# GA in-store display - Moss forest 180L



## viktorlantos (10 May 2011)

Cheers guys, i thought i share another tank with you which we're building up in the past few months. This is an experimental project as we wanted a stem tank in our showroom with some mosses on the wood decor.

Tank specs:

90P OptiWhite
Eheim 2075 filter
2 x Hydor 1600
Aqua Soil Malaya with ADA Mekong Sand
ATI Sun Power T5 - 4x39W
ADA Softenizer
Pressurized CO2 with ceramic diffuser
Decor: ADA Iron Wood

Plants: Taxiphyllum barbieri (Vesicularia), Vesicularia dubyana 'Christmas', Eleocharis Parvula, Hemianthus micranthemoides, Myriophyllum matogrossense, Proserpinaca palustris ''Cuba'', Micranthemum umbrosum, Rotala rotundifolia, Echinodorus tenellus, Anubias Nana, Hygrophila pinnatifida

start on 2011. jan. 23






feb 15 with some guppys  





march 10.





april 14.





april 26.





and today after a trim last week... sorry i captured without tripod and daytime













thanks for watching  
hope the stems wil grow up next week to the surface level then we will shoot the IAPLC photo.


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## BigTom (10 May 2011)

Beautiful stuff. I like how you've left the wood in the center exposed to offset everything else.


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## Ian Holdich (10 May 2011)

lovely looking tank, what is the moss on the bottom?


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## Antoni (10 May 2011)

That looks so natural and lush! Great work, Victor!   

Real example of Nature aquarium, I like how the moss has overtaken the driftwood.

What is your fertilising regime? What ferts are you using? 

As you are using softeniser I suppose you are using water straight from the tap? What are the parameters before and after the softeniser?


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## Garuf (10 May 2011)

Beautiful! I'd like to see it trimmed super hard to give the moss the same shape it had in the march the 10th picture. 
I'm super envious Viktor, I wish I could turn this hobby into a job like you have.


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## viktorlantos (10 May 2011)

BigTom said:
			
		

> Beautiful stuff. I like how you've left the wood in the center exposed to offset everything else.



thanks mate  yup we never trimmed the moss there. 
i could not capture how beauty and clean it is, but the soft water made miracle with this type of moss.



			
				ianho said:
			
		

> lovely looking tank, what is the moss on the bottom?



Thank you.  
Christmas Moss, same as on the left wood. Used Riccia Stone there to keep it in shape.



			
				Antoni said:
			
		

> That looks so natural and lush! Great work, Victor!
> Real example of Nature aquarium, I like how the moss has overtaken the driftwood.



thanks my friend  



			
				Antoni said:
			
		

> What is your fertilising regime? What ferts are you using?



We're using our own premixed EI ferts on this tank along with daily Easy Carbo. Other than that just cold soft water at water changes. Water temp is around 21-24 celsius.



			
				Antoni said:
			
		

> As you are using softeniser I suppose you are using water straight from the tap? What are the parameters before and after the softeniser?



well actually we put the softenizer in only for demo purposes. to learn more about it and show the functionality to our visitors. this softenizer reduce a bit of the hardness only from your tap water. Around 4-5 degrees. Maybe if you combo this with the Palm Net from ADA (if you're using the ADA system) you can have even softer water.
But we're using RO in our tanks. We left it in to see how much trouble to clean it. How frequently need to change the resin, what kind of problems users can have with the piping. So the past month helped a lot to learn all about it.



			
				Garuf said:
			
		

> hard to give the moss the same shape it had in the march the 10th picture.
> I'm super envious Viktor, I wish I could turn this hobby into a job like you have.



thank you sir  
yup well i guess a heavy trimming would help a lot on many places, but we just gave it a go. maybe after the photo shooting we will refine the tank to see if we could give it a different look. but i agree with you the moss - along with some other species - just overgrown.  

the fun part of the job when the tanks looks good and you see the happy faces of the visitors and friends, but maintain a hell lot of tank and the business itself sometimes kill the creativity and the fun. i guess the hardest to be more on the hobby side and learn to enjoy it daily, meanwhile the business not get hurt. anyway we do this because we love aquascaping, everything else does not matter. 

i am pretty happy that we can share our tanks here and we also can see many of yours which we enjoy so much. we're individuals here not business owners and if i see this way, this is pretty cool that we can play with so many tanks.


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## bigmatt (10 May 2011)

well that's pretty much perfect. I hate you  On a serious note i hear conflicting things about RO - do you think it makes a difference? Matt


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## viktorlantos (11 May 2011)

bigmatt said:
			
		

> well that's pretty much perfect. I hate you  On a serious note i hear conflicting things about RO - do you think it makes a difference? Matt



 

On RO i only can tell you our experiences. Using a 3 membrane system to generate RO water in the store. This is a pretty effective system produces less waste water because of the 3 membranes and around 1000 l / day RO or more.

We put it into a large barell but it is cold. Around 15 celsius. We measured a low pH in the barell around 5.8. 

Originally we wanted to mix the RO with tap water, but we gave a 2 months test to see how it works without tap mix.
So now we only use pure RO. 

