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I realize others have chimed in on this already, but i wouldn't use the polystyrene, you'll be amazed how much weight it takes to hold it down. A better solution is to use this stuff...

First flower for the hygrophila siamensis hygrophila siamensis 53b hygrophila siamensis 53b flower

Turns out that the fry are still alive and doing well. Here's a couple pictures of the parents, fry are too small for me to photograph even with a 68mm macro tube!

Yes, the leak fixed, I just left the clamps on for 3 days before removing them to allow the join to re-seal properly. Tank is really starting to mature. Some above water pics below. Also the Apistogrammas have spawned, Female is working really hard to keep track of the fry, though i fear she...

I give it a quick wipe with a very soft sponge once a day to stop any algae build up. If it did build up i'm sure the scrubbing would scratch the acrylic.

A little Update Came home from work to find water dribbling down the front of the stand. My DiY tank was leaking! I found the source, a very small leak in the back right corner of the tank. I've used bar clamps to hold the seem tight while the acrylic cement does its' work to repair the corner...

Tank is being stripped down today, decided against adding stems and decided to just rescape the tank.

Quite the find! very jelous! i still manage to kill it every time i try to grow this. No idea why, i seem to grow more difficult plants just fine...

Another lovely scape bud.

So, I broke and bought the last 4 (planned) rainbows for the tank. I'm super happy with how this tank has turned out, and I plan to keep it running for as long as possible. Here is a FTS and here are some close ups of the fish, i really need to buy a set of lenses as it's frustrating to only...

Tank has been planting and running for about 2 weeks. I haven't gone with any epiphytes at this point, although i do plan to in the future. Current plant list is Lilaeopsis Brasiliensis Riccia Fluitans Echinodorus Ozelot Leopard Green Echinodorus Tricolor Hygrophila Siamensis 53B Anubias Nana...

Yes, it gives you the option to go high light in the future. Plus they look really nice, they also have adjustable colour temperature.

Tank is still running really well, i'm starting to get a bit bored however and might introduce some stems at the back, any recommendations?

I have a Tetra EX1200 on my 60p and i've found it superb, doesn't invalidate other peoples experiences, just offering my opinion.

This is true, but if you're happy to dose EI then it's not really an issue, it's personal choice really.

Long overdue update. Tank is doing really well, about 5 months since planting. The Blyxa got really thick, but unfortunately when i thinned it out it really struggled to grow back, so there's been a bit of a re-jig. There is still some Blyxa, but the back ground is now dominated by a lot of...

If you're not actually planting into the substrate i wouldn't bother, i think sand or gravel is more aesthetically pleasing unless you're carpeting it. I used one of these, not a particularly big fan (considering the price), struggled to grow plants well at the substrate because the angle...

Looks great!

Superb! Thanks again Marcel.

Thanks Marcel, I was thinking about throwing in some Echinodorus at the back as well. From what i read and your testimony they do really well planted into the substrate with just the leaves above water. I assume all these plants require regular misting? I don't have a problem doing it, but I...

Can Spathiphyllum be planted into the substrate of the tank, or will the portion of the plant under water struggle? I was thinking of placing it in the corners at the back.

Thanks Marcel, I feel i have quite a lot of information to work with now :)

Thanks Marcel! I've been for the epiphytes i had been thinking of ferns mainly, i'd love to try some orchids but doubt the humidity in south east England would suffice. I've just been looking at George's insularium tank, and some of the plants in that look great, however it looks like the...

Here is my diy shallow tank, it has the same dimensions as the ADA 60-F except it's made from acrylic and only cost just over £20 to make. Initial thoughts are that this is going to be low tech with a carpet of lilaeopsis brasiliensis covering most of the tank. Not sure what's going to go up...

Beautiful, what a great mixture of textures.

Was an awesome scape, congrats.

Beautiful, a true nature aquarium.

Update! Tank has been planted for around 3 months. The algae burnt out as expected, so that's a good thing. I purchased a new far more programmable LED from @Lindy which is bloody lovely. Carpet is pretty much filled out at this point. Excuse the dirty lily pipe please, I wasn't in the mood the...

This is a beauty George, very competitively priced compared to the other brands too.

I love when monte carlo spills over the rocks like this, it adds a really natural look to the tank.

This is nice to hear, when i set up my 60P for the first time the cost was around £650 all in. I've tried to avoid spending anywhere near this amount of money again, my next tank is going to be almost entirely DiY to save money.

Lovely Hardscape. Wish I'd had an interest aquariums/plants at all when i was in school, i'd probably be a great deal better at it by now.

I did wonder, but the stripes only seem to go accross the middle of the body, where as maccullochi seem to cover the entire fish. I suppose they could be a hybrid of maccullochi and something else as they clearly share some traits.

Picked up some more Rainbows from my local LFS today, two differant species. The first are Madagascar Rainbowfish The second were sold to my as Dwarf Australian Rainbowfish, but i'm not so sure, any rainbow experts about? I'd still like to add a few more species to finish off the tank...

You've done a really nice job establishing depth in such a narrow tank. Congrats.

Beautiful tank Jordi. Love the reds!

Superb scapes.

Small Update. Tank has been planted for around 4 weeks, all is growing out very nicely. I've always been scared of using such a bright light in the past, but this seems to be going really well. The brightness really seemed to help the S.Repens recover after they lost their emersed leaves. I've...

Quick update Tank and inhabitants are doing well. I added some LED backlighting to add to the sunset feel i get from this tank. Carpet has almost filled out, but not quite yet, I forgot what a bloody slow grower eleocharis is! Suffering with some Dust algae at the moment, but I honestly don't...

Being that they're shaded by a large rock you might have trouble getting flow to them. I think you'd have better distribution if you had a spray bar across the back of the tank.

Do you have a par meter? I'd be tempted to check how much light is making it to the helfrei providing your Co2 and flow is all good in that area? What percentage are you running the Kessil at?

The second picture will look great (it's really a fantastic bit of wood), i'd plant some grasses or more busy plants behind it, then focus on a small foreground carpeting plant. I wouldn't go with H.C though, you'll struggle with it in low tech, unless you're some kind of wizard. 50 Par is also...

Thanks for all the kind words guys, I'm still a complete noob at this and i'm learning every day.

Hi all, A relative was going to bin this tank, so I took it on. Didn't want to spend too much money so built the stand out of concrete blocks and plywood. The sides and back were painted black apart from one chunk of the back pane for some reason, so I decided to paint that bit myself rather...

An Update Tank has been planted for about 6 weeks. Started with only two pots of 1-2 grow Eleocharis SP mini and after an initial melt it's now started to carpet really well. Fish and Shrimp added today. So far 10 Trigonostigma espei though i think a couple of them are actually Trigonostigma...

This is a really beautiful setup, congrats!

Really superb tank.

Love the cabinet.

Thanks, i'll bear this in mind.

Thanks, you might be right about the distance. There's a fair degree of finality at this point however as everything is hot glued into place under the substrate. Apologies for the appalling phone picture quality, I didn't take any with the proper camera, whoops!

Once I've actually got round to reinforcing it I will. It's just going to be a vertical support in the middle and some metal joins screwed into the corners to stop it becoming a parallelogram.

Tank - ADA 60P Stand - Reinforced IKEA Besta CO2 - DIY set-up with 2kg fire extinguisher. Inline diffuser. Heater - Hydor Inline 300w Filter - Tetra EX1200 Plus Lights - 24" Current USA Satellite Plus Pro 30W LED Substrate - 9 Litres Tropica Powder with a thin layer of Tropica plant growth...

Have to disagree, what S.Repens doesn't like is change, it can be grown in a wide variety of different setups, but will often melt back whenever something changes. Here is my work office tank, with minimal (around 15ppm) Co2 and fairly low light (5w Dennerle LED). This was taken a couple of...

What kind of snails are they? I welcome ramshorns in my tanks, they're all full of them. Prolific algae eaters!

