Gramazing's 44 gallon community tank

[Gramazing]

I probably should have started this a few months ago because I have made some changes to my tank since starting it in June 2009. At first I wasn't going to have real plants, but I have fiddled with them for a while half-heartedly and after realizing that my lighting was not enough, and correcting that, I have decided to go the whole hog.

So here are a couple of pics of my tank before the work I did today:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2SUs45ZAfI/AAAAAAAAAW0/S7-DzwW6MG8/s800/IMG_0269.JPG

I had a bit of hornwart floating around. The trouble was the current from my HOB would send the strands spiraling around and around the tank. When I had a bigger clump of it the larger mass would affect the water movement and it would stay put at the left side of the tank (HOB on the right as you can see) but most of it died off before I changed the lighting. To keep it away from the filter I spanned the tank across the middle with a thin tube of acrylic attached with suction cups. The hornwart would get hung on that and stay put.


http://lh4.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2SSbJ2bf1I/AAAAAAAAAWk/tZuicJ4ktV8/s800/IMG_0268.JPG

Here you see the blue suction cup directly behind the acrylic tube. There is a big clump of java moss and a few strands of hornwart wrapped around the acrylic tube. I was just keeping the java moss there for a week before making better use of it.

[Gramazing]

So today I took out my driftwood, my lava rock cave and a few bits of slate and I spread out my java moss and tied it to all these things.

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2Sbl8ncJ_I/AAAAAAAAAX8/GW_6OzXyOR8/s400/IMG_0295.JPGA small piece of slate.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2SdbwG9QGI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/ISD-3LHyB7o/s400/IMG_0286.JPG A close up of my driftwood (it's about 60cm long).

[Gramazing]

And here's my lava rock cave. I tied some java moss around the lower rocks, expecting that if it grows it will grow up. I'm trying to cover some of that aquarium glue. There were more rocks on the thing when I made it but some of them have fallen off, exposing the glue.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2SoVB3MaDI/AAAAAAAAAYs/c1FkzvjvN5k/s400/IMG_0300.JPG

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2SoVonju_I/AAAAAAAAAYw/hHFG8JBRzp8/s400/IMG_0301.JPG

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2SoWb5L9-I/AAAAAAAAAY0/hbMzXoNTDpQ/s400/IMG_0302.JPG The hornwart is obscuring the pic a bit.

[Gramazing]

Here's a longer shot of the driftwood piece:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2SoW9cbJ0I/AAAAAAAAAY4/OgPG_DAucQU/s800/IMG_0297.JPG

That's a bit of anarchis (?) tucked into the right end of the wood, where it's split. In the foreground is a bunch of micro sword, which I separated and planted in the sand.

[octoxpuss]

Nice plants. I like in the first set of pics how you can clearly see that the female guppy above the blue suction cup is pregnant along with some of the platies.

[Gramazing]

On the subject of the micro sword, here's a pic:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2SdbUJYQdI/AAAAAAAAAYM/u1lAuZFLcdU/s800/IMG_0288.JPG
and another:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S2SdbwG9QGI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/ISD-3LHyB7o/s800/IMG_0286.JPG

I hope I have planted that stuff ok. I have tried not to bury the rhizome but sometimes it's hard and I only have sand. For some of the strands I have put a small bit of slate over part of the rhizome to hold it down. Hopefully that will be enough for it to stay put long enough for it to take root.

They are plastic plants in the background. I hope to replace those with some Amazon Sword in the next couple of weeks.

[Gramazing]

It's been nearly 2 weeks since those last photos.

The lighting has really set off the algae in my tank. It was obviously the wrong kind before. I scrubbed the the inside front of the tank today and will give it a good scrub along the back tomorrow when I do my water change. There's lots on the driftwood too.

The hornwart is really growing and my java moss has sent out new strands on off the driftwood, but doesn't seem to be doing much anywhere else.

