Yo...... This is awesome.

 

Definitely following this one!

 

Thanks! Just wanted to reiterate that the above images are NOT mine, I don't think my scape will look as impressive as Watana's (he's got some other amazing looking scapes as well!)
That being said, I think it'll look pretty cool. Here's how I imagined the layout for it sitting on my desk, along with the angles it's mainly going to be viewed at.

Being a peninsula layout with the main viewpoint being at the front corners, I wanted to make the foreground green-ish, the "island" a forest of red, and the background would be yellow, kinda similar to Watana's. I love how he's pulled off a lush green foreground, then the red layer, and the yellow background layer. The main criticism I would have of Watana's scape is that I wish it would have more punches of red, with more Rotala Blood Red.
Here's a front-ish view of what I want:

I want that red to be STRONG and dense enough that I have a hard time seeing through the other side of the tank. We'll see if I can pull it off but the density I was able to get the Rotala Blood Red in my shrimp 30 cube makes me hopeful.

Setting up hardscape pics. I wasn't able to get nice thin straight pieces of wood to make that classic autumn forest scene but this was the only dark branchy wood I could find in LFSes nearby. I think it'll work but the twisty-ness does make putting my arms through them to do planting and maintenance a little challenging. I'm trying to build a trough in the middle with rocks and some large pieces of wood so I can stack it with soil for the stem plants. The front and sides were bare because I was still deciding if I want it to be sand. The trough later collapsed though and soil spilled out all over the tank so I guess I got a soil bottom now. Luckily I had saved half my soil.
Also, great time of year to be setting up a tank, Black Friday sales helped with some of the hardscape and equipment.

 

The second time I filled it up. I wish I had taken pictures but the first fill-up was a disaster. I thought sitting the large-ish rock in the front on top of the large branch on the left would be OK but I underestimated the floating power of wood. A slight bump and the wood rocketed up, destroying my trough and throwing soil all over the tank in the process. Attempting to shift the soil back made it super cloudy too.
I cut a large bit of that branch to stunt its buoyancy and tied it with string to the rock. One thing to be careful of is if you have taut bits of string sticking around that are fish-sized, they can get themselves stuck in it and hurt themselves. As I'm eventually looking to get a betta, who are experts at doing dumb stuff, I tied the wood to the rock via a figure 8 pattern, minimising stray taut bits.
I also superglued some pitiful bits of moss here and there. I probably need to buy more. I have a bunch of mini Christmas moss in my other tanks but that stuff grows like a weed in CO2 and high light and I would like less maintenance please. So I'll try sticking with Pellia, some Phoenix moss, and I'll try a little bit of Christmas moss. Maybe the tannins and being low in the tank will stunt it.

Planting some of the stems. Even after cutting that wood, it's still too strong for that rock, you can see it semi-floating in this pic. I moved over my DIY CO2 system from my 30cm cube to this tank and am seeing if moving to a more efficient Aquario Neo M diffuser can handle this tank. As you can see by that pine green in the drop checker, it doesn't, so I'll eventually need to boost it.

Today's tank. I retied the wood to the rock so that it's more secure and planted the rest of the stems I had been growing in my 30cm cube. Definitely needs more density of the Rotala Blood Red but it's starting to get there. I also planted some Ludwigia Super Red on the outsides of the trough to give it some extra red pops.
Tonight's task is to plant some Monte Carlo to weep over the rocks and wood near the front and sides. And another water change. I did a test last night and ammonia was at like 6ppm.

 

After some more planting. I think I'm pretty much complete with planting now

I salvaged a lot of the Monte Carlo carpet in my 30cm cube and all the Staurogyne Repens. The Monte Carlo is mainly stuck at the top of rocks and wood and I'm planning on letting them weep down. I probably wasted the moss on the wood if they turn out to be particularly prolific. But they're easy to move as they're not actually tied or glued to the wood.

