[Hi and My First Planted Tank]

Its going good thanks @Streetwise, the Platty female had more babies so got a few generations going now about 30 of them now. Still no algae in this tank, I think it has just gone to my others lol.

[Hello from New Zealand]

On 7/17/2020 at 5:15 AM, JessicaD said:

Hello!! That lil puffer is amazing xD I have 3 in my BN pleco grow-out tank to keep the snail population down.

My fiance is a kiwi and someday (who knows with the pandemic) I will be moving there (Palmerston North area). I've been looking for fellow fish keepers there to connect with!!! If either of you is willing to share info about local water parameters and fish/plant availability, please let me know, I'd love to pick your brain!! 😄

Hi, I live near by, Palmerston north has 2 Fish stores but only one is a LFS the other is a chain store so fish and plants are limited. Not sure of the water parameters as I have a different water source. NZ is a small country so most places can be couriered overnight. We can get a good selection of plants and fish and there is a great plant place that is only 1 hour away.

Only issue, no Aquarium Co-Op 😢 

[Hello from New Zealand]

Hello fellow Kiwi, love the pea puffers, how does it get along with the Otocinclus?

[Hi! I'm Jim!]

Wow Jimmy, they are amazing photos, your very talented😀, how long does it take to get those perfect moments?

[Reaction Limit]

OK good to know i guess views is the "I have read your post".

Thanks

[Reaction Limit]

Just wondering why there is a limit on reacting to posts and what is the limit? I like to leave a reaction if I have read someones post just so they now I was there and I read it.

[Hello!]

Yeah I have guppies and they went crazy lol. I am lucky I have a Local fish store I can get rid of the excess. Even then finding room to grow them out was a struggle but a good one😄

[Hi and My First Planted Tank]

Hi

My name is Jeremy from New Zealand and I have been keeping fish since I was 16 so 19 years ago.

I usually only had 1 tank at a time and mainly had it there as something nice to look at, never did live plants.

About 1 year and a half ago i came across a Aquarium Co-Op video and enjoyed the knowledge in the video and a few more videos I caught the bug🤢.

So got a small tank and did that for a few months with the survivor fish from my 180L i had been doing to make sure I still liked it, now I have 5 set up and 2 big tanks in storage for when I move into a bigger place. I also am doing live plants in all of them now.

Picture is of my 150L (so 40 gallon ish) which is my first real go at live plants and boy what a journey lol. Started it a year ago and have been struggling with Algae until about 3 weeks ago.

It was like overnight I started noticing all the green Algae (which was all over the sides and banks and a lot of the plants) was starting to vanish and was thinking whats going on, what I have I done to achieve this? So over the year that I was doing it I was watching you tube videos and far to much Aquarium Co-Op videos gathering all the info and came across live streams talking about ways to combat Algae. So I realized Nitrate was super high as the tank was stocked with a lot of fish, mainly babies but still I was feeding them a lot, also the fertilizer I was using used a bit of nitrogen in its mix.

I then started moving the fish around to other tanks (which is why 5 tanks now , sold some to my local fish store to the level that it is then now. I started feeding less but not really by much (they just look like they always need more food 😄) but still when the fish stock numbers lowered so did how much food I was feeding. I also changed to Seachem fertilizer as the info I got was that it was low in nitrogen (we don't have all in one fertilizers that I can find in NZ, no Easy Green or anything). I even dulled my light by one strip (I have 4 LED strips) but nothing was really working, I had green Algae everywhere and I was getting frustrated until about 3 weeks ago I noticed the Algae was not building up as usual and then few days later it was actually going down. I have 2 otocinclus and mystery snails from the start so they couldn't keep up, I manged to get so ramshorn snails about 2 months ago. My substrate is full of trumpet snails also from the start and I had so many baby snails but even they have started to dwindle which means feeding is ok. So with all the helpers and changes my tank has almost no Algae, most of it is off the plants (some leaves have died when the Algae was gone), the glass only has some small spots of green spot Algae. I am now enjoying plants a lot more at the moment and am so glad I could work it out. Of course i am now to scared to change anything as everything looks great haha. Now its a wait to see if my fertilizer regime is still good and I can keep it a good balance as I still want algae for the oto's as I might have to move them to another algae riddled tank (one tank at a time lol) unless they start eating the other foods. 

Not all the plants in my tanks I like or don't like there spot but I like the crypts in the left corner the center is fake wood with Java moss on top which I love ( and so do the babies). Amazon sword in the right corner I also like. The others I am not a fan of where they are but I can move them when I get my biggest tank set up in the next 6 months hopefully.

Its been a long journey with this one but am really happy I have been learning and persevering with it.

It all started with Cory from Aquarium Co-Op so a big thank you for sharing your knowledge so we can also get joy out of this hobby😃.