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Friday, 10:27 pm in Life

So, last time on Fishtank Saga you should all hopefully remember that we got our hardscaping done.  About three days after putting in the original tank, I decided it was going to be too much of a pain to light it adequately, so ripped it all apart, packed it up and replaced it with an AquaOne moulded-glass 34L tank (alas the only lights available for said tanks are 11W compact fluorescents, but it’s better than nothing).  it’s taller and thinner than the previous tank, plus I bought some new black gravel (mmm, black).  The end result looked something like this:

Pretty similar, eh?  Those of you who are observant will notice the little blue baggie thing in the top left hand corner.  That’s my ammonia sack.

Step 6: The Nitrogen Cycle

After looking all around the shops and eventually coming to the conclusion that you simply can’t buy clear ammonia here, I got thinking of other ways of possibly kick-starting the nitrogen cycle in my tank.  In the end, I decided to try food-based cycling.  Food cycling is not the best; the decaying food provides ammonia all right, but it also releases other pollutants into the water.  Solution?  Dump a box of cheap fish-flakes into a Wettex pouch; the food could decay in peace and the Wettex would stop the large food particles from getting into the gravel.  Genius!  I left the pouch in for a couple of hours (the Wettex started to decay and leave long ‘strings’ in the tank, necessitating its removal), cranked the temperature up to 34°C and let it sit in the dark for a few days while I went to Gladstone.  Meticulous monitoring did indeed show a quick rise in ammonia levels, which plateaued after about 4 days into 4ppm.  Alas, no nitrates appeared.  Two days later I went out and bought some Cycle.  I’ve heard very mixed things about Cycle; it’s supposedly ‘bacteria in a bottle’ for kick-starting nitrogen cycles, but common consensus seems to be that it may as well be water for all the good it does.  I decided to try it out anyway, and am please to report it has had no noticeable effect whatsoever.  Yay.

Oh well, I suppose you can’t expect miracles in a week.  Still, it would nave been nice to see some nitrite.

Step 7: Planting

Exactly one week after installing the new tank, I went back to Jem Aquatics and bought myself some plants.  Four types of plants, to be exact.  When I went into the store I had a list.  The plants I bought had to be hardy, fast growing and tolerant of low light conditions.  I wanted two types of tall plants – one ‘fluffy’, one leafy – some ground cover and something mid-sized.  After a bit of hemming and hawing, I eventually walked out with:

• 2 clumps of what I think is tropical hornwort but may be fanwort okay I’m now fairly sure it’s ambulia.
• 1 clump of water wisteria
• 3 rosettes of a kind of grass stuff
• 2 runners of Java lace fern

I’ve since learnt that if the stuff I think is hornwort really is hornwort then it probably won’t root.  Bum.  And the grassy stuff is a bit higher-maintenance than I would have liked, so hopefully it won’t die because it looks pretty.

Anyway, I bought the plants home and spread them out in a (specially bought) baking dish I filled with tank water.  I also emptied about half of the overall tank water into a bucket.

It didn’t look like much.  Well, where Lesson #1 was “You Always Need More Gravel Than You Think”, Lesson #2 is apparently “You Always Need Less Plants”.  I washed all the plants gently in the dish, shaking out Jem’s gravel and cleaning off the algae.  I un-clumped the ambulia and the wisteria, and cut the ends down and stripped the leaves from the bottom two sprouty joint things.  I trimmed the root length on the grass.

I then proceeded to learn that planting a tank is fucking hard.  Or, rather, it’s hard to do it one-handed in a small tank, since by the time you’ve dug your hole the plants have floated away.  The book I had on planting aquariums said to separate all stem plants and stick each stem in a different hole, though in the end I didn’t quite manage that (I started off with good intentions, but after a few re-plantings I conceded that it was easier to plant in clumps).  I smashed way too many stems for my liking, and I really hope I didn’t damage them too much.  The rooted plants were a bit easier, but I was still more ham-fisted than I would have liked.

Anyway, when all was said and done I finished off with a dose of Flourish.

I’m already thinking about pulling out the grass on the left and replacing it with a splat of Java moss growing up the side of the driftwood and down onto the tank floor.  Overall, though, I’m actually really happy with how it turned out.  In the end I only used one of the ambulia clumps, and I probably could have done with one less grass.  Hopefully the wisteria should fluff up a bit in the back corner.  I don’t expect much growth out of either the fern or the grasses, but I’m okay with that (and hence the desire to supplement with Java moss).

Oh, and check out what I found when I was scrutinising the ambulia:

It’s really tiny and the camera doesn’t pick it up well, but it’s a teensy tiny baby snail!  Oh well, little snail, you made it into the tank.  Hopefully there should be some algae for you soon and don’t have ten thousand babies.

Anyway, the plan now it to let this whole mess sit for about a month, monitor the plant growth and monitor the nitrogen cycle.  When that’s kicked in and the plants are getting settled, it’s back to Jem once more to grab some fishies; a male Siamese fighter, of course, and I’m thinking three tiny otos to clean the glass.

Wish me luck.

• Tags » fishkeeping, planted tanks 101, tutorials
• Comments By » Lisa, Dan