# 4 x 2 x 2 Low maintenance 'scape



## nrus70 (19 Jan 2010)

Hi Everyone

Ive been lurking for far too long so thought I would post a pic of my tank, it been set up around 12 months but this particular 'scape has been going for about 7 or 8 months. 
Tank 4 x 2 x 2 Starphire glass
Light 2 x 150 w halide 2 hours, 2 x T5 54 w 89 hours
Pressurised CO2,  Aquamedic reactor with Ocean Runner Pump 2400 LPH both external
2 x Eheim 2260
Substrate is a mix of ECO complete, some ADA , Pumice, peat and some clay tablets with blood and bone
Plants are easy ones for me to look after! Narrow leaf Java, Phllipine, Bolbitus, some Cyperus Helferi, Crypt Wendettii ( Green, Brown, Tropica) Some of these are absolute monsters Crypts!!
Anubias
Mini Xmas Moss
Fish 100 x  Harlequin Rasbora, some Otto's, Peppermint Bristles and some Neon Gold Corys
Plus far too many Cherry shrimp and some Native Darwin Algae Shrimp, excellent algae munchers! ( I live in Australia by the way) hope you like it 
Cheers Nick


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## vauxhallmark (19 Jan 2010)

Gorgeous tank. 60cm front to back looks so much nicer than narrow tanks. You're not tempted to put any other fish in? I wouldn't be able to resist a few pairs of dwarf cichlids, Nanacara or Apistogramma for example. You could have more than one male with several females, it would be great to see them stake out their teritory and try to attract the ladies!

Congrats on a lovely tank. We see very few from Australia.

Mark

PS Ever been to the aquarium in Townsville?


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## Themuleous (19 Jan 2010)

Crikey me!  That's sweet  must have taken a fair while to get the java fern and anubias to that size?!

Sam


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## AdAndrews (19 Jan 2010)

stunning, well done!


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## Jase (19 Jan 2010)

Now that's what I'm talking about! That is a stunner!   

What weight of wood do you have in there? I would expect a fair amount...


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## nrus70 (19 Jan 2010)

Thanks for the compliments everyone

Mark : No plans for anymore fish, I really love the Harlequins, their copper colour looks lovely against the green. I think Dwarf Cichlids would scoff all my Shrimp!

Sam : It took a while for everything to get going, but I wanted something long term, I would never dream of putting stems in a tank this big, my god the work to look after them ! The wife would leave me!!!

Jase : There is big chunk of wood in there ,Its sort of an S shape lying on its side, but its virtually invisble now, the Narrow Leaf Java had its first trim a couple of weeks ago, plus I took out heaps of moss, other than that its quite easy to look after, apart from shrimp kicking bits all over the sand at the front.


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## AdAndrews (19 Jan 2010)

sorry, did you say blood and bone for the substrate?? meaning? actually blood and bones   :?:


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## George Farmer (19 Jan 2010)

Nice job!

Low maint doesn't have to be low aesthetics and this is a perfect example.  The vivid green textures fill the tank wonderfully and the touch of open sand provides a nice balance to the vista.

Thanks for sharing and welcome to UKAPS!


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## LondonDragon (19 Jan 2010)

Amazing tank  congratulation and welcome aboard


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## chilled84 (19 Jan 2010)

Thouse java ferns are amazing.


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## aaronnorth (19 Jan 2010)

brilliant  
welcome to UKAPS

thanks, Aaron


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## andyh (19 Jan 2010)

Excellent scape! The greens are stunning! 

Can you explain what pruning you do with your ferns? I am interested as i have them in one of my scapes!


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## Nick16 (19 Jan 2010)

and do a plant plan!!

so we know exactly whats where. im gathering inspiration for my next tank so im looking at what plants work well!


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## flygja (20 Jan 2010)

Stop lurking and start posting more! This is a beautiful tank, gives me a lotta ideas for a low maintenance discus tank I'm planning.


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## Mark Webb (20 Jan 2010)

This is a really beautiful tank - well done


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## nrus70 (20 Jan 2010)

Thanks everyone, been fiddling around with planted tanks for about 3 years now, this is my "Dream" tank, it was inspired by a 'scape by Luis Navarro called " Forest of Crypts". The missus made me fund it myself by selling off all my diving gear, the water in Victoria is too cold anyway!!

