My AS900 was a Christmas present and has been sat waiting for me to get around to building a stand and until I knew I had the budget to hit it in one fell swoop. Well, finally took the plunge and figured I'd use the extended hours of being at home to get myself into gear so I could while away those extra hours with something to both keep occupied with the initial maintenance and something to spend my evening gazing into.
Setup
Tank: Aquascaper 900
Filter (and Heater): Oase Biomaster 600 Thermo
CO2: Co2 Art reg on FE, Sera Flore 500 reactor with Hydor Universal Pump
Lighting: Chihiros Vivid V1
Substrate: Tropica Soil & Powder with a base of crushed lava rock. Unipac Tana Sand
Ferts: TNC Complete
I really wanted to do a rock heavy scape. In the past I've tended to have wood as the feature element with supporting rocks as the kinda 'man behind the scenes' as it were, giving structure but never in the limelight. I has some ideas of what I wanted to achieve from a trip to Aquarium Gardens a few months ago when I played around in the dry scape area and brought back a fair amount of Seiryu. I'd roughed out 3 or 4 layouts to serve as a basis.
Let the fun begin...
I knew from how I'd banked the sand in the dry scape area I was either going to take out a 2nd mortgage for soil or use something cheap as a filler material so I bought 20kg of crushed lava rock. I put most of it into some media bags I had laying around as I thought they'd be easier to remove in the future, then filled the gaps with some loose. I placed a bag of Seachem Flourish Tabs in and around the lava rock just as a catch all, no idea if it was needed or not but I'd rather it be there than not.
I used 2 bags of Tropica Soil and a further bag and a bit of Soil Powder on top which seems to have given enough planting depth throughout.
Time to start playing with the hardscape. I had the general layout up fairly quickly but I knew over the next couple of weeks whilst I tweaked and amended my plant list I would invariably also make changes to the hardscape.
From the first 'final' layout I wasn't quite happy with the right hand side, it all looked a little disjointed and sat too far back compared to the left.
So the tweaking began. The idea was to elevate and strengthen the hardscape in the foreground on the right but I still wasn't sure. I also hadn't decided whether I wanted a sand path in the middle or if I was going to plant everything. I liked the aesthetics of the sand but was it just going to annoy me with keeping it soil free.
I finally decided to order the plants so had to get the final hardscape in place. I'm happy with the outcome. Moved the right hand main stone forwards to integrate it with the foreground hardscape more and went with the sand path. If it gets on my nerves too much I'll just syphon it out and plant up the middle but I figure you have to give these things a try.
And here is the view from sat on the sofa. The light is only temporarily there as it's still running my existing tank so when the plants get here that will be shut down and I'll move it over properly.
Setup
Tank: Aquascaper 900
Filter (and Heater): Oase Biomaster 600 Thermo
CO2: Co2 Art reg on FE, Sera Flore 500 reactor with Hydor Universal Pump
Lighting: Chihiros Vivid V1
Substrate: Tropica Soil & Powder with a base of crushed lava rock. Unipac Tana Sand
Ferts: TNC Complete
I really wanted to do a rock heavy scape. In the past I've tended to have wood as the feature element with supporting rocks as the kinda 'man behind the scenes' as it were, giving structure but never in the limelight. I has some ideas of what I wanted to achieve from a trip to Aquarium Gardens a few months ago when I played around in the dry scape area and brought back a fair amount of Seiryu. I'd roughed out 3 or 4 layouts to serve as a basis.
Let the fun begin...
I knew from how I'd banked the sand in the dry scape area I was either going to take out a 2nd mortgage for soil or use something cheap as a filler material so I bought 20kg of crushed lava rock. I put most of it into some media bags I had laying around as I thought they'd be easier to remove in the future, then filled the gaps with some loose. I placed a bag of Seachem Flourish Tabs in and around the lava rock just as a catch all, no idea if it was needed or not but I'd rather it be there than not.
I used 2 bags of Tropica Soil and a further bag and a bit of Soil Powder on top which seems to have given enough planting depth throughout.
Time to start playing with the hardscape. I had the general layout up fairly quickly but I knew over the next couple of weeks whilst I tweaked and amended my plant list I would invariably also make changes to the hardscape.
From the first 'final' layout I wasn't quite happy with the right hand side, it all looked a little disjointed and sat too far back compared to the left.
So the tweaking began. The idea was to elevate and strengthen the hardscape in the foreground on the right but I still wasn't sure. I also hadn't decided whether I wanted a sand path in the middle or if I was going to plant everything. I liked the aesthetics of the sand but was it just going to annoy me with keeping it soil free.
I finally decided to order the plants so had to get the final hardscape in place. I'm happy with the outcome. Moved the right hand main stone forwards to integrate it with the foreground hardscape more and went with the sand path. If it gets on my nerves too much I'll just syphon it out and plant up the middle but I figure you have to give these things a try.
And here is the view from sat on the sofa. The light is only temporarily there as it's still running my existing tank so when the plants get here that will be shut down and I'll move it over properly.
looking forward to following along! 
