I'm a city boy.
Born and raised.
So when I would see farmers on the television talking to reporters after a long drought or locus or whatever devastating cr-p that happens to farmers, I could never relate to them when they said, "I lost a whole season's crops to that [
insert whatever devastating cr-ap it happened to be]."
I simply had no basis of comparison.
The closest I could come to relating to those poor farmers was when I put a lot of effort into writing a post in a forum -- like, a hundred and fifty words! -- and the browser crashed and I lost all my work.
Yeah, I know, I'm a city boy. (And I know why farmers call us "soft".)
But now, I can relate to those farmers.
I know what it's like to lose an entire "season's" crops.
Most of it, anyway.
Something happened in the substrate that turned it bad. Killed nearly 75% of my
Lilaeopsis nova 'mini'.
This is not a simple transition from emeresed to submersed die-off. I've done many dry-starts and a die-off of this magnitude has never happened. Something else went wrong here.
It's sad waking up every morning and seeing something that you've sunk so much time, energy, and money into slowly decay. Day after day.
It's heartbreaking.
It's like watching a near and dear friend slowly start to dress like a hipster.
Please, shave the beard. Please! And why are you wearing nerd glasses? You don't even have bad eyesight! And, for the love of all that's holy, put on looser jeans! You're going to damage your junk. I'm serious!
I've taken action that I hope will halt and then reverse the die-off, but only time will tell if too much damage was done below the substrate.
Given the above situation, I did what any planted tanker would do in my situation.
I pulled out my tiny two gallon Do!aqua Plant Glass Cube20 and set up a simple, avant-garde, experimental panted tank. (My wife has not noticed it yet as I placed it next to the Do!aqua nursery in the living room. I'm hoping she just thinks they're one tank.)
Back in the day, the Plant Glass Cube20 was
my favorite tank.
Because was so small, it was so easy to manage and never, that I can recall, gave me a single problem.
I need some of that ease right now.
Furthermore, I took it a step further and made came up with a rather unorthodox hardscape that should make maintenance really easy. (You'll see it a couple of photos down, but stick with me as I have to walk you through the process.)
Back when I was setting up my Mini-L, I had this hardscape:
It was dark and wicked in a cool way that I really dug.
However, because the driftwood was so dominant, the coolness of the left-hand rock was never made apparent.
As a matter of fact, you probably didn't even notice anything about that rock when you first saw that photo, right?
The rock was overshadowed, literally and figuratively, by the wicked, creeping driftwood. (Which to this day, I still love although that tank was a b-tch to do maintenance on.)
At the time, I remarked to my wife that it was a shame that I could not use that rock as a focal point as it had so many cool features. The rock has divot caves perfect for planting, cool fissures and cracks, and when seen from a certain angle, a face. (The rock was too small and lacked a distinctive shape to be a focal point in a tank as large as a Mini-L, but I always wanted to showcase it in a tank and I finally have my chance.)
When I setup a tank, I almost always have what you guys think in mind. I try to make tanks that the "general public" will appreciate.
For example, when I made this tank, it was almost done completely to please the internet.
While I enjoyed that tank, it was not very fun for me with just two plants: UG and HC.
On the other hand, the last incarnation of Source, with all of its broken rules and lack of any artistic cohesion, was one of my favorites.
This tank had no sloped substrate, no focal point, and dozens of mismatched plants. I retired from the hobby before this tank could mature, but I still wonder how that one would have come out if the ferns on the left hand side had had time to grow in thick.
[I just noticed from that photo how deep I had the substrate. That is Lilaeopsis nova 'mini' there, also grown via dry-start. Look at how nice it is! Perhaps I had my substrate too shallow this go around.]
Anyway, because of all of that, I decided to create a tank with three criteria in mind.
One: It must be easy to maintain. This means no precariously placed pieces of driftwood or rocks and easy access to the filter tubes for painless maintenance.
Two: It must have a big-ass filter. I'm convinced that the reason that the Do!aqua Plant Glass Cube20 never gave me crap was because I had a relatively large filter attached to it. At the time I was running a ZooMed 501 (with 13W of CFL and DIY CO2). I'm convinced that the larger the filter the fewer the problems.
Case in point, here's my Do!aqua Mini-M nursery just now.
This tank has an EHEIM 2211 and a Fluval C3. Suffice it to say, it's got
a lot of filtration. I have virtually no problems with this tank. I don't even have to scrape the glass. All I do is top off for evaporation and dose fertilizers.
The final criteria is: It has to be fun for me.
So here's what I came up with.
As you can see, I've clearly been able to use the abovementioned rock as a focal point!
In my defense, while the use of one big-ass rock and nothing else as a hardscape is unorthodox and some would say ugly (but not in a good way), because the thing is four pounds, I have no fear of disturbing the hardscape during maintenance. Criteria number one is firmly met.
It's lit by an
AquaLighter Nano.
This is a cool little lamp. 4.5W at about 7000K. The RGB spectrum's not as ideal as the AZOO Flexi-Mini, the Flexi-Mini is way too long to fit on this thing.
Here's what the AquaLighter looks like from above.
This tank's a tad shy of 8"x8"x8". With the rock's displacement, there's about a gallon and a quarter of water in there.
The AquaLighter is the perfect size for this tank. I'm not sure if it's medium or high light at this point, but I think it's bright enough to grow what I've got in there.
Speaking of which, I've got three plants. EH as the carpet. Anubias nana 'bonsai' on the rock, and Rotala 'H'ra' in the back. Eventually, I'm going to put UG in the center "cave" in the rock so that it looks like it's spilling out and over onto the carpet of EH.
Other than that, I've got no further plant plans.
And, no, I don't intend on stocking this thing with livestock. (Not even snails if I can help it.)
For filtration, I went with what many would consider overboard: the Finnex PX-360.
It's big. It's spec'd for tanks up to 25 gallons, but I can't see that being true at all. I can't see it being good for anything over five gallons.
Here's it next to the tank.
Where the tank has about 1.25 gallons, the filter holds about .5 gallons. That's forty percent of the tank's volume! Flow is not unreasonable at all, either. For me, it's perfect.
I'm going unheated this time around as I'm building this tank around the EH which, from what I've read, prefers cooler water.
I'll be doing DIY CO2 via a glass diffuser, but I haven't set that up yet as I have to get some yeast. Until then, I'll be dosing Excel.
And that's what I've been up to lately. I'm still waiting for (Re)Source to bounce back. Aside from the carpet, all other plants are growing nicely. The only problem I can think of there is that the Rotala 'green' is not shooting upwards as I'd like it to, but I've been trimming to try to force it upwards.
And, before I forget -- and I think I've mentioned this before -- but the ADA Aquasky 361 is not worth your money, in my opinion.
For its price vs. the competition, ADA should bring more to the table.
For example, I'd love it if it had three dimming presets: low, medium, and high light based on the general consensus of what those are PAR-wise.
After all, these lights are built for specific aquariums so determining each light level would not be difficult.
Or, at the very least, put a damn dimmer on the thing!
Anyway, I wrote way more than I intended to. I guess I missed you guys.
(Re)Source should be ready in a few weeks. I'm crossing my fingers that the "whole crop" isn't lost and, at least in the meantime, I can watch my wet rock with a few plants around it.
Unquestioningly,
Ugly