[gregorylampron]

I am new to this forum; it seems to crash less and be more aesthetically pleasing than others I use, so I'll give it a try. Had renovations last year so after having to stop all indoor gardening (no power, water) and three teardowns, 55, 20 long, 10g, we only have a single 10g running, as well as a 1g that I dose with ferts to sprout bulbs and save sad plants. The 10g is currently planted with 3 hygrophila, a little monte carlo, rosette sword, java fern, water onion, and a red lotus. The 1g is sprouting 4 Aponogeton Ulvaceus, as well as holding onto some extra monte carlo and narrow leaf java fern that will be going into this beauty! (Photo below.) 75g will be planted with the a. Ulvaceus, monte carlo, java fern, christmas moss, and about 15 others I will be happy to overpay for online. Denver is kind of a dead zone for quality aquarium foliage, so if you're in the area and sell clean, healthy plants I wanna talk. I would rather give you money and have my choice. Substrate is flourite, with flourite tabs, as well as lava rock, play sand, and colorado stream rock; driftwood for snape, and because it is beautiful, of course. Filtration will be a canister and sponge for now, however, a sump system with a refugium will be getting set up to feed all my tanks, including a qt and plants downstairs as soon as i can scrape some bills together. The tank will house my lovely frisky pair of heavily breeding golden panda mollies, yukifuribaba and gil, and their scoliosis stricken, polyamorous ballon molly friend, Cynthia; a school of platies (sunburst and a few straggler mm's,) our sassy leopard pleco, Snape, and a medium shoal of rainbows or perhaps a docile centerpiece. Any suggestions? I was thinking boesemani rainbows, white cloud minnows, maybe a bichir or a blood parrot? Is that silly? I just don't know about cichlids, theyre beautiful, but I like my plants and mollies too much to endanger them... this tank will be getting built up in the next week or so, thusly wish me luck and get back to me if you sell quality aquatic plants in Denver.

Thanks again, happy to be here,

GRL

 

[gregorylampron]

Bump.

 

[Nordic]

Naah, just mess something up and everyone will jump in.
Keep posting pics of your progress.

 

[gregorylampron]

Ordering plants tomorrow.

 

[Joshism]

Welcome to the forum

 

[gregorylampron]

Plants ordered, substrate down! Might be in the wrong order, but it goes lava rock, root tabs, flourite, sand. Closer and closer...

 

[Nordic]

That is quite a tall tank, have any tallish hardscape you can stick in?

 

[gregorylampron]

Getting rocks and driftwood set in when I get the plants I ordered today. coming into my favorite part of setup! Hardest part is almost done. When the precipitation stops, I'll be able to get my bracings built for the stand and down in the crawlspace. Anybody interested in photos of the supports I'll be building? I am excited about the open space I have for hardscape.

Sent from my GT-P5113 using Tapatalk

 

[WaterLife]

What are the dimensions of the tank?
How old is your house?
I doubt reinforcing/adding supports under the floor is necessary for this size tank.

 

[gregorylampron]

We have floating floors, so a bit of support would go a long way to make me feel better about climate change expanding my walls as I have an old plaster and screen house; expansion/contraction does happen in my house. I dont want to have to relevel the tank every season. Plants and new stainless tools are shipped. Woo.

 

[gregorylampron]

New tools arrived today. Plants, heater show up Monday. Also ordering driftwood this week.

 

[gregorylampron]

Plants and heater show up tomorrow, and ordered this manzanita today. Stone this week as well. Almost there... costing about 600 to get this tank up and running. Never remember the inveztment. That is probably a symptom of the utopic feeling that comes after you've finished scaping.

Sent from my GT-P5113 using Tapatalk

 

[gregorylampron]

This is the lament of any red flourite user; the outcome more than justifies the 12 hrs of cloudiness. The only negative (?) outcome of not using a hose for a slow fill was the flourite coating the sand and lower leaves. Guess I've got all red substrate now. Just shows that patience pays off in every tenet of this hobby.
Some plants sent were not usable; goopy and dead. Still have to plant monte carlo, and affix moss and java fern when I weigh down the manzanita with a rock. I am keeping this tank separate of the sump system, this will be on sponge and canister setup. Getting an eheim can next paycheck.
Here's my clay cloud bucket. Better pics tomorrow; also starting a cycle with ammonia and stability.

