# 15 gal (Fluval Flex system) - one month in



## NickB (Oct 21, 2018)

This is just under month flooded. Pictures are of planting day (dry start), flooding day (after 4 weeks of dry start) and current (almost 4 weeks flooded).

Plant list:
Marsilea hirsuta
Anubias barteri (I think..)
Java moss
Java fern (trident)
Hygrophila
Staurogyne repens

Planted after flooding:
Cabomba
Jungle val

Tank details:
System: Fluval Flex 15 gal
- Added additional LED flexible light strip for a little extra light (it's also a warmer color light which I prefer to the stock cold white LED)
Substrate: Tropica Aquarium Soil
No ferts yet (have some root tabs that I will probably add soon)
No CO2

Fish stocking:
6 neon tetras (will probably get another 3 or so)
3 otocinclus
1 big ol' Amano shrimp
Eventually going to get a nice halfmoon plakat betta, which will be the main focus of my tank.


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## NickB (Oct 21, 2018)

Okay so I'm new to this forum, I guess the photos got super resized and look pretty awful. How do people here usually add good quality photos?

Also, since this was my first planted tank, I definitely have some regrets and things I would do differently next time. Here's few of them!

- The aquasoil is nice, but very very light. Things can uproot easily. A sand base under the soil might have worked better. The jungle val wouldn't even stay in the soil and I had to cut it way back to almost nothing to get it to stay put

- I took the stone base off my driftwood (mainly because it had a metal screw in it that I didn't want leaching into my water), but now my wood moves too easily, partly because of how light the soil is. You can see how it's shifted more to the side.

- bought too many plants at the start and not enough space for them. Should have got more Marsilea to make a denser carpet from the beginning, and skipped on the hygrophila since it just got lost in the other plants.

- wanted to try the Java fern using DSM, which kind of worked but it looks a bit lousy now. The anubias was fine for DSM though, but kind of unnecessary, same with the moss.


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

Usually when people use DSM it's for the tiniest carpet plants that uproots easily like HC Cuba. The plants you have by doing DSM actually puts more stress on them since when you bought them you got it subserse form and when you did the DSM it forced them to changed to emersed form and then you flooded the tank and now it has to change yet again to the submerse form. It's not unusal for your plants to loose their leaves and look "lousy" give them some time and they should transition back to submerse form.


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## PPulcher (Nov 17, 2006)

Looking good. Your jungle val might get out of hand. I have some in a much larger tank (50 gallon) and it gets to be almost six feet long sometimes!

I can't help with the photos much. When I click on the thumbnail I get a bigger version that looks just a wee bit out of focus.

I have one of these kits that I purchased about a year ago and never got around to setting up. I was concerned about the the lighting as well. Can you share the mod for adding an extra strip? Is it one of those stick on types?


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## NickB (Oct 21, 2018)

coldmantis said:


> Usually when people use DSM it's for the tiniest carpet plants that uproots easily like HC Cuba. The plants you have by doing DSM actually puts more stress on them since when you bought them you got it subserse form and when you did the DSM it forced them to changed to emersed form and then you flooded the tank and now it has to change yet again to the submerse form. It's not unusal for your plants to loose their leaves and look "lousy" give them some time and they should transition back to submerse form.


The Java fern actually arrived out of water anyway so I figured it had either been grown emersed or at least had been out of water a few days already. Same with the anubias. They came in the rockwool baskets that were saturated with water, but other than that there wasn't much in the bag. The anubias did fine, but I think my main issue was that that the fern wasn't getting enough water since I didn't plant it in the substrate. I tried to keep on top of misting it but it likely wasn't ideal. Anyways, it's starting to look better now so lesson learned.



PPulcher said:


> Looking good. Your jungle val might get out of hand. I have some in a much larger tank (50 gallon) and it gets to be almost six feet long sometimes!
> 
> I can't help with the photos much. When I click on the thumbnail I get a bigger version that looks just a wee bit out of focus.
> 
> I have one of these kits that I purchased about a year ago and never got around to setting up. I was concerned about the the lighting as well. Can you share the mod for adding an extra strip? Is it one of those stick on types?


Yeah it was just one of the flexible stick-on strip light LEDs. It does make the tank marginally brighter, and a nicer colour temp, but I don't think it's really a make or break addition. I used electrical tape to keep the strip on more securely since the twisting LED strip comes off easily. Here's a picture of the setup.


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## FishNerd (Oct 13, 2017)

Always liked the fluval flex. Nice looking tank !

In order to get photos uploaded properly you need to use an online image host. I use imgur. But there may be some better ones. You upload your photos to the image host, then you can resize the image appropriately and perform other edits. In the case of imgur, when viewing the image it gives you a number of options and links to the image. At this point you copy the BBCode into the body of the forum post. This way you'll get big images into your forum posts and not have to use thumbnails. Make sure you preview your posts before submitting though. If it's not how you want it to look you can go back to imgur to resize and edit appropriately. 

FN


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## PPulcher (Nov 17, 2006)

NickB said:


> Yeah it was just one of the flexible stick-on strip light LEDs. It does make the tank marginally brighter, and a nicer colour temp, but I don't think it's really a make or break addition. I used electrical tape to keep the strip on more securely since the twisting LED strip comes off easily. Here's a picture of the setup.


Thanks! Good to know when I get around to setting mine up!


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