[jiayaw]

As some of you might recall, I had a 75 gal planted that used to house my rams and angels. Fast forward a few years, and because of changes in personal life with a new job and etc, the tank was neglected. So I recently took 2 weeks off from work as a vacation and finally have time to completely revamp my tank. All inhabitants of the tank were actually given to relative as I didn't have time before to take care of them. So now I have the luxury to do a full revamp of thank without needing to worry about the fishes.

As a refresher, this is what the tank looked like before it turned into a big mess

Now I am starting fresh, with a new piece of driftwood that I bought from April's a few years back but havent had chance to use. keeping one smaller piece of driftwood on the right side as a dividing line between the foreground plants and background.
I am still using corallife 4xT5HO lighting setup, but currently just running two bulbs as the tank is still settling, and I don't want to brew green pea soup. Also still using CO2 injection with a pressured system with an atomizer.

Plants I bought
- two pots of Aquaflora 1 -2 - Grow Staurogyne Repens for fore ground
- a pot of dwarf hairgrass as midground blocking the sharp cut of the driftwood that is showing
- 1 pot Bacopa Australis as background
- 1 pot Hygrophila Siamensis as background
- Echinodorus "rose" (one pot but in there, there was actually two plants) as center piece, hopefully will have some nice immersed red leaves growing once the plant settles in

Temp set to 82 degrees F as I will eventually want to add 4 adult discus as this will be a planted discus community tank eventually

Dosing regime - EI dosing

This won't be my final layout but basically just a general skeleton. Planning to add more mid ground plants to have some sense of layering (hopefully some red plants to add to the coloring)

Day 1

Day 4 - Most of the plants starting to perk up, but some S. Repens started melting to the stem (I assume those were weaker ones from the pots that won't make it) but those that are doing well seem to have some growth already!

Hopefully the tank will come out as nicely as I plan it to be. I will be adding a couple more plants, and do some trimming/replanting once these plants settle in

 

[AquaAddict]

Great start to a beautiful tank and looking forward to more pics.

AquaAddict

 

[jiayaw]

Day 6 - Aug 24, 2015
Unbunched Bacopa Australis on left side and replanted them to encourage growth and improve health between each stems. Trimmed top nodes of Hygrophia on the left, rearranged S. Repens, and tri out browning bits (lots of new growth in less than a week so its nice).
Also added about 15 new stems of Stargrass and 4 stems of ludwigia repens that I got from a forum member.

Plants starting to fill in and grow, have three more plants on order that I would like to add to this tank and then I should be done in terms of plants, then it will be just trimming and waiting for everything to be the way I want it to be before I start adding fish to the tank.

 

[jiayaw]

Day 7
The Stargrass and Luwigia Repens started perking up, but still looking a little sad at the moment, but all the other plants I planted last week are doing really well. Especially the Echinodorus "rose". Over night it actually opened up it's first submersed leaf... looking forward to more!

Staurogyne Repens - aside from an old few which melted, most of them are starting to root and shooting out side runners

the Bacopa and Hygro are also doing great

 

[jiayaw]

and here are pics of the star grass and the luwigia which are bouncing up since the initial planting

 

[jiayaw]

Day 13th Since the last update, I have added 2 blue rams and today while picking up Echinodorus vesuvius, Alternanthera reineckii 'Mini' and ludwigia palustris from Aquariums west, I saw some nice silver angels for $5 each so I thought what the heck, I will keep them until I am ready to put in some discus in that tank. So i bought the 4 silver angels and they are gorgeous. the Bacopa Australis have been melting, not sure why but I've adjust the powerhead so that there's more flow to them and I've trimmed them to the healthy stems and moved them aside so that I could plant the Echinodorus Vesuvius in the back along with the Ludwigia Plaustris. The Alternanthera Reineckii "mini" are showcased in the midground on the right side.