 

[gregorylampron]

More drift coming in the mail as well as replacements for the plants that arrived as goop. I lost a very pretty good sword as well to what I can only attribute to their negligence or perhaps me roughing up the root ball when I was planting it. If anyone would like to know the name of the seller, so as to avoid, pm me.
This tank is growing like crazy already. Started cycling tonight with stability and ace brand 10% janitor's ammonia. Will do an update next friday night with full plant in, and more hardscape. The pandas are going to love this tank.

New light has a moon function. Never was a fan. Cycle is almost done. Will be moving a leopard and a mystery snail in after the bacterial bloom is done and I put the can on it.


Here is the final plant with some foreground plants, less anacharis, and addition of cabomba. Did a water change today and redosed the ammonia. waiting for the cycle.

 

[gregorylampron]

Bump update. The ulvaceus, cabomba, and whatever the stems are in the front are going crazy! Ordering a canister to double up on filtration today. Man can anybody identify that stem in the front? The medium sized ones... sorry but apparently the $300 camera my wife bought is either complete trash, or I have some mastering to do.

 

[Doogy262]

Great pic lol if you mean that one stem in the front with the whorls it looks like hornwort and will grow like crazy

 

[gregorylampron]

Great pic lol if you mean that one stem in the front with the whorls it looks like hornwort and will grow like crazy

Thank you for the suggestion! The one you're talking about is cabomba, and I found out the smaller stems are bacopa monnieri. Might have to move those to the back!

These golden panda fry will be part of the school (if they're female!) of them going into the tank. Seven of them in the box right now! These are five fry, in the bottom center, eating their warm, soft cucumber and infusoria. Cute buggers.

 

[gregorylampron]

I have the tank fully stocked now with a school of 10 golden pandas 'Poecilia Sphenops' I like the way that sounds, and they're my favorites as well. Also, 5 'Corydoras Aeneus,' albino or bronze cories; definitely the most energetic in the tank, and while you'd think they would be the ones doing most of the plant cleanup, the pandas do just as much, all the while the cories are blasting back and forth, bodyslamming everything in the tank. Otherwise, there is an oft-spawning single blue mystery snel, and a common pleco, 'hypostomus plecostomus.' There is a single, very stubborn and lively whisker shrimp you'll catch running into the filter flow or catching food with the school. Added glass inlet and glass 'poppy' outlet and thought folks might want to see how I went about connecting them. I used normal aluminum hose screw on junctioners and some rubber o-rings left over from plumbing my wife's salon room to get a good seal. Fingers crossed on them working out, they are beautiful, but very brittle; the suction cup snapped off the anchor peg on the poppy glass first day! Oof! I put a bead of silicone on the spot and supported the tube with some suction cup spray arm supports. The picture you see is right before the glass broke. Grr.

Please keep hands off glass.

 

[Goomie]

Hey this looks great, don't be disheartened I'd replies don't happen. I'm certainly not. In a year's time you'll come back to this and reminisce on how everything started.

Keep posting updates, I'm interested in seeing the turnout here

 

[Nordic]

Hey man, love the little pandas, My catfish fry are still at the mini tadpole stage, but swimming around quite energetically today.
If you can afford some purigen, it will clean up that white fog quite quickly.

Re your picture from the front, try to hold the camera high enough or angled low enough not to get the LEDs in the picture.
Digital cameras try to fit all the colours of the rainbow into a fixed mini palette. There is a darkest pixel and a lightest pixel, and the all the colours are fit in between those two points.
If your darkest and lightest pixels are very far apart, colours will be washed out. So, when you exclude the bright LEDs, The palette fits more of the real colours you have, into the picture.

Also, check if your camera has a manual white balance setting.
My old camera (I have a piece of crap now), used the following procedure; select manual white balance, take a white sheet of paper or whatever the whitest thing you have, hold it where you want to take the pic. Fill the entire viewfinder with only the white, and halfway depress the shutter button. Then it will change algorithms to properly interpret colour. Quite a handy function in greenhouses if you don't want everything shaded aquamarine.