One day my wife came home with a 29gal tank, light, filter and stand that she bought at a yard sell. That was it. This was truly the rekindling of my interest in aquariums.

I had five small tanks a very long time ago when I was in my early teens. I really enjoyed them, So when she asked me to help set it up in her office at work. It was one of the things you find on the "honey do list" that you really don't mind doing. This was about 1996, we just bought our first computer and was surfing the web for information on setup tips for aquariums. The information on-line is endless. While searching we came across some pictures of planted aquariums. I was hooked from that point on. We have all ways been into gardening with vegetable and flower beds but this was something new and challenging.

One thing different now is all the information you can find over the internet. I use to just raise fish that I would trade for fish food but now its much more challenging. The first time I looked at a heavily planted tank I knew I had to learn how to set up my own plant tank.

I started out with a 55gal. tank. As it would be with just about everyone that goes into a LFS for advice on what to buy, you didn't exactly get what you needed. The first tank had a UGF filter, two 15w NO (normal output) fluorescent lights. What a disaster my first year was. The maintenance on this tank was endless. After replacing the lighting, I was able to grow plants but the maintenance with UGF was a real pain. One to two hours a weeks wasn't bad but I would have to do gravel sucks at least once a month. This would take three hours or more, with uprooting and replants some of the smaller plants. This was the only way I could keep NO3 levels down. I Know there are people that use them and I am sure we can have a in-depth discussion on them. But in my opinion they are sewers. After replacing the filter system with a canister filter things really started to come together. The biggest step forward I took was DIY CO2. I could see plants grow in days. I was truly amazed at the growth but along with fast plant growth was every algae known to mankind. Slowly but truly I over come this plague on the planted tank. Working with this tank is where I have learned the most hardest lesson a beginner has to learn. That is patience.

Patience is hard to come by when algae is attacking every thing. I had to learn to make corrections one at a time to know what is the correct change to make. By doing this slowly you can see if the changes you make are the correct one or not.

IT really pays to be a good friend. One friend of mine has a small but nice pond with Koi and was looking to set up an aquarium in his house. He has been a gardener and wanted to grow aquatic plants. Knowing that I was doing the same he asked for my help in setting up a 75gal. He came over to check out what I have set up with my 55gal. I commence in telling every thing I knew up to that point with emphasis on the DIY CO2 being the trick to growing aquatic plants. OH did I mention he works for the Coke-a-Cola company? He asked me if CO2 they use for soda dispensing would work because it was to much work messing with DIY CO2.
"Well yes but it costs, especially the tank and regulator" I said. Then he asked how many tanks we would need. As you can imagine after picking my jaw up off the flour I explained what we would need to setup a pressure CO2 system. At the bottling company they where replacing their old steal tanks with new aluminum tank with new regulators. They where selling the old tanks and regulators for scrape. Helping him with his set up I was able to get three 20# tanks and regulators for my aquarium room taking me to the next stage in aquascaping. ( Plants on steroids )

The one part of aquascaping I find the most relaxing is planting or replanting a tank. I look at my tanks as a canvas waiting to be painted. I enjoy it so much that in my show tanks I redo them twice a year at lest. To grow an aquascape to maturity it takes five to six months for me now. It hasn't always been this way thou. In my research I have seen how people would plan their design out before they plant. They would get their plants from a LFS or on-line seller, plant and wait. I find that this method just takes to long and is more of a planning then creative way to Aquascape. Think about how a painter has an endless amount of paint and color to bring out the creativity he has. SO if I was to be creative with my aquascaping I would need an endless supply of paint. In my case plants. I thought if I had a few small tanks set up as grow out tanks it would give me a wider selection of plants for the time I was ready for a tank redo. This worked out very well. Not only do I have a better selection of plants at the ready, they are very healthy plants that are growing with new growth daily in some cases. Another lesson here, if you have to wait for new plants to over come the shock of coming form a grower to the LFS, then home. It could be weeks before they start any new growth. By having them already growing fast and stable, you don't have that lag time in growth. When it is critical to have plants out compete algae, the lag time before new growth is the time that algae can get a start then your back to fighting algae instead of enjoying the hours of relaxation you get out of a well balanced tank.

Living in a small house with my wife and two daughters there just wasn't room for me let alone indoor hobbies that seem to be growing in size, so I was left with the place I usually end up, my garage. I had already built a very small computer room there and I mean small. (4x8) More like a closet but I managed to have three PCs and 100w stereo with five CD disk changer, tuner and cassette recorder all hooked up to my PC network to play MP3s and net radio. You just have to have good tunes. So it was time to build on. I added another 6'x8' room. Sounds small but at that time is was big enough. I just started out with 15gal and 20gal tall. With the 27" TV and home theater system I had plenty of room, but now with 75gal, 36gal bow, 30gal, two 15gal things are starting to get crowded. So crowded that I had to put two 20gal and another 30gal outside the aquarium room in the garage. Looks like its going to be time to build on again this summer.

