moved off the light i was using before onto the fluval plant 3.0. the old one had a controller app that kept disconnecting from wifi and resetting my custom ramp schedule back to default, which meant i'd walk in some mornings to full blast lighting at 7am instead of the slow sunrise i'd programmed. happened often enough that i just stopped trusting it.
so far the fluval's been running exactly as scheduled, no dropouts. plants haven't reacted one way or the other yet but it's only been a few days.
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filling in
moss is finally thickening up on the wood and the sword has thrown a couple new leaves that are noticeably bigger than the older ones. carpet area still has a few gaps but it's closing.
the bucephalandra is the one thing not doing well - it's just sitting there, barely any new growth since i put it in, a couple leaves have gone a bit translucent at the edges. not dead, just sulking. might be flow related, might just need more time attached to the wood.
Grow-in progressPhoto Date
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algae outbreak
getting some green dusting on the glass and a bit of what looks like early staghorn on the sword leaves. not panicking yet but it's annoying to look at.
cutting the photoperiod back by an hour on the fluval and doing an extra water change this week to pull nutrients down a bit. also scrubbing the glass every couple days instead of waiting for the weekly clean - want to see if consistency helps more than any one big intervention.
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water change day
did the usual - about 30% water change, light trim on the sword leaves that were starting to shade the moss out.
checked params after: ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate around 15ppm, ph sitting at 6.8. pretty happy with that nitrate number given how light i've been dosing flourish.
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first fish
added a small group of harlequin rasboras today - first livestock in the tank. watched them for a solid hour just settling into the moss.
ended up naming a few of them based on markings - there's one with a slightly duller black wedge i've been calling smudge, and a bigger one that always leads the group i've nicknamed scout. feels a little silly writing that down but that's genuinely how i track who's doing what in a shoal this size.
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two weeks in
cycling is cycling - which is to say nothing visible is happening and i keep checking anyway. water's crystal clear, hardscape hasn't shifted, moss is still just thin little clumps tied to the wood that don't look like much yet.
i know better than to rush this after doing it a few times now but i still find myself standing in front of the tank willing the bacteria to hurry up.
Cycling, still sparsePhoto Date
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wet floor
filled it today and started the eheim - and immediately found a small puddle under the stand. spent a good twenty minutes convinced i had a cracked seam before realizing it was just water sloshed over the rim while i was filling with the hose. glass is fine, floor is fine, my nerves are not.
filter's running quiet, no leaks from the hose connections either, which is the actual thing i was worried about.
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dry scape
no water in yet - just the bones of the layout. the main wood piece came from a local guy who collects it out of a creek near his place, been curing it in a tub for weeks so it's done leaching tannins. the stone is cheap landscaping rock from a yard down the road, picked through about sixty pieces to get eight that actually stacked well together.
substrate is still bagged and sitting next to the tank, haven't poured it yet - wanted to get the hardscape locked in dry first so i'm not fighting wet sand while trying to angle things.
