GA workshop scape - seiryu with mosses

[viktorlantos]

We had a workshop session 2 weeks ago, when we set up a new 60P tank with Seiryu and some mosses.

You can find the earlier thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16712

The tank is 2 weeks old now and looks like this:





We also finished the workshop video from the event. A bit longer but you can see how the scape evolved.
Unfortunatelly hungarian the voice there.



One of our tank is also visible on the video:
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15911&start=20
Looks much nicer in flesh, but the video gives an idea. 😀

Hope you will enjoy it.

 

[James Marshall]

The scape looks great after only 2 weeks, love the way the hardscape uses the whole height of the tank.
I bet it will be stunning once grown in.

Cheers,
James

 

[Sonnyarba]

Viktor, don't be surprised if ADA stops the delivery of their products to you in the near future. Man, you and GA are becoming competition to their Nature Gallery in Niigata 😀

 

[SuperWen]

nice hardscape victor..!!!!

IMHO, the big rocks at the right side distract the focal point, because it has same size with main rock and has lighter colour comparing to the other. If I were you, I will change that rocks to a smaller one and with same texture/color

 

[G H Nelson]

Hi Victor
What substrate are you using.
Very nice scape
hoggie

 

[viktorlantos]

Hi Victor
What substrate are you using.
Very nice scape
hoggie

Cheers
ADA Saraawak Sand on the front, and as we ran out of Aqua Soil Amazonia we used Shirakura Red Bee Sand on the back where it's needed.

nice hardscape victor..!!!!

IMHO, the big rocks at the right side distract the focal point, because it has same size with main rock and has lighter colour comparing to the other. If I were you, I will change that rocks to a smaller one and with same texture/color

Thanks mate, the left rock is much larger in real. Goes above the water surface. We wanted to have a dramatic canyon between the 2 giant rock. On the frontal shot the canyon is not visible that much. But the right one is lighter a bit you're right. We're hoping this will be not distracting after a while.

Thanks for your feedback.

 

[Westyggx]

Great tank viktor love all of your tanks, looking forward to seeing this grow in.

 

[Tom]

Wow, very bold rockwork 😀 Great sense of depth in the little tank. I think the difference in textures of the rock make it look that much better.

Tom

 

[Gary Nelson]

Very nice indeed Viktor - very natural looking too.

 

[Garuf]

Out of interest are you running RO on this tank as well or is it just with the big tanks?
Reason I'm asking is I recently moved in with my grandparents for the summer and my tank has become a total wreck instantly despite nothing but the water changing.

 

[keymaker]

Thanks Guys and yes Garuf, we use RO on this one too.

BTW more pictures of this tank here.

I'm also a bit concerned about the lighter shade of the rock "B" from right, but we'll see. Might even change it later if it attracts the eye too much. Should be a definite "B" - not an "A-" 😉 (in A-B-C triangle composition terms). Luckily it just stands on the other rocks, so changing it should not be a technical problem. But will leave it like this for now.

 

[flygja]

So who was doing most of the talking in the first half and second half of the workshop? I think I recognised Viktor walking around

Sometime during the scape, when the soil was being topped up the back and the top middle rocks weren't placed yet, I thought the soil mound would look super nice with some HC growing it. There will be a valley of HC coming down the middle of the scape. I would have really liked that look.

 

[viktorlantos]

So who was doing most of the talking in the first half and second half of the workshop? I think I recognised Viktor walking around

LOL yeah this scape was done by Keymaker (Balazs) above. He is the master of the rocks in our team.
So this was his round. I walking around because of the live streaming. Chat with the guys online in the meantime. 😀

Sometime during the scape, when the soil was being topped up the back and the top middle rocks weren't placed yet, I thought the soil mound would look super nice with some HC growing it. There will be a valley of HC coming down the middle of the scape. I would have really liked that look

Yup we also had a thought to keep that way, but we wanted to use up the full height of the scape. Hopefully the time will tell we did a bit unique this way.

 

[viktorlantos]

We've not updated this topic a month ago or so. In the meantime we had some progress on this tank, but not as much as on the others. The TMC light unit hanging cable was only a meter long and we thought this will be ok. Turned out this is not enough to move the lamp into the right position. And the scape evolved really slowly.

