# Unorthodox Planted Tank- With Undergravel Filtration



## seds (Jan 30, 2009)

Floating plants and mosses and ferns and anubias could also be used. Just throwing that out there.

Such floating plants that could be used: Hornwort, Lemna trisulca, Utricularia Vulgaris, and those fancy true above the water floating plants like salvinia and frogbit and red root floaters.
I see no problem with using pots, although I am not particularly familiar with under gravel filters. 

By the way, some might think U.G. stands for utricularia graminifolia.


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## Olskule (Jan 28, 2010)

seds said:


> Floating plants and mosses and ferns and anubias could also be used. Just throwing that out there.
> 
> Such floating plants that could be used: Hornwort, Lemna trisulca, Utricularia Vulgaris, and those fancy true above the water floating plants like salvinia and frogbit and red root floaters.
> I see no problem with using pots, although I am not particularly familiar with under gravel filters.
> ...


LOL! See? I'm so old school that I automatically think "undergravel" when I see "UG":icon_redf

And good point about the floaters- thanks


Olskule


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

seds said:


> By the way, some might think U.G. stands for utricularia graminifolia.


That's actually what came to my mind when I read the title....then I realized it must be something shocking (hence the gasp in the title), so I thought Utricularia gibba...


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## Olskule (Jan 28, 2010)

Darkblade48 said:


> That's actually what came to my mind when I read the title....then I realized it must be something shocking (hence the gasp in the title), so I thought Utricularia gibba...


Sorry for the confusion, I'm still not familiar with all the abbreviations on this site; I just edited the heading to avoid confusion. But I did look up utricularia graminifolia. Interesting plant.

Olskule


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## Indignation (Mar 9, 2008)

I second going the moss/epiphyte route if your heart is set on using an undergravel filter. I think you might run into problems with trying to use pots.

There are some really nice tanks out there that only use epiphytes/moss combined with heavy use of driftwood. Take a look at all of the anubias, java ferns, and bolbitis. You could also check out some of the liverworts, like pellia/mini pellia and riccia.
I'd advise staying away from java moss, as personally i think it looks stringy and unkempt. Check out fissidens fontanus, or xmas/taiwan/peacock moss. all of these will grow more bushy, without the tendrils that java moss can get.
All of these can be tied, stapled or super-glued to the driftwood and will avoid the problems of roots clogging your filter.

Since most of these are slow growers by nature, you would probably be better off with low-medium light and a lighter fertilization regimen. The good news is you could have a very nice planted tank with minimal plant maintenance and no need for co2.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

There is no reason not to plant whatever you want when you use an undergravel filter. The only consequence is that the plant roots may grow into the slots in the filter plate, partly plugging them, and making removing the plant later much more difficult.

If you run that undergravel filter in reverse, with the water being pumped down the tubes to under the substrate, to flow back up through the substrate, you can avoid the roots problem almost entirely. I use that type filter now on one tank, with no problems. Another member here uses a conventional undergravel filter in his tanks, but with only a portion of the substrate being used as the filter, and no plants in that area. He has great success with that.

Just because a method is out of current favor, and no longer being used by many people, doesn't mean it isn't a good method.


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## Olskule (Jan 28, 2010)

Hoppy said:


> There is no reason not to plant whatever you want when you use an undergravel filter. The only consequence is that the plant roots may grow into the slots in the filter plate, partly plugging them, and making removing the plant later much more difficult.
> 
> If you run that undergravel filter in reverse, with the water being pumped down the tubes to under the substrate, to flow back up through the substrate, you can avoid the roots problem almost entirely. I use that type filter now on one tank, with no problems. Another member here uses a conventional undergravel filter in his tanks, but with only a portion of the substrate being used as the filter, and no plants in that area. He has great success with that.
> 
> Just because a method is out of current favor, and no longer being used by many people, doesn't mean it isn't a good method.


I've already thought about the partially bare substrate UG filter, and may do that in another aquarium (especially since I have inherited a 45+ year old triangular UG filter plate that would be perfect in a couple of different placements I can think of), but I like the reverse-flow idea you mentioned, and being able to grow whatever I want. On a 55 gallon standard tank with 2 X 24" plates (perfecta-flo, with 1/3 mid-way plate single uplift placement option), what reverse-flow rate would be good, what type of (preferable cheap) substrate can I use, and how thick should it be? I came across an old bag of cat litter (I read the cat litter thread), I'm testing it for firmness, and it seems to be staying together, so I'm wondering if, once rinsed extremely well, that would work in a mix with standard small/medium gravel. Or would the cat litter be better saved for a tank without the UG filter? (One or more of those is comming soon.) 

Thanks for the help!

Olskule


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## JamieH (Sep 20, 2006)

A UG filter will work fine for most plants as long as you power it with a powerhead below the water line of canister filter.. NOT an airstone.

I have grown many plants this way and actually inject C02 under the plate to diffuse in one of them. 

One of the AGA biotope tanks has reverse flow UG a few years ago... and that looked great.


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## JamieH (Sep 20, 2006)

this tank has an undergravel filter


















The article about the tank http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/People/opsomer.html

also, this tank has an undergravel too...

http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2002.cgi?&op=showcase&category=1&vol=-1&id=49


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

The best under gravel filter is the one you DIY from PVC or CPVC pipe and fittings. See http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/diy/78505-rfug-blast-past-diy.html


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## F22 (Sep 21, 2008)

why don't you just use a smaller undergravel plate then plant rooting plants on the opposite side of the tank?


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## JamieH (Sep 20, 2006)

F22 said:


> why don't you just use a smaller undergravel plate then plant rooting plants on the opposite side of the tank?


because there's no need?

did you see what i posted above?


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## F22 (Sep 21, 2008)

wow, snotty...

yea. cool...


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## Rooted (Feb 8, 2010)

about the pots...i'd just make sure that the with root feeders they get access to a free flowing water source...if they are planted in closed containers this may not happen. i'm not sure how ug filters work but perhaps if you put little holes on the bottom of the pot it will suck water through it so the plant is in constant contact with minerals in the water column?


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## Snuffelupagus (Sep 15, 2005)

I say go ahead and use it,don't worry about it.It works just as good in a planted tank as in any other with only a few issues.
I dont usually post much on the forum.Me being dyslexic,writing is a big challenge.But in this subject i might help somone out.You would have to plant very densly to really obstruct the flow thru the filter plates.my only conscern with U.G.F is when it comes time to aquascape,well established plants with large root systems like amazon swords might be a little difficult to remove,as the roots get entangled with the bottom plate if they have been there long enough.Its no big deal,just be as gentle as you can when its time to uproot the plants as to not damage the roots to much,and take a blade to the real stuburn parts:icon_evil. Then manually remove what ever you can ,as any decomposing material will make its way into me water colum.And you probably know this as an expirienced aquarist,not to use any type of root tab as the gravel has water flowing thru it (duh) ,and you will have no contol as to how these are released into the aquarium. ,Snuff


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## Olskule (Jan 28, 2010)

Ok, folks, thank you all for your great input (especially Jamie and Hoppy, for their validation and support) and for bringing up issues I might have otherwise overlooked. At this point, I'm going with the UGF, but I feel more confident about it now and have a better idea of the issues I'll be facing. This seems to be a largely unexplored issue (aside from a few cases) and without a standard line of thought, so I guess I should keep a log on it so y'all can see how the experiment goes. This particular venture will likely only include Amazonian species of plant and fish in this tank (any plant suggestions?), but I will try other species and UGF methods (including different substrates) in other smaller tanks I have. (And yes, not to be a total rebel, I will be going with standard sans-UGF methods in other tanks as well.)

Thanks, again, folks!

Olskule


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## JamieH (Sep 20, 2006)

Olskule said:


> Ok, folks, thank you all for your great input (especially Jamie and Hoppy, for their validation and support) and for bringing up issues I might have otherwise overlooked. At this point, I'm going with the UGF, but I feel more confident about it now and have a better idea of the issues I'll be facing. This seems to be a largely unexplored issue (aside from a few cases) and without a standard line of thought, so I guess I should keep a log on it so y'all can see how the experiment goes. This particular venture will likely only include Amazonian species of plant and fish in this tank (any plant suggestions?), but I will try other species and UGF methods (including different substrates) in other smaller tanks I have. (And yes, not to be a total rebel, I will be going with standard sans-UGF methods in other tanks as well.)
> 
> Thanks, again, folks!
> 
> Olskule



Glad to have helped.

Actually i'm about to do the same - got a tank that's REALLY not working out how i wanted so going to do a rebuild with reverse flow UG.

Maybe we could do a sort of joint journal? :bounce:


EDIT - also, re the root tabs... not required, as any ferts you dose into the water column are free to the roots using this system.


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

I used RFUG CPVC pipes for about 15 years or so, hold over from my fish only days and using DIY UG's to fit strange odd shaped tanks.

It works excellent with planted tanks with rich water column nutrients.
But.......you really do not need them and they really do not help plants any more than a control with out the UG might:thumbsup:

So they have little use, just like the Heat cable quackery of the 1980's and 1990's.

You need a reference to compare to.

So if you do that, you should find they offer little difference as far as plants are concerned, plants do best with no flow through the root zones, just normal diffusion you will find in natural systems.

Think about what plant roots are exposed to? Are there, UG's and heat cables in natural systems? How do plants deal with those reduced sediments?

They add O2 via their own root systems and modify their environment. They are not static.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## Olskule (Jan 28, 2010)

plantbrain said:


> I used RFUG CPVC pipes for about 15 years or so, hold over from my fish only days and using DIY UG's to fit strange odd shaped tanks.
> 
> It works excellent with planted tanks with rich water column nutrients.
> But.......you really do not need them and they really do not help plants any more than a control with out the UG might:thumbsup:
> ...


I know a UGF is strictly a bio-filter for dealing with animal wastes and the plants do not need it at all, but I am looking for higher numbers of livestock with a safety margin. Plant growth isn't paramount, aside from the asthetics alongside the fish, and I don't want to have to be testing water continuously for fear of nitrogen cycle problems. I may be wrong, but I don't have faith in the new line of thought ("quackery"?) that canister filters hold enough bio-medium to support enough bacterial life to cover a whole tank; I think it works good as long as you keep your schedule for changing the chemical filtration medium, because the chemical filtration medium is doing the job of bio-filtration, in removing toxic nitrogenous compounds. The alternative to no UGF is a lighter bio-load or a wet-dry filter.



plantbrain said:


> ...You need a reference to compare to.
> 
> So if you do that, you should find they offer little difference as far as plants are concerned, plants do best with no flow through the root zones, just normal diffusion you will find in natural systems.
> 
> ...


I've thought about doing a comparative study with side-by-side 20 gallon tanks later, but that will be after I get my 55g main tank up and running, and the main tank will be heavily stocked with fish, so the plants aren't the only concern. 

Plants and fish in nature are existing in a vastly larger biotope than the small slice we hold in small tanks, with extreme dilution of fish waste products and virtually unlimited surface area for beneficial bacteria. Since we attempt to be all-inclusive, we end up with an extremely unnatural density only approached in nature during droughts, at which time specimens are highly stressed, something we want to avoid. Lets face it; if we faithfully reproduced nature in our tanks, we would have a 55 gallon tank half full of water (or less), with three to five inches of total fish body length and a half dozen plants growing emersed at the back of the slanted substrate because most of them don't normally prefer constant submersion. The bottom line is, we can't reproduce nature exactly, and we wouldn't be satisfied with it if we could, so we must adapt the best methods we can think of to fit the needs of the species we want to keep. Our methodology as hobbyists is constantly changing, with different techniques and practices becoming the vogue, then passing for various reasons, commercial marketing not necessarily the least influentual. If we refused to take a second look at past practices and re-evaluate them, electric cars would be only a footnote in history, circa 1910. Instead, they are once again on the front page as leading technologies because we took a second look at the concept and saw advantages in it.

Aquatic plants in nature _are_ exposed to some flow through their root zones, primarily through percolation, or even if it is minor flow due to circulation induced by the temperature differential of water caused by heat (up to 2 degrees F) produced by anaerobic bacteria (as in a plenum filtration system), which especially occurs in "reduced sediments". This migration of water does bring "new" water--and thus, oxygen--to the plant roots, which, according to everything I've read on horticulture, benefit from access to oxygen, and do not, to my knowledge, themselves bring oxygen down into the soil. Another example of substratal circulation of water in nature is via animal burrowing activity, i.e. worms, insects, crustaceans, mulluscs, etc., and this can often produce substantial, if easily overlooked, water migration through the substrate.

Many of these naturally occuring phenomena are absent in the closed system of the aquarium, while others are easily reproduced, as with the commonly known benefits of including substrate-burrowing snails.

I suspect that the extra oxygen in the root zone that results from the use of an undergravel filter may benefit the plants (as long as flow is not excessive) and may at least offset any disadvantages to the plants, such as the reduction of nutrients available directly to the roots due to the necessary limitations of nutrients in the entire water column required to avoid algal problems. 

But over all, my main reason for using the UG filter is that I hope to balance the benefits and disdvantages to the flora while increasing the benefits to the fauna, with the desired result being a well planted tank with more densely stocked fauna and a more reasonable margin of safety for them.

Olskule


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

I've had issues with UG filters blowing up mulm after a few years of build up.


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## HypnoticAquatic (Feb 17, 2010)

i wouldnt say that plants do better with no flow over the roots, for ex just like in hydroponics it gives the plant access to more nutrients thus the plant has to send out less root mass. the easyest way to show this is by checking out a hydropoinc setup and comparing to dirt(noflow). ime theres always been a 1/3 ratio of root mass between the two, might be a lil less with a coarser substrate 1/2.


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## OverStocked (May 26, 2007)

I do not think you will gain anything by using UGF filters. You will have no ability for a larger bio load as opposed to a good canister or HOB. You will not help plants. You will only have another complication in the process. Sure, you can have a great tank with them, but not because of them.

I think people think more AREA equals more bacteria total. This isn't true. There is only so much bacteria(whatever the ammonia from fish/food/mulm feeds) in a tank. It could be condensed in a good canister or spread out in your substrate. There are equal risks to every method... The beauty of planted tanks is if heavily stocked with plants, after cycled, you have little risk of messing up your cycle.


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

Olskule said:


> I know a UGF is strictly a bio-filter for dealing with animal wastes and the plants do not need it at all, but I am looking for higher numbers of livestock with a safety margin.


There are better trade off options for that however.
I have massive loads in my tanks, without RFUG's.
A better filter, more flow, more focus on plant health, these are wise approaches.

Healthy plants= healthy fish.

Good feeding, good fish keeping, shrimp keeping skils play into this.
Nothing wrong with redundancy, I use to hold the same philosophy as you did with my own past in keeping the RFUG's. I came to realize there was no difference really, and could not use fertile enriched sediments which helped plants grow even better with more wiggle room.

That last issue alone was more than worth it to switch.
You can take your time and see if you can prove this to yourself.

I already know
So it's your own view that counts.
See if you prove this to yourself and own mind.



> Plant growth isn't paramount, aside from the asthetics alongside the fish, and I don't want to have to be testing water continuously for fear of nitrogen cycle problems.


I sure don't, results speak for themselves:
One of my tanks this week:










Full of fish, full of plants, no testing, not a lot of work either.
I sold 200$ worth of plants, 100$ worth of RCS out of this tank last month.
Not bad I figure.

I do a water change and add some DIY dry ferts 3x a week, that's all.
Nothing runs out, nothing builds up. Simple. I have ADA AS for the sediment, grows plants well, last years and years, adds a back up in case there's an issue with too little nutrients.

Nitrogen? Heck, I add 40ppm a week NO3 as KNO3 and 10-15ppm of PO4 to this tank above, the light is about 2w/gal, and the light is 14" above the tank, so it's not high light either.



> I may be wrong, but I don't have faith in the new line of thought ("quackery"?) that canister filters hold enough bio-medium to support enough bacterial life to cover a whole tank;



Quack quack and more quackroud:
I do not think many do, I think it's marketing and pumping their numbers up to justify a 200-400$ canister filter.



> I think it works good as long as you keep your schedule for changing the chemical filtration medium, because the chemical filtration medium is doing the job of bio-filtration, in removing toxic nitrogenous compounds. The alternative to no UGF is a lighter bio-load or a wet-dry filter.


Or healthy aquatic plants which not remove and assimilate N, they remove P and everything else, and add O2.

Try selling 200$ a month worth of bacteria out of your aquarium sometime, what do you get for all that? I get nice plants and have to add more KNO3 to keep them growing, that's the nice thing about REAL biological filtration, plants are extremely effective water purifiers.



> I've thought about doing a comparative study with side-by-side 20 gallon tanks later, but that will be after I get my 55g main tank up and running, and the main tank will be heavily stocked with fish, so the plants aren't the only concern.


I think many have this view and start off this way. I did, then went more plants, but am 50:50 these days.

I like me my fishes.

Making a test study independent of other factors is extremely tough for this.
CO2, light, nutrients in the water column and the root zone play roles, species of plants tested etc.

You can test them using a emergent growth chamber with flask and sponge to keep the water/sediments in the flask either no flow, low flow or higher flow to make different situations that mimic the aquarium. Light/CO2 will be independent and there's no effect from the water column with emergent growth.

You can also save the 20 Gal for other ideas and goals, since this is a small flask, you can run dozens of test replicates.



> Plants and fish in nature are existing in a vastly larger biotope than the small slice we hold in small tanks, with extreme dilution of fish waste products and virtually unlimited surface area for beneficial bacteria. Since we attempt to be all-inclusive, we end up with an extremely unnatural density only approached in nature during droughts, at which time specimens are highly stressed, something we want to avoid.


So more plants, less fish.



> Lets face it; if we faithfully reproduced nature in our tanks, we would have a 55 gallon tank half full of water (or less), with three to five inches of total fish body length and a half dozen plants growing emersed at the back of the slanted substrate because most of them don't normally prefer constant submersion.


Well, they tend to be amphibious, like about 95% of the aquatic plant species.



> The bottom line is, we can't reproduce nature exactly, and we wouldn't be satisfied with it if we could, so we must adapt the best methods we can think of to fit the needs of the species we want to keep. Our methodology as hobbyists is constantly changing, with different techniques and practices becoming the vogue, then passing for various reasons, commercial marketing not necessarily the least influentual. If we refused to take a second look at past practices and re-evaluate them, electric cars would be only a footnote in history, circa 1910. Instead, they are once again on the front page as leading technologies because we took a second look at the concept and saw advantages in it.


Well , how we evaluate the methods, what we can really say about those results? Without some good logic and test methods, we cannot answer such questions. Just saying it's unknown and that we need to test is one thing, nothing wrong with the spirit of testing, but getting results that you can actually say something about is quite another matter.

I do not want to reproduce nature honestly, it's got some issues I do not want in aquarium. Agriculture is not natural either, but grows plants much better than natural systems. Even the most hippy organic sustainable systems are a far far cry from a natural system.

Aquariums are no different, many assume natural/nature is better, it may or may not be.



> Aquatic plants in nature _are_ exposed to some flow through their root zones, primarily through percolation, or even if it is minor flow due to circulation induced by the temperature differential of water caused by heat (up to 2 degrees F) produced by anaerobic bacteria (as in a plenum filtration system), which especially occurs in "reduced sediments".


So, have you measured this flow in aquatic sediments where aquatic plants are present?