Thank you so much! it's knowing what it's called that I really needed I guess!

Hi Ryan, Where did you buy the plastic cells you're placing your hardscape on? I've been looking for these for ages, I've only been able to find the thin eggcrate that marine people use!

I'd also check there isn't any surface scum blocking the drop checker.

The brown algae on your rocks is diatoms, it will brush off very easily and otos will eat it. It will also disappear in a few weeks once your tank is fully cycled.

Monte Carlo in my experience seems to transition much better as single strands rather than clumps, I have no idea why. Just make sure to remove the dead bits so you don't end up with extra ammonia, which will lead to algae.

Superb looking first tank!

This looks great, how are you planning to deal with detritus building up behind the hardscape?

6 Month Update Tank is now 6 months old, I've been having a fairly major staghorn problem and while it seems impossible to get rid of it entirely I have got it down to a point where it's manageable. I was having to dose way more Co2 than i was happy with to get to 30ppm so changed back to an in...

Love this tank , what percentage brightness are you running the LEDs at out of interest?

Great looking scape George! I'm interested in knowing what kind of PAR you're getting with the Kessils at 50%?

It's Monte Carlo, so i'm less worried, I trim it every week during regular maintenance. Thanks for the nice comments.

Tank is almost four months old. Everything is thriving with the exception of the Hemianthus Micranthemoides which is still in the process of getting it's roots down. The Blyxa has turned a much more bronze-ish colour and has started the throw out flowers to my surprise, they're absolutely tiny...

27/03/2016 update. Real progress finally, have I now have a thick carpet of Monte Carlo that i'm having to trim weekly. I decided to remove the path, it was just too much hassle to maintain, so it's now filling in with more Monte Carlo. Blyxa has exploded and seems about to drop a couple of new...

Another update, tank seems really balanced now, all plants growing well. Here is a shot of the monte carlo close up Here is some blyxa japonica with lilaeopsis brasiliensis in the background. The blyxa was almost entirely dead when it went into the tank and in the last couple of weeks has...

Slight update, finally seemed to have found a balance between the LEDs and the CO2 after purchasing a par meter (seneye) Diatoms is gone and the only algae now left is some black spots on the rocks (think it's BBA due to faffing around with the CO2 levels a lot recently). Monte Carlo is growing...

Takes hours, I've always thought it's some kind of hardened clay/shale. Even once you get it clean, you still cloud your aquarium everytime you clean it, in my experience.

Having a bit of a rough time with it at the moment, Monte Carlo pretty much melted away and the didiplis diandra has struggled as well, However, I think it's on the road to recovery at this point. Had a big diatoms issue which has been pretty normal in my experience. There are 5 Amano Shrimp and...

Love the original tank, looks incredibly natural. Excited to see this one once it grows out.

I love the Raspberry Pi, such a versatile little piece of kit. Congrats on getting past your early struggles with the tank, really seems to be balancing out now.

HC will be fine, it's been in the cup for weeks/months already anyway :) .

I would also like to know about your pi setup.

Flooded the tank last Friday and all is well, other than the HC, which is melting as I expected, I didn't think the flow would be good enough in the area I planted it, but that was why I called it an experiment. I'll leave it for a while in case it's just losing it's emersed leaves. Monte Carlo...

Lovely rock work, I personally prefer it without the wood, looks a bit too crowded for my eyes.

In all honesty it was supposed to look more like a bay than a path. As I said before, i'm going to leave it in there for now, although I do appreciated the advice from all. If it looks like crap once stuff starts to grow out, i'll take it out and allow the carpet to fill in. I do think it...

Thanks. Yes, it may go in the future, for now, i'm going to see how it looks once everything is grown out, picture doesn't really do it justice IMO and the depth isn't as apparent.

Wasn't happy with how the last scape was going, there were some fundamental errors in the set-up stage, so here we go again. Tank- ADA 60P Stand - DIY ADA-ish style CO2- DIY set-up with 2kg fire extinguisher. Inline UP Aqua diffuser. Heater- Hydor Inline 200w Filter- Hydor Professional 350...

