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72 gallon bow - need help aquascaping...

4K views 10 replies 4 participants last post by  GotMC 
#1 ·
Here it is... kinda lost at what I should add, get rid of, do with my main drift wood pieces.. etc... thinking of ripping out dwarf hairgrass to gravel vacc the crap outa gravel w/ magnum 350 cause gba is kinda hurting dwarf hairgrass and I suspect it is dirty gravel used from last setup/never rinsed flourite etc... turtles in last setup etc...

or it could just be that my 4-5 bps diffused c02 is not enough and that's why it is struggling but anyways... help me with my scape please... I'm thinking about trashing the dwarf hairgrass for glosso maybe.





 
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#2 ·
update:

Stupid roommate leaves light on/not on timer mode since sunday mid day.

Today I drive to work on tank only to find green covered glass, cloudy greenish water, 10-15 dead fish... :(

Solution: Rip 90% of plants out... rinse every piece of dwarf hairgrass off, pick the pieces apart the best I can, gravel vacc like crazy doing 50% water change, taking dead fish out, cut off large chunks of java fern, switch some to other piece of drift wood, take pieces out, replant dwarf hairgrass really neatly, put drift wood pieces back in after making them look better, fill tank, make riccia balls for focal point, etc...





riccia



right side

 
#3 ·
That's never fun...I had BGA in my shrimp tank because I bought the tank off of another person who never cleaned it, he thought that the shrimp would eat the BGA...he was wrong. So i got new gravel and cleaned everything real well and it hasn't come back so far (lets hope for good). But now I have some BBA haha...you never win against algae. Best of luck with your solution!
 
#4 ·








Can anyone give me tips for back ground plants/placement? I have riccia that will lead up to something... what could I put behind it? right now I have some hygro thinner long leaves... grows tall/thicker stem... and some smaller leafed hygro weaker stem lots of leaves smaller thin and some of the furry looking red stem plant bunch...
 
#5 ·
Updated pics... hairgrass would get covered with debris and it would eventually turn into gba... sooo... I ripped it up put it in corner where it used to grow well and put down the only thing that has grown well for a foreground plant for some reason... even when dwarf baby tears has not...

BABY TEARS...





 
#6 ·


tell me what you guy's think of this...

blue is baby tears - it will grow really low...

greenish/yellow could be some sort of anubias to border that drift wood pieces and add an outline (anubias is good for this)

black kind of outlines different shapes of plants I can achieve... i'm thinking to the right where the open spaces are of some different long growing stem plant that will look good next to the "bushy" stem plant all the way in the back... or I could just go with the same stuff

the red will be red plants that look really good... maybe a red tiger lotus in with them....

to the left all the way to the left there is a patch of hairgrass that I might just let grow... and behind that I think I might get some busy stems instead of that hygro... I just don't like how the hygro grows really... it doesn't look all that great... kind of dirty looking in the corner.. the leaves are just too big with all the java fern in there...

The java fern is kind of out of control... but what can I do... I've ripped a ton off the drift wood as it is to the right i literally wrapped java moss around the bottom of the drift wood didn't need any string it just stayed there so I think it should attach... and inbetween it will be a sort of cave...

and in the center of the left piece of drift wood I'm thinking of having some red tiger lotus come through... it would hit both sides - golden ratio's but might put the scape off balance... but sometime's that can be a good thing... and I think there is already a lot of green as it is.
 
#8 · (Edited)
I would personally move the left DW all the way to the left and try to create a concave effect in your scape. Then try to have that 'path' be where you have it but place the tiger lotuses along each side of the 'path'. Still line the DW with anubias if you can, try to get ones that aren't monsters like I did on accident so I got rid of them.

I found this 72 gallon bowfront on another forum and really like the layout...you could try mimicing this layout since you have a lot of ferns and it looks like you could do a similar setup only with more colored plants perhaps?



Regarding the powerheads that I use...I have the eheim 2026 in the right corner without a spraybar just aimed to behind the driftwood. The eheim ecco 2234 has 2 spraybars connected to eachother to get the Co2 water to spread more evenly across my main part of the tank at about 45 degrees downward. Then I have a aquaclear 30 (I believe) powerhead in the back left corner pushing water behind the DW the other way from the 2026 and past the heater that way I won't have any 'hot spots' (if that's even really possibly) since I was thinking if you pee in the ocean/pool then you feel the heat until a current takes it away haha. Then I have my Koralina 2 powerhead just recently moved to go across the front of a the bow to every once in a while create some strong current to stir up the tank and debris.

Hope this helps a bit, it feels like I have just been rambling on about a bit of everything. Happy late birthday by the way!
 
#9 ·
update... bought a ton of plants... put diffuser way below in back corner... bubbles up to powerhead which blows out the small bubbles.. got point towards center of tank slightly angeled down... with power head on other side slightly pointed down and towards center of tank with XP4 spray bar in middle spraying towards front of tank... tons of current... lots of bps... air stone running lightly 24/7... 8-10 hr photo period.... added TONS of plants... too many haha...

looks a lot better... pulled the HM i had before and bought 3 new pots of baby tears... cept these baby tears look different... their both HM but my other HM leaves look different... maybe these ones need to adjust to my lights...

Hopefully it will grow down soon... that's what happened last time and it spread without having to cut it at all... like amano's glosso...

uhhh... a lot of fish passed away a couple weeks ago as you know so I don't have a huge fish load...

about 9-10 rummy nose, 2 angels, 5-6 little danios.... some peppered corries, bristlenose.... if it's still in there... some oto's...

1 german blue ram... thinking about adding 5 more... for final fish load...

but I'm gonna let the baby tear carpet form and then add the 5 german blue ram and by then the plants should be pretty damn dense so I should be able to add a few more fish and have extremely healthy and clean tank.


 
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