Complexity Journal: 75g / NEW PICS Mar 26! Several pics posted with more to come!

[Torpedobarb]

blah blah blah... pics now!

the tank looks great!

[sewingalot]

I totally want to do the bracket hanging thing. Now I need to get a canopy! Did you attach the brackets yourself? I have this issue where I cannot hang things in a straight line. I may need you to draw a template for me. By the way, I am ITCHING for new pictures. I've missed your tank for too long now.

[Pinto]

Tank looks great!
Love the cabinet setup.

[Complexity]

Originally Posted by lizziotti

I love your tank. I had a picture of it as things I wanted to do to my tank before I stumbled upon your thread! Not sure where I got the pic? Can't remember. It was great to read the progression. Long .....but great! Can't wait to see more pics.

Oh and I really like the way you have your lights! I'll have to see if I can copy it if you don't mind. Mine are always in the way drives me crazy!

Thank you! And by all means, copy away at the hanging lights. It was actually very easy to do and you only need to know how to use a drill to do it.

Originally Posted by Voozle

Has it grown in to resemble the aquascape prior to the move, or does it look very different? Please snap some shots of your lovely barbs while you're at it, as well as your new additions!

It's the same, but different. Meaning, the very same hardscaping and same basic layout, but not the same plants. I'm still working on that. It's very overgrown right now so the pics I'll be posting will look like a jungle (and hide some of the red plants), but it's all coming along nicely.

Also, congrats on your P. pulchers! I can't wait until they spawn so you can see how they raise their young. I think watching them raising their young is the best part of them.

Originally Posted by Torpedobarb

blah blah blah... pics now!

the tank looks great!

Blah, blah, blah... keep your shirt on. Pics will be coming!

Originally Posted by sewingalot

I totally want to do the bracket hanging thing. Now I need to get a canopy! Did you attach the brackets yourself? I have this issue where I cannot hang things in a straight line. I may need you to draw a template for me. By the way, I am ITCHING for new pictures. I've missed your tank for too long now.

I'm going to be posting pics tonight.

You don't need a canopy for the brackets since you can attach them into the studs in the wall, but then they won't be hidden when not in use. I attached them myself. Just marked where the screws would go, predrilled (the canopy is Oak so I prefer to predrill), and then put the screws in the holes. That's it! Oh, and I put some velcro on the bottom screw to ensure the brackets would stay closed when I opened my canopy.

You don't have to be precise with this design at all. You just have to be sure to line up the screws with the holes for the brackets.

The main challenge was just thinking up the idea and finding the brackets (wasn't sure what I would use when I first thought up the idea). Once I found the brackets, it was really easy to do.

Originally Posted by Pinto

Tank looks great!
Love the cabinet setup.

Thanks, Pinto!

[Complexity]

I was getting some pics ready to post when the database went down! So I didn't get many done. I just got the first 7 ready. Here they are!

These pictures were taken on Feb 17, 2009 so they're a little over a month old. Mainly random pics of the fish, but I did get a FTS.

Watch the FTS pics I'll be posting later to see the growth of these plants. It's crazy!

This is when I finally started getting the plants back in shape after having neglected them. My Red Tiger Lotus was severely cut back at this point so you can't even see it. I removed all of the leaves, cut off most of the roots, and removed a ton of babies. I had no choice because it was growing so large, so fast, that it was completely taking over the entire left side of the tank. The leaves were larger than my open hand!

The green plants in front of the driftwood that are on the left side, towards the middle are Hygro 'Kompact'. I bought ONE pot and split it. And it really took off! It's even much thicker now. I'll have a bunch to sell this weekend. A really great plant that grows very lush without getting too tall. One of my favorites. Beautiful bright green.



A pic of my Vals that were growing very nicely. They have taken over the tank now! I was keeping them cut back, but I wanted to share some so I stopped trimming the runners.

