Zapins

Dang! Pretty tank! I like the progress.

FishandTurtleJunkie

Looks like you have a case of collectoris going on in that scape...I love the variety.

Tex Gal

I'd love to see a tank update. How's it all doing. My husband is helping me on tank maintenance today. Taking things apart and back flushing! UGH!

Dielectric

yea post some pics please and thank you

tazcat70

Bryce,

Wow! The time flew as I read this entire thread, and the other about your algae problems. Your tank looks amazing!

Tonya

wearsbunnyslippers

wow!

it has gone from strength to strength. i feel your pain with not having anyone to share your tank with. i also get the same questions, are those real plants, why so many, is it freshwater, aaarrrgghhh....

i am moving in a weeks time, and their are some members of another forum in the same town i am moving to, so hopefully we will be able to share.

awesome work dood, it looks like it has been very rewarding to be involved in every step, from tiling the floor, to plumbing, to scaping! even with no one to share it with in real life, i am sure everyone who reads this thread can appreciate it as much as i have!

BryceM

Thanks for the kind comments.

I just got done with an enormously frustrating algae breakout. All at the same time I had bad BBA down by the substrate, thick tread algae throughout the top 1/3 of the plants and even BGA in certain areas..... all three at once!!!

Ugggh.

I did a few things which solved the problem. In no particular order I doubled my NO3 dosing, cut back a little on PO4, cut the halides down from 4.5 to 2 hrs per day (only for a week), added 2 rather large SAE's to replace jumpers, and added a Koralia 4 pump to supplement the current. Whatever it was, it worked. I hacked back lots of dead plants.

During all of this I lost the L. 'cuba', L. senagalensis, and the P. helferi. Funny, the tonina is just fine.

It's been going almost three years now. I'll post some photos shortly after the next trim. It's slightly overgrown at the moment. Colors are very nice right now, which is a funny thing to see after increasing NO3 levels. I'm pretty sure low NO3 and too little circulation was most of the issue. It's pretty hard to ensure excellent CO2 distribution in a tank this large, especially as densely as its planted. The Koralia helped tons.

Vadimshevchuk

i jus tread for 3 hrs from page 1 to the last one. Best 180 gallon planted i ever saw. I love you stocking list.

MrSanders

Just curious what is your current dosing on this beauty? I see back in June you doubled KNO3, what are you weekly or daily amounts on NPK and micros? THANKS!!

BryceM

I've been playing around with some different things. Dosing every day was just something I couldn't realistically do without an autodoser. Free time is just getting so hard to come by.

Currently, I'm doing a pretty lazy routine, but it seems to be working. I do about a 40 or 50% waterchange once every four days. I then refill with RO and add 3 tsp CaSO4, 2 tsp MgSO4, 3 tsp NaHCO3, 1/2 tsp CaCl2, and 1 tsp K2SO4.

I then add 5 ppm NO3 and 1 ppm PO4. A few minutes later I add 30ml of Flourish Iron and 60ml of Tropica traces. That's it. CO2 and lighting is otherwise automated. I've been doing this for about 3 weeks now. No problems yet. We'll see.





I'm doing a few other things differently too. I used to be an uproot and replant sort of guy when it came to stemmies. I'm going over more to the hack and let regrow side of things. For most plants it actually works out better, once you learn how to deal with growth rates and prevent shading of light-demanding species. I love the red on the B. aubertii above. It's never done that for me before.