180 L Planted Aquarium Journal

Through building and maintaining beautiful nature aquaria people re-learn the intricate connections between forms of life, plants, fish, microorganism and humans. Riches and beauty come from harmony, from balance. Aquaria are great teachers of this truth. Takashi Amano

2/12/2006

The 8th day

I resolved the cloudiness problem !!! One of my "angustifolia" plants was melting and polluting the water. As soon as I removed it together with some old "Siamensis 53B" leaves the water cleared up. I am cleaning the wool filter every day and there is always some dirt coming out of it proving that my filter is working fine.
Zosterifolia is the only plant that is holding back ( the left back corner of the tank ). Will give it another week to improve and if not...out of the aquarium ! Hope not, it is a beautiful plant though. The fastest growing plant is the Thalictroides on the right back corner of the tank, forming an attractive bush. My plan is to hide the filter box with this plant.
I also noticed a few Malaysian Trumpet Snails. I decided to keep them as they seem to be very helpful in planted tanks, aerating the substrate and eating algae and decaying plant material. I can see some beard algae on the Hygro and Bacopa leaves. Hope that this is not a problem. The ammonia and nitrite levels are zero. In 6 days time if the ammonia and nitrite stay zero and the plants are thriving I will add 1 Siamese Algae Eater and 3 Oto's to keep algae low.
In last week I did two times 20% water change and I use the CO2 Sera tablet every second day in the Sera diffuser. It is important to use it one hour after the light is on.