# Parva Beach - Where Corydoras Holiday



## Chris Jackson (14 Jul 2015)

Greetings and welcome to my new journal.

This is the follow on scape from my previous Island Shore effort that had become a bit old and overgrown.

For this project I wanted to go to something more wood and fern based and less high speed, high light

Friday 10th July marked change over day and I never cease to be surprised by how quick it is to tear down a scape that had previously occupied and challenged me for so many months.




 

The inhabitants were transferred to a large bucket and I borrowed a filter from another tank I have to keep them happy. It's a very warm room so no heater was needed.The existing sump filter was kept running by simply sticking the tank inflow pipe into the outflow box.



 

I kept a lot of the mature aqua soil and powersand mix to help acclimatise the tank swiftly and then added a generous top layer of fresh Aquasoil amazonia. There is a flexible plastic strip (a bit of worktop edge banding I happened to have) separating the sand from the Aquasoil. 



 

Plant wise I have:

Myriophyllum mattogrossense - From the previous scape
Bacopa Australis - From the previous scape
Rotala Wallichii - From the previous scape
Rotala rotundfolia - From the previous scape
Cryptocoryne wendtii (I think) - From my other tank
Crytocoryne willissii (I think) - From my other tank
Junius Repens - From the previous scape
Cryptocoryne parva - New (Potted Aqua Essentials)
Glossostigma elatinoides - New (Tissue Culture Aqua Essentials)
Micranthemum umbrosum - New (Potted Aqua Essentials)
Anubias nana bonsai - New (Potted Aqua Essentials)
Anubias nana - New (Potted Aqua Essentials)
Microsorum narrow leaf - New (Potted Aqua Essentials)
Tropica Taxiphyllum flame - New (Tissue Culture Aqua Essentials)

I've never grown the Parva or Glosso before and whilst I know the Glosso is supposedly a love of light but I've also seen tales of it managing v well in lower light conditions so I'll see how I get on. My hope it that it will tend to grow along the brighter boarder by the "beach". The Micranthemum and Australis leaf shape compliment each other well and here the idea is to grow in a soft green hillside behind what will hopefully become a Parva carpet along the shore line. 

This is immediately after planting.



 

This is two days later on Sunday and you can see how the new inflow from the sump pump is directed almost to the bottom of the tank and directing flow along the "beach". I've two targets with this, firstly, create a current for the Corydoras to swim against and secondly to direct CO2 rich water into the lower sections of the tank and particularly into the Parva and Glosso. I was using a firstly a Lilly pipe and then a spray bar with my old scape and wasn't so happy with either as far as getting good distribution into the lower areas of what is an awkward shaped tank for flow at 60 x 30 x 45. At the top of the inflow, at the water surface, there is a 6mm hole with a short length of CO2 inserted that acts as a syphon break in the event of power or pump failure that also adds some surface circulation.



 

As the filter is highly effective and well matured I felt confident enough to add some shrimp and Ottos back in on Sunday and they settled in very happily so the Phantoms returned on yesterday after a 25% water change as I rather thought they'd prefer life in here to the bucket. The long term aim is that once the plants are well enough established to cope with the foraging ½ dozen small Julii or maybe Panda Corydoras will join the fray and spend most of their time on the beach .

CO2 is added via my High Efficiency Reactor design (as I detest atomiser mist) at around 4bps and light comes from a pair of excellent Giesemman Pulzar HO's controlled via the BT Interface according to this schedule that is less than full output and has some peaks and troughs during the day.



 

The sand and stones are from a beach near my house and were throughly soaked and rinsed for over a week. My only concern with this is that the pieces of ground shell etc. therein may harden the water more than I might wish but so far this does not seem to be an issue. 

Currently my biggest challenge is deciding how much fertiliser to add considering the fresh aqua soil and acclimatising of the new plants. I've added a little macro solution (About ¼ EI) so far and am watching the Wallichi in particular carefully as I find that to be very fert sensitive and a good indicator. 

So 4 days from planting up and the water is sparkly clear with happy critters. After some inner debate I've ordered more Parva to speed things up a little. 

Here's a short video showing the sump


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## Chris Jackson (19 Jul 2015)

One week on and so far so good.
Everything is growing but the shrimp are working hard digging up Glosso and littering the beach with aquasoil...



 

The flame moss is alight



 

I added another couple of pots of parva and am trimming the bacopa and micranthemum to encourage compact growth as well as doing general thinning and tidying elsewhere. I've been doing 20% daily water changes before adding ferts at about ¼ EI with an additional 2.5ml FE added mid week because some of the new growth was looking a bit yellowy. 



 

I read the 25 page What actually cause BBA thread over the course of the week it's quite entertaining with twists and turns, rants and quarrels that had me thinking "..surely I've got better things to be doing then reading this" but after about 8 pages I felt I couldn't give up. Seems I feel some strange sense of achievement from reaching the end of it and well I may even be a little wiser... Happily there is no sign of BBA in here just now.


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## foxfish (19 Jul 2015)

Hi Chris, looks fantastic.
I don't have any criticism but I wondered why you don't have more plastic media & why it is not above the water level in your sump?
I would guesse even with your present design, the filter easily out preforms a standard external filter.


