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Well I am moving up from my 20g to a 75g as an early Christmas present! Link to 20g:
http://www.aquariumforum.com/f15/20g-planted-tank-1080.html
However, I ran into several early problems with my substrate, but I am back on track again. I got 6 bags of fluorite which I rinsed once and layed out into the tank. I layed out the drift wood and started filling the tank slowly. It got really cloudy and stayed that way for over 4 days. During that time 2 pieces of wood refused to sink. I tried Clarity which just made it more cloudy...there was just too much clay powder for it to handle. My only option was to completely empty the tank and start over!
I removed all the water and put the substrate into smaller buckets that I rinsed and dumped about 8-10 times until it was no longer cloudy. I ended up having to boil the wood for about 6hrs and then left them overnight in a full bath tub until they started to sink.
I then re-added the clean fluorite to the tank, filled it about a quarter of the way to check for cloudyness. Once it passed I added acid/akaline buffers (raise kH), prime, and began a DiY CO2 bottle. I then began transplanting some of the foreground plants like the dwarf grass and dwarf baby tears. I adde more water and added the background plants like the onion plant, amazon sword and ludwigia. These were rooted soo deep that they turned my 20g into a muddy mess like my 75g, but the Magnum filter was strong enough to clear that out in a few hours...poor fish!
I will start adding pics to this thread soon but for now here is one of the original 75g mess:
http://www.aquariumforum.com/f15/20g-planted-tank-1080.html
However, I ran into several early problems with my substrate, but I am back on track again. I got 6 bags of fluorite which I rinsed once and layed out into the tank. I layed out the drift wood and started filling the tank slowly. It got really cloudy and stayed that way for over 4 days. During that time 2 pieces of wood refused to sink. I tried Clarity which just made it more cloudy...there was just too much clay powder for it to handle. My only option was to completely empty the tank and start over!
I removed all the water and put the substrate into smaller buckets that I rinsed and dumped about 8-10 times until it was no longer cloudy. I ended up having to boil the wood for about 6hrs and then left them overnight in a full bath tub until they started to sink.
I then re-added the clean fluorite to the tank, filled it about a quarter of the way to check for cloudyness. Once it passed I added acid/akaline buffers (raise kH), prime, and began a DiY CO2 bottle. I then began transplanting some of the foreground plants like the dwarf grass and dwarf baby tears. I adde more water and added the background plants like the onion plant, amazon sword and ludwigia. These were rooted soo deep that they turned my 20g into a muddy mess like my 75g, but the Magnum filter was strong enough to clear that out in a few hours...poor fish!
I will start adding pics to this thread soon but for now here is one of the original 75g mess:
