Tomb Raider Petrified Wood Anubias Garden- evolution pics p.1! video 3/6

[whitepapagold]

Wanted to share my tank as Ive purchased the Anubias Petite and others here. Plus its a little different than most...

Its inspiration was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom... then the large slab of petrified wood I bought made it feel more OG side scrolling platform games. Then once it started to develop it leaned towards Tomb raider and as the Anubias roots grow out- its really lookin legit!

Ive planned this tank for 15 years but never found a statue/bust that didn't look cheesy... Then my friend in Africa sent me the one you see here that I grew the Java Fern head dress on. That triggered the entire change (as this tank was a reef tank up until June. I had needed to change to freshwater for a while... the bust made it come together)

Then a few weeks of eBAY rock shopping and 800 dollars later... (though 1/3 of that was shipping!) Voila! I sold my reef tank for good money (just the contents) so I had more than enough to cover start up!

Heres the sequence from start to finish ending with the placement of the Anubias Petite.

The UPDATED current stock list-
6 Khuli loaches
1 candy stripe pleco
17 Rummy nose tetras
a boatload of cherry shrimp
a boatload of Malaysian trumpet snails
6 tiger nerite snails- relegated to the backfilter now so they no longer uproot the anubias petite!
pond snails- which I have begun to remove as often as possible... I hate them but they came in on a live plant (that I even cleaned first...) At least they do a good job on algae... and eating small holes in new anubias petite leaves...doh!

VIDEO-

Crappy iPhone video- current as of 4/17/12
http://youtu.be/U4b8R7EqY5M

New crappy iphone video- 3/6/13

Tank 5/6/13 - YouTube

Tank 5/6/13 - YouTube

Day after reef switch

sand, anubs and Harlequin Rasboras (I later decided against them)

first batch of rocks, more plants

THE SLAB ARRIVES!!!!!

tier added, gully dug

more plants

the full 200lb lot of petrified rounds added (on top of the prior pics- yep 200 more lbs...) and end of rock additions, hill built

addition of Snow Bengal kitten and ADA 60F for him (hes sleeping on top cause I covered and hes annoyed!)...

Petite added to virgin sacrifice rock and statue base centerpiece










Its gonna take about 6 months for the tank to really take form but man has it been fun so far!

And going from reef to fresh???? LFS visits just lost a ZERO... From 200 bucks to 20 bucks! AWESOME!!! An expensive freshie fish is like 7 dollars...

Sorry about the later pics looking so bad... crappy phone camera.