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60L bialix's home tank - dragon stones + dirt substrate

Joined
23 Sep 2013
Messages
1,242
Location
Ukraine
Hi all, I'd like to share with you my latest tank adventure. In March I've bought several dragon stones in online shop, I just loved its structure. Also, they perfectly fitted to my 60x30x36 tank - so I couldn't resist.

Also, I always wanted to try the guide by Troi on dirted substrate and therefore I prepared some mix from potted dirt, sfagnum, peat, small gravel and something else, just to try it out. Covered with old & used Fluval Plant Stratum and some new small sized shrimp substrate.

And third new thing for me in this layout is new LED light. I've never tried to run aquascape under LED light, but I was lucky enough to get LED units from local manufacturer to try, so I'm testing and learning this LED sciense by my mistakes.

Too much text, let's look at the state of the tank almost month ago:

26339428581_2c7531d75f_z.jpg60x30x36 - about 3 weeks by Alexander, on Flickr

The tank looks clean and healthy enough (that's because first 2 weeks I run it with usual T5 lamps - 2x24W, not LEDs). Later I've removed most of tall plants as they didn't play well in the layout.

I didn't put any livestock almost for a month after set up, to avoid ammonia killing my shrimps or fish. Although, my tests of NH3/NH4 always showed zero. But I decided to follow "better safe than sorry" strategy, and only recently introduced shrimps.

About the beginning of the April I've got 2 LED units to test, and started to experiment with light, intensity, combination of cold and warm light, and so on. I'm still not confident enough with all this stuff.

As an expected result of my experiments - I've got a lot of green threads algaes on the rocks and plants. I guess it's spirogyra. Liquid carbon didn't help much, so next step was - put some cleaning crew. And last week 2 groups of shrimps (usual wild-style cherry shrimps and several amanos) was landed to the enemy territory. For my biggest and good surprise those amanos cleaned almost all the tank in 2 days. Just 2 days. They're animals! Crazy and good.

I've asked my daugther to help me with layout, to improve the colors and texture of composition. That was interesting experience for me - I know plants and she knows something about drawing and composition. I've transformed her thoughts into some changes in the tank, we all liked the result. But she doesn't really like to help me with maintenance of the tank, though :) Only with ideas :) But that's great anyway.

I don't have a FTS atm, just couple of fragments. We've added touch of pink with crypt flamingo and it's really pop under that light. What do you think?

26735919542_4ca2662f7e_z.jpg60x30x36 - about 1+ month by Alexander, on Flickr

26829680825_f37c18c706_z.jpgCryptocoryne sp. Flamingo by Alexander, on Flickr

The idea is to have dark red on the background - with ludwigia sp. super red.
 
Really love Crypt. Flamingo. I failed once with this plant. It lost red colour and started melting and eventually died :D
 
Yeah, flamingo is nice but somewhat picky plant. Although it survives in my low tech conditions. But it really needs hi-tech conditions to show all colors. Also, I found this crypt is very heavy root feeder: it needs a lot of root tabs, rich substrate, to grow successfully. This is my observations during last 2 years I own this plant.
 
Photo update:

26657195670_6956a77722_z.jpg60x30x36 - 1.5 months by Alexander, on Flickr

the picture was taken before a trim for glosso lawn. I don't really know this plant, and not really like how it develops. I've already started to mix in monte-carlo and have some hc cuba on the rocks, so I guess over several months either I will have big mix of different carpet plants, or glosso will go out. It's a little bit too big and it doesn't like to grow on substrate. Maybe my light level is too low.

You can spot a lot of snails everywhere. Recently got couple of dwarf puffers to control pests - inspired by great photos from Lauris journal(s). They are very funny tiny Bathyscaphes - with big eyes. So cute!

Also purchased apisto cacatuodies male - but I don't like it's behavior though, he looks nervous, so he will go out soon. Also bought 10 of nannostomus marginatus juveniles - they are so small - have to feed them 3 times per day, hope they will grow in next couple of months. Dwarf pencils are very good match to this scape in my opinion. Had to reduce flow a bit though.

Next weekend we will learn the trimming of stems on the background with my daughter. So she can understand better how to implement her ideas in aquascape. That should be fun. :)
 
When you don't have enough time to trim the lawn - it creeps on you:

27578301561_6faa8c09de_z.jpg60x30x36 - 2 months by Alexander, on Flickr

Singing: I see fire... over the mountains!

Things didn't go well last month or so after my last post. I've bought ten of dwarf pencil fish, and recently ten of galaxy danios. Pencils are young, so I have to feed them well and regularly. Probably, that increased bio load destabilized the system, so now all my precious rocks are more black than anything due to green algaes film. And now BBA was coming (dirty filter I suppose). I started to clean the tank more often, also using H2O2 and liquid carbon for rocks.

