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New Decade, New Decadence...

Are you planning to add the small twigs?

Don’t think so Luciën, not with this one. It wouldn’t really add any value and really want to get back to simply concentrating on plant health and form. The current wood in the scape being exposed to the strongest area of lighting will present a big problem at startup, the less to maintain the more time there is to attend to the anticipated problems with this scape design.

Nice, a really solid and well grounded scape.

Cheers Tim. Kept it simple but should provide a decent setup to showcase the Green Neon’s once again. Going colourful with the planting this time, scissor happy scape. Hopefully get planted and flooded this weekend.
 
Hi mate, would have been nice to put that left wood high enough to reach the surface ;)

Did have it high at one point on some rocks then positioned it lower for better viewing towards the back left.

Putting a lily outlet in the back left corner shooting right along the back with Cyperus helferi blowing about for some movement in the scape.
 
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Did have it high at one point on some rocks then positioned it lower for better viewing towards the back left.

Putting a lily outlet in the back left corner shooting right along the back with Cyperus helferi blowing about for some movement in the scape.

always wanted to try cyperus helferi, it’s so beautiful and mesmerizing when floating in the flow. Definitely something I’ll try on my next one. Anyway, don’t hesitate to go bold with your hardscape as once planted you won’t see a lot of it anymore :)
 
Planted and flooded.

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Species list:

Alternanthera reineckii ‘mini’

Anubias barteri nana bonsai

Anubias nana 'pinto'

Anubias petite

Blyxa japonica

Bolbitis difformis

Bolbitis heudelotii

Bucephalandra red

Cyperus helferi

Cryptocoryne lucens

Cryptocoryne mollmanii

Cryptocoryne pygmaea

Eleocharis acicularis ‘mini’

Eriocaulon cinereum

Hygrophila araguaia

Hygrophila pinnatifida

Ludwigia arcuata

Ludwigia palustris

Micranthemum monte carlo

Monosolenium tenerum

Murdannia keisak

Pogostemon erectus

Riccardia chamdryfolia

Rotala indica ‘bonsai’

Rotala rotundifolia ‘green’

Rotala rotundifolia ‘H’ra’

Schismatoglottis prietoi

Staurogyne repens

Vesicularia ‘Creeping Moss’

Vesicularia ‘Christmas Moss’
 
what a great planting mate

Owe it all to the golden ratio Jay... One beer to every five songs to every thirty minutes of planting up 😂

Hey @CooKieS did any of your Snow White survive? Down to two very knackered plants. The rhizome is still intact though so going to see if they can bounce back emersed with a drip of phytohormones at water change, nothing to lose at this point. Interested to know if you had any better luck...

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@Geoffrey Rea actually they didn’t grow and some started to get holes in the older leaves...it seems they started to fail and as I basically didn’t like the look of them anyway I throwed them in the garden. Haha (had won them from an contest so...). Some of my friends had them Melting and dying too...they seem to survive only on emersed setups. As @dw1305 said, the lack of chlorophyll won’t help this plant to thrive .... :(
 
Hi all,
Owe it all to the golden ratio Jay... One beer to every five songs to every thirty minutes of planting up
.......... I might even try aquascaping, now I know the secret.

I'm a great believer in "good things come to those who wait", so I may have to practice the drinking and listening bit first......

cheers Darrel
 
Throwing this out there to answer startup queries in one place rather than via multiple PM’s.


This is the method being used for high light, high Co2, high soil located nutrition and large scale planting in this setup here. Plenty of alternative views on this and not saying this is ‘the’ way, just my way to ensure a single tanks weekly maintenance doesn’t go over an hour and belt off in the wrong direction after the startup period.

Setup is started with lighting at 100% (can hear members screaming at their screens already). There is no controller, no ramp up, no alternative with this style of lighting so don’t consider it controversial, simply adapting to what it is - an on/off lighting unit. Six hours of light at 100% just like it used to be with halides and T5’s, nothing new. Personally prefer running tanks this way, gets the tank on its feet more efficiently and know the lighting isn’t a variable, fixed duration and intensity.

Rescapes also usually done in late autumn/winter to avoid ambient daylight during startup. Penalty here is plants tend to come in smaller from the grow houses this time of year but seasonal change doesn’t matter if using in-vitro pots.

Soil is nutrient rich, in this case ADA Amazonia on top of powersand advance, but would happily use alternatives like Tropica or Prodibio with ground up root tabs on the base glass topped with soil. Plants don’t care about branding, just sufficient nutrition. Substrate is started off rich to accommodate to the nutrition needed under high light from the get go.

Schedule for the first 28 days

Water changes, water changes, water changes. Not interested in marketing blurbs or any particular company’s recommendation on startup procedure. Don’t have a problem with any products that are supposed to help but find them unnecessary if water changes are being executed.

Doing daily for the first four weeks and use all that waste water to keep our drains clear in the colder months, so it gets a double use. It is a chore and appears wasteful. However, it has proven to pay dividends in the longer run and water is a cheap consumable. You’re getting a reset daily, taking out tannins leaching from the wood, organics, algal spores - good bang for your buck for simply switching some water out.

Water changes before Co2 on or after the photo period, whatever works best around your life commitments.

Obviously changing this amount of water with anything other than tap water isn’t really feasible. Rain water, might not rain enough, RO, would drive you mad on a large setup and waste even more water.

Water column fertilisation for startup period; potassium source (K2SO4 for example) and a meagre amount of micros daily just before lights on. That’s it. Trust that everything else is soil located and this leaves the water column as lean as possible until plant growth demands a change up.

Also dose glutaraldehyde (2%) during the first 28 days dosed at 1ml per 50l then discontinue after the startup.

Co2... get it right beforehand. Drop checker, pH pen monitoring, whatever. Used to fill the tank when empty with filters and skimmer running, place several drop checkers around the tank and assess how much of a ramp up is needed to get lime green at that water volume. Once this is known (e.g 3 hours 15 minutes ramp up needed at that injection rate) set the timer appropriately before lights come on ready for startup and leave Co2 settings alone. Obviously adding in hardscape/soil reduces the overall volume of water at finalisation of the scape; this means your dissolved Co2 rate will be higher than needed (yellow drop checker) on your first day and you can gingerly dial it back through the first month or leave it fixed and see if it ends up sufficient after some plant growth. Also depends on the planting type but overshooting to begin with and working your way back is less detrimental to falling short on Co2 demands. No livestock during this period so no potential of harm. Do this enough times with the same equipment you can usually eye ball it.


Aeration outside the photoperiod at the beginning:

1607262950673.jpeg


Stop this once a good amount of plant growth is established. Then it’s possibly a matter of dialling Co2 in once again as the night time aeration won’t be bringing dissolved gases back to atmospheric equilibrium everyday.

Skimmers and lily pipes that create a vortex can help manage a baseline of surface agitation for gas exchange:

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Filters left alone for the first 28 days. Simple. It is literally just 28 days of water changes then moving on with your life.


If this were a non soil setup using an inert substrate then this method is mostly obsolete.
 
nice looking scape,
is the adhesive something like pu18 with added aquascape tax?

JBL Pro Haru adhesive is a polymer-based adhesive. JBL state it is free from silicone, solvents, halogens, acids and isocyanates.

PU18 contains isocyanates, which I understand are very strong irritants.

They both work via polymerisation by humidity and the byproduct of that curing process for JBL Pro Haru is methanol being released, which is harmless.

PU18 has it stated on the data safety sheet that it is not safe for aquarium use, which I assume is because of isocyanates.

Putting aside any monetary difference, they are fit for different purposes so would say they are non comparable products.
 
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