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The Forest floor - Tropica aquascape New pics

Antoni

Member
Joined
25 Jan 2009
Messages
816
Location
Pompey
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

8+weeks+white+background_s.jpg


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.
 
Antoni, lovely looking tank,got to love 1-2 grow plants:)

Cheers
Martin
 
Beautiful!

The Boyo tank - is it 20 litres? That seems very small!
 
Looks great. How do you obtain plants "kindly provided by...." ?? What is the magic formula, hehe.
 
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.
 
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... o_O

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

Hardscape1s.jpg


The planting:

Planting2s.jpg



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


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..):

2+weeks+front_s.jpg


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.

35+days.jpg
 
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.

GR+and+RCS_s.jpg


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

Fragment2_s.jpg


And another close up.

Fragment-s.jpg
 
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....

27.04.13+black+background_s.jpg


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 :banghead:

What do you guys think?
 
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 :)

Option+6.jpg


2013-05-14.jpg


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....
 
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:

Cherry.jpg


And the illusive Danio margaritatus:

Galaxy+4_s.jpg



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

Galaxy+frontal+O_s.jpg
 
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