Seventh

This is my first fish tank in a long time, and my first attempt at a planted tank. I've been reading a ton about it lately and decided to give it a go. My son loves it, even though here are no fish yet (he keeps asking when I'm going to add dolphins..).

I learned a lot getting to this point and it's been pretty fun - and a lot more expensive than I though it would be (heh). The water is a little cloudy right now because it's still settling from moving some bits around. The substrate is black EcoComplete. The tree is a 12" bonsai driftwood covered in moss balls and christmas moss. The plants are a mix of hairgrass and rotala. Floating around in there is about $60 worth of Dwarf Baby Tears that I completely failed at planting correctly (they just fell apart and/or didn't stick), but you live and learn.

No CO2 yet, just seeing how it goes with Flourish alone but I think I'm going to end up adding it sooner than later. I'm really hoping the moss on the trees grows in so as to look more like leaves and less like a cat with mange, but I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out. Now I just hope at least some of it survives! I'm letting it cycle for another week or so and then I'll add some community fish.

Cheers!

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hoppycalif

Welcome to APC! It looks like you have a nice start on what should become a very nice looking aquarium.
What lighting do you have? The light intensity is the most critical parameter in deciding about fertilizing or using CO2. The more light, the faster the plants try to grow, so the more nutrients and CO2 they need.

Seventh

Thanks! I feel like it's a good start, I just hope it isn't a tank full of brown dead plants in two weeks... I'm using the Fluval Aquasky that came w/the Flex kit:

https://fluvalaquatics.com/ca/aquasky/

It has a "plant boost" preset that runs everything as bright as can be for most of the day. It's not in front of me, but it's something like 10 hours of bright light with 3 hours of sunrise/sunset on either side of it and then 8 hours of nighttime.

Comically, the last time I had a fish tank was ~20 years ago and it was a 55 gallon. I thought my canister filter was state-of-the-art, and now I have this thing. Telling my wife that I need to update the firmware on my fish tank via bluetooth will always sound ridiculous to me. What a time to be alive.

samll

that's a pretty good looking project for one who just started
looks harmonic

ukamikazu

If I might make a lighting suggestion, Seventh.



This, with the siesta, has kept some arguably finicky plants going great for me with virtually no algae.

Full Disclosure: I'm doing a Walstad in my Flexes (Flexi? Flexa?)
Also, I have heard from others I respect & trust like Bentley Pascoe, but found little published scientific evidence for, that turning down the blue discourages algae and turning up the green helps smaller plants in the understory get a bit more light.