The Forest floor - Tropica aquascape New pics

[Antoni]

Hi everybody,

after taking down my 20 l scape the Hare hill after Christmas, I have started a new aquascape with plants and substrate, kindly provided by Tropica.

The tank has been set up in the beginning of February and is now about 2 months old.
Spec:
20 l Boyo nano tank with filter, built in the lid.
Light: 13V Energy Saving bulb, 5400K
CO2: - pressurised DIY kit - 2bps
Substrate: Shirakura Red Bee Sand with undercoat of Tropica Plant substrate
Ferts: Tropica Plant Growth Premium Fertiliser and from week 8 Plant Growth Specialised Fertiliser
Plants: 1-2 Grow HC, 1-2 Grow Amannia sp. Bonsai, 1-2 Grow, 1-2 Grow Eleocharis sp. mini, 1-2 Grow Pogostemon Erectus and 1-2 Grow Alternanthera reineckii Mini
Fauna: RCS, Amano Shrimps x 2, Galaxy rasboras x4
Hardscape: Driftwood



So far plants are growing healthy and without any algae problems. I must admit, that Tropica 1-2 Grow range are the best plants I have ever used! Purely love them 😉

Still the Pogostemon erectus is not visible on this shot and has to grow a bit more, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks, the tank will get to its mature state.

Hope you like it!

In the next posts, I will post pictures of the tank from day one till present day. As you will see I have made few changes to the hardscape until I get it to this stage.

 

[martinmjr62]

Antoni, lovely looking tank,got to love 1-2 grow plants🙂

Cheers
Martin

 

[Manrock]

Beautiful!

The Boyo tank - is it 20 litres? That seems very small!

 

[Gary Nelson]

Very nice that, the scale is brilliant and it looks a much larger setup than 20l - well done 🙂

 

[BIN578]

Looks great. How do you obtain plants "kindly provided by...." ?? What is the magic formula, hehe.

 

[Antoni]

Antoni, lovely looking tank,got to love 1-2 grow plants🙂

Cheers
Martin

Cheers Martin, 1-2 grow are superb in any way!

Beautiful!

The Boyo tank - is it 20 litres? That seems very small!

Yes mate the boyu is just 20 l and at the moment with all the substrate and driftwood, I have probably about 15 l of water

Very nice that, the scale is brilliant and it looks a much larger setup than 20l - well done 🙂

Thank you Gary!

Looks great. How do you obtain plants "kindly provided by...." ?? What is the magic formula, hehe.

Thanks mate, this aquascape is a project I'm doing for Tropica.

 

[Antoni]

As promised some pictures of the scape since day one.

I had some driftwood laying around for quite some time and when the time come for scaping this tank again, I decided to give them a go and to embrace the challenge of pre-soaking. It took about a month of soaking, before the water was clear... 😵

Here is a pic from day 1 and the initial hardscape placement:



The planting:




One week later. For the first 3 weeks have been changing 50% of the water 2 times a week


The HC is growing pretty fast and this is how the carpet looks after 2 weeks(excuse me for all the bits and bobs in the tank and the mist from the CO2, but was a bit lazy to remove them..):



After 3 weeks I have reduced the water changes to once a week/ 30%. After the 3-th week, I have also started adding 1.2 ml of Tropica Plant Growth Premium Fertiliser a week, added daily with a syringe.

35 days later no algae issues, the HC is filling up nicely and the Eleocharis mini and the Ammania are taking off.

 

[flygja]

Thats a great looking scape.

 

[Ian Holdich]

Looking great antoni. It must be that French C02!

 

[Antoni]

Thats a great looking scape.

Thanks mate!

Looking great antoni. It must be that French C02!

It is very nice quality and at very good price 😀

 

[Antoni]

The plants are growing very fast now. Soon the Pogostemon erectus should be visible at the background.

A couple of close ups - not the best shots, but ...

I have tried to get the Galaxy rasbora in this shot, but they proved to be the hardest fish to shoot.



I love the color of the Alternanthera reineckii Mini. As close to the light it grows, the more intensive coloration it gets!



And another close up.

 

[Antoni]

Small update:

Shot from this night.
I wanted to experiment with black background, to see how it is going to change the appearance of the scape. It looks quite different....



The plants have grown quite a lot, since the last shot and have been through couple of trims.

Now I wonder if it will be better to remove all the stems and go for an appearance similar to the initial picture... more clear and simple

What do you guys think?

 

[tim]

Really like this antoni, think your right about the stems though to overpowering or maybe it's just the pogo erectus that should go ?? Nice layout though.

 

[Antoni]

Thanks Tim! Maybe I will go for more HC and Eleocharis mini, where the Ammania on the left is..... can't make up my mind completely. Or I will cut down the ammania and replant it, to keep a low profile....

 

[Antoni]

Just a quick update:

I have finally decided to remove all the stems, apart of small bunch of Ammania bonsai.

Here is a shot before the stems removal and after 🙂





It was very difficult to get the galaxy rasbora in the spot light, but somehow we have managed 🙂

Something curious I have notice, they respond very well to high levels of light... we used the flash to make them come out and I observed that they were curious to see what the heck is going on....

 

[Jack12]

awesome!

 

[Antoni]

Hi everyone,

today the scape has been trimmed very hardly so no pics of it now, but thought that I will share couple of pictures that me and a friend of mine have taken a couple of days back.

Red monster:



And the illusive Danio margaritatus:




And one funny pic of the Danio again....probably was yelling at me, to stop flashing with those flashes 🙂

 

[George Farmer]

Nice shot of the Galaxies. The hardest fish to photograph I've kept so far!

Scape is looking nice too. 🙂

 

[Antoni]

Thanks George! It took probably about 50 shots, to get couple decent ones... I love those fish, they are so lively and with such a nice temper 🙂

 

[Robbie X]

Another great scape, the Galaxy's are on my fish list for my first tank also. I love the Shirakura Red Bee Sand, great colour and texture, but very expensive! Just used the calculator on the site and I would need around 11L minimum for a TMC signature 60!