I'm going to move this to the far left back corner (where the C. balansae are now). They're growing too tall and hiding the plants behind them, and I think their bright green color will show up well in a back corner which tends to be darker.

The white spots is the pearling. It gets so bad, it's like a snow storm!



Five of my eight Torpedo Barbs. Great fish! That's Golden Creeping Jenny behind them. They grow really nicely.



One of my very favorites has grown back very nicely! At first, I thought this was Poly 'Sao Paulo', but it has later been determined to be Poly K. Whatever the name, it's really a beautiful plant!



There just has to be some food hiding in the substrate! Torpedo barbs checking every inch of the tank for a morsel of food while my SAE works his way to getting a meal of algae.



Okay, blurry shot, but I wanted to get a picture of my little blue guppy. He is so pretty! Unfortunately, like all of my male guppies in this tank, his tail has been shredded. But his tail lasted much longer than the rest!

The yellow and black leopard guppy is a baby from two of my other guppies. I got 4 of them with this design.

If you look just to the right of the blue guppy, there is a blur of color which is actually a hybrid guppy/endler. His colors don't show up well in this pic, but he's an iridescent array of many colors. Very pretty! I have two like this.



This is my C. balansae that I have decided to let go of. I know some people love to have plants drape over the top of the tank, but I'm not one of them. So I'll selling all of these this weekend. They've grown even taller since I took this pic!



That's it for this batch. More pics to come!

[imeridian]

Everything, flora and fauna alike, is so crisp and vibrant. I love it!

[Complexity]

Thanks, imeridian! Just wait until you see how it looks when it becomes overgrown! It's very different. I will have a LOT of trimming to do this weekend!

More pics to come, but my eyes are tired so I'll have to wait until tomorrow.

[Complexity]

More pics! These are still from 2-17. I took pics of the individual plants. It's fun for me now to see how much they've grown since then!

This is my poor Alternanthera reineckii ‘Rosefolia’. I got this one from mail order, and it was clearly emersed growth because it had little white flowers all over it. And it has not done well. It's better now than it shows in this picture, but it's still a challenge. I haven't been willing to give up on it yet.



This is Ludwigia peruensis which I think is the same thing as Ludwigia glandulosa? If so, this one is much more red than the L. glandulosa I had before.

I came close to losing this due to my own neglect, but this one stem survived and began growing very nicely. Keep this pic in mind because you won't believe how it's grown now!



It took me forever to identify this one. I had ordered Limnophila aromatica and Pogostemon stellatus from mail order at the same time. I just got this one plant that looked anything like either plant.

I have finally decided that this is Pogostemon stellatus 'Broadleaf' because it has purple nodes. I'm thinking of replacing it with Limnophila aromatica at some point.



I adore this plant! It's Limnophila aquatica which I received as an extra in a trade. It grows like mad (maybe too much), but it has the most beautiful delicate bright green leaves that do not break off and make a mess i the tank. It's very easy to prune, too. I've learned to just follow the stem with my hand, and when I can feel where it has split in a fork, I just pinch off the overgrown part. As long as I do this weekly, I can keep this beautiful pom-pom appearance.



Another picture of the Limnophila aquatica. I have a lot of this that I'll put in the SnS this weekend (I hope). I'm also interested in seeing how well it will do in a lower light tank. I bet it will do great!



It's so funny how some of my favorite plants came as extras. This is Lysimachia nummularia 'Golden' which is just a very reliable plant with very nice growth. It tends to get a little algae on the leaves, but nothing bad. Very easy to grow, but it doesn't grow too fast, making maintenance very easy, as well.



Last of this group of pics is Ludwigia arcuata x repens. It's doing well, growing as most Ludwigias do. It's grown taller now with more red at the top, but it's being choked out by the other plants nearby.



I have a LOT more pictures to post so stay tuned!

[btmarquis]

Great tank, awesome pictures!

