# 90 gallon planted



## Nyte (Nov 24, 2006)

*90 gallon planted *updated new pics on page 2!**

Hey Everyone 

As promised in my intro thread... pics! Enjoy!

Whole tank: 









Male Ram:









Male Rams showing off for each other: 









Apisto:









Right Side: 









Left Side: 









Everyone wanted to be in this one


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## nightowl1350 (Mar 19, 2006)

Great looking tank! Your plants look so nice, my only ones are java ferns cause I seem to kill off most others.


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## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

holy frik i love it! 

It looks very clean and neat.. 

What are the specs on that one??


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## sharon (Oct 2, 2006)

WOW!! that is one great looking tank..you must put alot of work into it?


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## jrs (Mar 18, 2006)

Looks good.

What is the substrate you are using? Is it a mixture of eco and river gravel?


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## WaterWorld (May 7, 2006)

Awesome looking tank Nyte. Excellent work. What are the specs of your tank? Lighting, filter, substrate, fauna, flora, dosing, etc, etc? Keep up the good work


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## Nyte (Nov 24, 2006)

Thanks everyone  

The substrate is a few things. It started out as flourite and pea gravel mixture but I decided I needed more so added some eco-complete. 

My tank specs at the time the pics were taken (lighting has since been upgraded):

Fluval 405 Canister Filter
2x65 watt compact flourescent lighting which has just been upgraded to 4x65 watt.
Pressurized c02

I don't do any EI dosing yet. I do use liquid ferts, flourish or tropica master grow. If I see any signs of deficinecy with the plants, I'll dose one of the PNK's depending on what signs the plants are showing. I assume with the new lighting I will battle algae so might have to start EI. 

Who lives there:
A school of neons
2 pairs of rams
2 apistos
3 plecs
5 swordtails, thankfully the males seem to be unable to breed with the females because they have VERY long fins. 

Plants: 
Nymphoea lotus (zenkeri) - The red plant
Limnophila sessiliflora - tall plant to the far left
Vals
Java fern (2 different kind, but I don't have the names anymore). 

I have a lot more plants now, a few, well alot unknown. I got an order online of plants because the selection around here isn't great. Anyway, it was just a variety pack. Still figuring out just what I have now. There's FAR too many plants in my tank right now, but I assume a fair amount of them will die due to the hard water.


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## WaterWorld (May 7, 2006)

Too bad you're not in the area. The Menagerie Petshop downtown Toronto has a fairly good variety of plants. I would like to see some updated pics? When will they be up?


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## Nyte (Nov 24, 2006)

I can take new pics next week sometime.  I want to give the new arrivals some time to grow a bit. It's pretty ugly right now actually, VERY FULL and the new ones are basically the same size.

I've been tempted by all the posts mentioning The Menagerie. I might have to plan a trip sometime to see it.


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## WaterWorld (May 7, 2006)

Looking forward to the pictures. You should visit the menagerie atleast once, it's worth it.


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## Nyte (Nov 24, 2006)

Alright! Got some new pics finally! And I went a little crazy! 

I'm pretty happy right now with my tank.  Although, I'm seeing some hair algae on the ricca that gets out of the hairnet/rock setup so hopefully it'll remain under control! I'm not sure what a lot of these plants are... except for the originals and the obvious (like the banana plant).

Oh yea, I'm including a pic of some ram fry too! I'll shush now and get to the pics!

Full Tank:









Bigger tank shot: 









Ram Fry:









Middle tank: 









Right side: 









Ricca:


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## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

WOW!!!

whats plant is in that last photo?


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## Nyte (Nov 24, 2006)

It's Riccia Fluitians attached to lava rocks. Kind of a pain in the butt plant heh it has to be tied down with a hairnet or something similar because it has no roots.


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## nightowl1350 (Mar 19, 2006)

OMG first time looking at the last pics I missed the ram fry pic! Wow they look like great parents to get any to live in a community tank. Congrats on the babies.

It looks like the theroy that rams must be parent raised to do it themselves has a huge hole in it as I raised them


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## WaterWorld (May 7, 2006)

Once again an awesome looking tank Nyte. Will you be parting out with the Ram fry? Keep up the excellent work and keep us updated with pictures. What type of camera are you using? Pictures look tiptop crisp.


