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Thanks for all the likes everyone!

Been a while. But here's what it looks like now. Overgrown.

I had a nightmare with 2 second hand pro 3 2080 leaking from the heads. I did take the heads apart and found that the priming rubber seal had shrunk so would no longer maintain a seal. Also Eheim used normal steel screws instead of aluminium or stainless steel ones inside so they rusted away. No...

My dream tank would have a billion watts of lighting and no algae. Is that too much to ask for???

True. I'm hoping the plants will cover it and so make it less noticeable. Also need to clean up the piping a little, I was too tired after setting up previously.

I don't like it either, but I prefer not to add another piece of electrical equipment to my tank. The chiller and filters are already adding a lot of consumption to my monthly bill! I also have a glass one, but the Fluval 405 is too powerful for it and its constantly drawing air into the filter.

No, only the Fluval FX-6 has an inline atomiser. The Fluval 405 runs through a chiller. Yeah I forgot to include the Anubias coffeefolia and Anubias barteri var nana in my plants list. I just jammed them in wherever I had space :D Latest shot - day 7. Added some Blyxa japonica I had in another...

Took 3 hours of planting. Some of the stones have sunk a little as the water made the aquasoil lighter. Water has cleared up but I haven't cleaned the glass yet. Currently running 4x 54W T5HO for 7 hours. CO2 is high - an uncountable bps - but I haven't measured the pH drop yet. Filtration is...

Hi all, been away for a while as usual, but still scaping. Here's my latest attempt: Hardscape is made out of Okho or dragon stones. These are all the stones I have. The greyish ones I bought many years ago, the brownish ones a few years ago. The colours and textures don't match completely...

I think this makes it pretty close to the top of my list of "Places I'd like to live next to"

Nice discus you have there. Good that you're upgrading to 125 gal. 75 gal is sufficient for them at this stage, but once they start pairing and laying eggs, more space is needed since the mating pair will defend their space.

In my personal experience... :D Discus are definitely more finnicky than other common types of aquarium fish. Seeing that you have wild-caught scalare, I don't think you'll have a big problem with discus. The first thing you need to decide is how far you want to go with your discus. If you...

Glad to see that you're still madly in love with discus. I have given up to be honest!

I hope whoever gave it to him made him sign a contract which requires a daily update with a minimum of 3 pictures and the tank must not be empty. Or something. What a nice gift!

Very bold! I'm too clumsy to balance rocks like that, and worse when it comes to maintenance as I'd probably send it all crumbling and crashing and scratching the glass!

Hi Andy, if you can get a hold of Ocean Free 0 Algae, then I suggest you give it a try. I have dosed it before and have had good results with BBA specifically. This will get you through the current outbreak, but you'll have to resolve the over-arching causes later...

What a great low tech! Mine doesn't seem to have your level of growth at all. I run a single 54W T5HO and no CO2.

That's large. I thought you were gonna keep giant gouramis in there :D

Thanks for the advice. The eheim skimmer is however, more expensive and is another piece of powered equipment in a tank. I prefer to use the passive skimmer :)

I must say that of all the tanks I've made, this is the one I can really sit in front of and stare. The colours, the pearling, the lushness... its all I wanted when I started this hobby. Only took me 8 years! My next experiment... switching to a lily pipe to see if there are any differences...

There is some GDA/GSA on the glass which I scrub every week, and some BBA on the filter outlets, but overall is very manageable. I brought nitrates back up to 20ppm, reasons below... It happened when I removed KNO3 from my dosing, since my API NO3 test kit showed very high concentrations of...

Hey Paulus... long time no see! Good to see you're still an active aquascaper, even if you're not active over here.

You mean Taobao? I rely on google translate to translate to chinese so I can search it. A friend of mine orders stuff regularly, so I just hitch in with the shipment whenever he does. https://world.taobao.com/item/526122032961.htm?spm=a312a.7700714.0.0.1i42wi#detail

I've had discus for a few years now. I've had individual specimens that were slow to come to food, some were gulping nonstop from the surface, so it really depends on each fish and how they were raised. I never vacuumed up their uneaten food, I have cories for that. What I usually do is feed...

