Over the past year I’ve become obsessed with this hobby and wanted to share the results. Setup info below:

Hygger 22W light from Amazon. My PAR meter puts it around 65 PAR at the substrate at 75% light intensity. I I currently run the light about 6 hours a day.

Nitrates I try to keep around 20ppm and phosphate at 2ppm. I originally would dose Flourish, Flourish Potassium, Flourish Phosphate, and Flourish Iron all individually. I got tired of that and went to using Thrive all in one fertilizer but it caused phosphate to climb disproportionately compared to nitrate so I’m back to individual dosing the past couple weeks. I had a lot more algae growing when the phosphate got above 2ppm. Recently started adding root tabs and the growth on the red tiger lotus and rotalla has exploded!

Water changes are usually in response to nutrient concentrations I don’t follow a rigid schedule. KH usually around a 4 or 5. I refill with tap water with a KH of 5 or 6. Temp kept around 78°F

Fluval 207 canister filter

No CO2 but I do dose 5mL of Flourish Excel daily. One day I’d like to get CO2 but realistically I don’t have the time for the extra maintenance.

Substrate is just normal gravel from the pet store.

The tank has a pretty heavy bioload. There’s been a couple rounds of platies reproducing that I need to donate. Currently have a king betta, 18 neon tetras, probably 10 platies of various sizes, 3 corys, 1 mystery snail, and 4 nerite snails.

I hope you guys like it feel free to give any feedback!