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My first - "3 of life" :)

zozo

Member
Joined
16 Apr 2015
Messages
8,643
Location
Netherlands
Finaly! A journal.. :) hope you like it.

how did it all started? it all began with purchasing a eledged Pygmae Nymphaea via ebay. I kept in the house for a while in a bowl of water. I didn't realy suite this lovely plant and after 25 years out of the hobby i decieded to step in again and to build an aquarium around this Nymphaea. And wanted to give here a proper stage to shine and put here as focal point in the spotlight. No idea how it would turn out in a small 60x30x30cm tank and don't have not yet very much scaping experience.

So i found me some suitable mopani at the lfs and found me some rocks in the forest and started building on her a stage. I found a piece of green slate of witch it's color intrigued me very much. But soon i found out didn't have enough of it, because i needed rocks to secure the wood. So i needed to find me some rocks that fitted to wood structure and go with the green slate. Actualy this was harder then i thought and came home with some light colored riverstone in the right shapes. and it turned out to be this.

Lily's stage :)
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So far so good, the wood stood stable and that was my goal. at this time i didn't realy see the stones not fitting eachother, but it was all i had.. So i went on with the planting for the dry start.

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While working on that i was missing something, the whole scape was to flat, so of again to the lfs digging in the wood boxes. And found my heights so far...

Here i did put lily for the first time on her stage to see how it fits.. Slowly my invisioning started to get shape.
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Mean while i needed to work on my filtration and heating and get my Co2 gear up and running. Now i'm not particular an LFS fan. I'm rather responsible for my own disasters than put my faight in Eheim and followers.

So time enough to find and build me a customized system for my own..

A Sunsun Prefilter canister 2.5 liter with a DC 12 volt waterpump 600l/h to be regulated.
(never mind the little gray one, that's another story)
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Here it is regulated, the voltmeter is my speedometer.. :) The switches bellow are lights and Heater.
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For the Co2 i went on with the famous FE setup.
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Installed the PH controler which i found for a lauch at a garage sale and did put the probe inline.
since i liked my tank clean of any electrical equipment, builded my own inline heating you see hanging below the pH controler.
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The one in the link is already replaced with a new build in 120 watts the 80 watts went to someone else in the family.

Mean while added some more plants to the tank and filled it up and made a test run.
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Time to work on the lightfixture which is to be found here, but in time already changed again and again.
At the time i'm building me a even stronger hanging lite fixture with an added full spectrum unit also from acrylic.. :) Almost done but still waiting on some ordered parts.

All is running on 12 volt with the use of a 450 Watt ATX power supply which you see hanging in the cabinet above the filter. It's running since april like a charm without any issues. I keep an close eye to it and do not for see any issues in the near future. I'm confident i builded a better quality then available in the LFS. :)

but after some time those off whit rocks started to bug me and other experienced scaper also pointed them out as very distracting. I covered them up with wood and smaller piieces of green slate. Some plants didn't realy make it all the way as expeccted and i replaced them. Like i made a mess of my HC carpet which became monte carlo by now. It's still in there but not as carpet. :)

Anyway, finaly after 5 moths changing and adding and some algae battles it turned out become this.

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So i find my title :)

1- Lily on stage
2- in front of her fuly packed and emersed growing tree
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3- next to here floating Wabi Kusa
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3 of life :lol:

Further specifications are:

plantlist by now (but still expanding):

Eleocharis acicularis 'Mini'
Hemianthus callitrichoides Cuba
Micranthemum sp. Monte Carlo
Anubias Nana Petit
Riccardia chamedryfolia- Mini Pelia
Vesicularia dubyana Santa Claus ?
Taxiphyllum 'Flame'
Fissidens fontanus
Utricularia graminifolia
Rotala Mexicana Goias
Bucephalandra Sekadua
Pogostemon helferi
Bolbitis heudelotii
Rotala (?)
Bolbitis heteroclita difformis
Bolbitis sp. 'Buea' (Didymoglossum erosum)
Pygmea Nymphea Rosennymphe Bonsai
Lilaepsis Brasiliensis
Staurogyne repens
Leptodictyum riparium
Potamogeton gayi
Rotala Indica 'Bonsai'
echinodorus dschungelstar nr 2 kleiner bär
Lomariopsis Lineata
Zosterfolia heternata
few unknown moss sp.
Anagallis tenella (bog pimpernell)
Peperomia Rosa
peperomia Rotundifolia
salvinia
duckweed

Substrate:
Akadama
Colombo

Hardware:
Green slate
Mopani

Parameters
pH6.4
kH5-6
Gh6
Temp 25c

Lifestock
7 Corydoras pygmeas
5 Otocinclus V.
11 Hyphessobrycon amandae
5 Amano Shrimp

It all still needs a few months to go.. So enough to keep it continued and you updated with more pics in more detail.

