Dave's 270 Litre Cube Tank

Couple of pics of my Eheim 270 litre cube tank.
One pic showing some of the inhabitants and the other is a picture of how my Lily has spread across the top of the tank. I usually cut this back about once a fortnight to about 1/3 of the tanks surface. The fish like the shading.
I had to purchase a new LED lighting unit as my previous one failed. The new unit (AI Hydra 26) is primarily designed for Marine use but can be used for Planted aquaria. It's programmable via a wireless interface so I'm currently in the process of tweaking it for the plants.
It's been going for about a fortnight and the plants still seem to be growing OK.

Looking v.good there Dave...   

Nice   The cube tank gives it a lot of depth 

Helen yes, the Lily is a Nymphae Lotus. For ferts I use Profito 10 ml daily, EasyCarbo 10 ml daily, Ferro 2.5 ml daily and Fosfo 2.5 ml every two days. I also use CO2 injection. The substrate consists of a layer of Tetraplant complete (2 cm) topped by a layer of JBL Manado (2-5 cm). I change water on a daily basis using 50/50 tap/RO mix (20 litres).  The water here is very hard and Nitrate is about 40 ppm, so I dilute it.
The tank has been running about 3 years.

Matt, the tanks I had previously mainly contained large Cichlids and had Undergravel filtration so I didn’t bother with plants. They would have been ‘toast’.
I did, however, start my initial foray into planted tanks with a small 2’ x 1’ x 1’ tank which contained a pair of dwarf Cichlids. This had a 3-4 cm Sand substrate planted with Cabomba and Vallisneria. This flourished with very little maintenance. This was before CO2 and Ferts were available !!!! (I won’t say how long ago that was).
In my experience with the planted tank I have now, it would be difficult to single out one product as a major contributing factor. I think it’s getting the right balance of Lighting, CO2 and Ferts over time that counts. It took a while from the initial setup of the tank to stabilise the conditions. I ended up with ‘pea soup’ for about a month and numerous algae outbreaks before I got it right.

Your probably right Matt. I was thinking more on the lines of adding CO2 requires more light to promote growth and then ferts to prevent the depletion of nutrients in the water column, hence my balance theory.

Nice! 

Lovely. 

In the last week I have had an outbreak of BBA on my Anubias Barteri. I have noticed that my CO2 drop checker was displaying lower readings than normal. Each morning at lights on the drop checker has been ‘blue’  (< 5 ppm) and takes an awfully long time to register any change. I usually set it up after a cylinder change and leave it. I have tweaked the CO2 level gradually and it’s now back in the green (> 20 ppm). Cylinder still has plenty of gas and the diffuser looks OK.
I have noticed that since installing the new lighting the Nymphae Lotus has gone ‘beserk’ and I’ve taken to removing copious amounts of surface leaves on a weekly basis. The leaves are also larger in size than they previously were. I can’t imagine this being the cause of a drastic fluctuation in CO2 levels though.
I have also decided to throttle the light output back by reducing the amount of light in the ‘blue’ area of the spectrum on the lighting unit. The lighting level now looks similar in intensity and colour to my previous luminaire.
As an aside the bud on the Lily wilted, although there is another bud sticking out from the surface of the water. This one will hopefully come to something.

Managed to 'tweak' my CO2 levels to provide a more reasonable output. Drop checker is now green during the photoperiod. Hopefully this will disperse the BBA on the Anubias Barteri. The drop checker is still blue in the early morning so the surface agitation of the tank is still dispersing CO2 overnight. I prefer that this is the case.I I have also attached some pics of the Lily in flower.