How To Keep Low Tech Aquarium Plants Alive - Comprehensive Guide 2022

Many people have been messaging below my videos why your

plants

look so lush and green all the time and how you

keep

them well

alive

first before getting into all the details. I want to assure you. that my

plants

don't look absolutely amazing all the time, I would say sometimes they look decent, half good, usually in the new stages of setting up you get your initial diatoms, certain plants die while everything is trying to settle, so don't let trick me into thinking everything is perfect, so for example this is my rainbow fish tank and on the surface look oh it looks fantastic, everything is great, certain plants are growing very well, hydrocodone from Japan is growing very well , all kinds of new and fresh growth. but look at bolbitis, there are all kinds of filamentous algae and things like that.

Hi, sorry not at the moment guys, we're just looking at bulbitis. You are beautiful, although it's okay, you can have two seconds, one, two. I'll get back to you in a minute the bolbitis has a lot of algae uh fred on the tip the antenna on the back looks lush but the tips have a little bit of siena bacteria now I'm not entirely sure why this happens but it's pretty common again once the tank matures it doesn't happen as much, but when they are very close to the light you can understand it anyway. My point is that sometimes not everything is perfect, especially in new setups, but they can be perfect, it usually all depends on the lighting you have for your tank.

Now, the right lighting doesn't necessarily mean it's really expensive, it doesn't necessarily mean cheap Eve is right, it's just the kind of amount or the kind of luminosity of the light and whether it's good enough to go to the plants or not, if it's good enough you'll get growth, if it's not good enough obviously the problem is when you don't get decent growth on your plants you start to have algae problems because it seems like they can grow much easier than plants so that you say, "Oh, my plants aren't growing well, I must need more fertilizer, so you put fertilizer in the water column with low light and then the algae starts using that fertilizer and then the algae grows but the plants don't, like this." which this tank here is a really good example of what I'm talking about when I set this up oh what was it like a week and a half almost two weeks ago now I had the light um you can turn it around so it's a short piece there, if you turn it around, obviously, it comes much lower.

I had it too low, it's a no-filter setup. I have quite a bit of algae on the rocks and I noticed there is quite a bit of algae up there as well, it's just not balanced enough for that amount of light right now, I think I'll eventually be able to lower the point through the light intensity was causing problems now the plants were growing and they are growing sorry because I want to say this pearl grass has already doubled in size it will soon have its first cutting but it is only if there is too much light if you are constantly appearing algae then you need to back off a little and that is what I have done now.

These two tanks here are actually a very good example, to be honest, both lights are very economical, one of the cheapest. the ones I could find get a good bang for your buck, really if you wanted high end lighting you would probably need two of those together, both sitting at that height of the tank, but since I don't use co2 and only have small internal filters, this kind of lighting works for low budget setups and you can see that I have it raised to the same height as that, but you can also see how good all the growth is, so just

keep

going. to show as you might think, it is necessary to illuminate the tank with a lot of light, but it is not necessary all the time now, it depends on the plants of course, so for example here we have many crips that do not require a lot of light. light, but we have japonica blocks and at the bottom there are weapons that require a medium amount of light, so they still get what they need even though the light is very high up and it's also not incredibly powerful now because it's not crazy . powerful, we don't have tons of algae, the plants grow well, I wouldn't say super fast and in the best conditions, I mean, some of them have some clear deficiencies, but overall I think given the fact that it's a really low level . budget and a low-

tech

setup, it's nice, right?

I think most people would enjoy this sort of thing in their living room or something without it costing a bomb, so yeah, they're like cheap strip lights you can get. On Amazon, I'll leave a link in the description. I have the larger version here in this tank suspended with some fishing wire, actually a little closer, there are also two and that is simply because it is a very deep tank. I wanted to make sure that we had light everywhere and that we had enough light, you see, because deep down the crips are growing well, the s repens are growing well and that's a good sign that there are no algae tankers, but when I say no algae remember I mean minimal algae that you can't really see, so strip lights are fantastic, very easy to purchase, but some of you may want to go ultra low

tech

and make your own lighting, so this is my amazon

aquarium

.

