Here are some pics of my planted tanks....some have been posted on here before. This bottom pic is plastic plants and just one of those plastic picture backs taped to the back of the aquarium. I know you are sorting out the good info from the bad...but I really can't express enough that a quarantine tank is VERY IMPORTANT......it regardless of where you purchase your fish.....some fish diseases don't show up for a long time......such as 4 to 6 weeks.....Even if all the fish in the store look healthy....you don't know what they were exposed to before they were put into the store tanks. Sometimes just the stress of shipping causes illnesses to show up. Having managed fishrooms for two pet stores and having my own fishroom.....I have seen this. One time I purchased some huge georgeous swordtails....put them into a quarantine tank for less than a month...all looked healthy......so I didn't wait the 6 weeks or two months.....I added them........I lost the whole tank of fish. The store where I purchased them...was a very reliable fish store that always had healthy looking fish...they were not a pet store! He lost them all too. There was no guarantees in this store...so I had to take the loss........won't mention how many $$ I lost with this mistake.....and I did know better too. The tank had to be taken all apart and disinfected and recycled before new fish could be added.... I would never go without quarantining any fish before adding to a community now......and I quarantine for 6 weeks or more......its a safety precausion...that works. Again, its one of those decisions that you have to make for yourself. The size of the tank....is really up to you....what you want to maintain and the size of space you have. Any of the Innes books, or Axelrod books are good to read. You mentioned an Atlas.....is it the Axelrod atlas? There is also the Baensch Aquarium Atlas.....there are soooo many books out there.....again its difficult to just name one or two that might help. Are you anywhere near an aquarium club? Some clubs also offer long distance membership and usually there is a bi-monthly newsletter where members write about there experiences with plants and fish. Also there are mags such as Tropical Fish Hobbyist, Aquarium Fish Magazine and Freshwater and Marine Aquarium Magazine...there are probably others as well. Hope this helps and doesn't add to the confusion! Sierra

Hi Mike, Spring came, then seemed to leave, but it's still months past January, the trees are budding and the last frost was weeks ago, so we live with the off-on chills, knowing that this too will pass. Meanwhile, we had a bit of a heatwave early in the week, so removed the solar pool cover from the greenhouse before it cooked inside, and of course; the next day, the temps plunged back down, but the heater kept it warm and as soon as it's above 60 deg. again, we will haul out the power washer and give the GH exterior a good spring cleaning before the sunshade goes up on it. You are right to be concerned about any fish capable of making a suicidal leap from a tank. One of my Wakin did it last year and I found it on the greenhouse floor too late to save it. As for transfering the kinders: It's not just temp that can shock a fish, but water chemistry, so mixing pond with tank water is a good precaution. For their size, I'd use 2 buckets; 3 actually. Fill one with pond water and let it sit inside to come to tank temp, then drain the tank down to about 10 inches and chase each of them into an empty bucket right in the tank, add pond water to fill it enough for the fish to be able to move about and proceed as you planned. Let the buckets sit next to the pond until the water cools down to pond temp., then release them into it. But cover the buckets, just in case. In just under two months, I too will be free at last, as my term will be up. But I still have an election to get through, although most of the work for it is done. Once all of the polls close and the ballots go to the County, I'm out of it, excepting only to turning my keys and records over to whoever was dumb enough to run for my office and be so unfortunate as to win. Then I'll finally have the time to devote to bringing in a backhoe to complete the drain lines to my own pond, for my own kinders. After which they will live outdoors permanently. With proper filtration, and it has more than it needs, a dozen Wakin can live nicely in 500 gal. Meanwhile, I'm in the process of setting up an oval, 350 gal. stock tank with a mud over gravel bottom that I'll plant heavily, dump in a pile of oak and magnolia leaves I collected last fall, let them rot for a leaf litter bottom, then add a few hundred red ram snails and by June, there should be lots of infusoria. Then I'll release 3 - 4 pairs of Red Line barbs into it and see if get babies. What I haven't settled on so far, is how I'll filter it, but am leaning to using a 36 gal. plastic storage container filled with media and drilled through the top and bottom for hoses, as an overhead sump filter. I was thinking of setting it up on a rack next to the tank, to have the bottom of the container just enough above the top of the tank for a gravity return, then use a big submersible pump with a sponge prefilter on the intake in the tank, to pump the water out from one end and return back through a splash bar at the other. Or, just buy a very large cannister filter and not worry about equalizing the intake to the outflow, but I've never tried a DIY filter and would like to see if I could- and make it work. Okay; table turning time: Any suggestions?

