So I have a mini m sized tank with a high tech setup. After 6 months of battling to grow anything I managed to get this:
I wasn't very happy with the scape so I sold all the plants and purchased some seiryu rock, something I've never worked with before.
I made a cardboard box the same size as the tank and arranged the rocks lots of different ways. It's a great way to spend an evening (or 2 or 3). I got some good feedback from TPT too, which helped a lot. I decided to get a few more rocks and in the end the arrangement that most closely matches the finished scape looked like this:
I planted some hc June 4th in seedling trays:
Today (9 weeks later) it looks like this:
Anyway, some of the hc in the tray ended up going into this scape:
Planting.....
And in the end:
I reused the aquasoil. It's 6 months old. I washed it and it looks and plants fine. But its ammonia is gone. So what are my options for cycling? What the recommended method in this situation? Thanks for any advice.
awesome scape, and love the new addition of the sand path! yea sand paths are a pita to maintain sometimes but from the barrier that your rocks seem to give I think youll be fine.
Great to see such a nice tank from a fellow Aussie! I love the path you added.
The HC to the right of the main rock... How is it going in the shadow? I've got a similar large rock to the left of my tank and with a single point of light (LED cluster) centered over the rock, but the eleocharis is really struggling to get started up behind the rock.
For pics the led is pushed to the back so the light hits the wall nice and the background of the scape lights up evenly. but doing this darkens the faces of the rocks, so a T5 is resting on top of the tank towards the front. So normally the led is in the middle, and the shadow on the right isn't so prominent (in fact, you can't see a shadow at all).
That said, the hc on the right has struggled a little. The hc taken away to form the path got replanted there. In the early days I think the flow was too high on the right and the hc was getting blown around too much. quite a lot dislodged and floated up too. the filter taps are turned down now and the hc is doing better.
Added more rocks at the back and front. (rocks and domes seem to be my thing ... if in doubt add more rock and/or trim domes).
It still a ways off from being finished. The fiss has a lot of growing in to do and I've got plans to take the hc to a few more places to further integrate the foreground into the rest of the scape.
Removed a lot of foreground dhg, shifted the fiss around
Added more sand paths down to the foreground, + lots more rock fragments
Removed fiss from bigger rocks
Added some ottos
Added background film
Removed some hc and trimmed the rest, trying to create mounds rather than a flat surface
This has become one of my favorite scapes on the board. Falls right in between Iwagumi and a mountain scape. For some, they are one of the same, for me they are different but at the end of the day, it has the best of both going.
thanks talontsiawd! still a few more tweaks to go. i have to figure out what to do with the right slope of hc, it's not growing too well in the shade of the big rock. Most of it is just resting on top of the soil.
I hear you on the lack of support from stores, I'm on the East coast near DC and we thankfully do have a lot of fish shops, sadly, they carry very little plants and Co2 stuff? what's that? No drop checkers, no co2 tanks, no co2 rated line, just the basic CO2 kits that come with the 3 week long throw away tanks.
Grrrr
Coral is where it's at over here, most shops carry thousands and thousands of dollars worth of coral. One shop in Northern Virginia is nothing but one massive black light looking shop, AWESOME shop, but not a single plant to be found.
Yeah, well it's the same here on the other side of the world. Reefers have the big bucks so stores cater for their needs. The population is small here (my state 3.5x bigger than Texas, but only 2.5mil people). So no shop could survive selling only planted tank stuff. But things have definitely got better in the past 1 year equipment wise. tanks, rocks, filters etc are all here. but plant quarantine restrictions still suck. i want an erio for this tank (right side base of biggest rock), but alas, none are available.
I hear you on the lack of support from stores, I'm on the East coast near DC and we thankfully do have a lot of fish shops, sadly, they carry very little plants and Co2 stuff? what's that? No drop checkers, no co2 tanks, no co2 rated line, just the basic CO2 kits that come with the 3 week long throw away tanks.
Grrrr
Coral is where it's at over here, most shops carry thousands and thousands of dollars worth of coral. One shop in Northern Virginia is nothing but one massive black light looking shop, AWESOME shop, but not a single plant to be found.
I understand its where the money is but having ZERO drop checkers, ZERO diffusers other than a basic ladder, ZERO tubing, yet carrying all the bottle crap like excel and such...
Diffusers are in the $5-20 range and take up very little shelf space. Makes no sense to me why no one carries them. Seems like most CO2 stuff is big in Europe. Handful of CO2 things I've bought were clearly for the English.
Did a small trim earlier today. Added yet more sand to make the paths a bit higher, particularly the path on the far left. Also add a new rock back left.
I super glued the intake back together and left it to set for a few days. I hooked it back up to the filter this afternoon and all seems ok. the damage was at the suction cup, so it's outside the tank and not very noticeable.
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