kassidi
Junior Member
Begining Fishkeeper
Posts: 49
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Post by kassidi on Dec 29, 2008 18:47:48 GMT -5
I probably should have posted my thread in this section... oops. Well I think you have some very beautiful plants. Great job!
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Post by babygeige on Dec 17, 2009 19:36:00 GMT -5
I've been a complete slacker with my plant blog!!! I bought some new plants this week, which are still in a bucket. Hopefully this weekend I will get them put in. In the meantime, here are my amazon swordplants. I am not positive of the latin name, but I think it is echinodorus bleheri. I've got 2 plants next to each other. They've been in there for a few months. I put some flourish tabs near them and they seem to be doing pretty well so far. I think the little bit of CO2 I add helps.
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Post by Carl on Dec 17, 2009 20:41:48 GMT -5
Very nice plant Stephanie Carl
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Post by kagome on Dec 18, 2009 23:37:00 GMT -5
Your plants are gorgeous!!
Does thread algae kill plants if it grows on them?
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Post by goldenpuon on Dec 19, 2009 15:51:03 GMT -5
Those are some very beautiful plants Babygeige. The backdrop is also great. It made me think you had even more plants in there for a minute.
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Post by babygeige on Dec 19, 2009 17:58:28 GMT -5
Thanks all!
I put that background on a couple of months ago. I like it much better than the old plain blue one. It doesn't look as boring anymore.
I don't think algae necessarily kills plants, but it seems that it's hard for the plants to grow properly after that. For example, check out my anubias plant in the front there. You can still see on the old leaves where the bad BBA algae was. Also I just pulled a bunch of crypts out today. They didn't look great, but the roots were really healthy when I ripped them out.
More pics coming of the new plants that I put in today. I'm going to give them a week or so and see how they do.
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Post by babygeige on Jan 9, 2010 16:37:32 GMT -5
Ok! My new plants are doing pretty well so far. I've got 2 new kinds of crypts in here. Both prefer moderate light levels. This is Cryptocoryne spiralis It's neat because it's unlike any of the other crypts I've kept before. It's the one in the back nearest to the angel. It seems to be growing pretty quickly. I took this picture on New Year's day and it's already got a couple new leaves since then. This is cryptocoryne lucens. Now that I look at the picture, I think I may have kept this before. Either that or it bears a good resemblence to crypt lutea when it's allowed to grow taller. I keep my luteas pretty short. Here is the last one. Sagittaria subulata It also needs medium light. It's really meant to be a foreground plant, but I thought it would look nice as a centerpiece in the middle toward the back.
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Post by Carl on Jan 9, 2010 17:07:21 GMT -5
Your plants look nice Stephanie Question; I notice that you use coarse gravel in your aquarium, do you have sand or a plant substrate under this and around the roots, or just the coarse gravel? Carl
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Post by babygeige on Jan 10, 2010 22:20:06 GMT -5
That's just regular gravel, I don't have good soil type stuff. When I started this tank, I just had java fern and anubias plants in it, so I only used gravel by itself. I would like to have a nice plant substrate. I'm sure I wouldn't have so many issues with my plants if I did. One of these days, I may put some in, but that would be a big project and I'd prefer to wait until the stocking level was pretty low before I did something like that.
For now, I just add root tabs. I usually use Flourish Root Tabs, but right now I'm trying out API's version. They're a lot smaller, so they only last a month. They seem to be working well right now though.
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Post by Carl on Jan 11, 2010 11:32:56 GMT -5
That's just regular gravel, I don't have good soil type stuff. When I started this tank, I just had java fern and anubias plants in it, so I only used gravel by itself. I would like to have a nice plant substrate. I'm sure I wouldn't have so many issues with my plants if I did. One of these days, I may put some in, but that would be a big project and I'd prefer to wait until the stocking level was pretty low before I did something like that. As you noted Java Fern and Anubias do not need any special substrate/sand, but you are also doing well with plants that prefer more fine soil. You do not need to make your entire substrate with with fine sand or plant substrates, I often have used coarse gravel and then added DIY sand substrates or ready made ones only in the area of plant roots. This "soil" falls between the coarse gravel un-noticed which allows you to keep the coarse gravel look that many prefer. In fact my YouTube aquarium cleaning video uses this method; this also draws a lot of rude comments that I end up deleting where so called experts (often kids) state that I need to clean the tank more as they see this "dirty" sand in the vacuum tube (which falls back down) coming out of the gravel convincing them that this is "dirt" when in reality it is plant substrate. The plant substrate is new when the video was made which makes it even more obvious in the cleaning (I just added a few live plants when this was made and have since removed much of the colored gravel) Carl
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Post by babygeige on Jan 13, 2010 20:33:01 GMT -5
Oh that's a really great idea Carl! I never thought of that! Would I need to drain the tank, or is it possible to place this while there is still water in the tank?
