and... SCORE! lol

[beckdg]

sorry, took a nap. not sleeping much lately.
looks great.

[froggsong]

All of the wood is still in there, it's just positioned differently, some of it is turned to face the front of the tank as well, making it looks much smaller.

The plants will get bigger. There are some I positioned in the rear that are too small to see atm, but they will get very tall. The ambulia (did I spell that right? it's the lighter green bushy stuff) will get fairly tall without trimming. I can either move it when it gets taller, or trim it and add some to the back (or other tanks, it's a fairly efficient nutrient eating machine, lol...) There are lots of java ferns attached to the wood pieces that you can't really see that well in this picture, and they'll stay around the same height that they are now. There is one java fern I know you can see, on the large wood piece on the left. It's been there for quite some time and is bushier, but not much larger than it was. It's spent it's time putting out new plants on the leaf tips (absolutely the coolest method of reproduction I've witness in plants, lol).

I'm setting up DIY CO2 today to practice for the big tank, so we'll see just how much bigger everything will get. I may send beck my amazon sword, but I'm not sure. The hubby hasn't decided yet.

2 dimensions don't do this thing justice. I've really got to get a better pic. This tank and the palu are hard to photograph because of their placement in their respective rooms. Lots of reflections and weird light.

EDIT: I'll take new pics tonight with all the other lights in the house off. Maybe that will help. Hopefully by then I'll have the moss wall installed. It won't be pretty for a bit, but I have high hopes for it.

EDIT again: Thanks beck! I'm glad you like it, alot of it is thanks to you, after all.

[Nighsliv]

Take a video with your camera, it will give you more depth, plus you get less reflection issues.

[froggsong]

Yeah, I tried that. The video was really grainy. I just need to play with it a little more. I can get great pics of everything but the palu and the fish tank. I'll try again tonight sometime. If I don't get any good ones tonight, I'll read the manual in the morning (I still have to install it, the book only has basic operating instructions).

I just did my water testing, here are the params:
KH - 2 (it's possible I didn't do this right... one part of the instructions said to add drops just till it turns yellow, but the other part said bright yellow... at two it turns from blue to pale yellow)
GH - 10 (179ppm)
pH - 7.0
ammo - >.25
nitrate - 40ppm
nitrite - >.25

Should I do another water change tonight or see where the params are in the morning?
How do I lower the GH, and how do I do it without lowering the KH? What do I need to shoot for for the KH and GH anyway? What does high GH do to the fish and plants?
How important is it to get a test kit for iron, phosphate, and potassium?

I know the nitrate is high (stupid me, I dosed the tank last night and apparently added too much), and nitrite is no good, but I expected it to read more than 0 because of the tank changes. It should even out soon even without a WC, my bacteria is VISIBLY increasing on the filter media (I've got a picture, I'll post it later, the growth of the bacteria is amazingly fast). pH was actually higher than I expected, with all the wood in the tank and the visibly tannic water. I think it's time to test the tap water again.

I'm going to poke around on aquariacentral and see if I can find this stuff out for myself, but any advice is appreciated.

EDIT: added stuff above.

[beckdg]

your nitrates are fine... about where you want them if you're adding co2 soon anyway.
your gh should be fine too. a little high in the case you want some liverworts maybe but i don't think directly in the water it'd matter much... not sure on that one. it's lack of that that would contribute to osmotic shock in fish or plants in most cases since many soft water species should adapt fine usually.

***angels might be a different story... i know practically nothing about them***

kh is fine... before you add co2... afterward it could be stripped pretty good and result in unpredictable ph swings. a daily swing is fine but going too low can hinder your beneficial bacteria (from i think dissolving oxygen) and potentially kill off some of your colony.
iron, phosphate and potassium are not always essential. if you're dosing low/sparingly/pps pro or experiencing algae/melt/issues/etc. you might want to know them. or just iron if you suspect it's high from the tap and have experienced deaths in your tank.
for kh i'd add a 1/2tsp to every 5 gallons of w/c water and add it slow like acclimating new fish... cause that's what you'll be doing, acclimating them to the higher kh/ph/tds/alkalinity. once your up close to or over 5dkh you can start adding co2 and monitoring kh to see how it dissolves and adjust your w/c mix or schedule accordingly.

right now your ph should be low with those numbers. that holds almost all your available ammo as ammonium which is less toxic to fish. as you raise that number more of it becomes full on ammonia so change your kh slowly over time or wait till you're not reading any ammo on your test kit. i'm sure the hobby kit you have measures total nh3/nh4 as one category and there are calculators that will tell you what percentage of that is ammonia according to your ph online if you're really into doing the technical side of math. your ammo/trite levels at this point are concerns regardless. you don't want them going any higher if you can avoid it.

one thing i would do is run tests on your tap water too. doing water changes is usually the best way to rid your tank of harmful chemicals whether natural to a tank or not but knowing if they're already in the water can be the difference between poisoning the tank while trying to help or not. for instance adding tap water with .5 ppm ammo is not going to be better than .25 ammo and .25 nitrite since the tank would be indicating it's doing it's job at that point.

definitely test the tap for ammo and trite and if you don't find any do water changes daily. i'd start with 50% at this point and try to do enough to keep both ammo and trite <.25 at all times. if you need to you can dose the entire tank with prime to detoxify it for short periods to get you through.

if i missed something, let me know.

[froggsong]

The last time I tested the water it was at 0 across the board, but it's been awhile and I'm sure the filters that clean the water before it gets to my tap aren't working as efficiently. I'll do a water test later and see what it's coming in at now.

Honestly, I'm not terribly worried about the ammo or the trite, I've had much higher levels of each before with no signs of stress on the fish. At the rate the bacterial colony is replenishing itself, I'd say the trite should be gone in a day or so, and I doubt it will get higher, based on my anal testing regimen the last time I had trite and ammo in the tank (when we moved here).

I'll test again tonight and then in the morning to keep an eye on it and do a change if it goes any higher or actually reads at .25 for either of them.

[beckdg]

Originally Posted by beckdg

iron, phosphate and potassium are not always essential to test

i just wanted to clear that up.

[froggsong]

oh, I knew that, lol...