All the plants looks awesome. The best HC what i ever seen in my life   Mosses looks great. Less algae issues with the right CO2 injection and balance. Fishes, shrimps love it. On shrimps we do add minerals of course. And this way we keep CRS easily in planted tanks too.

But there's a positive experience since we're using. I am using it at home too, but this is different when you see a lot of tank with different settings and they all works great.

One thing we need to take care is the pH. Because of the low pH from the RO water it could happen that the pH drops below 6 if we do frequent and large water changes. 

I've seen Furcata's falling down because of the Osmo shock when the pH dropped below 6. So we measure the water at every water changes to avoid any pH issues, and if needed we add a bit of Seachem pH changer powder directly to the tank. We have around pH 6.5 in average on the plant tanks. Usually pH 6.5-7.

For a nano tank it's not worth it i guess, but on larger tanks you will see differences in plant health for sure.


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## nayr88 (11 May 2011)

This is ridiculous !! 

Another stunning tank Viktor


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## a1Matt (11 May 2011)

Great looking tank.
I suspect the osmo shock is from a sudden change in TDS levels rather than pH.


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## viktorlantos (11 May 2011)

a1Matt said:
			
		

> Great looking tank.
> I suspect the osmo shock is from a sudden change in TDS levels rather than pH.



Thanks my friend.  

Well here is the thing. I did water changes on multiple tanks at that time. They were all around 6.3-6.4 pH originally.
Other tanks worked great after water changes, probably those fishes aren't that sensitive as Popondetta Furcata's.

We do water changes with a garden pipe driven by an Eheim compact. This means the refilling happens quick enough. When i filled the tanks i've seen that the furcatas swimming through the fresh osmo water and some of them got shocked and falled down in a few seconds. I never seen this before. Just like a when a bird get shot. It was quite shocking. And for the first sight we did not know what could be the problem as all of our other tank was ok after the change. 

Those fishes which still swimmed not swimmed anymore in a team. When i measured the water the pH was similar like in our barell around 5.8. We added in a spoon of Seachem Neutral Regulator and all those fish become relaxed in seconds and formed team again.

The rest of our tanks were also low on pH this time so i adjusted them a bit to the normal level.

I only can think of a pH issue because of this. The only reason we realized it, because of the sudden reaction from these sensitive fishes.


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## flygja (11 May 2011)

What a beauty!


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## twg (11 May 2011)

I'm in total awe of your work.

Incredibly inspiring!   

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?

Cheers, Tom


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## Plantgeek (11 May 2011)

Very nice!


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## George Farmer (11 May 2011)

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.


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## Antoni (11 May 2011)

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.. 

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.

Just out of curiosity, what the pH of the tank with the hemianthus is? 

I'm really interested to know, how phosphate based buffer such as Seachem Neutral Regulator increases pH, 





> "by precipitating calcium and magnesium while removing any chlorine, chloramine, or ammonia"


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## B7fec (11 May 2011)

Wow Victor,this is an absolute stunner!


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## viktorlantos (11 May 2011)

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.  

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.   



			
				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.


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## Antoni (11 May 2011)

Wow that was a nice, comprehensive answer my friend, thank you very much! 

I wish you great luck and wining ranking on the IAPLC 2011, will be waiting for the results to see!


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## laimyzaz (11 May 2011)

Very impresive tank


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## viktorlantos (20 May 2011)

Ready for IAPLC


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## Piece-of-fish (20 May 2011)

Viktor something is wrong with the picture, its all blurry


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## viktorlantos (20 May 2011)

Piece-of-fish said:
			
		

> Viktor something is wrong with the picture, its all blurry



Ah i thought it's only my monitor


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## Ian Holdich (20 May 2011)

thats a 1st place Victor!

if you shake your head really quickly, you can seen the scape. Lets hope Amano is epileptic. lol.


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## sanj (20 May 2011)

> if you shake your head really quickly, you can seen the scape. Lets hope Amano is epileptic. lol.




I wish I hadnt done that...


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## Piece-of-fish (20 May 2011)

sanj said:
			
		

> > if you shake your head really quickly, you can seen the scape. Lets hope Amano is epileptic. lol.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Ahhh   you can indeed.


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## John Starkey (21 May 2011)

Hi Viktor,i cannot believe it,this aquascape is more or less what i have planned for my 80x40x40 setup,this is a superb example of an ADA nature aquarium,excellent work my friend,

john.


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## viktorlantos (21 May 2011)

john starkey said:
			
		

> Hi Viktor,i cannot believe it,this aquascape is more or less what i have planned for my 80x40x40 setup,this is a superb example of an ADA nature aquarium,excellent work my friend,
> 
> john.



Thank you my friend.    

The story of this image is funny. We had an official shooting session last week on all  of our scapes. But at that time this was trimmed and not looked good. One week later the stems reached the surface again and the scape looked awesome so we had to do another round, but this time without all the prof photo gears.

We have too many things to do so we left the shooting to the end of our business hours. Without any professional lighting - we only used 2 T8 as a backlight and the Aquarium lighting. We forgot to bring the hairdryer, so we had to blow the surface  Packed the tank and myself in a black cloth meanwhile my friend blow the surface. Did a couple  shot in 10-15 minutes and we were ready. Shame, but one of the best tank got the less time for the final capture, but the image is still very good. Hopefully we will be able to share it later.


