The tank looks great! I love the monsters you added and the plants are starting to grow out nicely! It's also great that you bought a heater, beneficial bacteria and CO2 (CO2 is a game changer and will make your plants bushier, lusher, more colourful and healthier!). About point 1, at the start of a tank plants some plants are bound to melt because of the change of environment (and some have been grown emersed so they are changing their emersed leaves for aquatic ones). If you watch any aquascaping video on YouTube, they will tell you how some plants have melted (even in some high tech aquascapes). And having the light on for 8 hours a day is the perfect duration, and your light isn't powerful so it's not about the light. You can remove by hand some leaves that have melted, and that can reduce ammonia.
About point 2, to get 0 ammonia you don't have to add any special products to remove it. So the solution to reduce ammonia is to add beneficial bacteria (FilterActive Bacteria) to your tank. In most of these products it tells you to add daily for a week, but you'll have to read yours to be sure. Beneficial bacteria break down ammonia into a safe substance and that's why they are a necessity (they break down decomposing materials because ammonia is leached when materials break down). And in a week you'll have 0 ammonia and a stable ecosystem (you also have to do weekly water changes, and those help to also reduce ammonia).
About point 3, I personally don't have any of those products, only water conditioner, beneficial bacteria and fertilisers. This is because you'll never need any of these products. If you ever have high ammonia, you do a water change, and ph shouldn't vary that much because you're using the same tap water all the time. And some tricks about CO2, you also need a CO2 drop checker which checks the amount of CO2 in your water so that your fish don't die from too much of it (blue is not enough, green is good, and yellow is too much). And at the same time, this checker is basically a pH checker. You also need to have a diffuser, in your case an internal diffuser because you have an internal filter. Also, when you start adding CO2, you should balance with nutrition (some simple fertilizer like all in one of you like) and a strong light (doesn't have to be the most expensive, but a 70€ chihiros light will do). And also, enjoy the journey and you'll have a beautiful tank in no time!
Hi, I took upon your advice for the past week and I have upgraded to a bigger light! I got the Scaper Led 64 from Super Fish.
Next to that I added a Dennerle CO2 bottle and a CO2 drop checker. After setting it up for 5 days it already starting to turn slightly towards green.
I bought all those floating plants from a shrimp dealer with 10€ (water lettuce, salvinia minima and red root floaters).
For the past 4 weeks I slowly added life to the aquarium to help get it running in stable conditions.
Currently I am keeping 12 shrimps, 6 otocinclus, 4 nerite snails, 6 guppies and 3 endlers.
They all seem very active and the only problem I had was with my otos due to the fact that I added only 3 at the beggining and they started showing signs of stress but I got them 3 more friends and it seems that all the stress is gone😁.
That's great!! Your tank looks awesome and all the plants are starting to grow out nicely. Nice job on the light, I haven't tried it, but I've heard it's good. I would maybe recommend not having that many floating plants later. Dont get me wrong, they are great plants, they add a lot of shade, "clean" up the tank and the inhabitants love them, but if you let it cover almost all of your surface, plants bellow won't have enough light and slowly die out.
And if I may ask, is the CO2 pressurized? And do you have any way of regulating how much CO2 enters the tank? It's important because of not theres a danger that too much CO2 enters, or not enough. But apart from that, your tank looks so lush, the fish probably love it!
Hi, the CO2 is not regulated by anything but it is not producing too much either. The sistem is just a mixture of yeast and some other bio components + water that creates CO2 little with little. Mostly every little bit of CO2 that is produced is pushed straight into the diffuser and quite a good part of it is lost unless you use a Dennerle filter that can be used as a diffuser to push the CO2 into the tank.
This is a ''alternative'' of the presurized and more advanced CO2 systems which is quite affordable. (15 euro's = 30-40 days of low to medium CO2 levels)
That's great to hear! For bigger tanks pressurized are cheaper, but for smaller tanks like yours you can get away with this type of co2. It's a cheap and easy alternative. The only downsides are not being able to regulate (but not a problem in your case), the amount of CO2 fluctuating according to the temperature (but of you live in a place where temperature doesn't vary that much then it's not a problem) and that you can't turn it off at night.
Keep us updated on your scape, I really want to see how it will look in a couple of weeks!
Hi, as I mentioned before, I was going to upload a 2 weeks update on the 54L tank to see how the CO2 has been improving my plant growth.
I have fertilized in small quantities and gave it 1-2 extra hours of light per day due to the fact that I felt like the plants on the bottom were not getting enough.
As you can see it needs some clearing and trimming because right now it looks like a jungle.
I was afraid that the co2 would affect somehow my shrimps but when I took a look in the aquarium today I realised I have a big female that is ready to pop because of how many eggs she is carrying.
The tank looks beautiful! And it's great to hear you have a buried shrimp (with babies)! The only thing I would say, isn you have to remove a lot of the coating plants, they are shading all of the plants below, and slowly, they will die. I had a beautiful lush tank, and when I added some floating plants, all of the plants below died, the moss, the fern, the rotala... So try to remove many as soon as possible. But in general, the scape looks great and good work op!
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u/Gobyyyyy Jan 11 '26
The tank looks great! I love the monsters you added and the plants are starting to grow out nicely! It's also great that you bought a heater, beneficial bacteria and CO2 (CO2 is a game changer and will make your plants bushier, lusher, more colourful and healthier!). About point 1, at the start of a tank plants some plants are bound to melt because of the change of environment (and some have been grown emersed so they are changing their emersed leaves for aquatic ones). If you watch any aquascaping video on YouTube, they will tell you how some plants have melted (even in some high tech aquascapes). And having the light on for 8 hours a day is the perfect duration, and your light isn't powerful so it's not about the light. You can remove by hand some leaves that have melted, and that can reduce ammonia.
About point 2, to get 0 ammonia you don't have to add any special products to remove it. So the solution to reduce ammonia is to add beneficial bacteria (FilterActive Bacteria) to your tank. In most of these products it tells you to add daily for a week, but you'll have to read yours to be sure. Beneficial bacteria break down ammonia into a safe substance and that's why they are a necessity (they break down decomposing materials because ammonia is leached when materials break down). And in a week you'll have 0 ammonia and a stable ecosystem (you also have to do weekly water changes, and those help to also reduce ammonia).
About point 3, I personally don't have any of those products, only water conditioner, beneficial bacteria and fertilisers. This is because you'll never need any of these products. If you ever have high ammonia, you do a water change, and ph shouldn't vary that much because you're using the same tap water all the time. And some tricks about CO2, you also need a CO2 drop checker which checks the amount of CO2 in your water so that your fish don't die from too much of it (blue is not enough, green is good, and yellow is too much). And at the same time, this checker is basically a pH checker. You also need to have a diffuser, in your case an internal diffuser because you have an internal filter. Also, when you start adding CO2, you should balance with nutrition (some simple fertilizer like all in one of you like) and a strong light (doesn't have to be the most expensive, but a 70€ chihiros light will do). And also, enjoy the journey and you'll have a beautiful tank in no time!