Ok a few questions to answer

Yes it really is blood and bone with clay in the substrate, they are made in Australia by a company called Aquagreen and sold as Dino Dung ( Im not joking), they are superb for gross root feeders, there around 20 or so dotted around in the substrate. There  is a real mix of stuff in there, ADA, Eco, plus some homemade  Powersand ( too pricey to buy too much) and the real ADA stuff. I also chucked in some Laterite that I had lying about plus some peat. 

As for trimming the ferns, I just trimmed lots of old leaves off close to the rhizome, or cut pieces off the actual rhizome, it was VERY time consuming, but the fern has bounced with lots of new growth.

The hardest part with this tank was trying to visualise it several months down the track, you cant really be moving stuff about in here, so that was a real challenge. Long term gets my vote from now on, my 2 ft cube has just been stripped of stems apart from Proserpinaca Paulustris as it grows nice n slow, will post a pic of that up soon

Cheers Nick


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## Mark Webb (20 Jan 2010)

Nick, have you always had this level of lighting on the tank? What is your fert dosing regime?


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## Ben M (20 Jan 2010)

wow, i can't get my narrow java fern to thicken out. amazing tank


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## nrus70 (20 Jan 2010)

Mark

Lighting has been reduced, previously the 2 x 150 w halides were on for 4 -5 hours which I felt was too much, plus the 2 x T x 5 were on for 10 hours. I really only bought the halide /T 5 combo beacuse  my local shop gave me a good deal on it and i have too admit when they are on the ripple effect is really nice. The halide bulbs are 2 x 8000k from a company called Watergrass in Hong Kong, they now just come for a couple of hours in the evening when Im home, the rest of the time its just 2 x T5 whic are Geismann and also are pleasent to look at but probably no better for plant growth than some cheap ones!!!

Ferts are just powdered NPK added two or three time a week , I mix my own chelated trace elements with a mix I bought from a hydroponics shop. I add 10 gm to 500 ml of distilled water and just squirt some in every day, no fussing around with drops or xxxx amount of millimeters.  
Alage has never really been an issue, bit of BBA and some green spot here and there, but I just let them run their course and once everything stabilised and I tweaked the dry ferts they went. I get some green algae in the sand but i just turn it over and every now and then. 

The ferns love their water column ferts and get plenty of flow over them plus a blast of 300 w of halide everyday and they are thriving, I will giving more away agian soon!!

Cheers Nick 

Cheers Nick


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## rawr (20 Jan 2010)

Wow, now that's what I'm talking about! This is my type of tank, I would love to own something like that.


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## Mark Webb (21 Jan 2010)

nrus70 said:
			
		

> Mark
> 
> Lighting has been reduced, previously the 2 x 150 w halides were on for 4 -5 hours which I felt was too much, plus the 2 x T x 5 were on for 10 hours. I really only bought the halide /T 5 combo beacuse  my local shop gave me a good deal on it and i have too admit when they are on the ripple effect is really nice. The halide bulbs are 2 x 8000k from a company called Watergrass in Hong Kong, they now just come for a couple of hours in the evening when Im home, the rest of the time its just 2 x T5 whic are Geismann and also are pleasent to look at but probably no better for plant growth than some cheap ones!!!
> 
> ...



I find this most interesting Nick, as I am planning a new large low maintenence tank using all of the plants on your list, plus a few others. You clearly have things right to keep algae under control from the off. How densely did you plant initially?


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## plantbrain (21 Jan 2010)

nrus70 said:
			
		

> Thanks everyone, been fiddling around with planted tanks for about 3 years now, this is my "Dream" tank, it was inspired by a 'scape by Luis Navarro called " Forest of Crypts". The missus made me fund it myself by selling off all my diving gear, the water in Victoria is too cold anyway!!
> 
> Ok a few questions to answer
> 
> ...



Whaaaaa?
You do not like trimming and weeding the stems no more?

I thought only "advanced" aquarist do stem plants  

haha

Try going without the HQI's. Or run them only 1 hour. I use 4x 54W on my 120 gal, similar sized tank.
My 180 gal has 2 w/gal also, I have HQI for all the tanks, but no longer use them. Just T5 or PC.

I have a somewhat different shaped(60 gal cube), but similar tank and my client's tank also.

You might weed out some of the plants and sell them off and make a larger pathway for the white sand foreground for more space to feed, and catch cherry shrimp for sale. I add a shrimp pellet and they all come out, being stupid, they do not run from the net till it's too late.

