nah guys thanks for the warm welcome with this scape. last night we had a photo shoothing for the iaplc and we shoot this tank too. amazing what a 5D Mark II can do with professional lighting. You will be shocked by the moss details later when we share the photos.
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thanks for all of your nice feedback. all of this would not worth anything if we could not share and talk about it. so communities like UKAPS makes the real sense. we learned a lot here and still learning a lot with every visit. we cross inspire each other and that's just awesome
twg said:
Do you have a favourite type of moss to work with Viktor? I've only ever used Java and would be interested to see if you had any preference to one particular type. For it's shape, growing habits etc?
In soft water most of the mosses act and looks differently. they looks much better. around this time i love chrismas moss and weeping as they looks lovely bushy with great texture. but fissidens is one of my all time fav and i still did not had a chance to use riccardia which is a must have for me. of course there are many other mosses out there but these are my favs for sure.
nowadays i've more into to use mosses on the ground rather than the woods. so many possibilities and shapes, but not enough time to play all out.
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George Farmer said:
This is one of the best I've seen from you/GA - it's beautiful on many levels.
The fine textures of the mosses and stems make it look so inviting - sumptuous!
You guys are really living the dream with having the opportunity to aquascape and share your passion on such a great level. It's really awe-inspiring.
Thanks for sharing, and keep up the wonderful work.
Thanks my friend, we have really good masters here. Without them (including you of course) it would be much harder. I can't be enough appreciated for all the great knowledge and inspiration what we've gained here in the past years.
Antoni said:
Thanks for the info on softenizer, Victor! That is the best way to know how something works, is it good for use and what issues may arise - unprofessional attitude It will be appreciated if you could share your experience so far, regarding cleaning, time the resin lasts etc..
On softenizer...
Resin change could happen in every 2 month or so. What i've seen after a time the resin get stucked not floating that much. I bet if we would measure the water the water parameters would reflect this too. As at the beggining the resin is super light easy to float in the glass.
The softnenizer is hooked to the filter pipe all accessories included with more then enough resin in the basic package. So you will have enough to change it later meanwhile you recharge the resin in salt water.
You can turn on off or fine adjust the water pressure in the tube. So this is easy to set the desired floating with that.
For first sight i thougth the glass cleaning will be the hardest part, but there are other stuffs too. For example as the clean hose gets the water from the filter the hose will have algae after a time. which you could not clean. We had to replace after 2 month, but this is only a silicone tube like an air hose so this is not an issue.
At water changes you need to close the filter head otherwise the vacum will suck the resin back to the filter.
Cleaning the glass is ok, however you need the tiny fine brush from ADA to clean the softenizer inlet. That part is the most sensitive part of the softenizer so need to handle carefully at cleaning.
Other than that this works like a charm. Nice eye catching piece, to clean the glass is as much effort as a filter glass pipe.
Antoni said:
With no intention to hijack the topic... I'm really interested what is causing this swing in the pH. IMO a reason could be the low kH of the RO water, which lacks a buffer capacity if it has value under 4-5. But probably the substrate is playing role here too. As far as I''m aware the Malaya is lowering kH and pH most of all Aquasoil substrates, so this could be the major player for the swing and that is why you are experiencing this in this tank only.
You're right because of the full RO water the KH and GH is low. This lack of buffer capacity, so we need to be careful and measure the water parameters at WC. We never had problems only one time on one of the tanks. Other than that we did not had buffering problems.
We're using Amazonia in that pH swing tank. Probably KH was around 3 when the pH made the trick.
Antoni said:
Just out of curiosity, what the pH of the tank with the hemianthus is?
HC Iwagumi tank pH is higher because the water hardness is more there. We have around 25-30Kg of stones there which plays a big role in hardness. For this reason pH is around 6.8-7 usually there.
Antoni said:
I'm really interested to know, how phosphate based buffer such as Seachem Neutral Regulator increases pH,
well i am sure the scientific heads will answer this easily like Clive, Darell, Tom i am just a planthead here.
😛
but works like a charm and super quick. i thought after the initial increase the pH will drop again because of the buffering capacity but the tanks were pretty stable after the use. since then we used it with shrimp tanks and other plant tanks too. no negative effect on any species and you really see all the species calmed and relaxed if the pH was down before.
and that is why you are experiencing this in this tank only.