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## DaFishMan (Dec 19, 2006)

Hi Nyte 

My friend NightOwl pointed me to your thread to check out the ram pics.
Gratz on the fry !!

You have a beautiful tank & can tell you put alot of care into it.


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## nightowl1350 (Mar 19, 2006)

WaterWorld....I may still have a few pairs from the same spawn that Nyte got  closer to.


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## cichlidland (Jan 7, 2007)

*Your planted tank*

Hi,

Your planted tank looks great!!! I am really very impressed. I wish my plants would grow like that.

What kind of CO2 injector are you using?
What is the PH of the water?

If you have too many plants please consider selling them on the forum or you can also consider joining The Toronto Willowdale Aquarium Society. We usually meet every third Wednesday of each month except during June and August. Thee is a small fish and plants auction during each meeting and we often have interesting speakers too. You won't make much money on selling during the auctions, but you might like to meet more people interested in the hobby and to learn more from the lectures as well. The membership is only $20 per year and you can attend the fist meeting as a guest. Hope to see you there. More info about the club is at: http://www.torontoaquarium.org/

It looks like you can make a great speaker yourself. You really know a lot about growing plants as well as breeding South American cichlids. By the way congratulations on breeding Rams. They are one of my favorite fish.
Are you adding any peat moss to the water or any other conditioner to soften it?


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## Nyte (Nov 24, 2006)

WaterWorld said:


> Once again an awesome looking tank Nyte. Will you be parting out with the Ram fry? Keep up the excellent work and keep us updated with pictures. What type of camera are you using? Pictures look tiptop crisp.


Thank you! The fry never make it past about a week old. My thoughts are they slowly get picked off by the other female rams and fish in the tank.

The camera I'm using is: Fujifilm FinePix S9000. It's a great camera esp. considering I know NOTHING about photography at all.


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## Nyte (Nov 24, 2006)

cichlidland said:


> Your planted tank looks great!!! I am really very impressed. I wish my plants would grow like that.
> 
> What kind of CO2 injector are you using?
> What is the PH of the water?
> Are you adding any peat moss to the water or any other conditioner to soften it?


Hiya!  Thank you very much!

The C02 unit I use is this one: http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsU...l0/redseaco2prosystempaintballdeluxewsolenoid

I would not reccommend it though. I've had a lot of problems bit the reactor and well, pretty much every part of it.

The PH at last check was around 7ish.

I don't do anything to soften the water.

The secret to my plants seems to be great substrate and the C02. The C02 got shut off for 10 days recently because some part of it was "making funny noises" (I was out of town) and now all my plants look like crap. Alot have started to melt. It's too early to tell if the C02 will save them, but that's the only thing that changed from the time I left till now.

I also use Flourish as needed. And have the EI chemicals around, just in case algae becomes a problem or other deficiencys.

Hope this answers your questions sufficently!

p.s. I'm moving to Alberta at the end of this month and unfortunatly the plants are coming with me. It's too bad, because I literally pull grocery bags full of extra plants out. But usually have no one to give them to so the end up in the trash.


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## Allan (May 8, 2006)

Wonderful tank, well taken care of, you should be proud!

Allan


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## cichlidland (Jan 7, 2007)

*Growing plants.*

Hi,

Sorry for my late reply to your post about taking care of your plants. Somehow I have missed your reply before and just noticed it now.

Too bad since I would love to get some plants from you. I live in Toronto. 
I hope your move to Alberta was good and that you didn't lose any fish or too many plants.

What are EI chemicals?

Also did you ever had problem with sheet green algae (or maybe it is bacteria)? In one of my tanks I have big problem with this green algae that grow very fast within few hours of cleaning my tank. It looks very bad.

This is my 75 gallons with two big filters - Emperor and Eheim. 
I change water once a week (about 30%) and recently even twiece a week, the lights are on for about 9 hours. I have two Aqua Glow lights. I also have dark hair algae problem in this tank - they are growing mostly on rocks.

I add some fertilizer usually weekly and occasionally Excel.

I am afraid to add too much since I think algae grow better when I do that.

This is my African cichlids tank. I don't have too many plants there, but a few nice one that I hope to grow better.

Any suggestions on how to get rid of the algae would be greatly appreciated. I am not sure I can run C02 unit on this tank since I think it can lower my PH. Right now it is usually about 7.8


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