I think there is no denying that the plants are growing fantastically well, but what is causing all that growth. There are a few things, obviously, there's quite a bit of waste produced by these fish here, which means there's constant fertilizer, but other than that, I have reflectors, these are like reflectors that you would put on your driveway to illuminate them. They are 6500 kelvin so the sunlight is like midday and all I have done is simply attached them to a piece of wood that I just bracketed and glued to the frame at the bottom so it works all the way up, They are 30 watts each and yes, I think the results speak for themselves, this Japanese hydrocodone is going crazy, but the really good thing about these lights is that the reds are also very good, so look that on the part of fish come out behind.

I'll talk to you in a minute. Ludwigia super red is super red but the fish and the colors of the fish are very vibrant and that again is because it is 6500 kelvin, I think that is the best temperature for any of the lights, to be honest look how good all the colors are and the fish. I would have to say that the reflector method is my favorite lighting method. the tank so a lot of you are going to ask how long should I keep the lights on because I keep most of the lights on actually all these lights on for 12 hours 12 hours I mean yeah that sounds like a lot remember They are all low powered so it's not like they don't cost, they cost a lot because there are a lot of them, but individually they don't cost much so you're not going to have as many tanks as I do, so yeah, 12 hours for me.

The good thing about that is that I can reduce it if I need to. I never do that because I'm clear now, I know that's the right amount of light and I can. adjust other variables, it may not be the same for you, although one of the easiest things to do probably if you have a lot of algae is to just go back a few hours at a time or an hour at a time and keep coming back. until it starts to fade or at least balances out, but I'm in my studio for a long time and I like to have all the lights on.

I can be here for 12 hours, sometimes it can be like a split shift or something because I go out and have lunch, but I like the lights to be on when I'm here and I get in early, so that's why I do 12 hours and I don't really change that, but if you're at home If you're going to work, you could apparently do lighting schedules where you say four hours in the morning so that when you're awake you can see everything and then four hours after work as well, for a total of eight. Apparently this can trigger hours, I like to think two days have passed and you get even more growth.

I've never actually experienced that so it might be interesting, but yeah, I use 12 hour lighting, you might not necessarily need or want to do that. That's so you don't have to, but that's what I do and remember I'm using low power lighting, not high power, so that's probably why I can stay away from those long periods if you're using lights. high-tech that just explode. as down, I think they last between six and eight hours most places I know do now, whatever lighting you choose and you can choose any lighting you should expect results equal to the cost, there's really no question about it , the expensive lights are amazing, just the color and everything is great.

I just choose not to go for that style. I enjoy the challenge of going for the biggest budget possible, but with that low on my expectations, so I don't expect my tank to look like these high end ada, you know, like full CO2 systems, they just won't look like that, they still will. You will see well, but not like this and that leads me very well to the next chapter, I suppose it is a more appropriate title for this section. It would be plant selection because obviously you have to have plants to keep them

alive

, but plant selection I would say is key and it depends on the setup, the lighting levels, for example, if you have a really cheap light.

If you don't make it to the depth of the tank you don't want to be placed like a shiny stigma and a carpet of grass because nothing will happen, it will probably just melt, to be honest I've had incidents but that's not true. I've had it where the grass stayed exactly the same for about six months, which is still pretty good. I guess it looks like this, you won't get it to grow, so you have to think about the type of setup you have. I have and what you think as far as plants will be appropriate now, there are certain plants that just grow easily in any light and that's like a branch, sensitive lymphedema, caecilian flora, this thing is like a weed and you can cut it as quickly, replant it, cut it, replant.

It's really easy to do because the nodes, like the distance between each part of the plant, are quite wide, so you can just prune them and replant them, and when you do that, obviously you get more and it gets thicker and bushier, so so you can get that kind of really dense look, even in a very low-tech setup, it takes some time and a lot of trimming and replanting, but you can do it. Another one I find is the dwarf sinking. I found that it grows no matter what tank it is in. put it on and what lighting levels too to make the dwarf stage really vibrant green again.

