60L Cube - My first scape

[The_Iceman]

Hi UKAPS

Welcome to my first journal here on this message board
I hope that you will enjoy it. Please be gentle

Everything started a while ago, after I bought my first "Nano" Cube which was not so "nano" because of his 60 litres.

I looked out for a good cabinet but could not find one, so I started building my own!


My girlfriend hated me for doing this in the living room:


Meanwhile, I also started to work on my own LED-light because everything I found so far, was extremely ugly in terms of design:


After some month of fiddling and tinkering around, I ended up with this:


First test of the LED light was positive - bright as hell:


This was the perfect time to start with the actual scape!

At first, a nice layer of ADA Power Sand S:


Then I added a small net to avoid mixing of power sand + soil and I ended up with this:


Short check, all plants are ready to be "transplanted" :


And because scaping in germany is soooo extremely exhausting, I started with a "tiny" scape, just for ME


After 2 days of work, the final scape was finished.
I decided to start "dry", because I used some moss-yoghurt-mix on the wood:


Unfortunately after one week of dry start, a lot of mould was building up, so I decided to flood it:


This shot was taken after 1 week under water with "a lot" of CO2 and only dosing of "K":


This photo was taken last week, just before the first trimming of the rotala macandra in the background:


Right now I'm dealing with "GSA" on my glas and plants (especially the staurogyne and anubias) so I decided to lower the lighting time for 2 hours, pumped up the CO2 as far as possible and made a water-analysis to see what's going on there... The plants are eating up all my phosphates so I adjusted the daily dose of fertilizers accordingly. Let's wait and see what the next weeks will bring in...

Finally some shots from today:





I hope you enjoyed my first journal so far
I'll keep you posted about the progress and if you like, I can post some facts about the used plants/hardware/etc.

During the next water change tomorrow I will add some more moss on the "remaining" free parts of the "Magical Dream Tree"...

Enjoy the weekend!

Cheers
Christian

 

[Andy D]

Hi!

It looks great!

 

[The_Iceman]

Thanks Andy

Slowly my Eleocharis parvula in the background kicks in, too...Hopefully it will cover the soil soon like the Eleocharis "Mini" did...
Took ages until it rooted properly...

 

[allan angus]

nice one christian looks really good

 

[kirk]

Loverly, I particularly like that you built your own light unit and stand. Also like your centre piece thank for sharing.

 

[The_Iceman]

Thanks Allan,
thanks Kirk,

my pleasure

Regards,
Chris

 

[Lewis G]

Lovely scape. The driftwood is very 'tree like'. Looks very much like a scene in nature.

 

[Martin in Holland]

Nice tree...after a while it will look better and better...sehr gut gemacht.

 

[The_Iceman]

Thanks guys DANKE!
I had some drawbacks yesterday during the maintenance
One Anubias got loose and it seems that I'm unable to fix it again... and a branch of my "tree" has been broken off while I was cleaning the glas

BUT I have been able to fix it.. somehow - when the moss is starting to grow I will, hopefully, not see it
PLUS I got some nice Bucephalandras which will be placed on my dragonstones later on

 

[The_Iceman]

Hi UKAPS

A small minor update, after yesterdays trimming:
- Adjusted the fertilizer dosage again due to the lack of phosphate, my tank seems to eat this stuff
- Bucephanandras are adjusting, but are not in a good form after the arrival



Om nom nom:


Moss is doing quite well:


Find the little fellow in this image:


Buce in bad shape:


Om nom nom 2:


And from the side just before cutting the eleocharis:


Currently I'm not very happy with the distribution of the CO2... so I'm thinking about installing one of those UP inline atomizers... I hope this will work better.

Cheers
Chris

 

[allan angus]

well happy or not it looks stunning

 

[The_Iceman]

Thank you sir

I think I managed to get rid of the nasty Staghorn and my Bucephalandra Looks healthy again... Currently I'm quite pleased with the result so far







Will cut the rotala @the weeken to make it more "dense" and I'm thinking about adding something in the lower left corner.

Plans for the next project started already

Have a nice day!
Chris

 

[Lindy]

looks good!

 

[The_Iceman]

One more month and I think the moss will be completely covering the top

Excuse the Eheim Skim in the background



How can I achieve are more dense red on the rotala?
Pump up the light, or add more iron?

I'm planning to send in an image to the gaplc - what do you guys think... do I have any chances?

Regards,
Chris

 

[aclofty887]

How did you build your light, looks awesome?

 

[The_Iceman]

Thanks

It was quite easy (with some instructions from a german message board).
The light is made out of 2 parts:
- The acrylic frame which was cut, sanded and polished
- The Aluminium cooler with Cree LEDs (8x 7000 Kelvin, 4x 3000 Kelvin for a more yellowish light) + 2 constant power sources (don't know how they are called in english)
attached to a Laptop power supply

Have made some pics for you (bad quality):
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vhpzrkhd91wxeze/AADZmVMGY-r3G0XNCahX6J5Ga

In addition a small update on the tank:



Had some issues recently after I came back from my vacation... Algea everywhere because of massive overfeeding!!! Had to cut everything down and took the chance to insert 2 new plants The water is still a Little bit cloudy because of the maintenance... will make some better pics on the Weekend, after cleaning up the tank and changing the water.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[aclofty887]

thanks for that, I'm going to be starting up an Aquanano 40 Journal and I'm trying a PAR38 15W COB LED from the famous auction site. I used to have a 35L Reef tank and my PAR38 36W bulb would grow pretty much anything I had a frag which doubled in size in the space of 6 months, I didn't want to go down the route of something like an Aquaray 400 if I could so I have been looking at creating a DIY LED system, I think I have found a nice small heatsink with a splashguard and pre drilled and tapped so all I need to do is add the bulbs, drivers etc, I won't be dimming and I might try suspension.

Tank looks nice by the way

 

[The_Iceman]

Ahoi UKAPS

I don't know what has happened in the last couple of days, but holy cow.... my plants are mutating and going into overdrive...
Had to trim the Rotala again and the Pogostemon Stellatus is getting the new submersed leaves

Looks quite...well... green



Enjoy the Sunday...

Cheers,
Chris

 

[allan angus]

lol thats looking stunning

 

[The_Iceman]

Thanks Allan