Playing around with plants

Not exactly the lushest growth yet - as far as planted aquaria go, this is "barely planted at all"!

While further research into canister filter media is ongoing, here's a pic from tonight: the planted tank. The Amazon sword leaves have gone to a more intense green color than they had before, probably because I swapped lights between the cichlid tank and this one, putting the more powerful T8 light above the plants rather than on the unplanted tank. (I got both those lights secondhand and didn't bother to check what bulbs they used at the time - although the housings are identical, one is a T8 and the other a dim T12!) I don't imagine the newly-installed CO2 has that much affect on color. Eventually I'd like to replace the single T8 with a pair, and replace the plastic lids with all-glass ones (I'm not brave enough to go without lids - I've had neons jump before!) I think more light would let me grow better plants, maybe even some reddish varieties that require higher light. There are several species that are suitable for low light (anubias and java fern are the common two, not that I have either) but they grow slowly, and I'm impatient! The water sprite grows quite quickly, and goes all leggy, but the trimmings will let me beef up the plant mass.

I'm in the process of experimenting to see what the best "recipe" for DIY CO2 "injection" is for my system; growing yeast in a pressurized environment is more difficult than growing bacteria in the aquarium! I'll keep the dry, boring lists to myself until I have something to report. I'm not planning to go the full high-tech route with cans of pressurized CO2, intense lighting, and high fertilization - for one thing, having a good substrate would probably help a lot with that, and mine's inert sand. Thus why I fertilize even with low light and low CO2.

I'm not happy with the water clarity in this tank - I've been messing about with it a bit, but I did manage to get the water fairly clear last week. Then I cleaned the filter pads, and I think I damaged the bacteria colonies, because it clouded up again. (White "fog" is usually bacterial bloom, a normal occurrence in a cycling tank.) I'm a little disturbed by that - this tank should be cycled by now - it's been running since March, started with seeded filters no less. I'll have to take some chemical readings to find out what's really going on.