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Thanks for the comments and likes everyone.

It was with some trepidation I did the rescape and then left for Berlin for 4 days. In preparation I set the lights low, put the skimmer on 24 hour duty (it is normally on a timer to run a couple of minutes every other hour, and for a handful of hours during night) and left the CO2 on its regular setting. I left a few glasses with measured amounts of low dose ferts for my step-dad-in-law (or some such) to pour in on 2 of the days. I refrained from doing a waterchange on the morning before I left; didn't want anything to go awry, as I wouldn't have time to fix it. Needless to say I found myself worrying a bit while away.
Back home; quite a few floating plants (as expected), and one fish has left the building, as evidenced by a minute pile of bones. It might be yet another cory; I've unfortunatly been loosing these at a steady rate over the last couple of months. I think I'm down to 3 now, and not really been able to pinpoint the reason (except for the 2 that got caught in the skimmer during a mesh malfunction).
Amazingly, even though I've indicated the opposite at times: All 7 Otos are still alive and well. So there's that.
Replanted the floaters, did a 50% wc (no disasters this time, thankfully), dosed a bit of micro. Running lights a bit high today (maxes at 60% for 1 hour, full period 7 hours including ramp up and down at either end), and might keep it like that if I can get a pH profile done soon. My old pH meter was as reliable as a stick in a turd, so bought a new cheapo; cheaper than changing the electrode on the old.
Plants overall looks fine. I can see that all the new plants are starting to orientate towards the light source. My old clump of Riccardia seems to have taken badly to the move around and has turned a sort of brownish green. Bit sad about that. But the rest looks fine still so fingers crossed. One lump of pinnatifida still looks mostly like a dustbunny, the other has started to resemble a plant.

FTS as of today, need to pick a few floaters out of the Limnophila, it has a talent for catching them:

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Sorry about the reflections.

Speaking of Berlin; those of you familiar with the city might have visited Dussmann Kulturkaufhaus, a huge shop with loads of books, cd's and LPs. It has a garden wall made by Patrick Blanc, in adjunction to the cafe; it's quite a sight usually. Unfortunately it wasn't looking to good this time around, don't know if it is getting to dry in the central heating (although it looked fine last year about this time). Still pretty impressive:

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Yeah, that is basins with aquatic plants at the bottom.


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It might just need a do over, I'd be sad to see it go.
 
Looking really a lot better! I’m coming to the conclusion that sand beach looks nice but needs lots of replacement to keep it that way. Thinking of doing a carpet in my AS 900.

What is the wavy leaf plant in the back?

Shame that geen Wall is suffering. They are amazing instillations!


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Background plants is Aponogeton ulvaceus. And Cryptocoryne crispatula balansae, but they are still quite low.
Yeah, hopefully the vertical garden will bounce back. I've seen it when it was in full glory, and it was impressive. It is really massive in size.
 
Looks great. Watch that ulvaceus! they get bloody massive and the leaves will take over the tank if you let it.

Cheers

Conor
 
Looks great. Watch that ulvaceus! they get bloody massive and the leaves will take over the tank if you let it.

Cheers

Conor

I hope so! There is plenty of room behind that wood. At an estimate, around 18-20 centimeters to the back glass. I hope to actually have to remove plants at some point.
 
I hope so! There is plenty of room behind that wood. At an estimate, around 18-20 centimeters to the back glass. I hope to actually have to remove plants at some point.
Ah don't worry it'll fill that in no time at all lol, it'll then proceed to fill the top of the tank. It used to fill the top of a three foot tank in a few weeks if I let it. It's a beautiful plant by can get to monster sizes quickly.

