John's 75 planted new plant photo 4-20-13

Thanks

Excel should be dosed at 5ml per 60 gallons of water.

Driftwood can lower your pH by leaching tannins into the water, they make your water turn brown and are acidic. It will also lower your KH with the acids.

 

Yes, that is exactly what I read, but I just wanted to confirm it. How do I deal with it? Buffers? Also I assume the water turning brown is very temperary, but for how long does it stay like that?
Thanks

 

The wood can leach for a very long time. Carbon does the trick for the coloration and alkalinity buffers for the KH drop. Buy Seachem's alkalinity buffer it does not use phosphate for the buffers.

 

Im scared now
1)Did you use real driftwood or fake?
2)Are there any benefits of real over fake?
3)Also can the leaching affect my fish?
4) What if I soak the wood in a big bucket. This way it will leach in the bucket or would that not work?
Thanks, 2in10!
JJL

 

No need to be afraid

Real driftwood, real can help soften very hard water, the leaching won't hurt your fish, soaking with boiling water helps and lessens the leaching but you will still have it for some time. The leaching may slow growth of the plants because it lessens the amount of light that gets to the plants. Definitely nothing to worry about as almost all planted tanks have driftwood in them. Carbon is used if yellow to brown water is not wanted.

 

I was looking at the plant section in the TFH magazine and I found some stone planted tanks that look very interesting. Do you know of any stones that would work?
Thanks
JJL

 

What about OHKO stone? I found some on adana-usa.com. It is kind of expensive, but what are my other stone options?
Thanks!
JJL

 

Lava, sandstone and slate are all good. Petco has zebra stone at times.

 

Thanks for the suggestions!
I will look into all of that.

 

Nice Tank, Havn't kept a FW planted in years, but starting to dabble in marine plants and macroalgaes. I always loved German Blue Rams, and any cool tetra like the rummynose.