This will open the tank up more and allow you to see and view the livestock better and give you a different look as the design ages and you want to change it.

If you have any GSA on the glass, try increased PO4 dosing 2-3 ppm per dose).
I also used the watergrass bulbs, they are different from the ADA, but far more reasonable.
I have not cleaned glass for a long long time. 

Still, for the client's larger tank, I raised the lights up about 40cm and left 1/2 the HQI's on.
For my tanks, no HQI's any more, and the electric bill, and the fuse box thanks me every month.


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## nrus70 (22 Jan 2010)

With hindsight ( A wonderfull thing! ) I should have just bought a quad T 5 unit as this would be ample light , I will back off the halides a little and see what happens, the heat they chuck out is ridiculous. I would like nice Aracadia one but oh the price over here in Oz ! Stems, yeah there too advanced for me, or is it Im too lazy one or the other!
I will also up the Phospahate dosage a little as I noticed some more green spot than normal today.

I would like to extend the sand back a little in the middle to  give a more curved look but i dont really want to go rooting about in there, it IS my one major annoyance and I think I may have consider attempting it at a later date. 

I did plant very densley with all the species in there from the very start, perhaps a little too densley where the Crypts are concerned as some of them are getting quite chunky, Im going to snip a few leaves this weekend. I had never grown them very succesfully before due to my constant "fiddiling"' about with them in my previous tank, but when left alone and even though they are only green and brown Wendettii  I really like them, plus the Cyperus is another favourite with its lime green leaves

Cheers Nick


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## plantbrain (22 Jan 2010)

CO2 is the only other thing if you have the GSA on glass _if it's not PO4_, adding more PO4 quickly addresses it otherwise, I dose about 1/2 teaspoon 3x a week.

The Java fern will suffer and the Cypreus if the CO2 is poor compared to the other species.
Often getting a tad blackened and not as clean algae wise as you'd like and know is possible.

When CO2/light balance is good, the Java fern will bloom nicely.
Same for the mosses.

Still, with the density of plants, you have to be careful even with low light and and slower growing plants, you can certainly run out of nutrients and due to all the structure from the plants/wood, you can have many pockets of low current and low CO2.

Make sure to hack the weeds back and sell them off. Pays for the darn tank after all.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## Amoeba (5 Feb 2010)

Love the setup. How much time do you spend on trimming the plants?


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## Steve Smith (5 Feb 2010)

Very very nice    I love it!  More pics!!


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## TBRO (5 Feb 2010)

Wow, that is a lovley tank. You've got that really nice stem bush look without the stems! Do you get much BBA on the anubis? How is the sand separated from the rest of the substrate, my shrimps always mix everything up !?

Great work, Tom 

Just out of interest, have you ever collected plants in Australia and used them in your tank? I saw some really nice glosso type plants when we went on holiday to Fraser Island


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## nrus70 (5 Feb 2010)

I have only trimmed/chopped into the Narrow Leaf once and have removed some moss probably only twice. I have also trimmed a few Crypt leaves here and there as i planted a little too close together

I did have some BBA on some of the Anubias but I have fiddled around with the dosing after some advice from Tom Barr and upped the Phospahte and its now all gone, plus the glass is totally free off green spot algae. This has happened in less than two weeks. I also belive that the large flow rate has played a major part in this tank being relativley well behaved!! 

The sand is seperated with black strip of rubber the just reached the level of the growing substrate, I then placed some rocks over the " Join ". It looked a little artifical intially but  after the anubias took hold ( pushed the roots into the susbsrate and they really loved it, they grew much quicker than if they have to get their nutrients from the water column) Some little pumice rocks wrapped in Xmas moss in betwenn the cracks and soon it looked much more natural. The Shrimp do make bit of a mess but its not too bad! I have just added 10 x Dwarf Chain Loach and they love rooting about in the sand

Native plants are very popular with a lot aquarists over here as a some of the plants you can buy anywhere in the UK are not available due to Australias very strict quarantine rules. In my ignorance when I first moved here I ordered plants from Singapore and received a "Polite" letter from Customs basiclly saying , "Dont do this again, your plants have been destroyed, its illegall !!" Bit of shock but totally my fault,the wildlife and plants over here are totally unique and must be protected.

Im staring to get itchy hands with this 'scape now and may tear it down in winter time, I really fancy a nice shoal of Torpedo Barbs with hardscape at one end and free space at the other


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