Well today we've changed the cables so now we can burn the plants as we want.

Also based on your earlier comments, Keymaker rearranged the right side and replaced the strange texture stone to another. I really like the new stone.

Can't wait to see the HC progress a bit more, so the scape can be finalized and have that look what we imagined originally.





glued mosses stays in place and they grows nicely, like this riccardia. This may need some trimming shortly. 😀

 

[plantbrain]

Excellent hardscape.
Since this is mostly moss and a fair amount of the tank is not planted, why not use low light?
This would make trimming and algae issues much less of an issue and less work down the road.

We have a lot of this stone at our local quarry, I've used it a lot on larger tanks, but never was happy, for smaller tanks, I think it works well with a few species of plants, or a mono culture. My worry is breaking the and scratching the glass over time. I do rock groups for reef tanks with live rock and have to do a fair amount of prep, but wood is not an option for those systems.

Super glue works well on rock for the mosses
Nice tank so far.

 

[andy-mu]

Since replacing the right side rock I do agree the scape looks more natural and has a better balance to it

very nice

 

[andyh]

Guys

Really liking this one, ironically without seeing this i have just scaped my nano using similar stuff. My doesn't look as nice as yours though.

The mosses help age the scape quickly making it look natural, how do you decide where to place the moss?

Keep up the good work, and your shop looks fantastic!
Andyh

 

[clonitza]

Looks really nice Viktor, can you tell us a bit about the ferts regime in this tank?

You could buy some Dennerle Nano hose guides for your nanos:
http://www.dennerle.eu/global/index.php ... 80&lang=en
They are transparent not white like in the picture, they also sell clear CO2 tubing, a little bit hard to find though.

Mike

 

[keymaker]

Excellent hardscape. (...) Nice tank so far.

Thank you Tom, your words mean a lot to me! 😳

Since this is mostly moss and a fair amount of the tank is not planted, why not use low light?
This would make trimming and algae issues much less of an issue and less work down the road.

Well, we respectfully choose to go the other way. 😉 All our other planted tanks (there should be about 11 more at the moment in the Gallery and only 2 low-light) go high-tech, high-light and algae issues are minimal - almost non-existent. No exceptions. 🙂 Maintenance is regularly made on all of them, we never tire.

We like to go for the fast growth - high lighting levels, achieving the Vibrating Nature effect. With support of the EI.

We have a lot of this stone at our local quarry, I've used it a lot on larger tanks, but never was happy, for smaller tanks (...)

The problem with this stone is that it comes in smaller pieces. Hard to build a balanced, yet mountain-like hardscape with it in a bigger tank. You need to pile them, but then the connections should be covered, planted, etc. It's a building-hiding game at the same time. This is exactly the type of challenge I like... 🙂

I think it works well with a few species of plants, or a mono culture.

Funny you mention the mono culture thing. This morning I was looking at the new pictures Viktor took and wondered about the same thing. Might consider reducing the number of plants here, but not decided yet...

My worry is breaking the and scratching the glass over time.

A very real problem with these "rocks-on-top-of-each-other-near-the-glass" compositions indeed. I did slightly scratch about 3 opti-tanks by now. So I'm trying to handle these really carefully and not let our friend Ati next to any of our piles. He's the breaker in the team 😀

Since replacing the right side rock I do agree the scape looks more natural and has a better balance to it. very nice

Thank you Sir.

(...)Really liking this one (...) how do you decide where to place the moss?
Keep up the good work, and your shop looks fantastic!

Thanks Andy. As I mentioned before in this post one purpose of using the moss was to cover the joints. Other than that we put them in the cracks to break the larger rock-surfaces and we also concentrated on the visual balance of the moss-spots (to spread them in a nice way in the tank... 😉 ).

Looks really nice Viktor, can you tell us a bit about the ferts regime in this tank?

Simple. EI. :idea:

You could buy some Dennerle Nano hose guides for your nanos (...) They are transparent not white like in the picture

Problem with transparent is that it gets white after staying in the water. This was originally transparent...

 

[Mark Evans]

Simple. EI.

In a moss only tank?