If I move up this tank I'd probably lose the sump. For now it's pretty much kind of stuck the way it is. At some point I'd like to move the loaches over to a bigger home (they're about 12 years old now, I got them at 1/2" sometime in the 90's
) so it's on the horizon at some point.
When the tank is cleaned up it actually looks really good with the black substrate (I have black Fluorite or whatever it's called as the top 1" or so) and a black background. Right now though what happens is the hair algae is growing too fast so it only looks nice for about 3-4 days after a massive tank cleanup. I've swapped over the driftwood to new pieces because I just couldn't scrape the old ones clean so for now the old ones are out on the deck getting the algae freeze-dried into oblivion (hopefully anyhow, I don't want to toss them, they're otherwise fairly nice pieces)..
I'll change out the reactor and see what transpires. I kind of think that the one I'm using just isn't up to the job for this particular tank.
Oh .. fertilizer. Right .. Umm .. unfortunately I've fallen behind on that. I used to get all my FW stuff from one shop in town which closed down and I need to do a better job of looking for FW planted supplies when I go LFS hopping.
Do you use a liquid fertilizer or the tabs that you shove into the substrate? Any suggestions for a kind to look for next time I make the LFS rounds?