This is the first tank I've had where I can actually say the plants are "growing", and not just "managing feebly not to die". We have a real hood over it, with 4 4 foot 40 watt fluorescent lights. We installed the hood in December, 1996 (I bought it from a total stranger, who advertised on a fish newsgroup - it was a great deal!). Since I have never had a tank with adequate lighting for growing plants, I simplistically thought that was "the" limiting factor, and expected them to take off immediately. I bought some cabomba, some giant hygro, a few crypts, a brazilian sword plant, some ludwigia, and a few other little sprigs of things. At first, the leaves they did put out were very close together on the stems (as opposed to far apart, stretching toward the light), the underside of some of the ludwigia were beet red, and the sunset hygro had pink leaves again, implying that they were getting plenty of light. For a few days, life was good.
Everything quickly declined, though. The giant hygro dropped its leaves from the bottom up, the cabomba kept getting uprooted and dissolving, the ludwigia dropped most of its leaves, the sword plant became covered with tenacious dark green velvety algae (not hairy), etc.. We began to suspect that the substrate (about 1" of huge smooth stones from a nearby lake, ranging from gravel size to silver dollar size, some even larger) was preventing the plants from rooting properly.
After the big move (May, 1997), we removed the old gravel, and added 100 lbs of fine gravel (about the size of Grape Nuts cereal or Nerds candy). We bought the gravel in 30 lb bags from the pet store. I think it was mostly quartz - kind of a light grey/clear in color. We dug up some waterlogged clay from a stream in our backyard (probably 1-2 liter or so volume of clay), and mixed it with about 1/4 of the gravel. We smeared the muddy glop on the bottom of the tank, and covered it carefully with the remaining gravel (well washed - this took a while!). The clay was greyish, as is most clay in this area. We hoped that since it was in a riverbed, that most of the soluble nitrates and phosphates (and any other soluble junk) would have been washed away. Some people put nitrates, phosphates and other nutrients in their substrate on purpose, but we decided to keep things simple to start, and fertilize later when necessary.
We added the water carefully so as not to disturb the layered gravel, and the tank was barely cloudy at all. It cleared up to crystal clear within a few hours of starting the filter. We have an Aquaclear 500 filter on the tank right now, with 2 sponges in it (we'd have a smaller filter on it, but the hood creates such a wide tank rim that the 500 is the only thing with a big enough lip to sit on the edge of the tank). We also have a powerhead (I forgot the kind). It has a tube you can attach an airline to, for venturi style aeration. I put the outlet airline tubing from a yeast/sugar/water mixture I have into that hole, and now the CO2 produced from the yeast gets chopped into a fine mist of bubbles from the powerhead. I have the mist going into a 16 oz. plastic soda bottle with the bottom chopped off, where it swirls around a bit before getting flung out into the tank. Not all the gas dissolves, and I'm hoping to set up a more efficient reactor one of these days, but this is a good start.
Notes of June 13, 1997:
I haven't taken a lot of pH readings lately, but the plants are growing like CRAZY. I add a little squirt of Kent micronutrient mixture when I think of it (maybe twice a week). I've also noticed that this micronutrient mix works REALLY well for encouraging cuttings of terrestrial plants to root in a glass of water! Just add a few drops along with NPK macronutrients, and you'll have a ball of roots in no time. We change about 20% of the water every 3 weeks or so. The fish get a generous pinch or two of flakes once or twice a day, some freeze tried bloodworms, and an occasional pinch of Tetra Bits or a few AquariYums (sinking cory food). We give all the fish some frozen bloodworms (wet, not dry) every time we think of it (less than once a week lately).
