Future 5 gal home of 1 dwarf puffer

small echinda

Here we are! I tossed the corny skull and fake plants and the cheesey blue substrate today and replaced it with ADA powersand and ADA soil. I kind of forgot to pay attention to the names of the plants, but they are probably on the receipt.

They are very tall and the top quarter of each of the tall plants floats horizontally on the waters surface. is this cool? should i trim them sooner? or later? and how should i do it?

p.s. yes i will be adding more plants soon

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iamntbatman

Couldn't you raise the water level in the tank to let the plaints stand up straighter? That water level seems pretty low to me.

small echinda

Good idea, i didnt want to fill it all the way up right away as i think the last tank, wasn't actually broken. the in-tank filter might have let the water crawl up and out the back of the lip of the tank.. lol durr

stephanieleah

nice, good for you! i just set up my first aquasoil tank. just be prepared for an ammonia spike (a large on if you are using AS I). Now's definitely the time to put in lots of plants as they'll thrive in the first weeks of set up (they love the ammonia!). Sweet Aquatics is having 25% off right now so maybe a good time to capitalize on that ; )

Puffers like hiding places, and they also like places to chill, like horizontal leaves of my pennyworts or Anubias.

As far as pruning, you could cut all those tall ones in half or thirds and plant the cuttings and I'll bet you'll be able to do it again in a couple of weeks. Trust me, those plants will take off. What kind of lights you got in there?

small echinda

9 watt daylight. My LFS told me it would be fine with these plants as long as it doesnt have to go through more than 10" of water.
How soon do you think till the ammonia spike? i havent seen much in the past 2 days, ofc maybe the plants are hiding it from me or something.
I dont know so i put a shrimp in there :D


edit: ii cut and re planted the tops of the plants and all these little bubbles came out of the substrate heh