couldn’t wait to get it home and learn how I could also create one of these planted aquarium masterpieces for myself. At the time, I had a 46 gallon bow front aquarium. I thought to myself that this would be a great tank to attempt my first aquascape. I researched for many hours on the internet, and learned a great deal about this hobby. Most of the advice I received was very helpful but it only pertained to equipment requirements that I would need to have a healthy planted tank. At this time, my excitement was at a peak level and I started to buy lights, CO2 equipment and plants. I learned that I needed a lot of light, so I purchased two Coralife Freshwater Power Compact units; each with 130 watts a piece. I also bought an automated CO2 setup and Onyx sand for my substrate. For my plants, I placed a large order of plants from an Arizona aquatic plant distributor. I was off and running and could not wait to create an aquascape of my own. Everythin g was going 6
AquaScaping World AUGUST 2008
smoothly for the first week or so and I was very happy. Then some of my plants started to melt overnight! I had no idea that most of the plants I purchased were emersely grown (out of water) from a nursery. I thought it was something I was doing wrong, so I purchased fertilizers for my ailing plants. I found an “all in one” fertilizer on the internet and thought to myself “that’s convenient.” So I bought some and immediately started dosing the rec ommended dosage. I’m sure all of you know where this story is going. Yes, the dreaded algae bloom. I must have had every known algae known to man and maybe some no one has ever seen. This tank took over a year to “balance out”. I had no idea what I was doing. Trying to figure out my problem on the internet didn’t seem to help either. I tried black-outs, H2O2, split photo periods, and I even gassed all of my livestock with CO2. I almost gave up but I’m glad I didn’t. This aquarium finally
“balanced out” and I learned a great deal from my first planted tank. This was a learning process that I believe has to be done for yourself and not entirely from what others tell you. Yes, there is a lot of great technical advice from some well accomplished aquarists and you can learn a lot from their experiences. The advice I provide I have learned from first hand trial and error. Remember just because something works for someone else does not mean it will work for you. There seems to be no right or wrong way to be successful in this hobby. The important thing is to find what works for you and stick with it. Filtration This is a very important topic to me and seems to be overlooked when we all talk about planted tanks. Over filtration is the way to go whether you have a low light or high light set-up. The more light you have, the more biological filtration you need in order to “balance “ your