One of the things I make sure to do when I pick up my plants is that I always go with ones that I have used before and that I know work well. I have a pretty wide range of ones I can use now, so I can get that kind of variable look, not massively, but yeah, a huge variation of looks across the board. I think Ludwigia grows well in any lighting, it's just that it'll turn a lot redder at higher lighting settings, so with the reflectors in the tank behind me, the reds on all the ludwigia are adequate reds, but if we had less light it would be more of a kind of brownie yellow, so again you can make them all grow very well, you just have to be realistic in your expectations of what you think it will be versus what it will actually be if you find that your plants like the red or that are supposed to be red are not. properly red, it will literally be that the lighting isn't high enough, so you can refresh the light, bring it closer, and sometimes when those plants actually grow more towards the surface and then right under the light, they can really become vibrant. in that period, but you know, sometimes we want that a little bit further down the tank, don't we?

Otherwise, there's not much left on the bottom and then all the color on top can look good, it can work as well. It just depends on the setup, if you have a proper traditional style aquascape, with a rock retaining wall, a load of wood and then you want all the stems and colors behind it, that's not it, so it can really work. Well, if you hit the substrate, you will have options, if I had to deal with all this again, a good tip I would give you would be to go to the store and choose five different plants, stem plants in pots, so that you can actually already I have a little growth.

I'm talking about easy plants, Hydrophila Polysperma Sciences 53b, Limnophyllus siciliflora, like those kinds of plants, and put them all in your tank, yeah, they should grow, I mean, you don't even have them. To plant them and just put them in the pots, they should continue to grow. Find out which one is your favorite. Find out which ones work well in your water parameters. To be honest, everyone should do well. You know, choose another tundrafolia rotala. And some things that I know as dwarfs we also put them in that sand, we put them in that base layer and we'll talk about nutrients in a minute, that's the next stage, butFirst of all you have to choose some plants.

So yeah, go out and pick those plants right away, you'll get some good growth and it will give you some confidence. In my opinion, floating plants are absolutely essential for a low-tech system. Each of my tanks has some type. of floating plants themselves are red root floats, salvinia, water lettuce, duckweed and a piece of frog, a piece of Amazonian frog, I have that too, so I have five different types scattered around each one.Right now There isn't a specific one for a specific tank, I just like to collect them and grow them, move them around when I make a new setup, I'll pick a few to include as well, but the reason they are so good is that they use CO2 from the atmosphere to grow and draw nutrients from the water column, which means like turbocharged filters, if you like to suck up all those nutrients from the water column that would cause algae and just convert them into growth the way you want. exporting that waste then because the waste is what caused it to grow, it's just putting it out like you technically have an infinite supply of it once you grow it because the fish are creating the poop, the poop goes into the water column. all the plants are growing, the plants inside the tank have grown, you're trimming them, you're taking them out and it just goes on and on.

Floating plants are also great for reducing some lighting levels if you find that your tank is a little too bright. I had it before. I added the floating plants to just one tank and all the algae were gone within a couple of weeks. There are no nutrients for them and there is less light, that's why it works. They also just give. Hugely natural looking, isn't it throughout the tank, especially when you view them from um? like they have cover too so you'll see better behavior you'll find with the fish, the more cover you give them the more out in the open most fish tend to come anyway so yeah if you don't have anything floating. plants, I suggest you get some, you can buy them on eBay, you can go to your local official, find one that works great in your walking parameters and stick with it and then maybe introduce a few others as you go, but as soon as As you can. find a floating plant that works for you, to be honest this is not the easiest topic because it can be very confusing so I have had tanks where I put nothing but gravel and plants and the plants did well and They had good storage levels. of fish, meaning the fish produced waste that went down into the gravel system and provided nutrients for those roots.