Cheers

Conor
 
So, a bit of a change up.
The Limnophila aquatica wasn't working at that spot, besides the lower parts was very infested with algae, so out it went. I've got a few stems of it in my lowtech, though. Likewise, the C. albida has been ailing for so long it is not even funny no more; out and into the lowtech with that. In place of these I've put in:
- A few small rocks to act as a border between the HC and the rotala.
- A bunch of Hygrophila 'Araguaia'
- A bunch of Limnophila hippuridoides

The Rotala H'ra is doing good, I intend to keep it low and bushy; rapidly approaching first trim, so I need to think about how to handle that business. Some of them have been moved forward to where the L. aquatica was, in order to make room for the hippuridoides. That one seems to take off fast.
For some reason I've never had Pogo erectus working well for me, this one seems slow on the uptake too, so we'll see. Riccardia doing well. Same for C. crispatula and the hairgrass, the HC seems to start carpeting after I have replanted every one at least 500 times (cats and shrimp and snails seem to "uproot" these regularily during establishing).

Have taken a zero tolerance to staghorn popping up on (older) leaves. Cut them off on sight. In combination with other efforts this seems to have some effect. Took a heavy toll on Aponogetons and C. wendtii though, but new leaves look good so far. Still a few remnants here and there. Fingers crossed.

The other efforts?
Well, first order: Get some actual numbers on CO2. This means giving up the expensive, but not working pH-meter. Chinese industry comes to the rescue with a cheapo, calibrated with a screwdriver. Short story: No wonder my fish looked a bit stressed; regularily hitting 1.1-1.2+ drop. So I've backed up a bit, and is fine tuning at the moment.
Secondly; all the lowish light, ½ dose EI was not helping any plants, but algae LOVED it. I've grown tired of ailing deficient plants, furried up with staghorn.
New order: light @ 100% for about 3 hours in mid period, MASSIVELY overdosing EI (125 percent APF EI mix, plus Tropica ferts + extra iron). Getting a bit of green algae on glass, much to the pleasure of Otos and snails). Been running this way for 2 weeks, so far so good. Am actually pleased to see that algae can be green, not blackish grey :what: Starting to see some actual growth.

As for layout, LOL, will not be winning any contests with this though. I am ok with that, just want to grow some plants at this point. Frankly it is a mess. The wendtii might go, I'm not too sure. Same with the chainswords, not sure they are right here.

Bunch of crappy phone pics and a short video:

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Small update:

From this:

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'

To this in 1 month:

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I must say; I'm fairly happy with this. There's still some BBA and Staghorn popping up here and there, mostly on the Buces and a bit on the Bolbitis, but it is not much: I suspect the wood is the culprit here, I've been using this piece constantly for 3 years, and it is getting soft. I did buy another piece for the recent rescape but had to refrain from using it due to time constraints. Have a bunch of in vitro epiphytes coming in, and I think I will do something about it soon. Out with the old, in with the new.

Will do a larger CO2 themed update soon-ish, but for now just a pic of some new denizens in Casa Fiske:

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Got 4 of these guys saturday, unfortunately one jumped during the night. I think it stressed about the current from the skimmer; I've decommisioned that for now. Hopefully the rest will calm down and stay wet, at least it seems like that for now. Also upped the count of CPDs from 11 to the just as prime number of 17, hope they will get a little more confident and outgoing. So far it seems to work. As usual, a scrawny bunch of criiters, these CPDs, but so were my old ones before they got FAT. Now they're just a marauding bunch of chubbies. I swear the new ones are only half size in any direction.
 
Looking really nice. I like the red/bronze crypt in the middle, which species is it?

Peacock Gudgeon are really cool. Nice work. T


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Looking really nice. I like the red/bronze crypt in the middle, which species is it?

Peacock Gudgeon are really cool. Nice work. T


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C. wendtii "Tropica" if memory serves. These plants have been with me for years, and are MASSIVE. I really don't feel they fit too well at that spot, but I have a hard time removing them since the only place that has room is the compost. Besides, the fishies like them.

The gudgeons are a bit more aggressive than I expected, both towards each other, and everyone else. Or rather one of them is a right little bugger. The other two are more balanced. I think I've might have ended up with 3 females, though. Might have to search for a rooster ;) Awesome little fish, I've postponed having these for way too long.
 
