[agzuny]

Hi, im relatively new to planted tanks and this is my second time posting on this site, so im new here too. My question is if i plant all my plants together like a forest, such as the one in the current tank of the month. How would the light reach the bottom of the stems and would this forest like aquascape cause problems with decaying plant matter and such?

Thanks for any replies.

 

[dennis]

That depends on lots of factors. My tank, TOTM has very high light but with proper nutrients, as long as a little light filters down, ther shuod not be very much problem. The Lysomachia nummularia (green plant with round leaves in the right corner) will loose its lower leaves with out high ligh and good NO3 levels. The Rotala indica, when I pulled the mass out after the photos were taken, was in excellent health, even at the bottoms, the leaves were a bit smaller, but there were leves. I find that once a month or so, I do a very through cleaning, pruning and vacing job. Often adding water back to the tank can flush out alot of the OM that might accumulate, although having a bit of this is rather benificial. Harder plants like H. zosterfolia, Hottonina, Toninas adn Eriocalions9spelling?) will probably need lots more room around them to thrive while many of your Bacopas, Rotalas, Hygros, Mayacanad Ludwigias will be just fine in dense groupings, provided they get atlest adequate lighting, but more importantly, that hte fert levels and CO2 are adequate for the light levels. HTH

 

[agzuny]

Thanks for the advice!

Thanks for all the advice, my tank was planted very dense and I was worried about light reaching the bottom stems. I have included a pic of my tank which include rotala indica, baby tears, glosso, and ambulia. Disregard the moneywort in the pic, it has been moved elsewhere. Some of my tank stats are below but I dont have much readings because I lost my test strips after I tore down the tank. I am planning on removing all fish and adding neon tetras or some other small fish when tank matures again and plant growth begins. When should I start dosing on this tank? I only use Flourish but would like to use Flourish Excel as my CO2 has slowed production from cold temps (i think).

light: around 3 wpg on 20 gal (Coralife 65 watt 6700k)
co2: used to be 10ppm until winter came. Lol
using flourite red substrate
ammonia, nitrates, nitrite, ph, gh, etc I do not know right now b/c I lost my test strips. Lol

Thanks for all the advice from everybody, it has greatly helped me. Enjoy!