40L Guppie/Female Betta tank

Slightly better image

 

Anubias are looking lovely and green. Wish mine looked so good!

 

LOL Those pieces have been in that tank for about a year now. Had some BBA - peroxide treatment directly on the leaves treated that. And then swopped over to Tropica ferts and no more GSA or BBA in this tank.

 

What were you using for ferts and how do the costs compare?

 

Used Bloom and Grow and used Seachem's Flourish.

They are all similarly priced but I have been using the Tropica now for 2 months almost and its really great since I have no more algae.

I have to admit I don't follow the dosing schedules either. I dose maybe once a week - three pumps from the Tropica bottle in this tank. I also havent added excel nor do I use CO2 of any kind. I decided to keep the tanks low tech as much as possible.

Water changes on this tank is now once a month 50%. Currently 7 white clouds and 1 male siamese fighter in the tank and they are all thriving. Also my other trick is to only feed every second day - I keep my dry foods in an old salt grinder (robertsons salt one) I use a mix of flakes and granules and feed just enough to keep them all fit. The nice thing is in this tank I have only had some BBA and GSA, no sickness in 8 months.

 

Do you think the lack of algae is the ferts or something else thats changed in your tank?

 

It is the ferts, since I have played with all of the ranges - from the cheap stuff till the tropica. The change in my algae has appeared since I changed over to the tropica.

I also use it in my grow out tank - which was covered in hair algae. I treated my grow out tank with algaeway and then started using the tropica in there as well and no more algae.

I don't know if it is the composition of their product or the amount that I am using, but it works like a charm for me.

 

Interesting. Thanks. I've never tried anything other than Seachem so always intersting to see how others do it and this is clearly working well for you. Congrats again.

 

Thanks, I try to use various products so that I can see what works best for me.

One day I will do a tank with CO2 but when I hear of all the drama's some people have with CO2 I kinda tell myself is it really worth it to have the plants grow so fast that you can't keep up with the maintenance. It is why I like my low tech low maintenance tanks.

 

minor update, I am redoing the tank in the next 4 weeks, then I will upload new pics, I am currently soaking a stunning piece of spiderwood.

 

Ok so today was the rescape day. What a job it has been, but I am very happy with the result. It went from one look to a completely new look and I have to admit I cant wait for it to grow in. Basically the tank now only has a combination of:
Microsorum pteropus - narrow leaf
Anubias barteri var Nana Petite
Anubias barteri var gold
Cryptocoryne parva petite
Cryptocoryne pettchi

So here a a before shot:

(I agree it looked horrible )

So the rescape started when I found the perfect piece of wood at my LFS:

Spiderwood - It doesnt look like much now but wait till the end. I soaked this piece for 2 weeks in a salt swimming pool to get rid of some of the tannins and to get it to sink. After that it lived in the tub with fresh water daily for another week. (The news paper under the wood was folded in the exact dimensions of the bottom of my tank, I had another piece folded to check the height of my tank against the wood.)

Next up - I removed all the plants and old wood from the old scape, as well as the plants I got from my LFS - all the new plants are courtesy of @Sean J and its the Anubias range - I havent seen more stunning plants in ages:

 

Next up with some help I started tying the pieces to the wood - using just plain brown cotton thread and a needle to thread the cotton through the leaves and roots.

 

This was then placed in the tank - we immediately noticed that the anubias on the end of the thick stump was pressing on the glass so redid that - we managed to separate that piece into two and tied them on two different spots on the wood.

Then I placed the wood and separated the cryptocorynes from the tubs:


And finally:







Now for the wait - slow growth till the plants have settled.

 

Looking much better!

Just a suggestion: Where the wood has been cut, maybe tie some moss or add some Java fern PETITE to the area to hide the cuts?

 

Looking good I like how you've dressed up the wood.

 

The ones around the side with my needle leaf on it (upper right hand side) will grow around that - It will take a little time but I dont want to clutter it to much - you have to see how long the leaves become, if they dont cover it nicely I have some mosses that I will use to hide those edges. I just first want to see what the ferns do. If they do what they did in my 30L I wont have to worry about it, the ferns went boss and is now covering 90% of the wood in 4 months. . . . (the one thing ferns love to do to me whilst I tie them - MOVE and shift ) But I rather use cotton wool because the superglue method doesnt seem to always work especially when my wood is as wet as this piece was.)

 

Looks much better. Will be exciting to watch it grow in!