That large CO2 post I threatened? Yeah, here it is. Skip if you find CO2 as interesting as drying paint.

So when I started the hi-tec route with injecting and all, I looked at quite an expenditure. Finally I decided to buy a CO2art regulator set that included everything but the bottle. Because I'm sometimes a penny pincher, I decided on a single stage regulator. Actually, I just wanted to keep the initial cost as low as possible. So I got a lot of time to contemplate how annoying it was to constantly adjust the injection rate as the bottle emptied. Thus that dual stage reggie was always at the back of my mind. Also, the bottles I use has a safety bar which made installing the reg a &/"!/%! to say it nicely. As an aside; unless you have the connections, the FE route wasn't really viable for me. It might just be some weird danish thing; apparently we like overpaying. I did spend an afternoon having a look, but unless I wanted to pay through the nose, yeah, well, nope.

Finally, I took the jump, and invested in a Tunze 7077. I'm not dissing CO2art here, but it was like going from a rusty Honda to a BMW. This regulator probably weighs double of my old one. The housing on the solenoid broke a long time ago, but I hoped to reuse it at least for a while. But when I finally got it separated from the old reg (which meant disassembling everything), I could see it wouldn't work without at least 2-3 fittings. So I had to assemble the old reg again, and of course now it was a bit leaky. Also, the solenoid had given up completely.
Cue a couple of days of manually turning CO2 on and off, whilst waiting for a new solenoid to arrive. :meh:

Parts:

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Assemble:

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Easily tightened by hand.

Everything up, and ready to roll:

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So I'm back to calibrating CO2, but honestly it's been a breeze. Need to run a pH profile to get back to my 1.1-1.2 drop, but I'm very close just by eyeballing.

Next up; trimming and root canal. Uh, fresh wood. Uh... Well. o_O
 
Huge trim of stems finally done. I have removed loads of plantmass. Since everything was getting a bit messy, I cut the tops of the Rotala and the L. hippuridoides, scrapped the lower parts and replanted the best looking tops. Once grown in I will start using blackcurrant method on them. Before I cut the Limnophila I noticed this:

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Very chlorotic areas on the leaves. So some deficiency, at a guess I'd say Fe? Which is hilarious since I have been dosing Fe several ways. I guess I need to look at chelators, as I've planted everything in some very viscous rock that goes by "water" around these parts. Oh, damnation...

Also, I finally took the plunge and changed out the wood to a new piece. I had been eyeballing the new piece and was fairly certain it was about the same size as the old one. Refraction called, and sure enough, the new one is almost twice as large. Good, more room for epiphytes: More Riccardia (which apparently I can grow well and algae free, as opposed to so called 'easy' plants. Go figure. :banghead:), more Bolbitis and more H. pinnatifida. The old Bolbitis and the old Buces? Into the lowtech for de-algaeing. Only plant left with visible algae is the HC, which after 500 replantings have started to grow on stilts, there's room for parking your Volvo between the plant and the substrate. I think I might change it out for more hairgrass, unless it ups its game. Gave it a large trim anyway.

It looks a bit naff right now:

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Warts and all. Obligatory rock, because, hey, wood floats.

Look at that happy gudgeon! You know why it is happy? That's because it doesn't have to stay home with the kids. Yup, I checked all the savu pods for inhabitants, because I wanted to give them a glut treatment (the pods, not the inhabitants ;)). So I shone a powerful light into each while holding the pod to the front glass just below the surface. "Oh, this one's empty. Wait, what is that greyish stuff. Oh, it moves. Oh, there's daddy!" So I got all of the gudgies sexed. Two females, and one stay at home dad. That's why he was so extremely aggressive. They must have spawned almost immediately on introduction, I think I saw 2 of them enter that pod he has been guarding so ferociously, on the second day. I hope some will survive, although chances are slim. Will they take vinegar eels once free-swimming?
 
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