I actually just clamped some lead plant weights to the roots so I can perch them wherever. I did this as an experiment in my shrimp tank and look at how well this one is growing:

Ammonia is still sky high, so another 50% water change. No nitrites, maybe the BB on the filter media and the plants wasn't enough so I'm going to try adding some API Quick Start I have laying around and some shrimp baby bacteria food to help it along. Doing 50% water changes on a 60p is way more tedious than a 30cm cube. I'm purposefully keeping the water level lowered as well, just so I don't need to change out so much water.

 

Awesome, definitely following this one. Looking forward to how it looks when finished.

 

Daily water changes on something as big as a 60p is a pain! The tank is still cycling and the aquasoil is still pumping ammonia.

I'm finding all sorts of conflicting info on cycling a tank based on my specific circumstances.

• On my first tank, I did a dark start for 2 weeks before planting, that was easy and great.
• On my second tank, I seeded with filter media from the original tank and didn't use much aquasoil. That tank cycled in something like a week, maybe less. I couldn't do a dark start for that tank because I had moss attached to the hardscape, so I had the moss and a decent plant load from the start

On this tank, I have a similar situation with the moss blocking me from dark starting but I think I didn't have enough filter media to seed. I've been trying not to use media from my first tank because that might have nasties that killed my bettas in it still (I did use plants from it so might be a moot point). I can't touch my shrimp tank too much because those guys are sensitive. I think I already screwed up the cycle by taking some filter media already.
So it's just daily tests that tell me I need to do daily water changes and throwing API Quick Start. I read some advice online that says that I need to chuck KH into the water to buffer the pH above 6.8, otherwise the ammonia becomes unusable ammonium. That seems like it'll quickly exhaust my soil's buffering. I'm trying to use mostly RO water this time around to avoid that. But then the ADA recipe just says: use PowerSand and Bacter powder with your soil, daily water change for 1 week, then slowly back off. I've been doing daily 40-50% water changes for about 2 weeks and it's still at 2.0-4.0 ppm. No nitrites. Just a smidge of nitrates.
At least most of the plants seem to be doing OK. Except for the Staurogyne, about half of them just melted their leaves, but that's kind of expected of that plant. The Rotala seems to be growing and I've been adding more trimmings from the shrimp tank, it's almost at maximum density in that middle part already. The handful of snails seem to mostly be doing OK aside from some hitchhiker baby snails. I'm not in any real hurry to add fish or shrimp, I'd just like to be able to take some time off doing frequent water changes someday.

As far as the look is going, I think I need another tall branch in the centre. As the Rotala and Ludwigia are growing, I'm digging that contrasting black and red look, but there's not enough black and a giant mass of red in the middle. The issue is going to be weighing down a tall branch like that with something that won't take up too much space in the trough and won't exhaust my aquasoil.

 

Please ignore all advice saying you can't cycle a tank at 6.8 ph. In fact, you may wish to make note of where that information is coming from and ignore everything else they have to say as well.

There are probably dozens to hundreds of tanks on this site (counting old threads) that have a ph below 7 and yet they are all cycled.

 

Sounds tedious but I admire your commitment!

Could you at least get a set up to pump straight into a sink so you don’t have to empty into buckets? One of my tanks isn’t near any sinks but at least I have a yard to run the gravity siphon out to. Tricky in an apartment for sure.

 

That's a good idea. There's an old Aquarium Co-op YouTube video where he uses a powerhead and a long pipe to power water in and out of his tanks. Maybe I could forego my buckets and just power pump it straight into the toilet/sink and then from the RO container up to the tank. 🤔

 

Ok, I think I'm on the tail end of cycling now. I think the tank cycling was just a little slower than I'm used to, it took roughly 3 weeks for me to see nitrates. I think I saw a blip of nitrites for like 1 day? And then back to zero. At the moment, it's around 10-20ppm of nitrates and the tank is just spewing biofilm on the water surface. I've swapped the filter output to be just through the pipe instead of using the spray bar, I think it's helped flow and biofilm breakup. That means I might be able to upgrade to lily pipes with a skimmer in the future, woo!

