Need suggestions for my first planted tank

[aussieman57]

The Hornwort most likely did not prefer your water. With my water it grows so fast it over takes the tanks. I think with live plants it can be hit or miss until you find plant species that prefer your type water. How about attaching some anubias species to some driftwood or rock. They look nice are slower growing and very undemanding as far as plants go.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Thanks for the suggestion.
The hornwort is doing just fine in the main tank, I don't think it has a problem with my water. Maybe it was too much light, because that plant grower has a very intense LED.
Anubias I'll give a try if I can find some cheap and pathogen free. It does look pretty good.

 

[Kelly_Aquatics]

I got giant bags of hornwart for cheap at the pond section of garden centres. They shed the needles like crazy and it clogs up your filter. I’ll try to find pics of my tank with it

 

[aussieman57]

I got giant bags of hornwart for cheap at the pond section of garden centres. They shed the needles like crazy and it clogs up your filter. I’ll try to find pics of my tank with it

Noticed same issue with it clogging filters even with sponge pre-filters. I have been gradually replacing it with Pennywort & Moneywort to see how that does. Did not want to pull it all at once because it is a nitrate eating hog. Too bad it clogs filters.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

I got giant bags of hornwart for cheap at the pond section of garden centres. They shed the needles like crazy and it clogs up your filter. I’ll try to find pics of my tank with it

Thanks for the tip Kelly. Would love to see pictures!

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Some pleasant and surprising updates.

Put a new pothos in on Tuesday, half-dead as a potted houseplant and with no roots. This is a photo from today of how fast it is rooting.

Also some updates to the hornwort.
It seems to have been dying/melting as of late, with a lot of soft, lightly colored stems, needle-less stems, and shedding a lot of dead needles whenever I cleaned the tank. Why this was so seemed a mystery to me, until I found that an initially small clump of algae within the hornwort had really got going and smothered the mass of hornwort, making for a giant ball of algae that was probably outcompeting the hornwort for nutrients.

It's way too ugly to put a picture of, lol. But it seems to do the trick - even with the additional bioload of the 12 added dwarf chain loaches, and the rotting, dying hornwort, NO3 remains undetectable with the API test kit. I found the plant NO3 reduction thread by esoxlucius to be a good reference point about the algae keeping the NO3 down, especially since my algae looks exactly the same as his: https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/plants-zero-nitrates.746999/#post-8419435v

Additionally, to my surprise the pet store has no Java moss and I have been unable to find it in my local classifieds, so it seems I can't yet add any to this tank like I talked about in some other threads. But one thing the pet store does have is some gorgeous Java fern on wood, which is the perfect way to make the most of some of the built-in lid lights burning out (due to its propensity to do well in low light).
Just got to save for it.

And finally, some photos of the new dwarf chain loaches. Having mentioning them I can't not share these photos.
I will say that the green neon and cardinal tetras are acting as excellent dither fish for them. Only saw one go in a hiding place once, and that's because it was scared by my cleaning the tank.

 

[esoxlucius]

especially since my algae looks exactly the same as his:

Just a little add on for you regarding my hex tank. As this tank matured/developed/balanced out over the past few weeks there has been a marked change in the pecking order of the greenery.

At first it was the algae and java moss that was prominent, but as the salvinia took over the surface and started blocking out more and more light then the java moss started suffering, and the algae has all but gone now!

So I took out the java moss entirely and allowed the salvinia to completely outcompete the algae for light/nutrient. Today the surface salvinia is king, and of course I still have my small terrestrial spider plant too, but no java moss and hardly any algae to speak of. It has reached a good balance now.

And of course, during all of this juggling about with the greenery vying for supremacy, my nitrate has been 0ppm throughout.

I don't do water changes as such on this tank now, just evaporation top ups. The top ups I'm doing, it would seem, are ample as regards to the addition of essential trace minerals needed from the fresh water.

Fish are doing great, tank looks great, it's got a healthy balance to it at the moment, but of course I'm constantly monitoring it.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Thanks for the update. I wonder how my algae will do if I add no salvinia, since there will be no salvinia to outcompete it.
In any case, though, that's useful information in case I do decide on any salvinia.

By the way, doing water replacements is still recommended. While the plants and topping up may remove NO3 and replenish trace minerals, they don't do anything for growth inhibiting hormones, pheromones, and other undesirable organic compounds.

 

[Deadeye]

Adding seachem excel did a lot to combat algae growth - the extra co2 is good for plants but not so much algae. Between that and added mollies most of my algae disappeared. Once I stopped dosing excel the algae started coming back.

 

[jjohnwm]

A really simple tip for keeping algae under control, which I originally found here on MFK (wish I could remember who to thank!) is to split up your intended photoperiod each day into two shorter sessions as opposed to one longer one. Same total length of illumination, just broken up into two shorter periods.

Not sure why, but apparently algae doesn't adapt well to this schedule, whereas vascular plants have no problem with it. It works so well for me that I actually started to lose so much hair algae that I had to revert back to the old schedule in a couple of tanks containing fish that eat the stuff, for fear of it disappearing altogether.

Hair algae is the stuff with which both esoxlucius and M MultipleTankSyndrome were having issues. Not many fish eat it, but those that do...eat a lot of it! And, frankly, I like the look of it when a shortish carpet of it grows along the top of driftwood. If it starts to get too long and stringy, I just yank it out by the handful (revelling in the knowledge that I am literally pulling out handfuls of nitrates!) and feed it to the tanks that can use it. Reduce, reuse, recycle!

It's also great in my turtle's tank. His constant climbing around and over the algae-covered wood keeps the stuff densely packed and short, creating a very attractive, natural look. And when I throw in a large handful of snails, as I do regularly, it gives them somewhere to hide while the turtle goes a-hunting. I think it provides enrichment for him; I know it does for me.