So excited, started planting my Ebi!

[Sundancex]

Yesterday I went out and got some driftwood. I was originally planning on using rock to do my aquascape but my LFS didn't have any rock I liked but had some beautiful driftwood. So it was either the driftwood or drive an hour to get to a ginormous fish/pet store (it's the size of Walmart) to get rocks there. Needless to say I now have three gorgous pieces of driftwood arranged in a stump-like set up in my tank. I planted a dwarf lily and some other easy going, low light plants last night and now I'm waiting for the water to clear. I need to plant some dwarf hairgrass (it's on a mat that needs to be weighted down and I don't have weights yet), and some other plants I will butcher the names of.

Castiel is chilling in a 5 gal heated, unfiltered acrylic hex until I finish planting and setting up the Ebi. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before I can move him into his new 8 gal tank. Spoiled fishy.

When I first decided I wanted to do a planted tank I had a very sparse set up in mind with rocks w/ moss being my only aquascape. Now I've switched all the way to a heavily planted, driftwood set-up. Oh well. Next tank will be rock...whenever I have the money to get one. I want a 2 gal spec next to sit on my nightstand.

[Sundancex]

Oops, just saw there is now a planted tank sub forum. Mods, if you wouldn't mind moving this thread, that would be great!

[MyRainbowBettaFish]

sounds like a great tank and great plan! Can you post pics?

[Sundancex]

It's not currently in a state acceptable for public viewing.

Water is cloudy, plants don't look that great...I'm worried they're going to all die. If they are still looking ok in a few days though I will definitely post some pics.

[Oldfishlady]

I would make some water only changes and get the water clear for better light penetration to the plants.

What kind of lights, kelvin, watts, age of bulbs and photoperiod.
Type of substrate and how deep.

How many and what specie of live plants and how planted.

[Sundancex]

I have 2 Fluval 13 watt lights over my Ebi, which is ~8 gallons. I'm honestly not sure of the Kelvin, I'm assuming 6500k as the light is made for plant growth. I planted yesterday afternoon into the night, and then finished up mid morning along with an approximate 50% water change (which cleared things up a lot). I think visibility went from ~50% to 80%. I'm planning on doing another 50% change tomorrow.

As for photoperiod, since I just planted yesterday, I don't really have a schedule yet. I had some clippings of plants that arrived before the tank was ready to plant, I put them in a clear glass bowl filled with water in my sun room, so the plants got sun all day.

I have the plants in Fluval Shrimp Stratum, probably 1 1/2 inch depth at its shallowest, 2 1/2 inch at the deepest.

As for plants, geez, let me think. I know I have purple and green cabomba, arachnis, dwarf lily bulb, little bits of duckweed, water sprite, cryptocoryne wendtii 'red', cryptocoryne parva, cryptocoryne retrospiralis, and a few little bits of microsword. I think I have one stem of something I don't recognize as well. .

The Cabomba looks decent, arachnis is iffy, dwarf lily's leaves are curled and look in pretty bad shape, duckweed is growing like crazy already, water sprite doesn't look very good...has some browning/clear areas, the wendtii looks decent, and the retrospiralis may or may not be doing well. It looks kind of brownish but it also looks like it does in most of the pictures I've found. The parva looks the best out of everything I think. Very nice and green.

I dosed with Florish and Excel a few hours ago. When I watch closely I see a bubble or two rise from the plants and go to the surface, I believe it is called pearling and that is a good sign?

It didn't help that the styrofoam bg on my Ebi popped up out of the water last night and disrupted a lot of my plants so I had to re-plant them.

[Sundancex]

Oh, the lights are brand new, and everything except the duckweed is planted in substrate. Duckweed is floating...obviously lol.

[kfryman]

The plants will adjust soon, since tanks can differ a lot in terms of lights and nutrients. I have heard of the back coming off, so a lot of people don't even bother putting it on.

Watch out for dosing Flourish so soon, there is probably nutrients leaching out of the stratum already. Make sure to keep nutrients lower while the tank is still new and plants aren't actively growing.

[Sundancex]

Well, I really don't think my plants are dong well. Some of them have white fuzzy stuff on them. Others are browning.

[MSG]

Do you have an before & after pictures? I'm about to start the plant thing as well.

Taking a picture of the tank is easy, since plants don't move.


Did you ever find out the Kelvin rating for your lights? How long are you leaving them on?

What are you water test results?


Good luck.