My pH is a little worrying though, my API Master Test Kit can't even read it, it's so low. The Seachem pH Alert says it's somewhere around 5.6-5.8. I swapped the wood wall on one of the sides for some lava rocks to try and eke up the pH a little (also I think it looks better, more gradient). I don't plan on adding fish for another 3 weeks so I still have time to figure it out. The snails I added into the tank do not appreciate it, a few have passed away with shells that are practically falling apart so I'm now trying to feed them stuff with calcium in it.
All the red stems are just blowing up but are a bit green, so I've started stepping up my light intensity, it's currently at around 50%, 8 hours a day. Some of the Monte Carlo that was a bit shaded has started to melt, so definitely need more light. As far as fertilisers, I've only been dosing Flourish twice a week, will probably wait another month before I switch to the all-in-one fert.

 

My pH is a little worrying though, my API Master Test Kit can't even read it, it's so low. The Seachem pH Alert says it's somewhere around 5.6-5.8. I swapped the wood wall on one of the sides for some lava rocks to try and eke up the pH a little (also I think it looks better, more gradient). I don't plan on adding fish for another 3 weeks so I still have time to figure it out.

This is normal for ADA Aqua Soil Amazonia products. You're not going to be able to alter pH without exhausting your substrate and shouldn't bother trying. Don't go chasing parameters.

Which specific fish do you plan to keep? pH is likely not going to matter much.

I am assuming kH is 0 or near there? What's your gH?

 

This tank got really overgrown!
Before:

After:

It was mainly the Rotalas and Ludwigias. I replanted the Ludwigia tops around the edges, it gives nice bright red pops. The Rotala trimmings I'm giving away to a local hobbyist, I was quite surprised at how much I was able to harvest. I'm not used to the growing power of a tank this large! Maybe I can start selling my trimmings in the future. The stems were growing so big, it was shading the plants on the bottom, hopefully those guys can perk up now. I've pumped my light from 60%/6 hours a day to 70%/7 hours a day, let's see how that goes.

Still waiting for bettas to come in stock in the online shop, just gotta be patient. Going on holidays in a few days, after I come back, might start looking at getting a small school of corydoras. I'm starting to break down some of my other tanks and moving their shrimp and snail inhabitants here. I have 3 cherry shrimp which seem to just do laps of the outside part every now and then, it's nice to have moving inhabitants. Red shrimp and red plants is probably not the best combo, but gotta put my culls somewhere. And the parameters of this tank can handle caridina shrimp as well, if I can stop accidentally killing them in my shrimp tank.

 

Front View:

Side View:

Other side view:

Having red root floaters was a mistake. I let them grow out some, they took over half the tank and shaded it pretty heavily. The Rotala got a bunch of green-ish growth because of the reduced light and I've been working on trimming those and replanting the bright red tops. To be honest though, it does give it kind of a cool gradient look but the stunted green growth doesn't look great. I've now removed all the floaters as well.

Another big change was I finally put in a sand front. I've never used sand before, it gives it a nice clean look! Although aquasoil bits on top do look pretty bleh, I used to try to clean them up but when I got some tank inhabitants, I gave up on that battle.

What inhabitants? Pygmy corydoras! I got a small school of 6 from a LFS. Had a bit of trouble as the first LFS I tried to get them from pretty much refused to sell me any due to my low pH (5.6) from my aquasoil. They did make a good point that they typically keep their fish at pH 7 and tap water where this tank is peat-buffered 5.6-ish pH with remineralised RO water. I started up my 5-gallon as a quarantine tank and kept the Cories in there for a week while I slowly acclimated them to this tank's parameters. They seem to have settled in now, they used to glass surf in a school but now they mostly spend their time rooting around the substrate by themselves or in pairs. They only really school together when I stick my hands in the tank to do maintenance.

I am having an issue where my snails are slowly dying. This seems to happen in all my tanks when they're new. Corys are doing great, cherry shrimp are doing great, snails are struggling. I have a 7-gallon cube where they nearly died out but are now jumping back, maybe because the aquasoil is starting to exhaust.