That's why so many people ask me, oh, how do you keep the stones separate when you re-tax? I have never taxed the tank again. I always thought I did it once and it was like it was a waste of time and I just didn't do it again, obviously that's very different if you don't have a full planted tank and if you have like me I don't know Malawi cichlids or something well, yes you have to do it then, but for planted tanks you are actually extracting nutrients that could be used to benefit the entire ecosystem, so yes, you can keep it completely simple and just use gravel, but just don't expect explosive growth from In the beginning it will take time for the nutrient levels throughout the tank to build up, it can take around a month to be honest before you see really lush growth, however if you want to do it Another way to do it is very common: I use small bags of substrate and put aqua soil in aquasol, which is just kind of nutrient rich soil balls that harden and stick, so you can put them in the base layer and then cover them. remove it with sand if you want or you can just pour it and then plant it directly.

It can be done in several ways. I just like to cover it so it doesn't go everywhere. You can also just get gravel or sand and put it. The root tabs go back on, all you're doing is adding those nutrients to the sand or gravel right away, effectively like waiting for the poop to get in there with that method, but you're just speeding everything up, it's a lot faster and the plants can actually start rooting within the first week or so, that's the key, as soon as you get those plants to root they will simply remove even the ones that can feed from the water column, you will also get that the roots work, simply, yes, simply.

It goes crazy then and that's even without CO2. I found that some of my tanks are overgrown because they grow so fast. I have a lot of tanks, it's hard to keep up, but I enjoy the oversized look. I'm not going to lie, but to be honest, the best method I've found is aquatic soil in media bags covered with sand. Now I have a lot of tanks around me that just used those methods that I've had amazing. Success with a few of them, one of them in fact was the ecosystem tank that I had running for over a year with that method and it was still flourishing.

The only reason I broke it is because I wanted to get some different fish and change it up. it went up a little bit, but it worked great for a long time and all my other tanks here also work great with that method, so that's what I would suggest: you don't have to put the shaft in the media bag, you can just put it in. as a bottom layer and then cover it if you want. The reason I say cover it is that it seems to keep all the nutrients tightly locked in with these low-tech tanks and stops so much organic matter floating in the water column because most people are not willing to do weekly or every water changes. two or any other water changes, so the method I set up means you don't have to do as many water changes as you do initially, but after the tank settles.

In about a month, it's just autopilot and you sit back and enjoy so everyone has their own preferences and opinions on the leak. I'm not one of those guys that likes what they think and whatever they want to use is going to work so I have some tanks with zero filtration other than floating plants and I have some, I have a lot of filtration, actually two boats in one of my tanks but most of my tanks I just use a little bit internal and that's mostly just to push the water through, it has a little bit of sponge for mechanical filtration just to polish the water a little bit now and then most of the time It gets clogged and I turn it off, although I forget to turn it back on. like this one behind me now I just turned it back on after cleaning the sponges because otherwise you would have a little yeah, it's not nice um and it's absolutely fine, it's been off for like two weeks completely so I thought I'd just polish a little bit of water with it because it's in a very mature stage now that all the filtration happens in this substrate system and also the plants have a perfect balance and that's why I say it's not really like that.

It matters if you set up the tank right now, by the way this is not for unplanted tanks, if you have a cichlid tank with hundreds of them then you need some serious filtration, but for my planted tanks I can use anything. I also have them hanging on the back. I have a sponge filling. No, not anymore. I used to have some sponge filters, but I opt for a small internal one. Now I like the internal ones because they make an annoying noise that tells me it needs to be cleaned again once the tank matures, I basically turn them off unless they are needed, for example in my Rainbow River

aquarium

they like fast flow, so I still do it all the time and they're just swimming in and out of it which is awesome but yeah do what you want as you don't need huge amounts of filtration I don't think it's because of the style of tanks I have , so the under fabric of the tanks.

Like I said, we have a nice big substrate system that provides all the kind of home for the beneficial bacteria that you would normally have in the container, but it's just in the tank, so it's pretty much the same. Push some water definitely to start, I'll always use something to push the water on unless you're making a specific tank without a filter as I have a lot harder to do, although it's a lot harder to make a tank. without a filter than with a small filter, but it is more than doable if you are willing to take your time and give it the care and attention it needs, so filter and get the one you want.

