New pic

deucebiggss

Guru Class Expert
Aug 31, 2009
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Here is my tank as of March 17th. My water is clearing and things for the most part have been going well. My German Rams are demolishing my HC, but they are awesome looking so I'll get over it. My plants are doing well and the tank is clearing. I ran into a bout with ich which sucked. I picked up some Rainbows at my regular stopping grounds and they had ich. Needless to say I was some pissed off. I treated the tank with Formalin 3 and bought a UV sterilizer and things have been A ok. This is my first planted tank and I have to say I am really enjoying it.
 

shoggoth43

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Jan 15, 2009
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As long as you keep up with it this should fill in nicely.

One way to help with the equipment is to use cardboard on the outside of the aquarium. It's easy to attach to the back and you can experiment well with various colors. One of the better ones I tried ways a brown with just vague green vertical streaks on it. It kind of looked like out of focus plants in the distance, simple to do and for some reason helped to distract from the stuff in the tank even though it was all still visible. I'm not sure you can do much with the green tubes, they almost seem to glow in that picture. Most of that can be hidden as things grow in though.

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S
 

deucebiggss

Guru Class Expert
Aug 31, 2009
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Thanks. The left green tube is going! My Cal Aqua glass intake pipe just came in so I will replace that this weekend. That should help a little bit. The one problem with the glass intakes is that they are not tall enough. They should go back to the drawing board and make some longer ones. The PH probe is going back into my CO2 reactor so that will be out of the tank if all goes well. I just received the Neptune ph controller this past weekend and the PH probe is wider than the Milwaukee probe so I had to bore out the fitting. That's why it is the tank right now. Not sure what to do with the heater I wish I would have done an inline system, but you live and learn.
 

dutchy

Plant Guru Team
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Jul 6, 2009
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Well, why not buy an external heater? You can also use an external pump as a powerhead. Eheim has some nice small external pumps. Using multiple dropcheckers is nice as a test, but you can take them out when you have your CO2 working well.

regards,
dutchy
 

shoggoth43

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There are also numerous threads around on multiple sites about how to take an existing heater and make a PVC contraption to turn it into an external unit.

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S
 

deucebiggss

Guru Class Expert
Aug 31, 2009
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Glass intake is installed and I put my probe back into the reactor. I think it looks better.

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deucebiggss

Guru Class Expert
Aug 31, 2009
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New pics as of 4/18/10. Will be doing some trimming next weekend. My next plan is to get the grass to grow the length of the tank.

Planted Tank 0418&#49.jpg