It's hard to feed most of the fish without letting the SAEs eat too much - they're very quick and I worry that they won't graze the algae if I keep giving them flakes.. Still, they do graze during the day, and the plants are staying pretty clean. The plants are going wild. I have a water sprite that has grown from miniscule to the top of the water in about a week, the sword plants are putting out new leaves, the Corkscrew Valisneria is putting our runners like there's no tomorrow - a new baby plant pops out of the gravel every few days, it seems! The Val has spread lateraly, so instead of growing straight up, it looks like pom poms in the gravel.. I have wisteria that I planted that is growing rapidly, and some java moss in a corner which is putting out lots of new buds. One of the only tiny sprigs of Ludwigia I have from my previous disaster is recovering, and putting out some bushy new growth. The only plants that haven't improved drastically are the crypts, which isn't surprising. One is just sitting there (no new growth), and the other is either being eaten or it partially "melted" and hasn't recovered. I also have some sort of.. Brazilian sword plant that is growing pretty slowly, but it only has one leaf, so I guess I should give it a chance. :-)
When I come home from work at night, the plants are bubbling like crazy - presumably with oxygen. It's bubbling off of the water sprite and wisteria, and tons of tiny bubbles line the underside of the sword plant, as it someone dunked it in soda water! It's really impressive. I feel lucky, and hope I can keep this balance of light and nutrients up. The 12"x4' area on the bottom of a 55 gallon tank seems smaller and smaller every day, as I run out of room to plant the new baby plants. This is the kind of tank I have been dreaming about for months! I'm so excited!
Notes as of October, 1997:
I started using Tropica's micronutrient stuff a few months ago, when I got some for free at a fish auction. The Kent stuff probably works fine, but I was worried about how much copper I was adding over time. I still add much less than they recommend, but I figure I'd rather error on the side of too little than too much. The older leaves on the sword plant (which takes up a full 40% of the tank now, with leaves spread across the water surface and back down again!) generally turn yellowish and lose their mesophyll around the outer edges. I think it must have something to do with nutrients, although light could be part of it too. The Anubias that I got from our plant auction are doing well, and so is the Bolbitis plant I got from Dave and Janine Banks. I rip out handfuls of a plant I collected from Maine (it grows as a weed there too) every few weeks. The Corkscrew Val is still growing strong, and my smaller sword is looking healthier and healthier. The Madagascar lace plant has put out a few leaves, but has slowed down recently. I'm concerned about it. I found what looked like a small pine cone with a stem in the plants I collected from a friend's pond. I put it in this tank in a well-lit stable place - now there are shoots growing out of it. I hope it's not terrestrial. I have no idea what it is. So far, two leaves have sprouted, and they certainly don't look like evergreen leaves, so there's hope. I've cleared out most of the water sprite, wisteria and hygrophila polysperma from this tank, leaving just a few sprigs here and there in case I ever want to grow more. The Ludwigia FINALLY looks good, and has recovered from the spring disaster. The stems have lots of tight maroon/green leaves. Very pretty. The cabomba also looks pretty good, though I have to keep snipping the tops off and replanting it. Some of it looks a little gangly. All in all, it's a fun, fairly low maintenance tank.. I like to see people's faces when they see the tank and hear us say, "Yes, all those plants are real, alive and growing!". *grin*
Notes as of March, 1999:
Well, as you can see, I haven't been keeping this page up to date. We bought a house and moved in May, 1998. We removed all of the fish and plants, and transported them in several buckets. We removed all of the water (that we could) and transported the tank with just wet substrate at the bottom. We did this because we didn't want to disturb the soil/clay substrate, since we knew we'd have to rinse all of the gravel out and re-layer it if we did. We also had malaysian trumpet snails in the gravel, which we didn't want to disturb or kill by abrasion.. The tank was the heaviest thing I've ever lifted. It was very difficult, and I almost dropped it at one point. Don't try to move a tank with the gravel in it (esp. wet gravel) unless you get lots of very strong people to help, and/or if you have professional moving equipment (like straps or a cart or dolly or something - perhaps a transporter! Haha!).
Anyway. We got the tank into the house and slowly filled it with water. It cleared after a few hours of running the filter. We replanted the plants and added the fish. We took this opportunity to rearrange the way things were planted, and put the big sword plant on the side with the filter, etc. It was fun.
