Hello from the other side of summer! My summers are mostly spent away from the scapes. Should have known that a restart near almost complete abandonment is not a very good idea. Still wanted to give it a try. Results were not that great. After vacation time, about three weeks ago I had to do another restart.
My idea for the second variation was, as stated earlier, a sort of a modification of the iwagumi. More of a river or a stream scene, using partly the same materials.
LED lighting was kept to a minimal, due to the fact that this tank receives both morning and evening sunlight in long northern summer days. I did visit the scape about weekly, did waterchanges, fed the fish and cleaned around the tank. Fertilatisation was a bit erratic, Co2 was off.
Plants did not do too well and that opened up the opportunity for algae. I found out that especially L.macloviana did not like the replanting at all. I had a really strong plants, bucketfull of them. Lost most of them.
I got BGA! That crowned the failure. I have not had that problem in years, decades maybe. The cause for this is still a bit of a mystery to me. And that problem still persists and haunts me in this current, second restart. Problem might be in partly reused aquasoil or the new substrate material WIO biotope bed that I wanted to use.
At the moment the BGA is not overwhelming in volume, but persistent in the glass little above and little under the substrate line. I have not had test kits anymore in recent years. I grew confident, overconfident as it now seems. I am suspecting imbalance, nitrate defiency, judging from the pale and struggling plants. Second restart also propably messed up some of the bacteria, so I am enjoying a diatom, brown fuzz algae stage as well.
Not really enjoying this now, but I am reluctant to give up the idea altogether. I am leaning towards another restart but I will give this iteration a few weeks time with rigorous maintenance.
I am basically trying out a lot of different plant species to see what could thrive, or at this point at least survive, in here. Managed to buy minilotus, N. helvola from another Finnish hobbyist. Hope I can keep at least that one alive.
