40G Tank: Stem Jungle!

November 29th, 2006

40G - 11/29/2006

Pogostemon stellatusSomehow, without me realizing it, my 40G tank has turned into more of a farm tank, than an aquascape. There’s a little bit of everything in this tank right now, most of it doing surprisingly well!

This is part of the problem when you have a tank with ADA aquasoil in it. You know that just about anything will grow in it! Therefore, when I see a plant I’m interested in trying, but don’t have room for in my normal aquascapes, where does it go? Well, of course, in the 40G, where the amazonia will keep it alive until I do find room for it! The only problem I ever have in this tank is occasional blue-green algae, when I don’t dose enough nitrates. As you can imagine, all of these stem plants suck up some nutrients! I’m currently only dosing SeaChem products in this tank because they work well, and don’t cost that much to maintain a 40G tank. I pretty much follow their recommended dosing chart as far as frequency of dosing goes, but I dose more than they recommend of everything. To the right is the pogostemon stellatus from Jeff in GWAPA (bigstick120 online) that’s waiting for the right aquascape to go in. The time will come soon I hope!

A couple native collections

40G, stemsSo what’s in here? I’ve got the usual plants, such as limnophilia aromatica, baby tears, didiplis diandra, stargrass, blyxa japonica, blyxa albertii, rotala magenta, and rotala pusilla.

A few more exotic ones like ludwigia cuba, ludwigia pantanal cuba, cyperus helferii, and rotala macrandra var. ‘green.’ Don’t forget pogostemon stellatus, and pogostemon stellatus ‘broad leaf.’

Not to mention a few ground-cover plants that are not getting near the light they require! Then, I have a few plants that I’ve collected locally, including creeping jenny, ludwigia palustrus, and an eleocharis species.

With all of these plants, I rarely see my beautiful apistogramma panduro fish that I love so much. Fortunately, the dwarf neon rainbowfish juveniles that I picked up at the catfish convention seem very much at home in this tank. They’re always racing around the tank, from end to end, darting in-between plants and rocks as they go. I think they like it in there!

Praecox Dwarf Rainbowfish