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My real ADA 60pxd, Scapers tank 55 and UNS60f hobby return.

Garuf

Member
Joined
30 Oct 2007
Messages
5,644
Location
Copenhagen
Morning all.
2020 was wall to wall dogmuck so in a moment of madness I shut down my main shrimp tank, gave away my vampire crabs and came back to the aquascaping side of the hobby with a pair of fake ADA tanks.

First up is my dsm pseudo 45f aquascape which was something of an experiment. Because iwagumi's can be a bit of a 1 trick pony I wanted to do something that rewarded taking interest in the aquascape by having a hidden foreground and incorporating a lot of texture.
And well, it worked when the tank was dry but, now it's wet and the optics change, the foreground is as instantly viewable but, next time I know what to do to make it work better.

Oh and because it's a one of those panorama tanks, it's "backwards", why I hear you say, well, it means there's no silicone line in the background, crisp lines at the front. Nice.

In terms of things noticed, I use tropica's dosing line, if dosed as recommended it was so lean as to cause stunting and I was seeing deficiencies. At some point I'll do the leg work and figure out what I'm actually dosing to use as a reference against EI but meh, a pump a day works well at the moment. The gratiola is also a real algae magnet for staghorn and is a sort of sickly plant, I'll give it a few months and see if it was deficiencies. I'll most likely replant this with something daintier as the first change, It didn't really produce the nice pillow of plant I expected.
The Rotala hitting the surface fast is also a bit of an issue which I really should have seen coming but it was an experiment and I expected more of a crawling habit.
It's been a pretty painless set up really, I'll keep the bones of the scape and get the current planting "perfect" and then will replant and try out some other plantings. Ultimately I'll replant it with all grassy leaved plants and then shut it down and move onto something else.

Next is my pseudo 45p, this one I wanted to do a "traditional" nature aquarium using a good number of plants I've not really used before.

Those plant I've not used before? Namely 40million buces, all of which promptly melted.
Even though I thought I'd done everything right by running the filter on my quarantine tank for a number of weeks, then running the tank black for 2 weeks, then planting. I put this down to aquaflora's cell culture plants sucking and the plantlets being wayyyyyy too small to really pull through.
The tropica and aquasabi plants had only partial melt compared, not the full scale mushing out. Same goes for the stems, the aquaflora rotala and myriophyllum guyana came as tiny plantlets none being bigger than 1.5cm, which you guessed it, promptly melted to nothing. I'll replant those very soon with tropica versions. I'm told that melt is normal for buce (and rotalas), especially cell cultured, but the deep purple doesn't really have a rhizome to regrow from and rotala's that die don't really regrow so we just have to see.
This one is only a couple of weeks old and is intended as a slow burner so I'm not really expecting to see much in the first few months, stems will grow and bulk up, I'll trim and form them into a concave scape, if them buces are to come back, they will, if they don't I'll have to purchase something in their place.
I'll likely add more fissidens as the tank matures and I can trim it out of the 45f. The bolbitits and java petite I'll keep trimming back in... It's a high maintenance low maintenance tank.
There's not a huge amount to say about this one except 100euros worth of buce's dissolved and I'm bitter.
Erm other notes, all the wood and stone work is self collected stagheaded oak, the sand is ungraded gravel mixed with self collected river stones.
I snapped a lilly pipe inlet pretty much instantly, but because I run shrimp guards, I figured no harm no foul - turns out, the lily strangled the flow and the shrimp guard only gives noticeably better flow. I superglued my fingers to a cup of coffee preparing the moss stones, it took 3 afternoons and I bloody hated it but it is easier than using cotton. Yeah, just needs to grow in and mature.

Oh and twinstar users, did you notice a sort of "burn in" where the spectrum shifts? My 45f when planted for the first few weeks was just really ugly to look at a yellowy purple hue being obvious, the 45p I'm noticing the same thing.
 

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Thank you, thank you.

Ahhhh... They're okay, I dunno about great.
The iwagumi is definitely less problematic as an aquarium, much more stable, just much less teething issues. As an aquascape the rock work is unique but perhaps could be have been nicer with seriyu or manten et al. That said, this rock work was free...
This wood tank I can already tell is going to go through some real teething issues with the melt issues I'm having but in about 3 months it should be good provided everything pulls through. The big thing missing is time for it to come together properly and see what works and what can be trimmed in or what does or doesn't work in the hardscape and needs to be hidden with plants. I'll add 40 or so black rose cherry shrimp when water changes go to bi weekly so as to not stress them out too much.

I already have the fish settling in my quarantine tank, I ordered 20 M. Kubotai and received 31 which is more than I needed but they're a really attractive small fish. I'm already day dreaming of a 90F stream tank with gobies to show case them better.
 
hey does small lily pipes on the 45f, where did you get them from? I currently have the 45f and looking for some lily pipes. Yours are tiny af
 
The outlet is from aqua rebell, the intake is an ehiem green crook cut to length and using a shrimp guard on it. There are extremely small intakes available periodically from MIG glass works but they're too expensive for my needs.
 
We became re-interested at the same time Garuf :D Will watch with interest because I had in mind to try Buce in my main tank if I can remove enough overgrowing Bolbitus to give it a chance.
 
Thank you, all.
Them buces are finnicky things huh? The one that was okay turned to mush over the course of a few days and my staurgyne on the left lost all its leaves too, very odd indeed.

Also, I added shrimps. Turns out the tanks a bit of a shrimp killer and every morning I'm finding them at the surface climbing the wood to get out of the tank, I do a water change and they're fine. Very strange indeed as no parameters are off on the test kits.
 

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Here's a thought, are some plants "greasier" for lack of a better word than others? I'm thinking that my 45p has much less surface agitation but has next to no film but my 45f that has a healthy churn has always had a noticeable film.
Both will be getting a hard trim this weekend back to stumps.
In terms of updates, not much change in either. I'll post photo's pre trim. In the 45p, none of the cell culture buces pulled through, first signs of algae and the tank generally has that new tank scruffiness.
 
Came up with a suitably pretentious name for my 45f. "glade of the yellow butterflies".
Go one, I'll give you 3 guesses how I got there.
 

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Obligatory tank maintenance glamour shot.
It's the first time I've used superglue for plants and I have to say, I'm unimpressed, alllllll of the ferns have fallen off and of course are now a total pita to reglue.
 

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I've had a dwarf water lily bowl running for a little bit short of 6 months, unfortunately it started to smell like swamp, the soil for what ever reason had gone anoxic. Ever the one to look for an excuse to set up another tank when the opportunity allows l've added another fake 45f to the family. The bowl was a nice experiment but I think no-tech tanks are just destined to fail long term - or at least ones that small (3l) are.

I stole some M.hirsuta from the iwagumi, some stones and unknown buce from the shrimp tank, some filter media from 45p. Added some C. undulatus and C.wendtii green and here we go.
Low tech this time.
When the weather warms up I'll try and get some emergent cotton grass for the instagram fame likes and see if someone wants me to shill their products and see how that takes. With the new soil and a light I'm hoping the lilys will throw out some new surface pads soon. I've got an extra co2 line I can add but at first I'll see what low-tech looks like.
 

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Nice to see you again, Garuf. Didnt you used to have a profile pic/signature of a cartoon amano saying "I'm unplanting"? :p
 
Yeah that's right on planted tank though not ukaps, it was an ms paint special I drew.
 
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