A little background

I thought a good way to start off would be to give a little background. I've been keeping freshwater tanks for near 22 years. Always off and on I had one or two plants, usually java fern or something else that "looked neat" (read as: non aquatic) from the local fish store. As you would assume, these plants always came to an untimely demise shortly after being introduced to my tank. About 2.5 years ago I picked up some Ludwigia repens from Wet Pets in Pleasanton,CA. After a brief discussion about my sordid history with live plants, the guy there handed me a small bottle of Flourish and said "this stuff works great, toss in a capful every other week or so." And so it began.

After a few months of the L. repens living, but not really growing, I decided to investigate what else could help me have live plants in my tank. At this point, I define my interest as having "a tank with plants" rather than a "planted tank." I stumbled upon Aquaria Central, and from that, Planted Tank and APC. Quickly I built a DIY light fixture to bump my light from 18 watts over a 30g, to 120 watts over that same tank. I got into DIY CO2. Slowly my tank started to turn into a planted tank.

Not to long after this my exploration into planted tanks really started to steamroll into an obsession. A fried that was moving across the country passed on his 46g bowfront to me. After that, the 30g was upgraded to a 45g. These two tanks would become the focus of my attention for the next 2 years.

In posts to come, I will provide a little more detail about these two tanks.