Added some more plants and on Saturday added six neon tetras.  Been keeping track of the ammonia and nitrite since and has not budged off 0ppm.  I think the cycling of the tank prior to adding fish did it's job.  I have posted a new video in my videos.  Take a look how the moss is growing on the driftwood.

Tom C

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Went to the LFS today and got some java moss and riccia moss.  Tied it to the branches of the driftwood tree with the java moss on the bottom and the riccia on top.  Will post again after the moss starts to grow.…

Tank has   been set up since 1-13.  It is going through a natural cycle.  No fish just some plants and drift wood.  On the 16th it looks like the ammonia spiked at 4ppm then started dropping. On the 18th the nitrite got to 5ppm and stayed there through the 23rd.  Now today the 25th it is down to about .25ppm and the nitrate looks like it is starting to climb.  I am waiting til this weekend then I will check it again and see where it is at.  If nitrite is down to 0ppm I am thinking about…

I am just getting  back into the Tropical Fish Tank hobby.  I have just set up the tank and planted it.  I did not do the dirt method.  Had I found this site prior to getting it set up I would have.  I am now waiting for the nitrogen cycle to get through then I will start adding fish.  Not sure yet what I will have for fish.  Has to be small and not a lot of them though because of being only 10gal.

Tom C…

Since my wisteria grows extremely fast, i got to the point where i had no where to put the wisteria that i was trimming, so i decided to buy another 10 gallon tank and I DIRTED IT.!!! i bought a bag of organic choice potting mix, no clay though. I also put a thin layer of gravel and a layer of the MIcrolift. The lighting is the same though. I have about 20 ghost shrimp, a small goldfish, and a betta. the plants: i have some wisteria in it (not a lot) i have 2 amazon swords that i got from…

So, i finally got my tank to a point where i actually like it.  Its a 10 gallon aquarium.

as far as plants go, there are: its a wisteria, amazon swords, java fern, ludwigia.

The fish consist of: an African knife fish, red tail shark, 4 angelfish, bolivian ram cichlid, powder blue gourami, betta, rubberlip pleco, and a african butterfly fish.  I know its extremely overstocked, but they are all still babies and will all be moved to an bigger aquarium later. 

With the…

Step 1

I looked at what the problem was in my tank, and researched how I could fix it. In my case it was the pea gravel not holding the dirt, making the  water column yellow in color and leaving a brown sludge on the glass and leaves of the tank. 

I only had three solutions, the first was to go buy more pea gravel which, would most likely not match the original gravel. The second was to do crap-loads of water changes weekly and…

We all know by now CO2 makes our plants grow like crazy, but how??? Carbon dioxide (CO2) is 100% essential in plant growth whether they be on land or under water.  CO2 is present in all of our aquariums whether you have a CO2 producing system in place or not, it is present no matter what due to water surface absorption from the air you and I breath. So here’s how it works, following the light reaction in a plants chloroplast, witch generated small amounts of ATP and the high energy electron…