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Post by Carl on Jan 14, 2010 11:26:52 GMT -5
Oh that's a really great idea Carl! I never thought of that! Would I need to drain the tank, or is it possible to place this while there is still water in the tank? I simply add this with my hands. It may temporarily cloud the water, but in healthy well filtered tank this will disappear very quickly Carl
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Post by babygeige on Jan 19, 2010 23:18:02 GMT -5
Oh awesome! I will definitely have to remember this!!
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Post by babygeige on Jun 13, 2010 17:13:18 GMT -5
My pleco apparently decided that he didn't like one of the crypt luteas, so he dug it out over the course of a few days this week. So I thought it'd be a good time to do a little rearranging. I bought a few new plants this weekend at one of the stores I went to yesterday. One of them is for the 50 gallon and the other 2 are for the 30. I only put one of them in today. I removed the Sagittaria subulata that you see in the above picture. It grew quite a bit, so I took that out of the back of the tank, divided it into 3 plants and put them in the front of the tank where they will look much better. It started to look silly next to the big swordplants next to it. In the sag's place I put a bacopa caroliniana. Here is an updated pic of the crypt spiralis I put in back in December. I think it's neat, but wish it were a bit fuller. And here we have the 2 swordplants that are in the back of the tank. They're really become quite a focal point. I have to cut them back every few weeks or so. I cut about 8 big leaves off it today when I was cleaning. Pleco really loves it back there. He's going to be bummed when I move him to the 50 gallon in a couple of weeks. He sits under those plants, stuck to the back of that sandstone. He's back there in the picture, but you can't see him.
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Post by Carl on Jun 13, 2010 18:43:12 GMT -5
Wow, your Swords look great; very full and broad!
Your Sagittaria remind me of mine, with a little algae on the leaves.
Carl
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Post by bikeguy33 on Jun 13, 2010 20:26:44 GMT -5
it all looks great...wish i had a lil more of a green thumb...
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Post by babygeige on Feb 20, 2011 14:43:17 GMT -5
Here are a couple of pics of my newest plants. Echinodorus "ozelot" is a type of sword plant. I liked it because it has interesting leaf coloration. It's got neat spots on it. I hope the new growth will continue to have those spots. The other new plant I bought was an anubias nana "narrowleaf." It is the really tiny plant in the front. It was a little more substantial when I bought it, but I left it in a small bucket of water for about a week before I got around to putting it in the tank. When I pulled it out of the bucket, half of it had this weird gross slime on it that had eaten away part of the plant, so I had to cut that half away. I scrubbed this half really well before putting it in that tank. It seems to be doing ok and there is no sign of the weird slime. Bonus in the above shot! You can see my handsome angel, Pierre. On the far left, you can see one of my other anubias plants. I can't remember what variation that one is. I like the well defined ridges in the leaves of that one.
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Post by Carl on Feb 20, 2011 15:48:42 GMT -5
The new Amazon is really different looking, not being familiar with type of sword, I would have thought the unique coloration was rust or some other problem Your angel "Pierre" looks a lot like my Angel "Hollingsworth" Carl
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Post by parker002 on Feb 20, 2011 17:11:07 GMT -5
That Anubias on the left looks like a Coffee Leaf Anubias...
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Post by babygeige on Feb 26, 2011 11:24:16 GMT -5
Pierre and Hollingsworth do look a lot alike! I really like the Koi variation of angel. I don't know what the 2 little thin fin-like things that trail off the front of angels are called, but one of Pierre's is black and the other is white. I think that's so cute. He's growing so fast. I bought him in July or August and he's about doubled in size since then. It makes me sad that all of the others I bought over the summer died. I was at the lfs the other day and they had some marble angels about the same size as Pierre, but their fins didn't look very healthy and they were $15, so I passed on them.
It might be a Coffee Leaf, parker002. That sounds kind of familiar. I haven't been keeping track of the different varieties I've purchased, and I regret that. I think I'm going to start to do that.
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