My tank has started to pearl a lot, so I decided to shoot a video yesterday. Apologies for the quality of the FTS video... still trying to learn SLR video. Comments welcome.

:clap: The discus is looking superb

Thanks for the info. Very impressive crypt growth. I hope to get my crypt growth as dense as yours.

I see your CO2 and lights come on at the same time as well. How did you arrive at this schedule? Sorry but I'm just trying to pick your awesome brain for ideas ;)

Very nice! Good balance with 2x 54W and 1 bps of CO2. Everything looking very lush Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Very nice! Can you tell me what is the brown crypt on the right side and in the middle? Thanks.

Very nice tanks and cabinets!

Thanks for the comments Nelson. Paulo, I'm using this one - http://www.scottsbrands.com/smg/goprod/osmocote-outdoor-indoor-plant-food/prod70362. I couldn't get the Plus version when I bought it, so its just the normal version without the traces.

4 hours of work condensed into 1 min 45 seconds :D Youtube is still processing higher resolution versions of the video. I moved the 2-4 year old Aquasoil so it becomes the bottom later, added some Osmocote pellets and then topped with 3-5mm river gravel. Plant selection and position has not...

Things are looking better. I've lowered the lighting to just a few centimetres above the water and the plants are starting to grow more rapidly. Red plants are looking redder too.

Hey Kenny, nice tanks! Just curious but have you considered going without CO2? You plants seem like they will do without. I'm asking because I'm wondering if I should also go non-CO2 with similar plants.

How did you manage to grow a scape for 6 months without your son knowing about it? Oh that in the cupboard? It's nothing. Just some vegies I'm growing. Also, your son has a TV and a Playstation 3 in his bedroom and he's just 9? :cool:

Heaven! Now if there's a rock quarry over the hills, you could really start a profitable business!

Might as well use it to add extra iron and traces to your tank.

Very nice!

You don't really have to worry about nitrates at 80ppm. My API test kit read 80ppm and I thought I could stop dosing KNO3 since the tank was making its own nitrate from nitrifying bacteria. But my plants melted. When I was dosing KNO2 at 20ppm per week, my test kit was reading 80-160ppm! No...

That's quite possible the shallowest tank I've ever seen in comparison with its length and width. What's the tank underneath for? Are they connected?

Very nice infographic you can print and stick on your wall. The site also has more detailed information on iwagumi, NA, dutch and jungle styles. While I don't quite agree 100% with his definition of NA and jungle styles, they're still pretty good. Courtesy of: The Aquarium Guide

Check out the results from the hardscape challenge: http://aquaa3.com.br/2015/12/1o-nordic-scapers-hardscape-contest-nshc-2015.html. Bear in mind that these are not supposed to be flooded or planted or maintained in any way shape or form

I've had them for quite a few months now. They were procured in two batches. First batch were fed beefheart at the discus farm. Out of the 4, 3 of them now take both commercial granules, frozen bloodworms and live tubifex while one of them only takes frozen bloodworms or live tubifex. Another 2...

Steve, here you go: http://www.adana.co.jp/en/aquajournal/archives/189. Its on the last paragraph. Sorry I was mistaken, she didn't say anything about marrying a German!

I think in one of her blog posts, she mentioned that she married a German and she's now living in Germany. So even nearer!

Wow, so thats the secret huh? Plan a scape, then flip it completely upside down :D Am referring to one of the tank shots that have gone belly up. Your flow pattern is interesting, right side is back to front and left side is front to back? Why so? Really wished I could draw as well as you. I...

That's some impressive non-CO2 magic!

pH probe is always more accurate if its calibrated properly. But as Andy mentioned, it measures everything that can influence pH, including organic acids from decomposition, etc. To double check, get a sample of water at pH 6.58, shake it in a jar or leave for for an hour for CO2 to degass, then...