Can't wait for everything to start filling in
The rams are looking happy

 

[jiayaw]

The Alternanthera reineckii 'Mini' along with some Echinodorus vesuvius plantlet (the mother plant is on the other side of the tank) with some Ludwigia Repens and Hygrophila Siamensis in the background

Here are the four angels

So far all the plants except for the Bacopa Australis have been doing really well, there have been some melting with the Staurogyne Repens, but most of it are flourishing and with the melting stems, I see new grown stems and leaves coming out of parts of the stems under the substrate so looks like it is establishing itself nicely. I have a feeling the Bacopa Australis might have started to melt cuz of how I used excel initially in case there was going to be an algae outbreak. Hopefully things with the bacopa will improve and hope everything will fillin nicely.

 

[jiayaw]

The inhabitants are really loving it! Thinking of adding some rummy nose tetra and ottos next!

 

[Xenon]

Like your Angels!
What happened to your UV Sterilizer from Day 1?

 

[jiayaw]

UV sterilizer was there a few days just in case there was going to be green water as I dug up everything as I did all the planting!

 

[jiayaw]

Since adding the plants on Monday, tank started running on 4 bulbs, 2 of which are on for 10 hours with a break in between and another two on for 4 hours while the other two is on. The star grass and luwigia are both pearling by end of each night

 

[jiayaw]

picture of tank taken yesterday, day 19

I might have to just get rid of the bacopa eventually as I finally found out what caused the dying of the leaves ... the rams wouldn't leave it alone and kept on chewing on the soft leaves!
Secondly, my angels wouldn't leave my staurogyne repens alone so I have a few stems where the leaves were all bitten on ... hopefully the staurogyne will still grow and flourish... ive had success with Staurogyne and angels before.

I've also went ahead and unbunched the alternanthera reineckii mini into single stems and replanted them now that they grew to a larger size so they wouldn't be choking themselves. As soon as I did that, they are now looking better than ever

I also did the same for the staurogyne repens and I find that it helps them grow better if their root system is not as dense. The hard part is preventing the angels from pulling the plant out when they want to nip at the plants

 

[jiayaw]

Day 20
starting last night one of the 4 angels (the smalllest of the 4) started hiding in a corner of the tank for most of the day. It will still come out for food and chase fish away when they enter its "area" but it wouldn't swim around with the others anymore. Maybe the other three were bullying it. It still looks healthy, hopefully everything will be alright,

Also added some fish today from Canadian Aquatics, now the tank is pretty much fully stocked
I've added 24 farm-raised rummy nose tetra (sadly 1 died not long after I was done the dripping and putting it into tank, and another one is looking a bit stressed right now but rest of them looking fine), 10 ottos, 1 BNP, and 3 wild rams.

The wild rams are not as colourful as some of the tank bred ones at the current size, but I am sure once they are acclimatized in my tank and mature, they will look great (managed to get a picture of the larger one of the three, the two other smaller ones look a little rough but so far so good in terms of their activities in the tank)

Here are some pics I took today after I dripped the fish

 

[bigfry]

Nice going! Can't wait to see the plants fill in more.

 

[jiayaw]

feeding frenzy. 2 casualties with the RNT but everything else doing fine

 

[inuudo]

You take amazing photos! I especially like the one of the rummynoses.

 

[jiayaw]

Thanks! I try my best to do my fish and my tank justice haha. I am almost done soaking the piece of driftwood for the Fluval Ebi. Just waiting for the CO2 system I ordered for it to arrive then I will be setting that up in my bedroom!

 

[jiayaw]

Day 22! It's been full 3 weeks since I revamped the tank and happy to say that the tank should be stabilized now, no more casualties with the rummy nose tetra.

out of three wild rams I got, the two smaller ones are females and still looking a little scrawny... I will take pics of them when they fatten up. I however got some really nice pics of the male who is dominating the tank now (the two other wild plus the two domestic bred ones are all females)

 

[jiayaw]

Day 26

One of the 4 angels seems to be always hiding because it is constantly being bullied by 2 of the other angels. Debating on whether I should add a couple more angels just to even out the aggression. Aside from that I did some rearrangement with the plants in the tank after I took some trimmings out to put into my nano tank.

After the water change, I saw this guy lurking out, and I quickly snapped a pic of him with my cellphone. By time I got my real camera, it went under the piece of driftwood again

 

[jiayaw]

Day 33 (excuse me for feeding of the zuchinni) but we can see the plants are all filling in nicely. The Ludwigia Palustris are liking their new location much better in the tank!