# Heavily planted 35 gallon



## colio (Dec 8, 2012)

At long last, i uploaded some pics of my tank. I bought it from joel.c in December (thanks Joel, great deal!), and cycled it using plants and media from my 10 gallon tank. I used a substrate of river sand, with a layer or laterite, and started moving over some plants and stuff from my 10 gallon. Here is an early pic, cloudy from the sand (sorry for poor pic quality, used an ipod).



Notice the giant crater from the filter. It is an aquaclear 300, which is rated for a 70 gallon (twice the tank). It took me a little while to notice that it was wrecking my sandscaping. 

The first plants where an ozelot Sword and a large anubias. the stones came with the tank.




I then went on a plant buying binge in the formuns. I got a nice hygrophilia package to start off (I didn't like the hygro a lot at first, but it grew on me). And some floaters (frogbit and hygoriza). i tied the hygoriza to the sides, and used oit to contain the frogbit to create an "ultra low light" section of the rocks and anubias, which was designed as a comfortable tank space for the opaline gourami I eventually got. Then I grabbed a few more pakages, rearranged a bit, and ended up with this:





Sorry the picks are not very clear. it is much prettier in real life 

Here's a shot of new growth on the ozelot sword. Notice how the older leaved, which had long stems and round leaved, gave way to the more traditional sword plant shape.



Lastly, a pic showing a very nice plant I got with my hygrophilia pakage, some hygrophilia pinnatifida, which i gather is fairly rare. When i planted it, it was barely over the bottom stone. It's grown quite a bit!


I have not very good lighting, a t8 36 inch light which I think is about 30 watts, and a smaller light behind (24 inch, 15 W I think). I dose iron and phosphate, and have fishes in there for other neutrients, and DIY CO2. And amazingly, most of the plants are growing pretty well. I have some bacopa which has shot up, I have trimmed the hygro several times, my anubias spread roots like crazy, and even get growth on high light plants like ludgia repens 'rubin' and ludwigia glandulosa. I'd like to upgrade to a double t5 39 W lighting system, as soon as I can afford it.

I'm really happy with the tank. I only started planted (in my 10 gallon) in November, and it turned my aquarium from soemthing in the background into an obsession.

PS: Sorry for the small thumbs to links. I had hoped they would load full sized into the forum, but I'm not so sazzy on HTML or forum posting.


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