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16 gallon Rescape Journal

Joined
16 Nov 2007
Messages
735
Location
Blackpool
After previously scaping a 16 gallon in dutch/natural style, I decided to strip the tank down and start of scratch. After looking at all the planted tank from cau aqua, I've decided to take the plunge and try something similar.

The most difficult task I find is getting bogwood which is of desirable shape to fit in a 24" tank. The nice one are either far too big or way too pricy. Redmoor wood sounds like a good option for me and I was tempted to buy a few of those when I visited the green machine but they were way too twisted for my liking.

After a long long search, I managed to find some manzanita wood that has some brilliant curvature. I bought a whole lot of it and get it imported from the states! :wideyed: This is how many wood I received. I only used 7 pieces of them and got about 20 pieces extra!
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Substrate wise, I decided to stick to akadama as it lowers the hardness of the water and this is much favourable to me. Washing these substrate was a pain in the back.... Literally pain in the back. Those long hours of squatting and kneeling besides my bathtub running my hand through icy cold water just trying to get rid of those cloudy water really kills my back. And I'm only 24 :? Took me over 4 hours to wash 15l of the substrate and still I don't considered the substrate to be clean enough.
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As if washing the substrate is not enough, I had a whole tank of topsoil that I need to clean from my tank before the akadama can go in the tank. Some corner with deeper end of substrate was foul smelling due to the lack of oxygen and formed dead space. Well to make the story short, my room stinks of rotten eggs by the end of the day. (Garuf, if you are reading this, maybe you are lucky that you didn't come and help me out :D)
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CO2 is supplied by a 10L CO2 bottle through a nano diffuser sitting right under the inlet of eheim 2232. CO2 is regulated by a solenoid.
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15kg bottle, 2kg bottle, and 0.5kg bottle in a row.

Lighting is supplied by a germany company that auction cheap overtank luminaire on ebay. I've decided to go with 4x24W overtank luminaire with 2 normal day light tube and 2 grolux tube. Lighting is left on for 10 hours continuously on a daily basis regulated by a timer.

I've taken most of my plant out from my previous tank. It never ceased to amazed me how much organic substrate that the tank has accumulated within a month period. Rotten leaves and fish dropping were accumulated in unbelievable amount in areas that is invinsible to our naked eye. No wonder my tank keep getting grey staghorn algae. Any suggestion as how to avoid this issue will be greatly appreciated. I suppose increasing the flow will help but that means I need to invest another 60-70 quid in a bigger filter... :(

Picture of some plants from previous tank
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UG
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mixed
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crypt balansae. Got 25 of these little bugger. Pain to plant.... Ended up getting annoyed and trimming all the leaves away so they don't get in my way.

OK. after hours and hours of hard work, I finally managed to put together my bits and pieces.
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Initial hardscape.

Will post more picture once the crypt starts growing leaves again and the plants are more settled.

Plant that will be going in this tank will be

Pogostemon stellatus broad leaves
Limnophila aromatica
Didiplis diandra
Crypt balansae
Urtricularia graminofolia
Rotala rotundifolia sp green?
Blyxa japonica
Hamianthus Callictrichoides
Maybe some bolbitis heudelotti if there is space for the plant and I can be bothered to remove the wood to tie them onto it.
 
Looking good. I like the fan shape of the wood arrangement. How much did it cost to get wood sent from the states?! That's dedication!

When are the plants going in?
 
cost me about 50 quid inc. postage but i think it's worth it as I've now got enough wood to fully scape a 4 footer! The plants are in the tank now as we speak but not going to post any picture till they've grown a bit. I wanted to do a before and after picture when the plants are a little more settle.
 
Nice one. That's a good price for all that wood. I'll be interested in seeing how you get on with the Akadama. You washed the Akadama the hard way. Took me about 15 minutes per bag to get it pretty clean by using a kitchen sieve.

I've got some UG growing in my tank and it has taken off big time. Seems to like the Akadama and roots really well.

Thanks
James
 
I could do that too but my housemate will kill me if she finds out that I've been dipping her kitchen sieve in what she refer to as dirt :p I suppose the hard work does pay off. The water was clear from the moment I start filling the tank with water
 
Very nice, any chance of a link to where you bought the wood:?

Cheers
JOHNNY
 
It's a private seller. no webpage. I keep in contact with him through email. He's keen to sell his wood over to the UK. I think you can find them in local florist shop as they are the same one they use for flower arrangement but the one I see locally tend not to be as nicely curved as the one that this guy had hand pick though I had to say some of the branches sent to me were too thin to be used in my tank. They can be broken up and be used in a pico tank I suppose.
 
