Journal 60L tank ft Lagenandra meeboldii, using mini Anubias as foreground

[Dennis Wong]

I did a soft reset of the tank to change the layout:

This is the process I use for soft resets:
1. Remove fish/plants
2. Clear off excess organic detritus in the substrate by siphoning and stirring.
3. Mix in around 10-20% new APT Feast aquasoil
4. Replant plants in a new layout
5. Added back fish (better to wait if you have storage space)
6. 90% water changes every other day for next 2 weeks
7. Algae often blooms on adapting leaves, I trim these off
8. Replant new growth, discard old growth as soon as I have excess top growth

This is the tank at around 2 week mark

 

[JayP]

I did a soft reset of the tank to change the layout:

This is the process I use for soft resets:
1. Remove fish/plants
2. Clear off excess organic detritus in the substrate by siphoning and stirring.
3. Mix in around 10-20% new APT Feast aquasoil
4. Replant plants in a new layout
5. Added back fish (better to wait if you have storage space)
6. 90% water changes every other day for next 2 weeks
7. Algae often blooms on adapting leaves, I trim these off
8. Replant new growth, discard old growth as soon as I have excess top growth

This is the tank at around 2 week mark
View attachment 21125

Thank you for this. It answers questions brought up in several other posts, but I'm a bit surpised in the 90% water changes every other day for 2 weeks. Assuming you're using the same filter with cycled media and only 20% replenishing with new soil, I'd expect a faster turn-around. You've mentioned before you tend to be impatient so I'm assuming you've tried shorter turn-arounds?

Edit: Ah, nevermind, I just read your post on Instagram with the additional explanation of the big water changes being for introducing the plants to air.