Tait_007

It really does depend on the plants you use. I had regular aquarium gravel in my seventy five with a singular amazon sword in it but I did feed it some root tabs and there was goldfish in there with it. By far the best amazon sword I had ever seen. But now I have a 30 gallon with stems, pothos where its roots are in the gravel, and amazon swords where I need eco complete.

I know that ever since I had gotten a proper full spectrum led plant light for my aquarium my java moss won’t stop growing. Also a lot of trimming and “replanting” helped mine. I had trouble with it growing until I did a big trim and now about a month or two later I have doubled the amount of moss I have.

Yeah that is definitely not a Gary at this time.

I’ll edit the post in a second once my lights turn on with a newer picture. My profile background was a picture of its progress right after my first trim but I’ve already had to do another one so I’ll take one real quick. As for algae, I just don’t. I have my light on for only 6 hours and I have this bamboo skewers with a frayed end that I use to twirl any hair algae off of it and the rest of the time I’ll use the same stick to swish any leftover food and poop into the water column. If it does get too bad I’ll wait for it to be time to trim and I’ll trim the algae part off and then manually remove it from the trimmings. As you can see in the second picture it is not algae free. But it grows well and it is all alive so I do not care.

I know I am currently trying a java moss carpet and it is going pretty well. You just have to trim it about once a month on the top to make it grow thicker and across the floor.

Welcome to the forum. I am also in Indiana. @Flying fox 6523 your seem to have gone around Indiana do you know of any good Local Fish Stores or even a good Local Chain Store. I know of Uncle Bills in Indianapolis but it’s a bit more up in northern Indianapolis and a chain store.

I got my scarlet temple from ACO about a month ago, right before the price increase I believe. I planted mine in Eco-complete and just a couple days ago I noticed a few stems float up to the surface. I knew that Eco-Complete was known to break stems and I think that this has happened to these stems. However, the stems that are till I the gravel are growing great and have new growth on them. I do believe that getting rid of the most algae covered leaves helped and I just had some blackout days to keep algae under a little bit of control. Still try to keep some of the leaves on there as if they do die the plant will use upo their nutrients for itself. I know that Cory had just mentioned something similar to that in one of his latest videos.

@Milliardo Peacecraft You need to get your Nitrates up. IU had this problem when i first started doing planted tanks where my plants would die off because there would be no usable nitrogen for them. Having a nitrate level of 0 would be great for a fish only tank. However, nitrogen is one of the main nutrients for plants just like what @JoeQ said with NPK. (The N stands for Nitrogen.) Nitrates are where plants usually get Nitrogen. I would try to keep your Nitrates between 20 - 40 ppm, but I have had my tanks get above 80 ppm with little to no side effects. Also, you might want to watch your Nitrite levels as they can be harmful for your fish. Remember the most dangerous thing fro your fish is Ammonia, then Nitrites are still bad for your fish but they can tolerate a little more, then Nitrate isn’t harmful until a very extreme level but it is still a good thing to try to keep them under control.

@Ray B Is this a low or high tech tank? It’s a beautiful tank and I’m just curious.

I’ve never heard of this before till now. Does it bleach clothes or does it actually make it a certain color?

I would love to have a river style aquarium like what MD fish tanks had for his rainbow fish. I don’t know how he gets such amazing growth in his plants while not using CO2. I know he just started using it again and I can’t imagine what his tanks will look like now that he started using CO2.

I personally haven’t kept any Crypts, but I’ve seen people use them as a nice, red bush.

Dustinsfishtanks.com has a plant pack where they give you a selection of plants that would go well for your aquarium. I was planning on buying this and then I have some Bacopa Caroliniana, Scarlet Temple (Alternanthera Reineckii), Pogostemon stellatus octopus, java moss, and maybe an amazon sword or two i could take from my 30 gallon if I need to. I was planning on just using mostly low to medium light plants with no CO2 for this all.

Would something like organic compost be similar to this? Or where would I be able to get this at?

I do get that dirt is kind of a mess but I’m going to college in a couple of years and I don’t think my siblings would want to deal with root tabs if I couldn’t come home to do some maintenance. Also this tank probably wouldn’t get broken down for a couple of years.