5 gallon from submersed to emersed

[Green Thumb Aquatics]

so originally this was the tank... dont mind the algae, I had a battle with glosso I could not get to grow horizontal and tried using way too much light for a bit and got some hair algae..



Rocks and roots(driftwood) were locally collected

so I was using one of the disposable fluval 88g co2 setups and ran out of the little disposable canisters and took the tank down.. I have some DHG "belem" that just came in for a build I am doing in about a month and since it was grown emersed and I couldnt sleep last night I put this together...

I do not have experience with growing these type of plants emeresed.. I worked with hydroponics a couple of years back, and I have grown my own herbs every summer for a long time.. I love to cook ; )... but other than that I am way more experienced with submersed growth..

I started off with a thin layer of this which I got for free from the LFS

sorry its sideways its a pond planting substrate as far as I can tell.. its from microbe lift




then I added worm castings

then more micro lift, and capped the back with a little UP aquasoil



here is what the end result looks like





does anyone see potential problems with this?

I put the DHG in the back

a little glosso, dwarf hydrocotyle, HM, and a stem of a local PA plant which is really similar to eltaine triada(sp?)

since I do not have experience with this type of setup, all helpful comments would be appreciated

how wet to keep soil?
keep it cover?
saran wrap ok for the cover?
23w 6500k cfl from lowes ok?

thanks

Mike

[csmith]

The soil shouldn't be soaked. More dry on the top of the substrate. The key here is humidity in the air, not so much moisture on the ground (though the soil should be wet up to a point). You'll want to keep it covered, and 100% covered with Saran wrap will do fine.

Also, just as an FYI, I'd pull the worm castings away from the glass. johnny_ftm noted when he was doing his DSM with earthworm castings that algae grew rampant where the castings were in contact with the glass. Push the other substrate between the castings and the glass and it should be fine.

[Green Thumb Aquatics]

Thanks! for the reply, will do..

[nicewicz]

Nice tank. I noticed some clown killifish in the first pic. I've wanted to keep a few of these in a 6.5 gal setup. How are they to keep? Can you keep any shrimp with them, or will they eat them? Sorry for the slightly off-topic discussion, but I haven't seen too many people with clown killifish in planted tanks before.

[Green Thumb Aquatics]

they are great with planted tanks, they love them.. I did not have any fry actually raised successfully however, they spawned like crazy in there.. originally I had 3 males and 8-9 females, but one of the males got picked on till he was dead.. like most killi they are semi aggressive when more than one male per species is in the tank.. if you have really thick plants in there, you could even do some gardneri, they are great fish...
here is a pic of pair I bred a coupla times using a five gallon tank super heavy with plants and some green yarn throw in for spawing, the male used to come right up to the glass when I would gaze into the tank, they have such great personality


if put in a larger tank with too large of fish they will do poorly, but in a little 5 gal they do great.. I did have some issues with shrimp not doing so well in the tank but I think that was due to too much CO2 as I has putting alot into the small tank.. and they are too tiny I believe to be much of a threat to the shrimp..

also killifish's natural enviroment can be very oxygen depleted, so they are amazing at handling, and being super happy in really high CO2 setups.. they used to breed all the time in that 75, I still have a male I found a couple months after selling them in the tank right now... he will however go after the red cherry shrimp.. but is still a bit small to get many of them..