Actually, here's a perfect example of what I was talking about so you can see this is so lush and it looks perfect, very, very, very minimal, there is algae in this tank and if you come and look at the filter that we have, it just I have one of these little internal ones with a spray bar and I came here and you can see the spray bar barely works, but it's enough to keep the water flowing so that the beneficial bacteria on the sponge in there can work. Well, but at this point it's not even necessary because we have a thick layer of water going in the front and that depth is much higher in the back with gravel underneath as well, so we have all the beneficial bacteria we need.

The tank is on autopilot and that's what I love about planted tanks, they just do their thing, you just have to coax it in the right direction, so the fertilizers will be very tank dependent, so I prefer low tech setups, which means I don't want a lot of excess nutrients in the tank and I already put a good amount of fish in most of my setups, so the fish provide most of the fertilizer the plants need from their excrement, but every time I do a water change or water refill Water changes happen quite frequently in the early stages of the tank, then it's just evaporation refill evaporation refill every time I do a refill, which is usually probably twice a week in the summer, once a week in the winter because everything is air conditioned, but still, yes, there is still evaporation, people wonder about that a lot in my studio, actually, but it's pretty good, all the air is Extract it so it doesn't have mold and stuff.

So yeah, I like to use a fertilizer once a week and the one I use is wait, yeah, this isn't sponsored or anything, but I use the API leaf zone, it's iron and potassium and that's it because, like I say, I'm getting the rest of the nutrients from the fish's poop and if I start adding a special type of all-in-one or estimated rate fertilizer into the tank before you know it, it's just going to be flooded with algae, it's going to be flooded. and it will grow. There's a lot of algae, so I guess what I'm saying is that I keep everything on the right lean side, let the fish provide the nutrients and then top it off with a little iron and potassium and just a simple fertilizer, and it works great .

To me, if you're looking for a high-end setup, I guess it's not like that if you're watching this video because it's not really geared toward that, if you're looking for a high-end setup. a lot of co2, so you need to put in a lot of different fertilizers that they like, they do daily fertilizers, weekly water changes, that's not my style of fish farming or gardening, but you know, I understand that it's a requirement in that type of setup so yeah literally for a tank this size here I don't know why I'm struggling to open a lid I just put a lid on there we go like this for this size um I'll probably do this last bit.

I have used the entire bottle. Oh, I need a little more. Yeah, so I'm going to use a lid for this one. I'll use half a cup for smaller tanks and obviously even smaller tanks even less than that, but I've found it's about right. amount and keeps everything looking lush but with minimal algae, I mean minimal, there is always something true. I'm not going to sit here and pretend to know anything about CO2. I've used it a couple of times in the last four and a half years. I've been keeping fish and making fish tanks for a year and a half and I know it's amazing, but for someone who doesn't want to keep trimming plants all the time, meaning me, it's an absolute no. -not my studio so I like to keep everything low tech but you might want to use co2 and in fact you might need to apparently if you have a high ph you need the co2 to get it down to the level um not to the level I'm at but even lower actually because my CO2 levels in my tap are a decent amount and I have a ph of seven so it's neutral if you're in the high eights apparently it can be harder , but in reality it is not impossible at all. you know, grow decent plants and even then, I don't think you have to have co2, you just have to select specific plants.

I'm not going to talk too much about this because I don't want to pretend to be an expert, but if you're interested in those crazy ada and green aqua george farmer style um aquascapes they all use co2 yuris too he's another one he always uses co2 and a lot of the best aquascapers just everyone uses co2 it's a great thing, apparently it's once you have the initial investment, it's not that expensive, it's expensive to maintain, you just have to keep dosing thatbottle, which doesn't cost a lot either. I don't think it's just the initial investment you're talking about, I know.

If I put it in one of the tanks here, I'll want it in all of them, so I don't bother at all, but yeah, if you're interested in CO2, there are tons of people that have

guide

s and a lot of information on that, you have to look on another part because my knowledge is not very good, no, I'm not talking about what Santa gives gifts, I'm talking about the number of fish in your aquarium now that you start. with low tank start just start with low population i mean i put fish in my tanks immediately from the beginning what is called cycle fish we can talk about that in a moment because that is also very important in terms of start. a tank, that's what I think most tanks I start with five or six fish, that's it, if it's a smaller tank and smaller fish, if it's four foot tanks, it's usually bigger fish, you know, like an electric blue car , as I'm looking right behind me, um and then in The smaller tanks like this are rice fish, so you know it's all relative to the size of the tank.