Since then, several species have gone downhill - we have no cabomba left for reasons I can't explain. It was doing well and flowering profusely (I even have pictures!), and then it just wasn't there one day. The vallisneria is just hanging in there, though it was a jungle before. The bulbitis, however, has absolutely taken off, and we have gobs of the stuff! Also, our sword plant sprouted a long stalk around mid-winter, and on the stalk several new sword plants are growing, on a chain. It's almost vallisneria-style, but the plants are in mid-water - the stalk went up to the surface, then curved down.. I'm not sure how many more will grow, but it's really cool. The babies look like tennis-ball sized pom-poms now, with nice white roots hanging into the water. I've been meaning to snip and plant them, but I want to see what will happen to the stalk first. Very interesting!!
Notes as of June, 1999:
The cabomba is still pretty much gone - I found a few remaining fragments and carefully planted them, but they haven't really taken off. The sword plant self-destructed. The momma plant put out runners in the water column with cascades of babies coming off - it looked like an underwater spider plant! But the momma plant is now very tiny and spent looking. My hope is to plant the babies and snip them off of mom. I think they're sucking her dry. I don't have enough real-estate in the tank for all those swords though. I'd love to make another planted tank, but the lighting is a bit expensive to run. Even 80 watts a day adds up pretty fast.. So, I keep my fish going and hang my laundry instead. :-)
I set the CO2 mixture back up (yeast/sugar/water) about two months ago - I had let it die for a while.. and the vallisneria absolutely exploded! I now have some healthy younger corkscrew val again, as well as a whole bunch of really tall stuff that I think is "sagitaria subulata" or something - I have the tag at home. Anyway - it looks like a grassy marsh now. The day the CO2 dies, the val/sag. stops growing in its tracks, like the game "red light/green light". As soon as I add it, it takes off again. Very interesting.
Both the tops of the sag. and the baby sword plants are getting gooked by some bluegreen algae. I've tried to take all of the floating plants off that I can, in an attempt to keep the surface of the water moving and prevent the algae from having something to grow on, but so far, it always creeps back in. It kills the plants it grows on - perhaps competing for local nutrients (CO2, etc), perhaps blocking the light, or perhaps it's actually toxic somehow. In any case, I don't like it. I refuse to use chemical methods, but I do need to be more careful about removing it. Luckily it only grows in the top one inch of the water in this tank, and it's actually really not a problem. I'm the only one who can see it (when I lift up the cover). I don't really understand how bluegreen algae works, but I think its neat that there is a balance - it's not eradicated, but I never have to worry about it taking over the tank - it just sticks to the waterfall on the filter sometimes, and grows on the duckweed and anything that hits the surface. I wonder why that is.
I also have a huge mass of hair algae that I haven't removed because I happen to love it. It looks exactly like hair! It's long thin surprisingly strong strands of lovely green. When its out of the water, it looks like the scummy hair that collects at the bottom of the shower drain.. but in the water, it's billowy an magical. I keep it in check by plucking off some of it and feeding it to other tanks (where it is devoured). I guess one person's weed is another person's treasure. I happen to like the stuff (although I'm sure the plants its growing on don't agree!).
Notes as of October, 1999:
I did a bit of housecleaning on the tank recently, and removed a bunch of the tall Sagitaria - since I've been keeping the CO2 thing going, the Sag has been taking over every inch of gravel. I gave about 20 individual plants to my boss, and about 20 to a tank we donated to a rehab unit in a hospital nearby. The tank hardly looks thinner! I also donated a bunch of Java Fern and that made a big difference. I had had a big clump attached to a branch as a sort of centerpiece for the tank, and with that gone, there is a big 10"x10" spot in the gravel that I can plant other things in. I still have java fern around, but it's nice to have this extra space. I'm going to try to find some of the baby swords that mysteriously disappeared after I planted them a month or two ago, and try to get them to root.
I just got the last issue of the Aquatic Gardener's Association publication, and it's SO inspirational! I have all these thoughts and ideas about plants and tanks and changes I'd like to make... Sigh. I just need a good rainy weekend with no terrestrial gardening chores to do.
BTW, there is a lot of aquatic plant information available on the internet. A nice place to start is the Aquatic Plant FAQ. I believe this is put together using information from the Aquatic Plants mailing list (click on the above link and search for "aquatic-plants" to get the the section on the mailing list).
Last Modified October 15, 1999
