id go for a driftwood hardscape with attatched moss and a vallisneria background for half of the tank then have the other half or quarter carpeted in dhg with open water above
I'd go a mangrove-esq hardscape with a few plants that flower above the water. Add some Indian almond leaves and go for a tea colored look and then many many dwarf puffers (i have a puffer problem...)
@leblue: that sounds great, but wouldnt i have to lower my water level in order for that to look its best; to see the flowers?
Also i can't really put anymore fish in here haha, or swap fish out. puffers wouldnt work because i like my sulawesi snails in here Too many pest snails, yes, but the puffers would go after my prized snails too
You might be able to get away with not lowering the water if you made some sort of faux background to mount the plants to instead of putting them on the bottom. Also finding a way to make a lattice as if you were growing pothos ivy out of a hob filter.
not my photo btw
I would definitely try to use more of the vertical space since it is so narrow.
You can either use bigger rocks or make a pile of rocks to increase the vertical range of the hardscape. The rockscape you have now is a little bland and lacks drama. If you had more of them you could make some caves etc...also getting similar rocks will make it less distracting.
Driftwood could also be great for using the entire height of the tank. You could have big sticks descending down to look like submerged roots, or you could do a tree stump scape.
thanks newman
nt to sure of a good place in the us you could always go foraging and disinfect the wood and clean it yourself iv had alot of success doing this
if you want the tank anything other than low light i would go for upgraded lighting
id go for xmas moss
It'd look great with a nice piece of manzanita in there! Ifound mine at a LFS, but there should be some vendors that would be able to hook you up!
I had a hard time vertical space as well...but as you can see in my Ebi...a nice piece of manzanita with moss works well. Anubias petite at the base along with java fern growing out behind it would be cool.
Yes, I think i will put manzanita in here. I ordered a nice big piece on [Ebay Link Removed] wasn't too expensive. It will arrive some time next week. In the meantime i will be gathering my vals, hairgrass and choosing what moss to put on the DW.
My LFS will get some vals in on thursday this week, so I'll pick some up soon =)
Unfortunately anubias does not do well in my water for some reason...it hates my tap and melts after a week in my tank. i have tried multiple times and failed. java fern is in here now. not sure if i will use it for the scape though...
Planned plants are Vals, Moss, and Dwarf Hairgrass. keeping it to 3 plants is a good idea and should look nice.
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?
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.
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 >_>
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.)
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=mH1tG303Ksw&feature=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.)
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