New tank evolution

This Friday finally we got the Eco-Complete substrate. It is a naturally dark substrate special for plant growing. It is very expensive and clouds the water big time! Nice eh?
Just kidding, the water will be cloudy until the substrate settles down. A very light surface vacuum, without disturbing the substrate, would clear the bottom too.

First we got three bags and as we filled the tank the substrate got very disturbed. We didn’t used the plate technique or the “slow pouring” technique, but we put a plastic can to slow down the impact. After a while the can was missing in the misty water. We just waited for it to be clear without starting the filter.

As three bags seemed not be enough we got yesterday another bag, this time we poured it very carefully and we started the filter with floss fiber instead of the bio-filter and regular filter cartridge (with carbon). We may throw the floss away after a little while.

The water is getting better now, after 24+6 hours but still not good for planting it.

At the same time we are keeping some driftwood in a water bucket. The tap water pH is very high here, it escapes from the scale in our tester, but after 24 hours the water with the wood lowered the pH down, escaping from the scale again in the opposite direction. Probably in the 55 gallon tank it may help to stabilize the pH near the 7 range.

In the other tanks and in another bucket we are keeping some new plants. Among those we have some java fern, java moss, growing echinodorus bulbs, two packs of micro swords, some water spite and some Taiwan moss that we got from Singapore by eBay.

We don’t want snails in the new tank as they could eat the moss, so we are going to give a bath to the plants with Potassium Permanganate.

We created the page for the new 55 Gallon Aquarium, although it is not ready yet.