 

Been awhile since I posted on this tank! Continuing on from the last post, all 6 of the Corys are still doing great. After that last post, I tried fattening them up a lot with some sinking insectivore pellets, shrimp pellets, and frozen brine shrimp. I was considering getting more but since I wasn't sure how they'd get along with their eventual roommate and might need to be moved, held back.

Then finally, at the end of March, there was the Melbourne Pet Show where I heard the state betta club was going to be selling bettas! I was expecting locally bred bettas but when I got there, they admitted they were imported. They must have gotten first pick because they had stunning bettas that were miles better than anything I had seen in LFSes. So finally, the star of the show arrived home: Flareon the betta!

He's a giant plakat betta. Color name might be Crimson Fire or Red Fancy, I'm not sure. Why did I name him Flareon? First of all, his bright red coloration. Also, here's him doing one of his favourite things:

His first day in the tank, he spent practically all day flaring at the back of the tank where I had some black backing so I had to remove that. Then he flared at random things like black tissue boxes. He was very angry that first week: flaring at people, the corys, snails, etc. He's calmed down a lot more now although sometimes he'll still randomly flare at me. I was afraid he would bully his roommates to death as he kept nipping at them but after a week of observation, I think he's just an *******. Sometime he'll swim by them and when he snaps, he never does so seriously. The corys stopped schooling after a day or two and I've seen them flit away when halfheartedly nipped at, then as soon as Flareon passes, they settle back down to scrounging as before. Sometimes they even attempt to school with him ¯\(ツ)/¯.
The one thing I am afraid of is trying to feed them enough. Flareon's learned to steal their food, in fact, he's learned to chase them away and steal whatever they were trying to eat. Since they're insectivores as well, everything the Corys eat is yummy to bettas. These days I'm trying to sprinkle some crushed pellets or tiny tropical fish flakes and just assume Flareon will eat half of it.

As far as the rest of the tank is going, the snails had a big population boost when I was overfeeding my corys but after the betta was introduced and ate all the food, I had a big die off of the baby snails. Kinda strange as there's plenty of green dust algae for them. The shrimp went into hiding after the betta was introduced, I occasionally see one of them coming out but unsure if the others are alive.
Most of the plants are doing well, except for the Monte Carlo and Staurogyne. I suspect they're getting shaded out so I've been slowly bumping my lights up, it's currently at 90% on my WRGB2 Slim. I've only been dealing with green dust algae in this tank and lately even that's been calming down. I should probably bump the ferts up too.

 

The one thing I am afraid of is trying to feed them enough. Flareon's learned to steal their food, in fact, he's learned to chase them away and steal whatever they were trying to eat. Since they're insectivores as well, everything the Corys eat is yummy to bettas. These days I'm trying to sprinkle some crushed pellets or tiny tropical fish flakes and just assume Flareon will eat half of it.

Try separating your betta during feeding time, with a breeding box or something improvised. The problem with this situation is not only that others aren't getting enough, but that your betta may be overeating as well.
For me, this works so well I don't even have to catch the betta, he just goes inside the container as soon as I place it in the water.

 

Looks great!

 

So it's been awhile! Tank is still chugging along but I've made some changes since the last post:

• I shuffled the hardscape in the front of the tank, pulling it back a little to make more sand.
• Cut down on the Rotala Blood Red density.
• Consolidated the Ludwigia Super Red to not be mixed in with the Rotala, making an effort to keep it in bunches instead.
• Propagated a bunch of Anubias Barteri and added Anubias Nana Petite.
• Trying out some Brazilian pennywort (Hydrocotyle leucocephala)
• Switched from a 2-bottle DIY yeast CO2 system to a pressurised system.

The hardscape shuffle, Rotala slashback, and Ludwigia slashback all hopefully opens up more light into the lower layers. They were getting shaded pretty bad and the Monte Carlo was really slow growing and yellowing. I lost most of my remaining Staurogyne as well, I seem to have really bad luck with that plant. The Anubias didn't seem to mind though and I've been cutting bits off each plant maybe 2-3 times now. Cheap tissue culture Anubias Nana Petite became available in a few LFSes around me so I added a few of those as well.