I like videos from channel of Dennis Wong, his recent video about algaes and types of planted tanks made me think about balancing my tank to lean dosing. Unfortunately, increasing the CO2 injection is no option, it seems CO2 has killed 2 of 4 of my otocinclus.

I made video after trimming:



In HD quality you will be able to see all algae I talked earlier. As a bonus: at 1:07 you can see what I think is spawning activity of my galaxy danios. About 3-5 males chase one female in dwarf hairgrass spot. As I can see they eat something in the process, probably fresh eggs, so I don't expect to see fry. The funniest thing: those fish are only couple of days in the tank, but started this activity the very next day I've introduced them to tank.
 
I mentioned in previous post: in that video you could see spawning of galaxy danios. I'm 100% sure it was spawning, cause tonight I saw one larva on the glass. Still not sure it will survive, all fish in the tank seem to like eat every possible food. But, maybe!
 
Last 1.5 weeks or so I started to work with this tank more "serious" trying to trim here and there the lawn and fast growing plants almost daily, every second day do a spot treatment with H2O2 and then liquid carbon on rocks where green and black algaes are, following by 50% water change. I noticed some positive changes re algaes: they become less visible. I hope my efforts will work. I just need to do brush work after spot treatments as well. And maybe 25% waterchange is enough, giving in mind I can do regular 50% wc once per week?

I've added new plants at the middle back of the tank: rotala walichi, and ludwigia sp senegal. After hard trim of rotala sp red and adding pink/bright red plants - the colors of tank shifted to light red rather than dark red as before. I guess I like this change.

27370812523_ecec6d2a70.jpg60x30x36 - 3 months by Alexander, on Flickr

Still not very happy with the tank. It's about 3 months old, but still far from what I'd like to achieve. I guess couple more months are needed.
 
I like your fire on the mountains! Generally your combination of textures and colours on your tank is looking really nice ☺Sorry to hear about your two Ottos, will you add more? Pencil fish are a lovely addition to a tank - shame you don't see them more often! Hope you got your algae under control ☺
 
It's almost here. This tank was difficult for me in term of plant selection and stones cleaning. I've tried to apply H2O2 and liquid carbon to stones - but they anyway became green. I've given up on stones. I've tried different stem plants on the background but almost eveything but super red ludwigia fell out of this scape for me. Sometimes I felt those dragon stones need only green plants around to get the best contrast and composition.

I was too tired and uninspired to do proper maintenance for 1.5 months I guess. Plus my wife decided we need our bathroom to be renovated, and that took entire August. No time, no energy, no desire. But now bathroom is finished and I'm slowly trying to go on track again. It took me more than 2 weeks to properly clean tank, external filter and trim all this crap off. But now I can see the really nice tank.

29499449302_d479de09d6_z.jpg60x30x36 - 5 months by Alexander, on Flickr

The tank I can be proud of. Not all went as planned. I had to ditch my glosso and replaced with monte carlo. I should admit I'm unable to grow glosso carpet. All I got is glossostigma sp. verticilata in this tank. Look here, it was about 15 cm tall:

29320636990_8034acf4e5_z.jpgStarting a trimming by Alexander, on Flickr

The photo has been taken in the middle of carpet trimming so you can see how tall it was.

On the first photo you can see the tank with all equipment in. You can spot 2 circulation pumps on left and right side, each one 200 lph. The right one was cruicial to get the proper carpet near right side glass (where filter inlet and outlet). Without additional pump there was dead earth, but now it's nicely filling with mc. I've started to mix in mc at the beginning of the summer, and at the end of August it took over glosso. So far mc is proven to be the easiest carpet plant for me.
 
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Tim aka Troi, thanks, as you might remeber this tank was setup with dirt based on your guide and I have literally no issues with dirt at all.
 
It's almost here. This tank was difficult for me in term of plant selection and stones cleaning. I've tried to apply H2O2 and liquid carbon to stones - but they anyway became green. I've given up on stones. I've tried different stem plants on the background but almost eveything but super red ludwigia fell out of this scape for me. Sometimes I felt those dragon stones need only green plants around to get the best contrast and composition.
You can't get rid of green algae on dragon stone with direct and strong light. I had the same issue and then covered it with java moss. Problem fixed. Lol
 
Tonight made small video. Only one light unit (closer to front glass) was working, I've noticed interesting effect: the water level was exactly at the top of outlet and output stream made aeration bubbles for free :)



I should admit the quality of the video is really worse than I see with my eyes. My pocket camera is not good as video recorder.
 
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