Approaching 1 year

This is a shot of my tank from yesterday. I’m approaching the 1 year mark for having this tank up. By that I mean plants and fish in the tank. That day was May 27th, 2007. I keep really detail records on my tanks (something I heartily recommend to everyone), so I know that is the correct date. Yet I am frustrated by the fact that I STILL don’t have an aquascape that I’m happy with. But I’m going to have to just chill on that, because I’ve stated on some forums that if I haven’t gotten control of the algae I’m battling by the one year mark, then I’m scrapping the aquascape and starting over.

Well, as it turns out, the algae is reasonable right now. But it’s only been “OK” for a few weeks - apparently due to a radical change in my fertilization regimen. So while I’d love to rearrange plants so that I could say that I crossed the 1-year mark having achieved a satisfactory aquascape, I’m going keep my hands out of the tank for the next couple of weeks. If the algae remains under control as it is now, I won’t scrape the tank, but will merely rearrange it to a more esthetically pleasing arrangement.

If you saw my AGA 2007 post, you will see that I started this tank with anubias all over the driftwood. Those anubias got (and continue to get) green spot algae (GSA) on old leaves like nobody’s business. So I ripped those out and tried to replace them with other plants - primarily crypts of various forms. You will also note that I removed all the lovely lotus plants I was growing. Those were sending roots into the sand and causing what seemed (to me) to be unhealthy conditions in the sand. So I ripped them out. I never intended to have plants rooted in sand. All the plants you see right now are either not rooted in the sand, or they are in shallow pots of ADA Aquasoil covered with sand.

From the primarily anubias and lotus arrangement I moved to a (shallow potted) ’scape of various rosette plants. Those all suffered from the intensity of the 2 150w halogens. The algae it created on their leaves caused constant trimming until the plants were just dim shadows of the huge plants they started out as.

And next I filled the tank with stem plants as an algae fighting measure. The tank you see today is a reflection of that.

There are a number of urgent aquascape changes that need to be made to this tank . But I’m gonna let it cross the 1 year mark before I mess with it in a major way.

IMO a planted discus tank does not do well with hard tinkering or rapid changes. If it is balanced, leave well enough alone. Or tinker very slowly. So keep posted. A better tank is coming. I hope. But it will take a month or so.