• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

My Road to IAPLC 2017

Yo-han

Member
Joined
3 Apr 2012
Messages
631
Location
The Netherlands
My 1000L tank is running for over 1,5 year now, and everything is working the way I would like to. This combined with the fact that I finally got some time to maintain the tank, did made me think of rescaping the tank for IAPLC (or another contest). I will try to update this journal as often as possible and with DSRL photo's as much as possible, to give you a good impression of my tank. You can find a thread about the build and first scape here: https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/1000.32902/

Here some specs about the tank:

Tank: 195x80x80cm (water level roughly 70 cm), optiwhite glass and black glass overflow and backwall, build in the wall.
Filtration: Bean animal black glass overflow, with a 450L sump in the room behind. 2 filtersocks, followed by filter mats and 100L Bio Rio powered by 2x Ecotech Vectra M1 (8000L/u, not running full power) do the job.
Heating: 4x 300W glass heater (if 1 gets stuck on, it won't boil the tank, if one is broken, the other 3 can still heat the tank warm enough.
Lighting: 4x custumized DSunY LED + 2x20W flood lights on the side. Running for 8 hours bright and 4 hours dim.
Co2: Pressurised via 2 home made Cerges Style reactors and a 7,5/15kg bottle pH controlled and a second magnet valve to shut it off at night.
Aeration: 10 hours a night.
Fertilzer: Home made mixes automatically dosed 3 times a day by a dosing pump to keep the water parameters steady.
Hardscape: 8 large pieces of river wood and about 100 kg of Grey mountain rock.
Substrate: ADA Amazonia and and Tropica Aquasoil mixed and decorative sand.

Fauna: All current fish: pencil fish, dwarf harlequin rasbora, simulans tetra, dwarf congo tetra's and all the Otocinclus, Hisonotus and L-numbers and different species of shrimp.

Flora: This tank will use only plants from the Dutch nursery Aquaflora:
On the wood:
Taxiphyllum species
Microsorum pteropus 'petite'

On the stones and just behind:
All sort of Anubias and Bucephalandra mixed
Cryptocoryne becketti 'petchii'

Middle and background:

Cryptocoryne retrospiralis
Cryptocoryne spiralis var. caudigera
Cardamina lyrata
Pogostemon quadrifolius (octopus)
Proserpinaca palustris 'cuba'
And 1 or 2 Aponogeton

Latest look:

1FpLeNq.jpg
 

Attachments

  • 2ikqz2b.jpg
    2ikqz2b.jpg
    365.2 KB · Views: 1,009
Last edited:
Looking forward to seeing the photos - and WOW. Where did you find those pieces of wood and did it cost you an arm and a leg?!
I work in an lfs in the Netherlands which sells this wood. Not cheap indeed (about €600,- ) but I like it very much!

Good luck
Thank you!
 
Last edited:
So lucky... and yes, that costs an arm for sure LOL. Do you guys ever ship to Vancouver, BC? If so - are you allowed to ship wood and do you know how much the shipping would cost approximately?
 
400 meter ADA Moss Cotton and 500 gram Taxiphyllum later, I only need to do one more piece of wood (the biggest). Tomorrow is D-Day, or maybe better: Scape-Day. Will finish the last piece of wood and after that start emptying the tank and hope to do some hardscaping. I guess you guys all know how I feel right now #cantsleep!
 
Last edited:
A quick photo before I start. This (and the soil, stones and some plants already in the tank) all need to be in the tank in 2 days. Wish me luck!!

122nqrd.jpg


All plants are powered by AquaFlora. For the soil I picked Tropica soil this time, because I was scared ADA would leach too much ammonia, because all fish need to be in there tomorrow again. All ADA soil will be cleaned as much as possible and stay in the tank. Tropica is much richer compared to most other brands IME, and not the ammonia leaching from ADA. Not too much advertisement for Tropica, they didn't sponsor me, haha, but I think this will be a good alternative for me.
 
Hi

Looking forward to seeing this develop. Can I ask why you are using both ADA and Tropica substrate? Is there any specific benefit to using a mixture of both?

The benefit is me not having to buy 10 new bags and the old one is still fine. I didn´t want to risk my fish adding ADA soil although I think it´s the best soil for plants as stated in my previous message:

For the soil I picked Tropica soil this time, because I was scared ADA would leach too much ammonia, because all fish need to be in there tomorrow again. All ADA soil will be cleaned as much as possible and stay in the tank. Tropica is much richer compared to most other brands IME, and not the ammonia leaching from ADA.

Will add some photo's later tonight!
 
500m ADA Moss Cotton later (they should sell sixpacks or something) I finished the last piece of wood.

w9ifc7.jpg


Neglected tank before emptying:

mcgf9x.jpg


Plants and spiderwood out:

2hs96aq.jpg


106alxx.jpg


ml5qpy.jpg


2cg0nsi.jpg


Filling up again and emptying to rinse the soil:

5n3hw2.jpg


es5cgp.jpg


Rescaped the soil:

hv9lqf.jpg


The stones:

2w7ed78.jpg


29ksuah.jpg


See whether the wood fits in:

b84umo.jpg


2uts2v5.jpg


My wife checking the new scape:

rjpo50.jpg


Result after 12 hours of almost non-stop working on the tank:

2qd3b4x.jpg


Tomorrow some final adjustments and planting and filling up the tank.
 
Back
Top