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Goodmorning from Holland

jsiegmund

jsiegmund

Member
Joined
15 Nov 2014
Messages
167
Location
Netherlands
Hi all,

My name is Jasper, 30 years old from a small town in the south of Holland. A fellow enthusiast pointed me to ukaps as a premium resource for aquarium knowledge and so far I've been reading a lot of very interesting stuff. The tanks you guys post here are awesome and look a lot like what I want to have as an end result.

Beginning of the year I bought a 240L Scubaline tank, following up on my hobby which ended about 15 years ago when I sold my tank back then. At the moment I'm dealing with serious issues caused by high PH/KH due to the rocks and soil I used which contain lime. I decided I'll go for a restart in somewhere in the upcoming weeks, replacing soil with Akadama and rock with dragon stone. All the other bits like CO2, nutrients and stuff I already have in place, so I hope that this new attempt will have a better end result.
 
Dantrasy said:
Welcome, looking forward to the journal for your new scape. Do you have a style in mind?
Click to expand...

I'm pretty impressed by George's TMC signature tank. I like the slope and the mix of wood and rock. But my tank is a bit bigger, so I'm not quite sure whether I'm going to try two slopes or one. In my current setup I had somewhat of a slope, but I found out that it's pretty pratical to have the filter intake on the low side and not the high side. Downside is the visibility of technique, I don't have all that nice glassware and stuff. What I did consider is to use somekind of mesh to allow me to poor soil around the intake and heater. But my gut feeling says that's going to cause more trouble than it solves.

First thing I need to tackle though, is an approach on how to change soil and hardscape. I do not have a second tank for my fish & shrimps. So I'm looking for a pratical approach which does not cause too much stress and risk for the residents of my tank.

@Ady34 thanks! Good to be here :)
 
Haha, yeah I was already kind of prepared for that. The guy who pointed me here told me that the Dutch way of working is pretty old school compared to what others do. Luckily I'm nowhere near a fan of old school stuff, so definitely going to check out that tutorial section :)
 
Rinsing the substrate ones will help to reduce cloudiness, also if you have the possibility you could siphon water out and at the same time ad new water (with hoses), unless there is to much chlorine in the water....Even easier to just re home your fish in a bucket for an afternoon, they should be fine if you use an airstone for that time.
 
Any large plastic container will do, you can "harvest"water from the tank in it, put a cheap airfilter and a heater in it. When you have plenty transfer fish and the remaining water. Empty and clean the tank, put in the new substrate/plants and add water from the container. Fish will keep in the container for 24 hours easily. If the tank is ready for them transfer fish again.
 
Thank hoggie!

Last week I got myself three bags of 18L Akadama, the hard quality with small grain. I also got about 15 kilo's of dragon stone which either turned out to be more kilo's, or it's just way more rock than I expected. And lastly, four pieces of bonzai wood to complement the hardscape. The wood already sank in my current tank, so no boiling of waiting there.

Still doubting about the scape. As said, I like George's TMC signature tank, but my tank is a bit bigger (120 x 40 x 45) so doing one slope might not be the best idea. So instead I'm thinking of doing a mountain like thing in the middle, surrounded by dwarf hairgrass which I already have. I will drop by the local garden shop to find something to support the mountain underneath the soil.

For the flora, I have pogostemon helferi which I want to reuse. I also have some cyperus helferi and a couple of different red coloured stem plants which might create a nice contrast. The problem with these plants is that they are not in great shape due to the high KG / GH in my current setup. So I'm in doubt whether I should give them a chance in the new tank, or not take the risk and buy some new ones instead.
 
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