Wiggles tank

[Wiggles]

Well that didn't take long got the new light

[Gingerlove05]

Thats s little less intense on the eyes

[Wiggles]

Yeah it's better when the light goes in the tank not at the whole room including your face

Its not even on full brightness the plant 3.0 seems a very nice bit of kit, tank is 2ft deep so need a decent light, picked it up for ,£80 2nd hand.

[Wiggles]

Removed some of the rocks and rearranged some of the java fern which seems to be a only plant that I can grow


Valli's is dying in the background, still not sure what to do substrate wise as the sand is getting thinner and thinner from cleaning it and losing so much of it.

[plankton]

Why are you losing sand?
Some of my tanks have 20 year-old sand and I haven't had to top it up.......
You only have to waft the cleaner over it to pick up the muck, not dig it in.

[Wiggles]

Mostly because of clumps of algae, can't get them out without removing sand with it. The python I use for water changes doesn't have a great amount of suction to clean a 2ft deep tank so don't lose much that way.

Thinking about getting one of those electric vacs but not sure if they will just suck too much and lose sand that way instead.

Want to do a lot more planting so probably need to lay at least some soil/substrate over some of the tank to get better growth. But unsure if I can just add some in some places or just completely rip it all out and start again

[plankton]

What sort of algae is taking out clumps of sand?
Before I syphon I move the top layer of sand, this frees all the tat and garbage and it then sucks up easily when the syphon starts by wafting above it......

[Gingerlove05]

From the pic it looks similar to when we had the white sand in the 54l a while back, it seems to develop slime or possibly cyno really easily, them when you syphon it all the algae/slime pulls up the sand with it.
I never did manage get it sorted either, tried adjusting flow/lighting etc. In the end we changed the sand

[plankton]

When I had cyano I just stirred the sand until it loosened and then syphoned it up.

[Wiggles]

I'm not exactly sure what it is, sort of dark green lumpy stuff that goes across the sand surface and then just clumps together I can grab it with tweezers but obviously very time consuming so end up taking a lot of sand trying to get it out.


The tank is tall and needs more flow lower down really it is supposed to be a marine tank so came with big powerful wave makers (even though was used as freshwater) so I got rid of them as it was too much for the fish so need to probably add a smaller one or two as stops so much settling on the bottom in the first place.

I'm weighing up my subtrate options, want something better for plants but want sand for the Corys so not sure if I move the sand to one area and add another sustrate for the rest or if o just replace the lot.