The problem is that if you start putting too many fish in initially, you will get too much ammonia for the new plants you put in. handling it can burn them and melt them or it can cause the fish to die which means even more ammonia and it's like a vicious cycle so fish cycling is one of those things I've heard a little about. some negative comments about it, you know, I guess this is coming from people who haven't tried it or seen the great results you can get with cycling fish, so what do we mean by cycling fish?

The tank is new, there is new water, it has a new filter and you can put fish in right away. We do this by adding beneficial bacteria to the tank, but also by closely monitoring the water every day and looking for any signs of ammonia. nitrite spikes increase that kind of thing and then you can just drain the water and refill it and then everything is fresh. The idea is that everything is being colonized by bacteria because the fish are providing it with waste, the right amount of waste for that. For fish, the more traditional style would be to add your own ammonia to the tank before any fish come in, you build up the bacteria levels.

Now the problem with that is how much ammonia it tastes like. I'm sure there are formulas to solve it, but. like if you put the fish in, maybe some bacteria die and then you start recycling and you're back to square one. I've talked to quite a few people about this, really knowledgeable people and they have also combined like time. with about 40 years of experience keeping fish and they even say to start with a few fish in your tank and just let it circulate on its own and monitor the water to do it you need a test kit so you need one of those of all modes.

To be fair, shouldn't it be that way? That's not a big deal and we're just looking for small spikes of ammonia, not big ones, where it's dangerous, like it's not going to hurt the fish, but you can see that the signs of ammonia in the water, going down and up the water to be honest i only do 50 more changes when i do this every day anyway for at least a week or so, every tank is different, most of them balance out within a week to a week. Half to two weeks at this point you can start adding a few more fish and get up to the numbers you really want in the tank, so if you start with "I don't know four five six" and then eventually they'll add two more and add two more, something like that.

Now I know the trend is to just put in all the fish you want at once but you may have to pay so much attention to it that it leaves no room for error at all like I've done it before and done it very well in fact I did it with this tank behind me which was very well stocked worked well I monitored it very closely but I needed to do it because I already had the fish so I had to put them back in the tank. Luckily, we had other means that we also talked about.

I put in some sponges, but most of my large tanks only have one small sponge. I don't have a big boat full of media, so it was pretty much starting over from scratch, uh, bacteria-wise, considering how many fish there are in the tank and I'm sure you'll agree that everything worked pretty well on this tank. Ultra detected the albino pleco. Down there we can have a better view, you're a beast, don't you look at it? no, that's it, there are no bristles, but yes, so why is fishing cycling relevant to keeping your plants alive? I just find that it creates a balance. much faster when there is a faster equilibrium it means you get less algae and more plants grow if the plants grow fast you are far away right you can compete with the algae and everything is fine so for me fishing on a bike after a year and a half. two weeks you are there and in that period you are changing the water so regularly that there is no algae for me either, every tank needs some kind of cleaning equipment, whether it be snails, bristly nose, something like that, it still needs something, eventually there will be some kind of imbalance and algae will form or it is simply a very low and constant background level.

Now sometimes on some of my big tanks I just have one bristly nose pleco and that just does the job everywhere and then another tank maybe has a little more powerful lighting, I'll put two or three in and that works again . This is one of those where you don't put the cleaning crew in right away because you don't know what you need and you want to make sure there's enough food for them, food in the form of seaweed of course, usually around two o'clock. Weeks after setting up the tank is when I add the cleaning equipment and I tend to look for synchronized amano otto shrimp and rams horn. snails occasionally i will also get a neurite snail but what i like about ramsan snails is that they breed fast and you get a good population for the tank, if you don't overfeed the tank the population will stabilize and be fair. enough, that's why my tanks are not only covered in snails everywhere.