With keeping several tanks all in the same water parameters you are able to move plants and fish around without worrying about stress. Plus if you want to increase or decrease nutrients you can do so in a small 15gal before you try it in a 75gal. Makes sense but its not all way the case. I find that parameter you might have in a small tank are not the same as those you would have in a large tank. I have found that a small take with light in the 2w/gal range can grow plants that will not grow in a 75gal with 2w/gal. This lesson taught me that light penetration has more to do with good growth then watts/gal. Right now I am experimenting on two 15gal tanks. One has 65w cf (compact fluorescent) and the other has 2x15w NO (normal outout) fluorescent. What I am trying to find is the relationship between light and the amount of CO2 levels. I read a post by Roger Miller talking about the balance needed between light, watts/CO2 . The 15gal with 65w has been a real challenge with CO2 injected thru a diffuser. This tank has green hair algae on just about every thing. CO2 levels seem to never get out of the low teens no matter what bubble count I used. So if what Roger said was true the light/CO2 balance was the problem as long as the other parameters are in the proper range. To solve this I made a DIY reactor in a in-tank filter. This did two things I needed to raise CO2 levels. One it gave me a better way to dissolve higher levels of CO2 and second it cut down on the surface turbulence. Both seem to have work because my levels of CO2 are up in the high 20s. The green hair algae is gone from the plants but still grow slowly on the substrate. I have noticed that with the light/CO2 balance plants are using up nutrients faster. With the other 15gal tank, I am going to see how light penetration effects foreground plats. With 2x15w without CO2 I am gradually going to go to 2x13w cf from AH. By using there reflectors and CF I am going to see how Light penetration is more important then watts/gal. IF this works I think plants with 26w CF will grow better then plants with 30w NO. I will be setting up CO2 in this tank as soon as it has completed its cycle time.

Setting up small observation experiments are just one of the many things to do in a small aquarium room. I also raise mollies and Kribs. I hope to raise Rams in the future but at this point I am still working on this. I started raising Mollies for there ferocious appetite for algae. I have Sailfin and Dalmatian Mollies. I find that the Dalmatians are the best algae eater. Otto's and Golden Algae eaters are on my algae eating crew. Along with fish I have a large colony of Malaysian and Rams Horn snails that do a great job. I use to have SAE but I find them to be over rated for the work they actually do. Its just the young SAE that eat algae. The mature SAE lay around waiting for feeding time and chasing other fish in the tank. Along with large schools of Cory cats and Rummy Nose Tetra's that rounds out my fish loads. I do raise some angelfish from time to time. They are a good trade when they are large adult size. I just traded three Black Lace Angle's at my LFS and received $40. What a deal. I enjoy this fish for about one year and make money on them. I would have kept them but they started eating my Baby Tears and Dwarf Hairgrass that I've been growing to trade. They just didn't under stand that its the plants first then fish in the pecking order in my tanks.

I think this is the big plus in having a aquarium room for me. That is having plants to trade at my LFS or on-line with friends I have met at The Wet Thumb and The Planted Tank. I can't stand to just toss out my plant trimmings. It seems like such a waste, so I am very lucky to have found a way to trade them to help support my aquarium room. If I really try, by this I mean grow fast growing stem plants along with Sword plants and a variety of Crypts. Plus some LFS favorites like Baby Tears and Stargrass I can make $100 to $120 per month. My last three tanks have been bought with LFS credits. I didn't start out this way. I had to talk to the owner and by showing pictures of my tanks, I was able to prove that I knew what I was doing in growing plants. When selling plants to a LFS you have to have algae free plants that are healthy. Plus make it worth while for them. You just can not take a bucket full of cuttings to them and expect to get store credits. IF they have to take the time to sort and bunch plants its more cost to them then buying them form a grower. What I do is trim and bunch stem plants. The LFS saves me their old plant weights and pots. I reuse the pots to plant other plants I have to trade. The only draw back I have is reusing rockwool. You can only reuse it a couple of time before its not useable. I have been able to get some form on-line hydroponics supplier thou. I split the cost of them with the LFS. The relationship I have with my LFS is beneficial. It cuts down on their plant orders which saves them money, they give me store credits and discounts on shelf items. When I order something I get it at cost. I think the reason I get such a good deal is there doesn't seem to be very many people that have plant show tanks in this area. We don't have any clubs ether. Hanging out at the LFS and posting at The Wet Thumb and The Planted Tank is just about the only out let I have for my hobby.

One of the big things to over come in having eight tanks is the time for maintenance. When I had my 55gal tank in the living room of my house. I would spend over one hour per/week on average with one weekend/month at lest three hours. I would have to drag out all the stuff to maintain the tank then put it all back. If I had to do this with eight tanks, I wouldn't have time to do any thing else. So planning out my aquarium room I knew I had to have a source for water and a drain close by. What I did to fit this in such a tight space was put a 11/2" pvc pipe thru the wall and out the back of my garage for the drain. I put a 11/2" to 6" coupling on the end in the aquarium room. This worked out great for space saving. When I do water changes I just put the siphon hose down the pipe. As far as water I put a Y connector on my outside hose spout and ran it into my aquarium room. This gave me water. I was worried about the water being to cold in the winter and its be a pain having to disconnect the hose on those cold freezing night but I have plans this summer on a system that I will not have to disconnect at night. I will have valves that I can open to drain the water line on those cold nights. With just cold water It was a concern of mine that the water would be to cold for water changes in the winter but this has turned out to be false. The tank water temperature only drops 3-5 degrees then when the heaters kicking on they warm up fast. Believe it or not I think the fish like the cold water during water changes. They seem to always play in the current. I just add my water conditioners when I add water. It has work out very well so far.

I have had many learning experiences setting up eight tanks, with more to come when my expansion is complete. From the substrate to lighting. What I have is not a scientific lab set up for truly controlled experiments. But what I do have is a simple setup for doing visible test. I try not to make it more complicated then need be. I don't believe that a well planted aquariums have to be complicated. It may have been true in the past but this hobby has come a long way. With new types of substrate and new designs in lighting its getting to be less complicated. In the future I hope to share with you a new way to start up new tanks. I will share with you the battles I have had with algae out breaks. My experience with different hardware setups. Along with things I do to keep it simple, After all you should spend more time enjoying the relaxing pleasure you get form sitting back viewing a well planted aquarium instead of working on it. My motto is just keep it simple.

Hawk