Did you manage to get Otos in there? Otos will make short work of brown diatoms. Plants are not in good health too, what sorta CO2 and fertilisers are you dosing?

How much lighting over those tanks if I may ask.

I would suggest doubling or tripling the liquid carbon. But before you do that, grab a few tufts of the algae, put them on a spoon or tiny container, and drop some pure liquid carbon on them, see if that kills them. I've strangely had green thread algae that would die while some just wouldn't...

I quite like the look of glosso + riccia, but I don't like the maintenance of it.

Hi and welcome, I'm from Penang, Malaysia.

Eheim classics are the best. Get as many double taps to put between equipment such as heaters, inline CO2, inlets, outlets, etc. It will save you a lot of time during maintenance and they basically last a lifetime. The only problem I have with them is priming. Easy when its just filter and tank...

Sweet!

According to Seachem's website, Equilibrium doesn't contain chelated iron, so it might react with phosphates. Better to dose the micros on separate days then. You can actually easily test this, though I've only read it but never actually tried it. Put some KH2PO4 and some Equilibrium in some...

Honestly speaking, the stuff he puts into his mix sounds pretty much like commercial dried pellets/granules/flakes, so I don't quite understand the point of it. Dried foods ain't that expensive, I use Tetrabits granules myself. His mix might be more useful for getting mega growth and spawns, but...

28'C - 29'C for me. I live in the tropics where afternoon temps regularly reach 31-32'C indoors. I use fans to cool down the water, it's usually at 29'C. If my discus fall sick, I switch off the fans and the temp goes up to 30-31'C for a few days.

I made some pork heart + shrimps + spirulina + garlic and until now my discus still don't want them :(

Hey Chris, that's an interesting overflow box. Looks like you use 3 lilies to suck water from the overflow box thats inside the tank, into the first part of the overflow box thats outside the tank, which then overflows again to the second part? What's the benefit of doing this?

Should be pretty much perfect for discus.

Watch the yellowing anubias a bit. It might be iron deficiency, or it might be some sorta color morphing. I have anubias barteri var nana that had some very pleasant yellow marbling effect develope over time.

Based on George's measurement here - http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/ada-solar-i-vs-tmc-1500-ultima.27121/ the 2x Ultima 1500 puts out about 80 PAR at the substrate when hung 45cm above the water, about 45cm + 25cm above the substrate. Doing some extrapolation for your single tile being 36cm...

I don't think I can choose... please don't make me choose!!

Nice! What's the Echinodorus that you had?

Hi chrism. I subscribe to the digital edition of Tropical Fish Hobbyist and one of the columnists is Jack Watley who is a famous discus breeder in the US. He feeds garlic to all his discus as an anti-bacterial agent. Supposedly reduces the possibility of gut parasites. I just followed his...

Tried one block last night, discus totally ignored it. Other fish also ignored it. Had to suck out most of it after 10 mins or so. That garlic clove I put in was *strong*. Would it affect if fish would take it?

I on the other hand, have never had luck with increasing KNO3 to get rid of BGA. I even dropped KNO3 powder right on top of the BGA and it did nothing. I also tried dropping ADA bacter ball powder, as suggested by ADA, with no effect. Somehow just adding a powerhead helped.

When I planted my Pogostemon helferi, they almost completely melted away. A few weeks later shoots started growing and they're doing alright now. My water's only 3 dKH.

Moss tree! :D

Very nice! From my experience, cyano can be prevented by having good flow of oxygen. It usually developes in places where flow is bad, so try sticking a power head aimed at the area with cyano.

With the stuff you have now, I'd just keep the spraybar at the current location, open-ended. The place the powerhead next to it on the left side glass, pointing in the same direction as the open end of the spray bar. So the flow goes from left to right, back to front.

OK I think the experiment has failed. More and more MC is lifting off the carpet and I'm starting to see yellowish leaves on plants like Staurogyne repens. So its back to 10ppm nitrates this week.