I hope you liked my kickoff so far, it's a start.. Can't say i haven't tried.

Do you have any feedback, recomendations, critique, questions.. Anything and all?
Don't hesitate to shoot.. :) I'm glad to hear it all.. :)

Thanks..

(Pfew now that's of my chest.. :nailbiting:)
 
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Love it Marcel... And I feel very jealous seeing how skilled you are with electronics. All you have is DIY!

What's your experience with Anagalis tenellus? I collected mne in a wetland but it didn't adapted to submerged conditions, it only did well in emersed setups and in my pond.

The kind of tank you have needs a lot of patience but after some time they are marvelous: beautiful, simple, low maintenance, great water conditions... What more can you ask for?

Jordi
 
Thanks Ed, Roy, EnderUk and Jordi.. :) preciate you like it.. :)

@EnderUK.. :D Chaos! Indeed, the best word to discribe.. It was on my mind as title as well..

@Jordi.. Low maintenance not realy, i work daily on it to keep it in shape, not all plants grow equaly fast and or in the shape i like.. i'm daily sciccoring it like a bonsai tree. And have many small cavities, crack and holes to inspect and clean out. It's packet with a lot for the little 42 liters of water it has. Planning to swap some things that don't work out as expected. Still having some minor staghorn issues lurking around the corner, this youll see when i go realy close up. I'm afraid i never totaly get rid of it. when i comes to that i actualy don't like the quality of the new camera i got. Now i see every darn hair that doesn't belong.. :arghh: But indeed this one takes a lot of patience, it's a challange, a jump in the deep after such a long time. Still strugling to get the potamogeton gayi and UG astablishing, but slowly getting there.

Anagalis tenellus, wonderfull little plant, found it by change at the LFS.. Got it also submersed in my little low tech test tank, doing ok, bit leggy, think because of the low light, but propagating. Maybe it's temperatur sensitive submersed, this tank is around 20-21c. Got it growing in 2 W-K's and there it grows realy good and gets lots of tiny branches. You're lucky to have found it in nature, we have it on the red list and hard to find. There is no more room left or else i would try it in the High tech tank. But have no idea where i should put it. So i did put it emersed.

I simply love the emersed growth :clap:
Comming from our W-K master himself, this is a great compliment.. Thank you!!
 
Indeed Martin :) I'm still playing with that, to see what i can get out of it.. this is 2 lights, a warm white from above and a colored from below.
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The possibilities are almost endless

from the early morning honey dew
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to the late evening crimson sky
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And everything in between.. :)

Still waiting to receive the order.. Next is trying color from above and color from below, also for moon light replication at night. If it after testing looks promesing with the simple controlers build in color schemes, than i want to automate it with a multichannel programable controler to fine tune the colors softer so it be less in your face like this. :)
 
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Thanks Guys for the likes.. :) here are a few more shots..

One of Buce with its impressive rootsystem creeping down, next to Lily smack dab in the midlle. Next to buce you see 2 very (very) small leaves of a mini bolbitis. I just did put a little rizom under the buce's root. The idea was great in my mind having a small fern there. But i didn't know in reality this fern is so slow. I guess if doesn't get it motor runnung soon, my scape probably will have old tank syndrome before it reaches a respectable size. :rolleyes: It took 5 months to grow this tiny bit of leaves. Hopfully it starts to grow faster somewhere in the near future.
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The submersed part of that (not realy) floating piece of driftwood. In the left corner there is still some room left. I'm waiting to get my hands on a few cuttings of some Java fern mini petit to put there. This piece of wood is fully packed with UG, in a way it loves to be up there and grows like crazy. I use trimmings of this UG and try to get it astablished submersed in the substrate. This is slowly taking shape, but a difficult plant down on the bottom for sure. Also the Rotala mexicana goyas grows on this wood, thought it would be grown emersed by now after months. But no go it just refuses to do this, it keeps itself below the water surface. Hard headed little bugger and a difficult plant at the top. :dead:
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Here you see what i mean with the downside of a better camera. :mad: You see all, also what you dont want to see. You see? With the naked eye you nearly don't. So it's cleaning and taking a photo :arghh: and cleaning and tacking a photo :bawling: it never ends. So for now you have to do with this dirty pic. :shifty: Sorry... Fortunately the dirt is dead, but still looks nasty.
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Thanks Ed, if i can keep t up like this it's finaly getting somewhere. :) It was quite a strugle to get it this far. I hope i can keep my plant list complete, till now all still is in there. :)

