Planted African Tank

[danotaylor]

G'day MCA Crew...

I know it is not the norm, nor some peoples cup of tea, but I thought I would post a few pics of my planted African tank. Nothing too fancy but I like the look. Yesterday I swapped out all the Malawi's bar my wife's favorite blue dolphins and added 22 Tropheus Mpulungu to grow out to adulthood.



Please excuse the poor quality images.
Cheers & God bless,
Danny

[danotaylor]

I should add that the tank is a 72 gallon bowfront. Filtration in a 25 gallon acrylic wet/dry trickle system with solid waste removal sponge in stage 1, bio-balls in stage 2, and the 500gph return pump, heater, airstones & purigen are all located in stage 3 of the sump. Lighting is a 4 baton JBJ with 2 pure white & 2 acitinic blue tubes.
Comments and suggestions welcome.
Danny

[Riftwater]

Danny,

I think having plants in African Cichlid tanks is really wrong and deters from what a tank should be.


( It's awesome, nice job)

Mine's a week end in, just added the plants.

[danotaylor]

Nice one Rift. Thanks for sharing your pics.

I was very fortunate to score my plants from a tank tear down I did for my part time job as an aquarium maintenance guy. 1 of our customers moved out of state and donated all of his plants to me. I have tried and failed in the past back in Australia but the Perth water was hard as a rock and I was adding cichlid lake salt & tang buffer. The plants just couldn't handle the hardness. These plants transplanted well and seem to be past the shock phase of the move. The anubias that is anchored to the rockwork is doing well and looks great. The plants also had quite a bit of hair algae because the customer didn't have any water changed etc the 6 weks b4 he left. The troph"s are going to town cleaning it all up.

Keep us posted of your progress. I am interested to see how yours turns out. Seems like you were the only one interested enough in mine to comment...lol 

[Riftwater]

I tried plants a few times with Tropheus and they didn't last long. Supposedly the 3 varieties of Anubis I have along with the Java can  make it. If not, I'll run that light 24/7 until I add the fish to get those rocks flowing algae off them.

[danotaylor]

I hear ya mate...things may change in my tank once the Mups grow some more...lol...we'll see...I'm lovin it atm tho & hope this season lasts I to their adulthood
Here's a link to a short phone vid I shot tonight;
https://youtu.be/sgx7BHweqx8

[Mastiffman]

I believe fluval makes a really good plant additive for freshwater tanks for plants. Doesn't color the water or anything. I used it on tropheus fry tank for a while with some Valasneria and they were doing quite well for not have a great light source. I can only image what they would have done in a tank with ample or extra lighting.

 Plus it was a tank with sand in it. Not sure if that helped or not.

[css merrimac]

Tanks look fine-well-done.!!