I have a lot of debris as well. I put a cover with some filter wool inside over the the inlet to the filter to pre-filter it a bit and I'm surprised at how much it has intercepted.

I have a Whisper HOB with 2 large cartridges and am considering getting a canister filter as I think the Whisper really isn't up to it, although I have to say my parameters are good. It shoots the water out across the tank from front to back, and I am concerned the water is hitting the wall, going down and back into the filter, and the other end isn't getting enough filtration.

I've opened both my filter cartridges and taken out the carbon, based on what people have been saying here. One of them has filter wool and the other has zeolite. Whisper cartridges aren't really designed to be stuffed with filter wool though :poke:

[Cristoff]

Looking Great! I can't wait to see how it grows out for you. I'm toying with live plants as well, but can't seem to get myself started on them.

[Gramazing]

Here's some shots of the tank taken last weekend. The hornwart on my driftwood has started throwing out new shoots. I think it's going to look really good. I tied it mostly around the back of the wood so it will grow up and have a kind of "horizon" look.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S3n6jrZnakI/AAAAAAAAAb0/VzpEGtddZ2M/s800/IMG_0401.JPG

And here's the whole tank: the hornwart keeps drifting around.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S3n5M388wnI/AAAAAAAAAbk/d2iKjovgLNY/s800/IMG_0352.JPG

[cherokee_psh]

Looks really nice.

[troy]

Great looking tank.thumbs2:

[brianyu]

thumbs2: i like it , it so clean . i love platy , they are so fun to watch .

[Gramazing]

Here's what it looks like now. The java moss is coming along nicely, but I pulled out almost all of the micro sword. It wasn't going to grow as my light is not enough.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S4SU1_9yQ7I/AAAAAAAAAdM/KDDy-NsThAY/s800/IMG_0421.JPG

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S4SU2VPdaGI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/dSFXIK5bb2Y/s800/IMG_0422.JPG

This is close up of a crypt attached to a bit of lava rock with a rubber band. It doesn't seem to be doing much and it's been 3 and a half weeks since I put it in. I think there's a couple of new roots there but it's hard to tell and it's even harder in this picture.

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S4SU29Kgy8I/AAAAAAAAAdU/_3CQwU0PELI/s800/IMG_0425.JPG

[Cliff]

the tank looks good. i love all the plants

[Gramazing]

Thanks. The really successful one at the back is plastic (blush)

[Gramazing]

I have put some plants in my tank but nothing seems to be growing much, except for the java moss.

Here is a shot of a dwarf anubia nana that hitched a ride on my java moss when I bought it. I tied it to a piece of rock. It's been there for weeks and doesn't seem to have done a thing - the roots haven't grown and there's algae growing on it. Should I give up on it?

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S5Plw5oTsrI/AAAAAAAAAgs/KJ77e1NGVGE/s800/IMG_0490.JPG

[Gramazing]

That anubia has probably been in the tank for 2 months. The swords and crypt have been in there 6 weeks. They are starting to throw out some fine roots, see below:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S5PpmdEMlNI/AAAAAAAAAhI/-O5OW7B0gio/s800/IMG_0499.JPG

My crypt has grown some very fine roots:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S5Ppm49lR5I/AAAAAAAAAhM/YEa0SXWEY9c/s800/IMG_0502.JPG

Is this normal? I know they're slow growing plants but there's been no new leaves in 6 weeks.

[Gramazing]

Lastly, here's some marselia quadrofolia that I put in a week ago. It has done nothing either, but then it's only been a week. You can see it's looking a little brown in place and there's some algae around the edges:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S5Plwm-UW1I/AAAAAAAAAgo/46Nm6m5LJ9U/s800/IMG_0478.JPG

Here's another bit looking rather lonely:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_2ooWNceDkXI/S5Pm17lEDWI/AAAAAAAAAg4/BaujNGK2yBA/s800/IMG_0483.JPG

Does it look like it's dying? Or does it just take a while to acclimate?