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Thanks for all the likes everyone!

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

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...

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

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!

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.

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:

Very nice!

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...

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?

Sweet!

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...

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.

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...

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...

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.

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.

Man that's cabinet pr0n :hungry: Really loving your setup. The hardware seems to have taken my eye completely off the scape I must say!

Really nice. Your HC is not growing in substrate at all?

Looking superb!

Sad to hear about the discus deaths mate. It echoes my own experiences, though not with No Planaria. A neon tetra death is just another death, but a discus death is heart crushing. Up to a point I almost gave up on discus completely. I also read about PFK forummer medicman and his experiences...

Hey you took my advice with the angels. Looking super lovely now! Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Very sad to hear about your discus mate. I've had similar incidents where discus health suddenly degrade and they die, with no known causes. I got so frustrated and disappointed at one point that i almost gave up on discus. In any case, I would suggest to raise the water temp to 29-30'C as this...

Not a problem. I really love congo tetras. I had a few jump from my open-topped 120cm tank though, so be careful of that. Here's the larger sized pic of my avatar and an extra one. Hope you don't mind. Tank is looking great! Still a lot of shaping to go, right now all the "streets" of...

Looking at the height in which its growing and the shape of the leaves, I think its Saggitaria subulata instead.

30'C will melt most of your plants pretty quickly. 27-28'C is alright for general health. You can crank it up to 30'C for a few days if you notice your discus are not feeding well or are having fungus, skin, whitespot, etc.

That is nuts! I'm very impressed with the mega high light combined with long lighting period and no algae at all!

Ed, your frogbit has shiny leaves while mine has "hairy" leaves. So my floater has Pistia texture but with frogbit shaped leaves. Confused!

Hey Ed. That's as big as it grows, I don't think its water lettuce or pistia.

Can you believe that I planted the MC "Monte Carlo" in May and I have NEVER trimmed it and this is how much its grown in ~4 months? Note melted Staurogyne repens at the front right. It was growing very slowly for 2 months, then growth picked up for a month and suddenly started melting after...

I had no idea there were that many different types of Microsorum ferns.

What a beaut! Your cabinet arrangement is so nice and neat. How many bps are you running in your reactor? Do you have all of your 6 T5-HO tubes turned on during the photoperiod?

Sorry I don't know, haven't had angels in a long time now. I guess if discus are fine, angels would be too. I have 10x flow with discus. They can always find a place where the flow is calmer and just sit there.

The hobby-grade angelfish don't grow very tall. Only the wild ones like altums will grow to be 10 inches tall. Amano shrimps will be ok... once they're big enough, they won't fit into the mouths of hobby-grade angelfish. Cherry shrimps will be food.

You're making me miss my Congo Tetras. One of the nicest and most interactive "small fish" I've ever had. Even the Mrs loved feeding them because they would snap up food quickly and she'd tell me "That guy's greedy" or "This guy is chasing the others off".

Lovely! Reminds me what I did with an older scape of mine, which I unfortunately changed and its never looked as good. Put some angel fish in there!

Great hardscape, great planting plan. I'm so sure about Crypt balansae though, they tend to get unruly and everywhere, which is the opposite of a simple iwagumi. Will be watching this one with interest.

Wow, I have no idea how that sump of yours works. But it looks brilliant!

You can also consider moving the pair into a bare bottomed tank with a spawning cone. You'd have to remove the fry and parents sooner or later anyway, so might as well get a cheap tank, filter and put them in there. No lights needed even, natural sunlight is enough.

Nice. I've had 3 or 4 attempts at spawning, all of them failures as the eggs turned white the next day. On the last attempted, my turqoise leopard male spawned with a red melon female! Internet wisdom says blue discus should not spawn with red discus as the offspring would be extremely peppered...

That's a nice one Iain. I'm guessing the lights are on full blast when you take photos? Because that doesn't look like low light at all!

Very excited for this. I have 3 personal dreams in aquascaping - 1. A large discus tank, 2. A large marine tank and 3. A large dutch tank. So happy achieving my 3rd dream!

Congratulations Stu!

:wideyed: Extremely impressed!

Thanks for the offer Steve, but unfortunately the discus is no longer with me. That particular fella hasn't eaten much for some weeks now, as it was being chased away from the food but one of the other discus. I was distracting the rest and dropping some food in front of it and it was eating a...

Usually a 24 hour soak in a bucket, changing the water 2-3 times works. If not, the shrimps will probably be dead. Plant condition is also important, some plants will melt if placed in a bucket for 24 hours, probably because it spent a few days being shipped in the first place.

True, though the fish sold are usually the very common types like tetras and goldfish. Plants are ridden with snails and insecticides.

That is growing in so well!

Your discus are looking great. I've had, in recent months, 2 discus jump out of the tank, 5 of them falling sick to some fungus from newly introduced fish where 4 recovered and 1 looks like its not gonna recover. So stressful!

20% off ADA products - bargain!

I'm jealous. Most of the "junk" stones in Malaysia are limestone or light coloured granite-like, so not easy to use in a tank. The granite-like ones break off like slate, which doesn't suit well to an iwagumi.

Hi Lauris, that has grown out nicely. I'm quite impressed that your Anubias isn't getting covered in algae, it being the closest plant to the lights. You got mad skillz.

Just make sure the Amano shrimp or any other critters are twice the size of the discus' mouths and feed the discus once a day at least and they should leave them well alone. Having foliage where the shrimps can hide will also help. I've had 2 discus jump before, was pretty gutted about it. Would...

I agree with the rest of the guys here, this scape won't go amiss in any of Amano's books.

Very nice scape there! The stones you got which were dumped are really good! People pay money for those!