It took me about a month to dial in the pressurised CO2. I'm not used to trying to blast CO2 in the daytime only as yeast-based CO2 runs 24/7 and builds up. I started at 1 bps with my bubble counter and had to eventually dial it up to 3 bps to get the drop checker to turn light green-ish. Unfortunately that dialling-in period opened the door for algae and I'm currently battling staghorn, green spot, spirogyra, maybe blue-green algae, and even diatoms in one part of the tank. Will be looking to try a treatment of Excel to get it under control now that the CO2 is at a happy level. But at least the amount of CO2 is consistent, it was pretty annoying to worry about yellow drop checkers in warmer weather or when I've freshly refilled the sugar solution.

The inhabitants are doing well. I think. Flarey the betta seems to spend most of his day chasing the Corydoras. I worry about them a little but they don't show stress stripes and don't school together the majority of the time. When they get chased, they just flit up and settle back down right behind Flarey. I've figured out a good feeding regime for them, it's either small sinking pellets or crushed insectivore pellets and I distract Flarey with his floating pellets. He definitely loves his own food more than stealing their food, as soon as I call and dangle his food above the water, he'll immediately stop trying to scrounge on the bottom for their food and shoot up to the top of the tank to snap for pellets. He can jump and grab the pellets from my finger, sometimes 2-3 at a time!

 

We want an update

 

Not sure if it was the CO2 switch or the cutback of plants but I got a pretty bad outbreak of green algae. Here's the cocktail:

• Green spot algae
• Spirogyra algae
• Some kind of bushy green hair algae
• Start of black beard algae in the filter flow

I had tried to control the spirogyra with 3-day blackouts previously but Flarey the betta was getting pretty aggressive against his Cory tank mates so I didn't want to use that if I didn't have to. I read on Tom Barr's forum that API Algaefix was really good against green algae so I bought a small bottle and gave it a go.

This is slightly more than a day after treatment, wow! I had tried to manually clean as much of the green algae as I could and did a 50% water change before treatment. It didn't seem to do much to the green spot algae but the hair and spirogyra, it was amazing. I was especially impressed with how quickly it killed spirogyra, nothing else had worked before.
From what I read and observed, it is safe for fish but it is supposed to be pretty bad for shrimp. I hadn't seen any shrimp for awhile so I had assumed Flarey had hunted them all down but on the second day, one ventured out! I caught him and transferred him to my shrimp tank, I think he was one of the Crystal Red shrimp. I did 3-days of treatment, then did a 50% water change.

Afterwards, the fish seemed to be all fine. Most of the plants seemed OK except for one of my buce. A week later, I noticed some shedded leaves floating around and one of my plants looking skinnier. It's now been about 2 weeks since treatment and the spirogyra is definitely dead. The green hair bushy algae is starting to come back though, so I suspect it's an imbalance of the tank. The fish don't get tangled up in that algae and it's easier to keep it under control with manual removal so I don't mind it as much. I'll play with lighting intensity and fertiliser dosages in the next few weeks though.
As for the black beard, I caught it early enough that there were only 2-3 spots of it and I did a hydrogen peroxide treatment in the second 50% water change, which seems to have cleared that up.

The Brazilian pennywort is really taking off. The story of that plant is my wife got an in-vitro pot for her low-tech tank. It failed to convert and almost all of it melted so I tried to salvage a single stem in my shrimp tank. 2 months later and it grew to about 10 leaves and the stem reached the top of the water so I moved it to this tank. It's really been thriving here with multiple offshoots that are reaching the water surface so I've been trimming those and returning them to my wife's low-tech tank where they seem to be doing OK. In this tank they've been melding with the Anubias leaves and also help shield the corydoras scavenging on the sand from Flarey's attention. He can get down there if we wants but he's got to really commit, so it gives them a little bit of cover

 

Thanks mate I’m getting the wrgb slim for my tank. Can you screenshot your settings/schedule?

