this tank into a cichlid tank, getting bored with the fish that are in it.

Starting to consider turning this tank into a cichlid tank, getting bored with the fish that are in it.

Srsly? It's been, like a month, you have the attention span of an ADD Mayfly! :slfg: