My 15g is 3 years old and has been planted for 8 months. It has 3.73WPG, CO2 injection and EI fertilisation. Prepare yourself for a long thread.

Here is its first incarnation as planted tank. Great background.:rolleyes:


I wised up, replaced the background with basic black, purchased a few plants from Aquariumplants.com, and started using CO2, though it's not stable. Used the packets that the Nutrafin system came with. Rubbish!


It worked alright for a while. At this point, I hadn't started EI, and I only dosed Iron and trace. Had some algae problems, but mostly diatoms and hair algae, not a big problem. I also tried to get away from a pure linear approach to the aquascape and experimented with different textures


Unfortunately, I go on Holiday break, leaving the tank in the care of a friend, for 6 weeks and arrived home to an algae-ridden mess. Not just any algae, BGA, green, hair, you name it, I had it. After a long scrub and binning plants too heavily infested, this is what I was able to salvage.


I aquascaped again, January 28th 2006, this time experimenting with different textures and plant types. Lost the hairgrass in a few weeks. Then the severe BGA epidemic started. Still wasn't using EI and literally had to scrub and vacumn the tank twice a week. I was not happy. :(


I became very serious about destroying the BGA and began using the EI method of fertilization. In addition, I started using a DIY mix of yeast and sugar for my CO2 reactor, and plant lots of hardy stem plants. I finally had a stable CO2 level of 30ppm. The algae is slowly destroyed and I thought victory was mine. This was around February.


Unfortunately, my tank had other plans. I started noticing that the water was quite cloudy. At first, since I had tannins and started EI, that maybe I had messed up the dosing and dosed Iron and Phosphate too close together. I reduced their dose. But the cloudiness persisted, despite water changes. It didn't look green at the time, but it was GREENWATER! This is around early March. I also manage to borrow a digital camera from a friend, so I could finally take some nice pictures. Tank didn't feel like cooperating.


Finally, I did a 3-day blackout and cleared the Greenwater. Finally, I can take pictures of my tank. I am quite interested in red-leaved plants, especially to contrast with the myriophyllum, so I purchased some A. reineckii and R. rotundifolia and macrandra.


I'm still not happy with the layout, and I kept tweaking.


This week, I had some plant over-crowding issues in my 10g. I decided to thin out that tank a little and move my lotus, which was growing way too fast to be housed in the 10g anymore, and some creeping jenny. I moved these plants to the 15g and below is the current set-up.


At first, I thought the lotus was too much for this tank, and a part of me still believes this, but I have received some positive feedback about this layout. Not sure what's going to happen when the lotus gets too big. I'm assuming I'll have to cut some leaves. This plant is turning out to be a lovely specimen and it was only a month ago that I purchased this specimen as a bulb. This tank will actually be reassembled in Miami, FL with the same plants, just a black substrate and different fish, so I'd really like to work on the layout for this tank. 15g highs are not commonly seen, and the tank shape has some interesting potential, IMO.

Thank you so much for reading. I apologize for the extreme length of the post, but this is the saga of my 15g in a nutshell. Feel free to ask any questions and as always, I accept and digest all types of comments and criticisms as long as it's clean. ;) And if it's not clean, you can always PM me.

Warmest regards,

lljdma06 :D

Holy wow :o If i had the patience to start up a planted tank I'd want mine to look like yours.. That is absolutely amazing...

Very nicely done!!!

holy $#!* that is amasing!!!!!! i am trying to get mine to look 1/2 as good as that!

i think that could actually have a running in top aquarium of the year.