Now the problem with ammano shrimp can be a little difficult because if you have bigger fish they will just eat them, for example I put them in once. Quite a few of them in my discus tank, I don't have my discus tank now, but I used to oh no, my light is going out, wait, here we go, yeah, I think I put in about 10 or 20, even a manna shrimp from a discus tank and they ate them all in one day so it's not always appropriate but in that tank the bristly nosed plecos worked brilliantly along with the snails which they also left alone.

If you have really bad hair algae, you can use some products to sort it out. That's clear, but if you don't want to, you can use Salmi's algae eaters. I've used this a lot before, it's a great effect. You can also do many of these things manually. It's always better if you can see things. Get your hands out and then let the bugs do the work on the smallest things. You know, things that are actually, I don't know, etched into things. You know they are solid. Sometimes you can't even remove them with a brush. I found that amano shrimp are really good with a dustier type of nose bristle algae, plecos are absolutely brilliant for diatoms and those types of early snails are generally good everywhere, but I went for that after two weeks To configure, search for amano. snails shrimp and bristlenose plecos, if you have a smaller tank the bristlenose won't really be good, it's just the snails and shrimp amino, assuming you have a small tank you have small fish and the shrimp are good with That again, why do we have to worry about the cleaning crew?

What does that have to do with keeping plants alive? It involves plants competing with algae for light and nutrients. We get rid of the algae. All light nutrients are available to the plant. If you keep it at a low level of algae because you remember there is always some there, then the plants can absolutely flourish. Remember that the more light and nutrients you can give the tank without an algae explosion, the better the plants will grow, so having a cleaning kit is really going to contribute to this, but you know that there will be times when it won't fix it for you. complete.

You will be left completely bewildered as to what to do. You feel like you have the right lights because the plants are growing pretty decently, it's just this annoying level of algae that doesn't take over the tank, but you don't want them there now of course, manual removal is always the first option, get as much as you can, sometimes I like to use brushes and things like this so you can get into difficult places with that one and with this one you just twist it like a thread of seaweed and it not only takes off what you can see, but it pulls it from the inside of plants and things like that.

Also, you just give it a twist, it looks like green cotton candy on a stick, but after you've done that you might want to treat the tank with a chemical and now chemicals should probably be your last resort, that's really what I look at . to last because you can fix the problem with a chemical but it will come back immediately if you haven't tidied up the other areas so this is for annoying levels that won't go away but won't be completed like our kit coverage if there is coverage your light will probably be too strong now that you have some leaves that have horrible pieces of algae on them.

I use a co2 api enhancer. This is a glutaraldehyde. It is marketed as liquid carbon. They are all marketed as liquid carbon, but realistically. Face it, it will stop us from going to the leaves, which means the leaves can absorb more CO2 from the water. All water has a certain level of CO2, so if you're going to have algae on those leaves, it's going to be difficult to get them off. everything is included, so if you use this, you can also treat it with a syringe or something or you can just dose the water column. I tend to treat large areas that aren't very good at all and then after that I just like to use the whole area and then I'll just treat the whole tank and then you can just sit back and that should take care of it.

Now a lot of people advocate for a lot of water changes, I mean, that's really not my style of keeping fish. I don't want to keep throwing water at something to try to solve a problem that's not really an ecosystem, so that's constantly dragging things down. Now I know it's like in a river. I'm not in a river, I'm in a room above a gym that plays loud music, so let's do a full rundown, like building a tank from scratch. We start with that really good nutrient substrate distribution. We need good nutrients. So that plants can grow very quickly and healthily, they will extract nutrients from the water column, but they also need them from the roots.

That's not true, they don't need them, but if they do, you'll have a much bigger advantage. You've got your nutrients, you've also locked them in because in these low-tech systems you probably don't want them floating in the water column because we're not doing constant water changes, it's locked in with sand. layer on top or a layer of gravel on top and now we can go into our plants and put them in now, the plants that we want to use remember they are the fast growing ones at least initially, you can also have some anubias and Java ferns like well, which ones don't grow really fast, but you know that the majority of your tank composition wants to be these fast growing stem plants.

