holycow

thought it spelt 'pov'

a pic or it doesn't exist!

adding more fertilizer, having pooing machines (the bristlenoses), adding more light, and having a lot of slow growing plants could result in an algal bloom!

aquas soil, any version, has a HUGE fertilizer/ammonia content; so it takes a while for a tank to cycle once you use it. the soil leeches like crazy! and it can quickly lose its structure, turning into an amorphous mess, so take care in how often you rescape your tank!

that moss looks like it's on its last legs; time to remove it

you can use a number of plants with the dry-start method including HC (dwarf baby tears), eleocharis (hair grass), anubias, echinodorus (swords) and mosses. you want to separate the plants/plantlets before planting, or in the case of mosses and anubias, attach them to something, and then plant into the substrate. then you want to saturate the substrate with water (dechlorinated) and fertilizer (look to fertilizing instructions; too much fertilizer equates to reverse osmosis or root-burn), but don't submerge your plants. substrates like aqua soil and ada soil already have HEAPS of fertilizer/ammonia added and don't require more fertilizer. then to keep the moisture within your tank, seal the tank with glad wrap. then apply light source for about 8-10 hours/day. spray a fine mist into the tank every day or so in order to maintain the high humidity within the tank. the dry-start method should see your plants spread quite quickly within your tank. but it does take about a month to see the full benefits, and you must exercise restraint and avoid the temptation to flood the tank with water. so by the time you flood the tank, the soil should have already been colonised by ammonia-using bacteria colonies, so your tank will have already been 'cycled'. when you eventually flood the tank remember to used dechlorinated water! also, after flooding, remember to flush the substrate to remove excess nutrients/fertilizer, otherwise you may end up with an algae bloom. after flooding, you will need to add excel or C02 in order to acclimatise your plant to the sudden change in gas-exchange; that is, your plants will go from a state of almost unrestricted access to C02 to a restricted one. failure to do so will see your plants 'melting'. you can gradually reduce the amount of C02 you inject into your tank.

you could go about growing aquarium plants using the 'dry-start' method? but it does requires a bit of discipline as it requires you to wait for the plant(s to carpet out before adding water and fishies to the tank

for a moment thought that pic that shows the bettas eating the blood worms off the bottom was actually the remains of a tank bust-up!

is that black algae kind-of fuzzy in appearance? as someone mentioned before, it looks like black-beard algae. you could reduce the light photo-period that the tank receives, or you could black out the tank for a day or two. nutrients in the water and the spectrum of the lights that you're using will influence whether you have algae problems. also, manually remove the algae with a brush or spot application of excel or glutareldahyde has been recommended, but if you don't address the nutrients in the water and the emitted light spectrum, it's going to come back.

dwarf baby tears as in hemianthus callitrichoides (HC)? HC can be grown in both the emersed state and submerged state. it's actually quicker to grow a number of plants via the emersed state route. however, most people want to add fish to the tank, so they flood the tank. when you flood the tank, the gas exchange, CO2, for the emersed grown plants is greatly altered, so one needs to compensate the sudden loss of CO2 by adding it to the water, otherwise your plants will melt. you can gradually decrease the amount of CO2 over a period of time. You can also grow moss, anubias, crypts, hair-grass, swords, etc., in the emersed state but when you flood the tank you need to pump CO2 in there as well to compensate for the sudden loss. regarding your second question, have a look at Aquagreen. they've managed to transplant two native hair-grasses, though it does tend to be longer than the 'dwarf' hair-grass that is usually seen in aquascapes.

anubias are not planted but tied to structures. bury the rhizome and it'll eventually rot away. the rhizome will send out roots that will eventually encircle/adhere to an object. java moss and anubias aren't aggressive users of nutrients, whereas echinodorus, swords, are moderate users. therefore, you aren't required to fertilize too often.

you read correctly, anubias does tend to grow more quickly emersed-wise than submerged. post submerging is when all the problems occur, like algae and leaf-melt. algae growth usually occurs because anubias is a slow growing plant, whereas leaf-melt usually occurs due to the gas inbalance post-submerging, i.e., not enough CO2. don'y bury the rhizome, keep the plant in a sealed environs and spray the plant to keep the humidity up!

it's not necessary the strength of light or duration of lighting; also must consider the spectrum of the light being emitted. The BGA may be the only organism able to utilize the particular wavelength of light. there's also problem of tank parameters. even if you remove the BGA, BBA, GSA, etc, if you don't change the basic conditions of the tank, all these algaes will keep coming back. regards, ty

bacterial bloom. indicative of too much nutrients in water, maybe from over feeding, with nothing efficient enough to utilize it but BGA (read: cyanob). also, the lighting also provides energy for the buggers. 30% water change followed by a blackout period of 24-48 hrs, and no fertilization or feeding. then maintain the water changes. should clear up after that. in future watch your feeding/fertilization/lighting.