What is this optimal flow for growth of aquatic plants in nature? How about in culture?

It's about 0.4-0.7 liters per day, per m^2.
Tropica's is about 0.5 liters per day flow through the roots.

This rate is typical non flowing diffusion through sand (Or no UG or RFUG or heating cables flow rates). So the optimal flow rates are nothing at all, just plain old diffusion.

Hard data and results back this up.



> This migration of water does bring "new" water--and thus, oxygen--to the plant roots, which, according to everything I've read on horticulture, benefit from access to oxygen, and do not, to my knowledge, themselves bring oxygen down into the soil.


All(almost) aquatic and wetland plants do this. I am trying to think or a single rooted plant that does not do this, but every one I can think of does this.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3544675

Rates will vary, but they must do this, as roots are respiring and have no source of O2 in such sediments.

Barko's paper is fairly good overview:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2261090

Aerenchyma formation provides pipes to pump O2 from the shoot, to the root zones, terrestrial plants have high O2 in their soils, but flooding changes all that. Water lilies have a sunlight heat pressurized O2 system that drives O2 into the root zone.

The bacteria are at a much higher concentration and faster at cycling when plant roots are present since they are source of O2. If you allow the plants to grow in and mature, this root mat will get more intense and produce even more. Diffusion also takes place more so that these studies which sought to isolate the diffusion between sediment and water column.

Getting aquatic plant root physiology to occur in crops would save a lot of crop damage losses due to flooding and standing water, so there's a lot of interest from agriculture.




> Another example of substratal circulation of water in nature is via animal burrowing activity, i.e. worms, insects, crustaceans, mulluscs, etc., and this can often produce substantial, if easily overlooked, water migration through the substrate.


This is mostly in the top 1-2cm where aquatic plants are present, not much deeper, where the sediments are highly reduce, nothing other than bacteria can live............

The main blow out from the sediments that are reduce.........bubbling up of CO2, CH4 perhaps, N2, for us, it's mostly CO2. Bacteria and root respiration.



> Many of these naturally occuring phenomena are absent in the closed system of the aquarium, while others are easily reproduced, as with the commonly known benefits of including substrate-burrowing snails.


I hate the things, they offer me nor plants any benefit.
The pond snail (_Physa_) is a decent algae eating critter, Ramshorn and others etc, but as far moving sediment around to aid in plant growth?
There's no evidence they help at all. You'd be hard pressed to show they influence much at all.



> I suspect that the extra oxygen in the root zone that results from the use of an undergravel filter may benefit the plants (as long as flow is not excessive) and may at least offset any disadvantages to the plants, such as the reduction of nutrients available directly to the roots due to the necessary limitations of nutrients in the entire water column required to avoid algal problems.
> [/quote[]
> 
> So how come folks have nicer looking plants without these UGF's?
> ...


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

Hey! Another riparium!!


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## Tsartetra (Oct 20, 2003)

I know I am resurrecting a dead thread, but thought I would share a bit of my experience. I have a 44 gallon tank, UGF, with Java ferns (these reproduce like tribbles! :icon_lol: ), lace ferns, Crypt wendtii, C. blassi, a dwarf lilly (N. stellata?), Anubia congensis, Red melon sword, Hydrocoytle leucocephyla and java moss. I do 25% water change (including gravel vacuuming strategic parts) every 10-14 days and add 1/2 dose of (10ml, I think?) of Nutrafin Plantgro each week (micros, no macros).
It's been going well for about seven years now.
Unfortunately, it's all a matter of trial and error--no matter what you read or "know".


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## ukamikazu (Jun 4, 2010)

Very Ukiyo-e, Tom. Please expound on this exhibit. I really, really would like to know your thought processes on this particular set up. I want to know very, very badly. I am entranced by it :icon_eek:.


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## [email protected] (Jul 17, 2008)

Just plant and enjoy. Use water column fertilization rather than root tabs. 

Worrying causes more stress to you and your plants than enjoying them does.


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