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## flygja (21 May 2011)

Since when IAPLC accepts 3D photos huh?


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## George Farmer (21 May 2011)

Even from the blurred image I can see how strong the composition is, and how wonderfully grown-in the plants are.

I'm sure it'll do very well in the IAPLC and look forward to seeing the final image.


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## viktorlantos (28 Jul 2011)

#227 IAPLC 2011


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## viktorlantos (28 Jul 2011)




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## flygja (29 Jul 2011)

That's NA through and through


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## viktorlantos (27 Oct 2011)

we had some algae issues on this tank in the past month. since i checked through all the possible issues it turned out the massive mosses caused the algae breakout. had too many invisible dirt in it and under the moss carpet. so we throw out part of the mosses and replaced the upper part to fissidens. also replaced the background plants to pogostemon stellata, rotala r., rotala sp green. this sitll need to grow in but you get the idea.   
this tank will be rescaped also by the end of the year.


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


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## Ian Holdich (27 Oct 2011)

great last shot Viktor! I'd love to come over to your shop.


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## viktorlantos (2 Dec 2011)

A bit of an update here.

We've changed the background plant in the last months to stems. Rotala Rotundifolia, Rotala sp. Green, Pogostemon Stellata. 

I shot this today>


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr

Christmas time is here.... with moss now  


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


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## Arana (2 Dec 2011)

WOW!!!


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## plantbrain (3 Dec 2011)

Moss is harder is some ways over time to keep.
Gets dirty, gets into all filters and where it does not belong.
Grows fast

But has a nice look and darker cool feel.

Also catches all sorts of algae and pest plants.

I always found lots of shrimp to clean it was very helpful.


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## viktorlantos (3 Dec 2011)

plantbrain said:
			
		

> Moss is harder is some ways over time to keep.
> Gets dirty, gets into all filters and where it does not belong.
> Grows fast
> 
> ...



Yup you're right Tom. They looks amazing, but keeping them on a long term adds many challenges to the scaper. We had algae attack 2 or 3 times in the past 10 months since we started it. All because of the detrius which collected under the mosses. So we learned the lesson to suck out everything under these mosses which helps a lot to keep it algae free.

Soft water really add a new dimension to these mosses.

And what i've seen on some of our tanks, that high light helps to make it look better. More bushier, more vivid green. However this is really not needed to keep them. They just looks 10 times better with that


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## viktorlantos (3 Dec 2011)

I have to add that the current moss does not look the best here. It was in the past, but we used H2O2 on one of our algae attack to manage the hair algae and this was too much for the mosses. Still a few chunk survived nicely as you can see on the christmas tree image above.


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## viktorlantos (6 Dec 2011)

Shot from today... some trimming needed, too bad the colors are the best now... so good that i could not capture it  


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


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## Mark Evans (6 Dec 2011)

Absolutely fantastic Viktor!

A good lesson in how to grow plants.


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## foxfish (6 Dec 2011)

Beautiful, not much open space left now!


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## jalexst (6 Dec 2011)

Nice one victor,

Stunning tank, it's a real inspiration!


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## viktorlantos (6 Dec 2011)

Mark Evans said:
			
		

> Absolutely fantastic Viktor!
> 
> A good lesson in how to grow plants.



Thank you my friend. A bit overgrown, but it's a nice way to change something on the original idea. We did that 3 times in the past 11 months. So had a little fun on it.  

We may will redo this in january to something new.



			
				foxfish said:
			
		

> Beautiful, not much open space left now!



Thanks mate. Yup too much plant, we just do minimal trimming on plants to keep up this shape and colors.
The current fishes are hiding all the time when i get closer to the tank. So they might appreciate it   



			
				jalexst said:
			
		

> Nice one victor,
> Stunning tank, it's a real inspiration!



Thank you, i am glad if this help in some ways.


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## viktorlantos (6 Dec 2011)

My collegue also shot this, but with an older Nikon cam and a different lens. This is closer to the reality


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## Dan-CR4 (6 Dec 2011)

an absolutely beautiful & stunning tank. One day i hope to be able to do something like this, but got a long way to go


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## fandango (7 Dec 2011)

Wow! An explosion of textures and colour shades. Very beautiful!


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## viktorlantos (8 Jan 2012)

A quick update on this one too. The tank is really overgrown so it's lost the shape a bit, but we try different things there until we rescape it soon.

Currently the left HM was removed and replanted, because we can't trimm it anymore and lifted up from the soil.

Tried Fissidens on the top of the wood close to the surface with extreme high light and this become a super dense thing. The photo has a green glow like it would have affected by algae, but this is clean  The guy behind the camera is an amateur one to capture it correctly.  

A few shots from yesterday.


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


Green Aqua - Showroom by viktorlantos, on Flickr


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## clonitza (8 Jan 2012)

I like the warm light better then the one you used in the IAPLC photo, it really shows the beautiful colors in your tank.   
Guess everyone's wondering what's lurking inside your moss, it really needs a haircut. 

Mike


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