40 Gallon Community Journal

[Drift Monkey]

Simple is always good! Can't wait to see the rescape.

[Newman]

Ok started to work on it today. vals went in, other plants were removed, two rocks went out.
didnt get hairgrass yet. DW is shipped, will arrive next week.
Still unsure about which moss to use. christmas moss? mini christmas moss?

[Newman]

how do you guys feel a blue background would look? I can just flip my black BKG - its blue on the reverse side. i think it might look interesting. I've had this black for 3 years now lol.

[Newman]

seems like my sulawesi snails might make planting this tank more difficult than expected. they may be eating my plants lol.

At any rate, I put in dwarf hairgrass and the DW branch that i found. waiting on the branch to sink. will happen soon.

[Newman]

Tank now looks like this:

[Newman]

hairgrass isnt going to work, so i'm going to go crazy and get a bunch of dwarf sag instead...

also my vals are getting chomped by my snails, but they are sending out runners and growing somewhat.

[Newman]

so i planted a bunch of dwarf sag yesterday, and if my snails dont eat it all over the course of the next few months then it should look nice!
vals are still half eaten. I also removed most of my pest snails from my tank. the only ones left are a huge number of my sulawesis. they bred prolifically recently. hopefully they wont eat everything i planted lol! but I'll still love them even if they do. they really are the best snails for my tap water.

over the next few days i'll be trying to hunt down and remove ALL of my pest snails. they're bladder snails, and we all know how impossible these are to get rid of >_>

[Newman]

Mission one: eliminate all pest snails
Mission one status: FAILED

After a month of repeated manual removal, i now feel confident that it is not possible to remove pest snails from this tank. so **** 'em. I have better things to do.

Recently i have started to raise some more pleco fry in a breeder net since my BN pair bred.

The planted idea didn't work because my sulawesis ate right through the planted part of it. on the plus side now i have a lot of tylo babies in the tank. on the negative side I am pretty much left with doing a hardscape for this tank.
At least the plecos will appreciate the DW. lots of DW. I'll probably work on the re-scape during winter break.

(I am planning on buying a lot of DW and adding in some dried leaves.)

[Newman]

This will be my inspiration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tysGxRYRubk

going to replace some of my flourite with a sand cap.
I hope i can select appropriate DW for this...

[danakin]

Starting from scratch? Or just redoing it?

[Newman]

redoing it. its pretty empty right now, with just flourite and a single branch. i'll take out some flourite and cover with sand.

my fish are still in here though. they're staying the same for the most part.

[Newman]

looks like i haven't updated this in a long while, so here we go:

I finally got my LED components today so i quickly gutted out my fixture and put them in. The results are exactly like my schematic showed before. here is a video, because only a video can show how dim the lighting goes (the camera always adjusts the light level for w/e reason.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH1tG...ature=youtu.be

Here is a pic of the max light output. the sword plant will go where the spot light is.


There is some shimmer but I'm going to modify my HOB a little bit so that hopefully i can move it right next to the LEDs (so that there would be turbulence right next to the light) to get the level of shimmer i really want. It's going to be crazy.

(I realize there is no schematic, this is just a copy paste out of context. basically i swapped out most of the flourite for play sand, got rid of plants, added in DW from my back yard, and am planning on selling all of my sulawesi snails soon so that i can add one Red Rubin Swordplant. Right in that spotlight.)

[Newman]

Swords are in (they sent me two. one will stay, the extra one will be grown out then sold.) and i tried positioning the tree bark on the substrate like i wanted to. unfortunately that bark still floats so its hard to keep it down like that. released all the pleco fry and shrimp. do not know what will happen.

Tank looks much more complete now. put some dried leaves in the corner to water log them and when they sink they will be spread over the sand. I think the tank reminds me of the Amazon a bit, what do you think?





Two main structures are the driftwood pile on the left of the tank:


And the plant on the right side:

[Kinection]

Your really creative. Makes me want to rescape...

[Newman]

Thanks! It really looks great in person, the pics only show a general idea. the full effect with the shimmer can only be experienced in real life (or through a good camera which I do not own haha!)

I am finally happy with this tank. I added more neon tetras for a school and also added pygmy cories.
When the pleco fry grow a bit more they will be sold and moved out, because clearly it is not possible to house 50+ BN plecos in a 40gallon lol. I'm also thinking about re-homing the platies to lower the bioload, but I may just let them live out the rest of their lives in comfort here. They are used to this tank.