Thanks Niko for the pics of my tanks and everyone for the gracious comments. I wish you had left out the pic with my backside showing. Anyway... Tank Info
Each of the tanks was started at a different time. The oldest tank, 29G, has been setup for about 7 years now, has flourite for the substrate, a RFUG, and a HOB. It houses Corys and Cherry Shrimp. The red cabomba in this tank is really red. I started this tank on Excel and a modified EI dosing scheme with water changes every other week about 6 weeks ago and trim the cabomba about twice a week. The pH hovers around 6.0 with no CO2 (possibly the RFUG has produced a very acidic substrate condition?).
The ADA aquasoil is in the 3 newer CO2 tanks, 40G, 20G and 15G (the oldest is a little over 2 months old, the newest, less than 1 week). Only the 40G has critters, Pygmy Corys, OTOS and Nerite snails. The other 2 are plant tanks only.
The 90 Gallon (setup now for about 18 months) has about 3/4" amazonia over an unknown substrate that came with the tank that was a combination of Flourite and something else. This is my community tank with about 100 Cherry shrimp, 12 Albino Corys, 11 Lemon Tetras and a few other different tetras. This is my lowest light tank with about 1.2 WPG of Compact Flourescent.
The other 6 tanks have, let's see, 2 tanks have Flourite, 2 tanks have Onyx, 2 tanks have Eco Complete and are all about 3 years old or less. They house mostly Cherry Shrimp but I also have Endlers with Cherrys in one tank and Yellow Shrimp in a tank by themselves. 2 of these tanks have plants only and will be closed down when I get my 40G breeder (I still have some aquasoil to use up).
Hoppycalif is right, I don't have any algae at the moment and I attribute it mostly to the low/medium light situation on the non CO2 tanks. In fact, I haven't had any in the newly setup CO2 tanks yet but I'm sure I will. Nature of the beast until I can get the EI setup correctly on those amped up tanks. I think each one of those is about 3 to 4WPG of CF. The newest CO2 tank, the 20G, has some standard T5 lights (not HO) on order to replace the 36" Odyssea 96watt CF light. Only the 90G and 40G CO2 tank will have CF lighting when I am done. A lot of CF generates too much heat.
Maintenance is 50% water changes on the 3 CO2 tanks weekly along with a lot of trimming, 50% water changes every other week on the 4 Excel tanks and only topping off for the other 3 tanks. I dose Macros and Micros according to EI on CO2 and Excel tanks. Sunday maintenance takes about 2.5 hours each week. The HOB filters require cleaning every couple of months. The prefilters about every 2-3 weeks each. I use a Python for water changes and Prime for dechlor. EI is dry.
Picture 1 shows, left to right, 10G 15w NO Flourescent, 20L 40w NO Fl., 20Tall 28w T5, 29G 60w T5, 15G Tall 55W CF.
Picture 2 shows 20L 96w CF, 40G Tall 192w CF, 10G with shop light about 10" above tank.
Picture 3 shows the 90G 110w CF, 30G 78w T5HO, 10G under 30G has about 25w of T5.
The NO Flourescents have 10 year old bulbs, CFs are 3 years old, T5s and T5HO about 1 year old. Some are low, some are medium and some are high light.
Thanks Niko. My pics don't ever turn out that well.