Hi Roy, thank you.. :) Maybe we need some goggles.. :rolleyes:
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I have no idea why that Mini B. eventualy dies all old leaves off on me in my water all the time and than still comes back. It does it in both tanks.. Im not going to buy new one again. Maybe it needs some established roots first. The one on the pic is from a piece of rizome with some roots without any leaves. I hope it keeps going.. :) We'll see.
i got 5 or 6 of them in there and they all died off during transition and come back like this.. :what:
 
Little update :) extended my plantlist again, still had some spots i wasnt happy with.. Thanks to Greenfinger2 i am now..
Added Crypt Parva in front of the driftwood with the bolbitis. And a crypt Alibaba brown ;) in the somewhat shaded corner behind the UG.
The UG i;m still strugling with to get it going its addapting very slowly.. If i ever get it going, but im not yet about to give it up.
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And finaly found my long sought-after Java Fern Mini Needle. Took a long time to find it.. :woot: And found it by chance when i went looking for something else. Happy i kept that spot open for it all this time..
What goes around comes around.. :cool:
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Im still not done yet :wacky:.. There is one more tiny little beauty on my whishlist i definitely want in there.. Already found it and got it waitin, i know now where i want it, but not yet figured out how i'm going to fix it.. :)

Oh scrapped the Little Star from my list.. This plant realy wasnt happy in my tank. I took it out.
 
It's with this little Daimond in the rough i'll think to finish with adding plants. :) Finaly got my collection complete together now..

On this pic you probably think what the hell is he talking about.. :D
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Its this Bucephalandra motleyana Mini Catherine :) i guess it will take many months to spread and carpet over the rock.. But once it wil do that i think it will be a very stunning and special rock. It was just to expensive to buy a bunch, so i need to have patience..
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This size is about as big as it gets, so it realy needs to propagate and spread..
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Took some pic seen trough the side panels of my tank.. :) I like to share.. Something i elaborated on long before, in my very first Hello from the Netherlands introduction post. That this tank actualy came to live with an idea i have on my mind for something different i like to do in the future. Building a small dimension scape viewable from all sides.
And because i was out of the hobby for so long with very little scaping experience i wasnt convident enough with my idea to begin with.. So as a learning curve and pratice i tried to integrate this idea a little into this scape.. That's why the tank stands free on a table away from the wall and kept 3 sides in view.. My hardscape is more placed in the midground and kept it away from the side panels more or less with the 1/3 rule in consideration from every view side. This to achieve the goal that the tank/scape can be watched from multiple sides. usualy this is done with rather large tanks, but i want to do it in nano style.

Also my plantlist is generaly choosen to get to know them and how they could do in this plan for the future. Still i have a few plants in there not fitting this idea in the placement they are in now. Still i wanted them to try as well.

Anyway these are the side views.. And from what i see now i kinda think i worked out pretty well, actualy im i bit sorry this tank is only 30 cm deep 10 cm more to slope the substrate back down to the other side woul have been realy close to the final idea i have. but i had only this standard size to work with.

Right side panel view
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Left side panel view.. :)
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another right side view just because the embers are posing so nicely.. :)
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If you like to share some thoughts on this idea you're very welcom.. :) I realy like to know..
 
Hi Roy, thanks, indeed.. And Exciting too.. :) Few hours later.. :nailbiting: they go fast once broken open. Have 14 knots total.. And i have no idea how long such a flower lives and if it's wait for the rest.. But there are more to come, would be awsome to get all 14 flowers opened.. :shy: Need a tank glass cleanup anyway before i start shooting. :snaphappy:

Nice curly flower..
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Thanks guys.. :) I hope to show you a few more flowers and how the rest of the tank developed in a few days.. Well developed might be the wrong word.. :rolleyes: Had some set backs which still show and swaped some plants that didn't realy worked out with what i wanted for them in this setup. The new ones are still aclimatizing.. But everything still in there for a year now did realy well so far. This tank is a perpetuum experiment instead of a real planned scape. :thumbup: Stepped away from the low flow concept, as hard headed as i am, i tried for a year, but it's running on the edge all the time in high tech.The Rhizoclonium kicked my butt hard.. Can be done, but to intensive on the maintenance. :bored:
 
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