If your pleco is the P. Gibbiceps species then I've had them get up to 14"+. No matter when you change to sand out it's going to cause a major re-cycling in the tank. When you do it take the fish out then stir the sand. All the "dirt" that floats up out of it is wahat you want to save some of. I'd try to keep as much of that water as possible. At least half to refill the tank with. It'll look bad for a while but hopefully you'll have enough bacteria in it to keep the take from going thru a complete cycle. Also have ammonia and nitrite test kits on hand and check those daily. If you see either getting high enough to be dangerous or starting to make the fish uncomfortable then change some of the water in the tank but NO cleaning. You'll take out more of the bacteria you are trying to cultivate. Just remove some water and refill. Be sure to check the temp and use dechlorinator.That should keep any amm/nitrites at a level the fish can survive in temporarily until everything gets back to good levels. Lisa

Use your mind's eye to envision what I'm about to explain. Adding 'some' gravel to a medium with small particles will do very little to increase either drainage or aeration (unless the volume of gravel is a VERY large fraction of the medium - like more than 80%), but it will reduce the amount of water that can be held in the perched water table (PWT) of soils that support a PWT. IOW, the pebbles will take up space that would normally be taken up by particles that hold water. If you have a bucket filled to the brim with water, and you ease a brick into the bucket, the brick will displace a volume of water equal to the volume of space occupied by the brick. The same principle can be applied to PWTs, which is why using ballast can be so effective if done correctly. This is something I wrote to explain why adding 'some' coarse material to a water-retentive medium does precious little to increase either aeration or drainage: Pudding Obviously, I think the grower's soil choice when establishing a planting for the long term is the most important decision he/she will make. There is no question that the roots are the heart of the plant, and plant vitality is inextricably linked in a hard lock-up with root vitality. In order to get the best from your plants, you absolutely must have happy roots. If you start with a water-retentive medium, you cannot improve it's aeration or drainage characteristics by adding larger particulates. Sand, perlite, Turface, calcined DE ...... none of them will work. To visualize why sand and perlite can't change drainage/aeration, think of how well a pot full of BBs would drain (perlite), then think of how poorly a pot full of pudding would drain (bagged soil). Even mixing the pudding and perlite/BBs together 1:1 in a third pot yields a mix that retains the drainage characteristics and PWT height of the pudding. It's only after the perlite become the largest fraction of the mix (60-75%) that drainage & PWT height begins to improve. At that point, you're growing in perlite amended with a little potting soil. You cannot add coarse material to fine material and improve drainage or the ht of the PWT. Use the same example as above & replace the pudding with play sand or peat moss - same results. The benefit in adding perlite to heavy soils doesn't come from the fact that they drain better. The fine peat or pudding particles simply 'fill in' around the perlite, so drainage & the ht of the PWT remains the same. All perlite does in heavy soils is occupy space that would otherwise be full of water. Perlite simply reduces the amount of water a soil is capable of holding because it is not internally porous. IOW - all it does is take up space. If you want to profit from a soil that offers superior drainage and aeration, you need to build it into the soil from the start, by ensuring that the soil is primarily comprised of particles much larger than those in peat/compost/coir, which is why the recipes I suggest as starting points all direct readers to START with the foremost fraction of the soil being large particles, to ensure excellent aeration. From there, if you choose, you can add an appropriate volume of finer particles to increase water retention. You do not have that option with a soil that is already extremely water-retentive right out of the bag. I fully understand that many are happy with the results they get when using commercially prepared soils, and I'm not trying to get anyone to change anything. My intent is to make sure that those who are having trouble with issues related to soil, understand why the issues occur, that there are options, and what they are. I hope that helps. Al