Rhonda Wilson

Setting up a Planted Aquarium (Supplement to The Planted Tank, August '08)

The 50-gallon aquarium in the September issue of “The Planted Tank” was set up on June 23, 2008. The first two photos are the tank and a close-up taken on the 27th and 28th. The close-up was taken on day four, while the shot of the entire tank was taken on day 5:





Notice how the tank has cleared up, and the Glossostigma has straightened out after a few days.

The fish I bought for the tank were a group of 10 Danio margaritatus. They started out shy, but as time went on, they came out more often, especially at feeding time:



I had been looking at these fish as they've come and gone at my local fish store, and when I got them, I wanted to make sure that they had a good start in their new home. They looked a bit skinny, so I fed them on a nice diet consisting of frozen brine shrimp, good flake, and live mosquito larva:



Other animals in the tank include several small species of snails that came in from the old gravel and plants, and a group of nerites I specifically purchased for the tank. Snowball shrimp that were breeding like crazy in other tanks were also moved here:



There is also a single bright orange lyretail sword. He was sitting all alone in a 10-gallon tank in the fish room and I thought that the new set-up needed a little color. I thought that the orange would be a nice complement to the orange from the tail of the Danio margaritatus:



After setting up the tank, I did a water change the next day, and performed another a couple days after that---then I stopped. By July 13, there was a nice bloom of green water in the tank. I did a 50-percent water change that cleared a lot of the green, but as you can tell by the before-and-after photos, not all of it was cleared:





I was also worried that the Glossostigma looked a bit yellow, and that I was getting a bit of hair algae in with some of my mosses. I trimmed the plants and had to replant the Limnophila aromatica. I did water changes for a few days, added fertilizers, got it all nice and clear again, then prompty went back to ignoring the tank until it started turning green again.

Here is a close-up of the tank on August 1st---after two weeks with no water changes, the water was getting green again:



I've gorwn it in another tank with CO2, but it just didn't want to do well in my new set-up, so I moved what was left to the aquarium that it seems to like to grow in. You may notice that the Anubias on the right has produced a bud. It seems to be liking this tank.

Another plant that seems to be doing very well is the Glossostigma. Glossostigma is an interesting plant. It either doesn't grow at all, or it grows like mad, taking over the entire tank. Below is a photo of some of the Glossostigma when the tank was first planted on June 23rd, and again after several trimmings, on August 1st: