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A long journey of just trying stuff.


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29 gallon community tank before and after trimming. I even trimmed back my bolbitis which I hated to do but it was heading across the front of the tank.   

It usually takes a while for me to start liking the tank again after a trim but I like it a lot this time around. It also allowed me to float some of my wisteria trimmings which I always like doing. 

 

 

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Tank inhabitants lost in the forest:  Several Apistogramma Cacatuoides(triple reds), Amano Shrimp, Celestial Pearl Danios, Blue Ramshorn Snails and Cherry Barbs. 

Plants: Water Wisteria, Ludwigia Repens, Bolbitis Heudelotii, Java Fern Windelov, Anubias Nana, Anubias Barteri. Struggling plants: Monte Carlo, Staurogyne Repens.

Edited by TheChosenOne
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6 minutes ago, TheChosenOne said:

Thanks I find myself liking it a lot when it has that overgrown look. 

 

Have a lot of vall in one of my tanks and that gets like a Jungal have to take a bucket full out every 2 week

Edited by Colu
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On 4/28/2021 at 12:55 AM, Patrick_G said:

I love the look of your tank. The Wisteria has a really nice form. The leaves on mine aren’t nearly as fine. I bet the Monte Carlo will like all the extra light!

I hope so, the monte carlo is the only plant I've struggled with since I got back in the hobby well that and S. repens. 

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It's silly,but every time I think about trimming my Bolbitis I feel bad.  It took so long for this plant to really take off.  And I know some people are having trouble getting in their areas so I hate just throwing it away but it's genuinely starting to take over the left side of my tank. And I know it should be planted in the background because they can get massive but so can wisteria and it grows way faster. It was a toss up between wisteria blocking my view every week or so or let the bolbitis take a few years growing out to eventually do the same. 

Edited by TheChosenOne
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13 hours ago, TheChosenOne said:

It's silly,but every time I think about trimming my Bolbitis I feel bad.  It took so long for this plant to really take off.  And I know some people are having trouble getting in their areas so I hate just throwing it away but it's genuinely starting to take over the left side of my tank. And I know it should be planted in the background because they can get massive but so can wisteria and it grows way faster. It was a toss up between wisteria blocking my view every week or so or let the bolbitis take a few years growing out to eventually do the same. 

You could save the clippings in a bucket and sell them off on Ebay. 

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On 5/26/2021 at 10:09 AM, quirkylemon103 said:

or you could give some to the lfs, I traded a bunch of salvinia for a crypt

I'm very tempted to start growing some in my 10 gallon when it's not serving as quarantine/hospital tank and trying to sell a bit. 

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Little update:  the tank has now been up and running since around march-june of 2019. There have been many changes to the tank over the years: additional filter (i was trying one out but didn't wanna remove my main filter) new lights, new plants and new creatures.  All these things are additional factors that add up to the state the tank is in today.  For the first time ever I'm dealing with algae in the tank and I know that probably sounds strange to most but up until mid 2023  the plants have been growing so wildly that I just assumed no algae had a chance to take hold.  And on that front just about everything seems to have slowed in growth and in some cases started to suffer and/or die back.  My first sign was that my ludwigia repens and water wisteria started getting very leggy, something I attributed to poor lighting (thus the new lights).  But then the S. Repens started dying off/getting leggy and I couldn't tell if something was eating them at first but I know at this point that my fish/ramshorn snails don't eat healthy plants.   Next sign was green spot algae started taking over the different anubias plants in the tank. If you look at the video above you can see it starting on some of the leaves but it got much much worse. Most of the leaves on the anubias started getting lighter/pale green and some leaves started yellowing And at this point green spot algae was growing on pretty much everything without fins.   Lastly my water wisteria and ludwigia had nearly entirely died back in fact I ended up buying new wisteria to replace what had died and took what little remained and replanted on one side of the tank. 

I happen to be watching @Bentley Pascoe on YT (i forget what video) and he mentioned something along the lines that in the past his plants had been struggling until he started using Trace.  And I thought about my tank having been up and running since 2019 and the substrate is probably fairly exhausted; so even with liquid ferts and rare root tabs I may be missing some trace mineral(s) that is inhibiting plant growth.   Sure enough my ludwigia which was already regrowing after I replanted and was diligent with root-tabs has had a boom in growth after starting Trace dosing.  And my ludwigia that was doing nothing but get leggy and slowly wilt away has started growing again. Today 1-14-24 I noticed that I'm getting growth at the base of the wisteria; not just the new plant growing at the substrate but leaves starting to grow out of the bare leggy portion! (I literally just read about this being possible a few weeks ago and now I see it happening which is the first time ever) So the plant is truly thriving again.  Of course this is after i bought just about everything I need to re-scape the tank lol.  I may throw in a picture to chronicle the journey and to show how much the tank has changed but it's a sad comparison from what it was even tho everything is regrowing at the moment.  I will still most likely rescape the tank at some point so I can get back to the crazy growth I once had but I want to continue to see how well the plants bounce back. 

 Even when this hobby gets difficult is still so much fun if you enjoy learning. 

Edited by TheChosenOne
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As I mentioned above the tank has underwent a number of changes. And for a good while (several months) most of the plants have either been dying back or had stunted growth. Believe it looks much better now after a while of dosing trace minerals into the tank It was looking much worse than this.  You wouldn't believe that at one point I only had a single stem about 6 sinches long of that ludwigia left ; but it's now back up to the surface and showing off it's colors. The wisteria is as well just starting to regrow not as fast as I'd like but definitely bouncing back. 

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a new wisteria leaf growing out of one the ridges or nodules on the base of the stem.  Never seem a stem-plant recover in this manner.  As you can see the plant has gotten very leggy but is experiencing very good growth recently at the top of the plant.  This was shot after lights out that's why it's dim in that section.

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