My 130g test tank...

Hey all,

Just snapped a pic of a 130g tank I have. Basically I went to my local store and bought a few different species of plants to test out. The tank has C02 with 3wpg of lighting. I run 10 hrs of light and CO2 per day and dose EI for my size tank using all dry ferts.

Over the past few weeks i've had to do some relocating because some plants I didnt expect to grow so tall were in the front etc. I also had some plants die on me while others were growing very well. Now I know which plants grow nice in my tank/water and which ones don't. I still have a few more plants I'd like to try but soon I plan to rescape the entire tank. The first scape I did looked great for a week, then some plants died out and other grew like weeds.

You'll notice that white pvc pipe in the background, thats my CO2 spray bar. I added that about 2 months ago and have seen better growth than the single return like I had before. Right now I'm looking to replace the spray bar with something that will function the same way but blend into the background a little better.



Over all I'm happy with the growth (with no visible algae), but the tank has no design to it. I'm thinking about some drift wood in my next design also.

 

Yestreday I extended the spray bar down the bottom and angled the ports up a little. I also filled the tank about 1/2" lower than I normally do, this way the filter return is causing some good surface movement. I kicked up the CO2 a notch also. I'm going to give everything a week and see how it goes. I'll snap another picture for comparison this weekend.

Thanks for the input!

 

Update...

Couldn't be happier, everything is growing with ease. I had to relocate all of the Sagittaria to the back now, the ones in the first picture grew 3/4 of the way to the top in a week. My Rotalla Indica that you couldn't see in the first picture is booming now. Also my Red & Green Tiger Lotus Lilly Pads are producing a new leaf every 2 days. Algae is still almost non-existent

6/14/2007


6/24/2007 : 10 days later


Tank is 130g running 2.3 watts per gallon of light, dosing EI and I still control the CO2 manually. I run 10 hours of lights and 10 hours of CO2.

I'll snap another pic in a week.

 

Just another update... I took a picture from today to show a comparison of the growth I'm getting in 7 days. The top picture is from last Sunday the bottom is from tonight:





I moved my anuba from the right to the left and added some apontagena maya (sp?) right next to it on the left side. The rotalla is growing like a weed now. I also clipped 3 huge green & 2 red tiger lotus out tonight. I cannot get over how fast they grow. From the time I see a new leaf protruding from the soil, its about 12 hours and its 1/2 way to the surface and opens to the size of my hand. By about 24 hours its near the surface and in 48 hours its at the surface about 8" in diameter and another one is growing out of the soil. That is some really cool cell replication.

I was scuba diving all day and I'm beat, I just did my routine EI maintenance and snapped the new pic. I will get some close ups tomorrow to show some nice pearling.

Thx.

 

Shot a video...

My wife took the camera tonite so I shot a little video with my cell phone. I think it came out ok. Anyway the quality is poor so it doesn't do the tank justice but you can get an idea of the shape of things. The video starts with my red tiger lotus pearling away, enjoy...

Fly By Video (24mb) Quicktime

Sorry for the size, its raw unedited video off my phone.