[Complexity]

Thank you! It's not anywhere near what I'm wanting, but I'm working on it. Too much green and not enough red for my taste. And I really miss my centerpiece lotus. It's beginning to grow large enough to be seen above the hygro 'Kompact', by now so it shouldn't be longer before it'll fill in that spot again.

[Complexity]

These are the last pics I took on 2-17.

This is Lamiaceae sp. (formerly known as Hemigraphis Traian). It's just not growing as well as I had hoped, but I think that's because it's not getting enough light.



This is so sad. This plant was Rotala macrandra, but it suffered greatly when I was neglecting the tank. I had hoped this little bit of growth would have survived, but it didn't. So this one is dead now.



This one is a puzzler to me. It's Cardamine lyrata which should be easy to grow, but it doesn't seem to like my tank. Or maybe it doesn't like where it is in the tank. I'm not sure what's up, but it just doesn't want to grow for me.



Now here's a plant that's growing for me! This is Lilaeopsis mauritius (Narrow Leaf Micro Sword) which has taken off nicely from some starters. I'm not sure what to do to get it to thicken up so I'll have to learn more about this plant.



This is Proserpinaca palustris (Mermaid Weed) that I got from mail order. It arrived, as expected, in its emersed form, and it has been touch and go into getting it to grow from there. These stems finally did begin to grow, showing the beautiful immersed red form. I'm still working with this plant to try to make something out of it.



OMG, if ever a plant grew well, it's this one! This is Hygrophila corymbosa ‘Kompakt’. I bought one potted plant online just to try it out. I split that one plant into 5 sections, and take a look at how it grew! Keep in mind that this growth was when I was neglecting the tank! I adore this plant!



Forget the anubias in the photo as it just happened to be attached to a piece of driftwood I put in for my pleco. I was trying to get a picture of my Red Tiger Lotus after having cut it back so severely. You can see just a small bit of it in the picture. I wish I had taken pictures of it when it was taking over the tank. I took this to track the growth after having been pruned back so severely.

[Voozle]

Yay torpedo barbs! Haha, Indigo's right, everything in the tank is looking superb. I'm having trouble even locating the red tiger lotus; I was going to ask if it was still the centerpiece when the database went down, but this answers my question. I have a hygro 'kompact' bush myself, and it fares well even in my low tech tank.

My kribensis did spawn, actually, a few weeks after I brought them home. I was so shocked to see both parents take such good care of their young! The mother is looking about ready to spawn again, her belly is enormous at the moment... Imagine your fat cardinals if they were cichlids.

Oh, and I noticed there were some really great pictures of congo tetras in the May issue of TFH; have you seen them? It was you who was interested in them, wasn't it?

[fastfreddie]

I hope I am lurking in the Swap n Shop the day that Hygro Kompakt decides to leave your tank!

It looks great Vicki! You and ZTM were the first people to help me on the forum so I've been watching closely ever since. I'm so glad this 75 is back in full swing!

[Complexity]

Voozie, thanks for the nice compliment! Good to hear the Hygro 'Kompakt' does well in a low light tank. I figured it would because they did great even as other plants have shaded them. I love how they get bushy instead of tall. A definite winner!

I want to see your kribs and babies! You have to take pictures to show me.

And, yes, I'm the one talking about the Congos. Thanks for letting me know! I'm thinking I could move the rainbows to my 29g, and put Congos in my 75g. Or maybe I could just add the congos? I'm so overstocked now, I don't know how I could fit more fish in, but you know how it is. It's so hard to resist!

[Complexity]

Thank you, too, fastfreddie! I fully intend to put plants up for sale in the SNS for this weekend, including some really nice pieces of the Hygro 'Kompakt'.

I'm not feeling like this tank is in full swing quite yet, but it's definitely survived the move and is on the upswing. It's very overgrown now (I'll post those pics later) so it needs a really good trimming, some reorganization, and I'd like to get a few specific plants for a few spots. I want more red!

Originally Posted by fastfreddie

You and ZTM were the first people to help me on the forum...

You just made my day! I'm so glad I was able to help!