 

Here are my current settings. I might need to lower the light intensity though, my green algae is making a comeback

 

So, it's time for a rescape. The tank has been running for slightly over a year now and it's starting to become unmanageable in ways I didn't expect haha.

Problem 1: My plants grow too fast. This is a week after trimming. I swear, I trimmed at least half of those Rotala Blood Red to half height last week. I'm smashing the Ludwigia Super Red as well. The Brazilian pennywort has gotten comfortable and attempts to reach the top of the tank every week. I probably need to be more aggressive in trimming them back, multiple trimmings have meant that each single stem has grown into 4-6 stems so I really need to just uproot and replant. The peninsula layout has now blown out so that the stem plants have nearly taken over the tank. On the plus side, my anubias and buce has also flourished so I have a lot to work with now.

Problem 2: Algae is becoming unmanageable. I'm dealing with cladophora algae mainly, it's really infested my fissidens moss, anubias, and wood. I do have a little bit of spirogyra and black beard but those are easy to keep in check. After I took this pic, I took out most of my wood and moss and I had to throw away 1/3 of my moss clumps because it was more algae than plant. The rest I'm treating with API Algaefix in a seperate container but I don't like depending on that stuff too much because it's bad for my buce and I don't trust it with my fish long-term.

The other main reason is that I'm moving my aquariums to a different room and I'll be able to make this a standard front-on viewing aquarium instead of a peninsula layout. I think my filter was a little underpowered (UNS Delta 60) for something as challenging as a peninsula layout but should be fine for a standard layout. I'd like to keep some of my Rotala Blood Red in the back but am debating what to do with the Limnophilia and Ludwigia Blood Red. Definitely getting rid of the Brazilian pennywort and moving that to a low-tech tank.
The fish are still doing fine, I will probably need to home them in buckets while I work. I'm a little worried about Flarey the betta, he's got an abscess on the base of a fin but it hasn't changed for a couple weeks and he damaged his lip the other day, probably from enthusiastically diving into the sand and wood trying to steal the corydoras' food.

 

Beautiful colours mate 👍

 

So I spend a decent chunk of my holidays moving and redoing my tanks. I rescaped the 60p to be a more front-on layout like I mentioned previously, really making use of most of the anubias and buce I had available. I still have leftover anubias too! I moved the sand from the left edge to the centre to make a sand path and reoriented the wood I had in there previously. I guess this is kind of a standard-ish layout I've seen several others do, but I wanted to give it a go and hopefully it makes maintenance easier with less of the stem plants to deal with. I set up a plant-only tank with an old 5-gallon and temporarily homed the fish in there for the day I was rescaping. I'm glad I planned for it to be an all-day thing because I certainly needed it! I'm not even done, I have a tissue culture pot of Staurogyne Repens (my third attempt with that plant) that I need to plant here next weekend.

Here's the tank in its new location. For the stand I'm using an IKEA Besta cabinet with some modifications, I liked the look of it that matched the rest of my IKEA furniture and figured I could save some money. Long story short, it didn't save that much and I kinda wish I had just bought a white stand but I'm also proud of the work I did. Here's a look at the modifications I made inside:

I just stuck 6 pine beams inside and glued and angle bracketed them inside the cabinet to increase its structural strength. I also got a plank of birch and treated it with varnish to make a water-resistant surface the aquarium sits on so water doesn't just soak into the IKEA cardboard bits. I don't really have the power tools or space in my tiny apartment to build anything major, I figured that if I could get the hardware store to cut these bits of wood to size, I would just need to do some minor sanding to get things to fit.
I've just shoved everything in there for now but next time I hit up IKEA, I'll grab some stackable storage boxes to hold the chemicals, a plastic bin to hold my filter, and a magnetic knife rack to hold my aquascaping tools on the door like the fancy stands do. I cut a hole in the back of the stand to route all my cables and tubing through. I also need to someday buy feet for the stand as I have to drag the door through the carpet when the stand sits flush.

 

Looks awesome!