Remember we said get five, if you can, five different stems, put them up and see which ones grow really well for your water parameters, everyone everywhere has similar slightly different parameters and you might find that this plant doesn't work for me. Like I said, there are a few on my list that I just don't go near unless I do like ro water co2 and that's not worth it to me, right? You have the substrate, you have the plants, you fill it with water. Next is lighting. You can choose the lighting you want, but you should pay attention to the plants in the first type. about a week and it needs to show signs of growth at the top, the top of the plant should look a slightly different color than the bottom because it grew out of the water and now you have the top growing The water looks a little different, it should look a little more vibrant and green too, if you're like me when I first set up my tanks, I liked to look every couple of hours and look inside the tank, like it's going to grow faster.

I'm a little more patient now, but not much more, so there you have it, your plants are now growing, but it feels like a little algae is forming on everything, not too much, but you know more than you'd like . It's time to reduce the amount of time you have the light on or it might be a good idea to turn it back on. This is where you will have to experiment for yourselves and you will learn over time what the light is. with lightingAdequately, I can pretty much look at a tank now and know if there is too much light or not, simply because I am so used to it and when I look around my room, they all have a pretty similar level of brightness.

I don't know why I did that when coming out of the tanks and they all have to do with the level and that's why they all do well. It all comes down to experience. You'll have to learn that on your own. is the right amount of light for your style of tanks, I say your style, remember because if you are doing high tech you can bombard it with light loads of co2, the water changes tons of nutrients in the form of fertilizer, you are left with root tabs. front, center, I mean, that sounds amazing, isn't that a lot of work?

Although it's a lot of work, I'm not going to do that. Well, now you go to the store to buy your first fish that you already planned for this tank. Remember to go. you don't get them all, so let's say you want a school of 30 neons for example, yeah don't go looking for 30 needles to put in your tank because they'll probably die, go get five, put five in the tank and then just watch how the tank evolves, you should pay attention to the water primers every day, at least for the first few weeks, change the water regularly when necessary.

I would change it regardless of whether, even if it doesn't show ammonia or nitrite, which probably there will be even a small amount, remember it won't be harmful to the deficient side, but it will be food for the algae, so keep changing it every time. day just to get started because like I said we don't want to do that, the rest of our fish stay alive because wow no one has time for that right now it's been two weeks since you got those first five fish you can go. Go back and add a little bit more and you can add a cleaning crew because now at this point it's probably necessary.

It's built up a level of bottom algae from diatoms, that sort of thing, so we can put in some snails and some shrimp. a bit of bristles, whatever is appropriate for your tank, they all work and they all work very well, if you have them in your tank currently they are not working well then you are producing too much algae so you probably have too much light on the nutrients . or both, so yeah, that's it in a nutshell, in a nutshell, after about two or three weeks, you'll start to notice that some areas have more algae than others, maybe it's because that kind of stuff flows, now remove them manually and I can also treat certain areas with a CO2 booster that I use from API, but there are a lot of glutaraldehydes out there.

I really like API products and they also sponsor a sponsored channel, of course this is not a sponsored video. I'm just saying that and you should find it. At this point of three weeks and four weeks the tank is looking absolutely lush and really nice, by then you should have been able to fix any problems in terms of algae by sorting lighting or cleaning equipment and manual removal, and we should be able to From stopping at this point doing many water changes now it's up to you what you want to do. I like to go as minimal as possible on some tanks.

I eventually stopped doing water changes, I just fill them with water and every time I do it. A water top up is when I add my fertilizers which is usually once a week it can be every week and a half it just depends on how hot everything is and how fast the evaporation is for me but there is something hugely satisfying about getting a tank to a point where it runs smoothly and perfectly, if it were my home aquariums I would keep it like this indefinitely, but obviously this is my studio and in the studio you create content, things break down, new things are built, but I hope there was This video offers some really useful information for you guys and if you've done me a favor, maybe click the subscribe button and the little like and a little notification about something like that, it's not necessary, but it would be great if they could and then.

I hope to see you next time.