Iain... I'm gonna be aiming for the middle-ground as much as possible. Liquid carbon will end up being a bit too expensive for a 300L tank I think. I only have access to Seachem Excel and other branded gluta. Last night I tried my hand at making some food for my discus. The squeamish and vegans...

I'm actually in this situation as well. What I'm planning to do is to split the single 25mm output into two 16mm outputs connected to one spraybar each. That will enable me to re-use the spray bars from an Eheim Pro 3 2080 and also it compatible with regular 16/22mm inline accessories. The...

The monte carlo seems to have formed a few bald spots 2 weeks after the last brutal trim. Maybe I left it grow too tall and the bottom shoots which were exposed after trimming cannot survive on their own. Or could it be the effect of not dosing any KNO3? The other plants seem OK, though growth...

Beeeeeaautiful!

I like how the ferns and bolbitis are integrated on the wood. Looks very natural. That rock on the left doesn't float my boat though.

That room is awesome! Scape is pretty nice too... :p

I don't think I've ever seen a tank with that much CO2 microbubbles before. It's quite a nice scape... spidery and triangle-y if that makes any sense. I'd stand on Jaap's side with this. I'm starting to think about deficiencies in a different way. If you have melting which points at...

I like no 1 and 2 personally.

And then I see this... arrghh!!

Those are beautiful. I can't decide whether no CO2 or minimal CO2 injection will be better.

Been thinking about Iain's suggestion and its sounding better and better. Take out the rocks, sweep the aquasoil to the back and top with gravel.

Sometimes clicking forwards immediately will load the draft. I feel for you mate. Been there many times myself. I usually copy a long post into my clipboard before posting in case my internet dies.

I didn't know mini Fissidens was that expensive! Might have started an air mule convoy carrying mini fissidens to you guys :D

Hey Iain. I haven't been able to find Akadama soil here. Most bonsai I've seen are planted with normal soil. I could cover the aquasoil with gravel, but that would mean I won't be able to use the gravel anymore if I decided to rescape since it will all be mixed. Conundrum! Sent from my Nexus...

Ya know... I'm also seriously tempted to do just that.

It's not a popular theory these days, so take it with a pinch of salt. Only my personal experience!

I need your thoughts on something. I'm thinking of either reducing CO2 injection in this tank, or completely turning off the gas and turning it into a low tech. I don't mind doing 50% water changes every week, and just about the only algae I have are some occassional BBA, red rhodophyta and some...

So this tank isn't going great. Fish are healthy, but plants not doing too well. For the past month or so, most of them have been steadily browning and melting away. Anubias and ferns are browning, crypts and vallis are melting and bolbitis is turning black. The only change I have made in the...

Haven't updated in a bit. Here's what the tank looks like now. It's going pretty good. None of the plants except for Blyxa japonica have melted so far. My first trims were to trim and top in order to remove the emersed leaves. Rotala wallichii seems to be growing the fastest, it's been...

From experience, the lower parts of Ludwigia palustris and ovalis always melt off, I think due to lack of light.

Beautiful. Have your discus jumped out of the tank before? I had to cover mine with acrylic after 2 of them jumped to their doom.

They dig up natural soil and then bake and sift them. It was mentioned that Amazonia comes from Japan, not sure where the other types come from. Amano himself mentioned before that he may have to stop selling Amazonia one day because its a natural non-renewable resource.

I don't have much to add, but I do remember reading that overdosing on iron causes BBA and red algae. I can at least confirm that with red algae in my tank when I was dosing about 4x more traces than EI when I was trying out PPS-Pro. But my tank isn't the healthiest so it's just purely my own...

Very nice and healthy plants!

Like millenials gangsta talk... U KAPS someone yesterday? :cool:

I've just read your journal from start to end and I must say its a very inspirational read. I'm definitely gonna think about going low-tech on my 300 litre tank. I tried it once by switching off the CO2 and it was bad. Now I just have to decide whether to use the 3-year-old aquasoil or go with...