20g Long Dirted

Wow, what a big difference since you first set up! The tannins in the tank also look really nice, it’s making me consider taking the leap and trying them as well. Also, are you dosing iron? It made the biggest difference for my dwarf Lily

I am dosing a little bit of iron along with the all-in-one fertilizer. I started with half dose when I first started the tank, but with the larger plant mass I assumed I should dose more accordingly.

 

Holy moly, this has been severely outdated. The tank looks more different with a lot more stock now. Jeus had been moved to a 55 community and he's a fat boy, and there's two Rainbow Shiners, 6 Indian Hi-Fin Barbs, 3 Panda Garras (very smol, growing out and will move to other tanks later), 2 Red Lizard Whiptails, 1 Orange Fin Goby, a number of Blue Diamond Shrimp, and a Black Angel growing out.

I let the tank go rampant and then hair algae became a thing while on a camping trip. Been hard to fight it and it's taking its toll on most of the plant growth and overall aesthetic. The only thing unaffected are the Marsilea Hirsuta (traded out M.crenata for a nice TC M.hirsuta), Ludwigia Repens, Red Tiger Lotus, Crypt. Pink, and the other mysterious Crypt. Japonica Blyxa, Limnophila aromatica, Lobelia cardinalis, Ludwigia sp. Red and Super Red MinI are just surviving.

Some stuff has happened and I'm at a new chapter of myself where I feel like it's time to rescape it again lol. I'm probably going to toss a lot of the plants out that are overrun with hair algae and maybe whatever I keep will get a quick H2O2 dip. Might change stones and hardscape, or perhaps omit hardscape and go iwagumi/dutch style, might do dirt again or might try some kind of aquasoil, definitely going to do CO2 for the first couple months and then let it go. We'll see. That will be a long time coming, trying to save up for a trip coming up in March so I gotta be a little more frugal with my spending in the mean time.

 

Have you ran into any cloudy water with it? I don’t mean tinted, but a white cloud.

 

Man this snail is super dope. I feel like I lucked out.
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he has some awesome design tho

 

Have you ran into any cloudy water with it? I don’t mean tinted, but a white cloud.

From what I remember, I had some cloudiness upon startup and then a mild case from a bacterial bloom as my cycle started taking root.

 

Haha the reboot plans got pushed to the back burner. It's become one of my favorite tanks now. It's funny how your views on fishkeeping evolve throughout the years. I didnt like the idea of changing your pH, and well I mean I still don't unless you know what you're doing, but once again I've went back on my word (much like how I vowed I'd never do cichlids and goldfish again and yet here we are). I'm using some Seachem neutralizer which changes your pH to 7.0, with trace elements and some of my favorite all-in-one liquid ferts. So it's been at a constant 7.5 these last few days (my normal tap pH is 8.2).

Why did I decide to change the pH? I ordered in some wild Manacapuru Angelfish and I wanted to make sure they were as comfortable as possible. I always said breeding and keeping exotic/wild fish would be an exception to fiddling with your pH. They're still small so they're in the 20 long for a short amount of time.




Tank doesn't look half bad but I just did a water change and scraped up as much hair algae as I could.

I'm so excited for them to grow up. The planted tank seems fine for now so I can put it aside for now. I'm more driven on pushing forward with plans of a 90g jungle tank for them. Still planning other stock but was considering cardinal tetras.