Looks great Dan! Loving the wood arangement. Will be interested in how the UG grows. Its a plant I've thought about growing, but I should really get to grips with something more basic first :D
 
The plant is now in the tank for 24 hours now. The UC and HC seemed a little tattered after replanting. They looked alright in the previous tank but due to my terrible work load in the hospital, I slack off on the tight dosing regime and guess what I've got algae! I spent quite some time trying to hand pick those one that hasn't been coated with algae and those that are coated with algae I will nip the leaves off.

I've put pogostemon stellatus in the middle in between the wood. I tried to make use of the golden ratio but it's difficult when you have the base of the wood lying right there as a stump. I ended up planting the plants around it. Limnophila aromatica goes in the right end corner just to add a pinch of pink to the picture . The tank will be mostly fill with blyxa. can't wait till this tank mature and turn into a blyxa heaven.
 
I love these step by step journals and seeing how the scapes develop. An excellent start Daniel, that wood is beautiful, and the way you've arranged it is spot on. I think we all like to see all the different stages of a tank's development, including photos of co2 bottles and filters!I don't know why, maybe we are just nosey, or is that just me! I will post my tank journals one day, I have lots of photos waiting to be criticised. Anyway good work Daniel keep posting the piccies, everyone loves a photo! ;)
 
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This is the picture of the tank in day 2. Can't see the didiplis diandra at the moment as they are all hiding on the right hand corner between the two pieces of bog wood.

Hc and crypt balansae seemed to be throwing out some new leaves but no sign of growth for UG at the moment. I've trimmed all the leaves from my bolbitis mother plant and was thinking of adding them to the tank but can't seemed to find a nice spot for them to grow. Crypts were all planted in the back to create a background wall

Hopefully the limnophila will turn out red. If they didn't turn out as red as I want them to be, I might change them into rotal macandra and plant it right in between the V shape wood and make it the centre of focus.
Just a few picture of me cutting the leaves of bolbitis while crying my heart out. These leaves took me 4 months to grow and now they are going in the bin!
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I had about 27 plugs of it. I think these plug will end up in my shrimp only tank to be grown again. Maybe I will have some to offer in 6 months time!
 
Dan,
As far as I know L. aromatica is not fundamentally a red plant (at least not the version I have), and is certainly not in the class of R. macandra in terms of red. The underside of the leaves can turn magenta and it normally only achieves non-green colors as it approaches the surface. I suppose if you carefully limit NO3 you might coax some red but you are just as likely to see yellows:


Cheers,
 
I was hoping mine is going to turn out this way. lol
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/9205/20659809vm3.jpg

Yeah the plant I got from you pretty much turn out the same as yours. Even those one that I saw in the green machine are no where as red as these plants in the picture. I would kill to get hold of some of these specimen! They are truly stunning. Even macandra can't compare to that red.
 
There is a few shops that sell them online. I bought mine for £9 per bag and £7 for postage. However if you are thinking of buying multiple bag there is another webpage that sells it for £11 per bag but postage is a flat rate of £8.50. That one works out cheaper if you are getting 3 bags or more.

This is the webpage with flat delivery rate and each bag cost £11.95. this work out cheaper if you are buying more than 3 bags.
http://www.greendragonbonsai.co.uk/BONS ... BONSAI.htm

This webpage is better if you are buying 3 bags or less. Delivery for 2 bags of akadama remains at 7 quid.
http://www.herons.co.uk/index.asp
 
Dan, undoubtedly there are other color variants, but one thing about dosing EI is that the high Nitrogen content of this scheme means that the plants will produce a very high chlorophyll population. This pigment is green so it will tend to obscure other pigment colors when high nitrates are dosed. I have a feeling that the extreme red in the plant shown in your picture is accomplished by very tight control of nitrates, not by just throwing megawattage at it. That may mean lots of testing/calibration to ensure that you do not bottom out nitrate, which causes problems. The choice is yours at the end of the day but I reckon if you want red while dosing EI then just get a red plant like R. macandra. From the new Tropica catalog I see that they do a red hygrophila now, which I hadn't noticed before, so that might be another option.

Cheers,
 
Guess I'll have to give it up then. The tap water here comes with 50ppm nitrate. Unless I use full RO water there is no way I can limit the nitrate. I suspect that's why my shrimp died. Might just leave the plant out or alter as my tank mature.
 
Wow Dan! Great work on this, I wish I'd not been working! I can't wait to see how this comes on, all I can suggest is to up your co2 and ferts and see how it goes, something to really turbo charge that growth.
How are your shrimp I'm thinking of getting some more but I can't be dealing with the loss, I'm sure its something in our water I just can't pinpoint what.
 
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