Lovely scape, looks like there's more Okho than water in there!

If you're doing EI, you're already providing the maximum amount of levels that the plants can use. Perhaps you could try creating a solution and dosing directly onto the plants with a pipette? I've done this with melting S.Repens in the past and it has helped. It won't hurt to add more ferts...

My advice would be, drop the lights, let the plants recover for a couple weeks at least.

My two cents... With pearling like that occurring I would imagine that your lights are still set too high. Your still very early on in the development and growth of this scape and while the plant mass is so low you really don't need high lighting. There's not really such a thing as a high light...

I didn't give up on the stauro in the end, however i did swap the montecarlo for eleocharis acicularis, hasn't grown out completely yet but the tank is recovering.The Blyxa took a nose dive after I thinned it out too much, so it'll be a few weeks before the tank is back to how I like it to look...

Melting is usually down to poor co2 distribution. I'd keep your lights down at the 15% (maybe even lower it), which will slow the plants metabolism. Watch your plants and see how they respond, your TMC tile is a very powerful fixture and most people suspend these 30-40cm above the tank...

Hello, Sorry it took me so long to read this, been a bit busy lately so hopefully my thoughts are still of use. I really love the fixture, I bought it because it was the only one reasonably priced which had a timer and dimmer built in. I love being able to customize the spectrum to whatever i...

Stauro and Monte Carlo continued to melt, Monte Carlo seems to be coming back strong after upgrading the filter and moving to a spray bar along the back of the tank. Unfortuantely, the Stauro is looking really bad and I'm getting very tempted by the idea of pulling it all out and replacing it...

This looks wonderful, great first iwagumi!

It was the bottom roots, it was odd, sort of pushing itself up and out of the substrate.

Thanks for the great comments! On the Blyxa, yes I had thought about moving it to the back, but it's actually in that position, because I look at the tank from a 45 degree angle most of the time, as my desk is in the opposite corner of the room. I'm actually considering removing the rock on the...

So, The time has come for the final timelapse, I wanted it to go a little longer, but I now need to use the tv on which the raspberry pi is stuck, because the football season is coming! I'll keep updating with pictures however, as the tank still has some developing to do (especially the monte...

Been a couple weeks, so time for an update. All is well now, the melt was pretty widespread, i put this down the poor co2 distribution, moved the powerhead to the other side with the outlet, and that seems to have fixed it. The S.Repens has come back really well, and while the Monte Carlo has...

Bit of melt going on with the S.Repens and the monte carlo, I assume that it's just to do with transitioning from emersed to submersed, but to be on the safe side I've reduced the photo period to 6.5 hours and increased the co2 a bit more.

Thanks! blyxa was from this person http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/261555776501?limghlpsr=true&hlpv=2&ops=true&viphx=1&hlpht=true&lpid=108&chn=ps&device=c&rlsatarget=&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0-L&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=108 I was recommended them on the first page of this thread. I will...

It's almost a week since the tank was flooded. Plants are doing really well. As you can see the s.repens and monte carlo have filled out pretty well and the rotala has now started to emerge above the rocks in the back corner. Alternanthera is still adapting to the conditions, so I think it'll be...

A lot of pearling going on. I'm doing 50% water changes daily in the first week, then 50% every other day in the second week, and probably every third day in the third week.

Got lucky and everything arrived early, so today I flooded the tank. Did it very slowly using an airline tube to avoid disturbing the substrate and uprooting any plants. It all went very well and I'm delighted with how the Blyxa looks, unfortunately it completely covers up the Rotala, but once...

Yeah, I know, it's going to be sitting in the box until the joins arrive. :)

1 Week after planting and everything seems to be going well, my Blyxa should be arriving tomorrow, then I just need to wait until friday for some elbow joins for my pipe work to flood it. S.Repens is really starting to spread out, the Alternantherna is doing really well, rotala is really...