A New Project

At first the plan was to sell the 55g but I bought it for too much originally and I would not be able to get my money back out of it so we moved it out into the livingroom taking over the space previously occupied by the 35g hexagon. There are some big plans on the books for this tank. It will now become our planted tank! And this time, we're doing things the right way. We are utilizing a lot more light than we did on the 35g and I'll be installing a 5lb bottle of pressurized Co2 under the tank, also the tank is beginning using the dry start method pioneered by Tom Barr. The tank has been filled with substrate and aquascaped to my liking and planted with foreground plants that can be successfully grown out of water, Hemianthus callitrichoides (dwarf baby tears) and Echinodorus tenellus (pygmy chain swords). The HC makes a beautiful carpetting plant but its near impossible to plant submerged so using DSM it will grown out of water for 6 weeks providing a stable enough root bed to survive the filling process.

On Tuesday, I spent two hours planting. I ordered 9 pots of HC and 6 pots of PCS from liveaquaria.com, the plants arrived early, in great condition, and they even sent me an extra PCS. This was my first time ordering anything live online and it was a good experience, maybe one day I'll actually get some fish or coral this way. The HC came in little plant pots so I have to take it out, divide the plug into tiny groupings and them remove the mineral wool they come wrapped in before the could be planted.
Here's my little cutting board while I was planting:

After the HC was all planted, I placed the PCS right behind them in aestheticly pleasing locations across the length of the tank:

This is all that's going to the tank for now. After about 6 weeks of grow out the tank will be filled with water and be ready for the reast of the plants and a half million tetras and rasboras:

The final step in the dry start method is to wrap the tank in saran wrap and mist down the whole thing to keep the tank wet and humid for the plants:

I'll try and be a bit more diligent with the blog from now on since the semester is almost out but I can't really promise I wont drop off the face of the planet again.