Starting small

Hi guys, I am starting small on my plant scaping tank. Just added gravel & fertilizer into my 1ft tank. Water starts to clear after 3 to 4 days with some help from Clear Water solution, it works miracles. Below are some initial images of my empty tank with a small plant.



After a few more days, I bought some more plants from the LFS and here's the outcome...



It looks a little un-organise and messy but i guess they will slowly get into place once they start to grow. Notice that the water's getting a little cloudy again. I did not use any CO2 for my tank, will the plants still grow with only light and water??

From my personal experience, the beginning stage is ALWAYS the messiest. So don't worry about that. When the water has stabilised, then you can start planting according to your intended aquascape.

I read sometime ago that in the beginning, it's advisable to start planting heavily so that excess nutrients could be consumed by the plants, thus preventing algae. I have always relied on difformis to start planting heavily.

If you use CO2, your plants will like it. But then again, there must be a balance lightings and ferts to come along with the CO2.

Have fun!

Ignore the messiness, just focus on keeping your plants healthy.

Plants can grow in your conditon, but they won't thrive. You need to read up more on plant keeping, like fertilisation, the difference between "low and high" maintainence setups, and lots more. Just keep reading.

seems to me that you are using a "overhead filtration system" and your tank seems to be covered.

I will try to ignore the messiness... and plant more. Think still can add a little more.

ZhiQiang :
Yes my tank is covered but not totally covered. The OHF I am using only covers the inner side of the tank, the outer side with the PL lamps is not covered, I purposesly removed the movable cover for better ventilation.

Any comments on the filtration system?

u really starting slow and steady bro

I have included a few more plants today but it seems that the previous ones arenotgrowing well, the roots are not growing deep. Can tell from the leave growth, many slowly turned yellowish. I am suspecting that my room temperature might be a little high, maintains at 31 to 33 deg morning and night. I heard the plants needs around 23 deg to grow or something, is it true for all plants? Will the temperature drops if I were to add a small ventilation fan to blow at the water?

Here are my new tank images....


Bought a SAEs and a few Yamato to clear the algea growing on the tank surfaces.

Hi, in my opinion u have enough hardware to run a pretty decent tank, but u might want move on to include some rocks or DW to define ur setup better. Right now the planted tank is rather bare.

u might want to think of the type of layout u want to create in the small tank, like a centralised layout or a triangular layout from left to right ( vice versa ). Consider the mixture of plants, coz a right mix will bring the tank to life, while the converse is true too.

looking at Takashi Amano's work can help visualise a setup better.

in a nut shell... dun hold back and have fun =P

Yes definetly i will add in the stones and DW, but at a later time. I am more concern on the growth of the plants rather then the 'eye candy' right now. Any tips on reducing my water temperature?

Anyway thanks for the comments Bunz!....

Your temperature is definately way too high. Get a fan. Anything above 30 degrees celcius is not desireable at all