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## Chris Jackson (19 Jul 2015)

Hi Foxfish,

Are well originally I had a great deal of the K1 micro media in a basket mostly above the water level but when i checked it after a couple of months only a very small amount was brown with bacteria and it seemed most of it was doing very little. So I decided to go for more of a moving bed type setup with the idea being that the media is always moving, self cleaning and repopulating with hungry new bacteria. It's only a shallow layer so that it is able to move about more freely than a thick one when only driven by the mild rain from the trickle plate. 

The foam pre-filter layer above serves as a 'dry' layer. It seems to work very well and I love that I can see into it to check it and that there is no clogging effect slowing flow.


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## foxfish (20 Jul 2015)

Oh, I have never heard about brown bacteria, I had a quick look at my bio balls & they are very clean looking & they have been in operation for many years!
Anyway it looks like yours is working ok


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## Chris Jackson (20 Jul 2015)

ha i'm no expert on brown bacteria.....that's just something i saw on a video about K1 media....could be dirt!


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## Mark-jan (20 Jul 2015)

Hi Chris! I was a big fan of Island Shore, and i'm very curious how this 1 is going to look in a few weeks! So far it looks great!


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## Chris Jackson (20 Jul 2015)

Hi Mark, Thanks! 
I'm really hoping for less of a schooling with this one


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## Chris Jackson (26 Jul 2015)

So here we are 16 days since planting and so far mostly so good.

One small drama this week mind. A shrimp somehow managed to get stuck in the outflow pipe and partially blocking the return flow to the sump and causing the overflow box to flood meaning that my wife went downstairs in the morning to find a small flood (about a litre  before the pump ran dry). I got one of her looks  I've put a mesh shrimp guard in the overflow box for now whilst I plot more fail safes.



 

Everything is growing, there are new leaves on all the crypts and the glosso is spreading but some green spot algae is showing it's presence a so I'll be upping ferts to ½ EI and reducing the photoperiod a bit (in particular turning off the moon phase feature as this has the tank partially lit until midnight which is a bit keen really). 

Water changes were 50% last weekend, 20% on Wednesday and 50% yesterday.

Here is a video for historical purposes.


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## Chris Jackson (5 Aug 2015)

So 26 days in....

I had to leave the tank unattended for 5 days over the weekend with just my mother in law feeding the fish a bit daily. I turned down the lighting considerably and left it with a last dose of macros. Pheww no dramas... 



 

Very tricky to get photos without reflections at this time of year and now there is some striping because the LED dimming (they dim by flashing on and off very rapidly) is picked up by my camera sensor, at this level of dimming at least.

So a good trim this evening, meant thinning out the back left corner to let more light in around there, a trim of the moss (followed by a slow zen like removal of the cuttings that got away). The only plant that is really showing much issue is the Cryptocoryne Parva where the original leaves are a bit sad with algae growth but there are healthy new shoots coming up as well and I'm pretty confident they will win through. Crypts are well known for their slow settling in periods.



 

The glossostigma is doing well and does not seem to have gone leggy with the reduced light and my only concern here is that it might tend to squeeze out the parva with its speedier growth.



 

It's going to be awhile before any corydoras arrive however as I want everything well rooted and grown it..

In order to reduce algae risks and try and balance the needs of high and low light plants I'm keeping the lower output "holiday" light schedule I set but have added a brighter peak to it. I'm wishing I had a PAR meter to help me tune this lighting better but in the absence of that watching the plants is the only way and probably a more useful learning experience. What I do know is that 100% output from 2 Pulzar HO's is BRIGHT...far brighter than my ferns or anubias want. I've also reduced the blue/green output a little through the photo period for a warmer look. This tank gets a lot of ambient light and maybe 20 mins of dawn sunshine on a clear day so balancing that is interesting. The plants grow forward towards the windows during the morning and then up to the lights as they get brighter later in the day. 

I do love the flexibility of this setup though and highly recommend the Giesemann Pulzar and BT Interface combination. Not cheap but money well spent!


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## Alexander Belchenko (6 Aug 2015)

Chris Jackson said:


> ....a trim of the moss (followed by a slow zen like removal of the cuttings that got away).



LOL ))))


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## Chris Jackson (6 Aug 2015)

A few better photos



 
Nice new growth



 
One of the workers



 
Delicate greens



 

The old growth is maybe a tad furry.. something to watch


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## Sentral (7 Aug 2015)

Very nice


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## Dantrasy (7 Aug 2015)

I like the glosso up high. You don't see that too often.


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## Chris Jackson (7 Aug 2015)

Dantrasy said:


> I like the glosso up high. You don't see that too often.



Thank. Well there was this gap in the wood that was cyring out for more than just moss and I also figured it might be interesting to compare the growth between the fully water fed glosso and the rooted stuff also feeding on AS Amazonia.


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## Chris Jackson (15 Aug 2015)

Meanwhile...

Rampant growth has meant daily trimming and me questioning my light levels as well as my selection of plants and fert regime.






The only thing that isn't romping away is the Cryptocoryne parva which is unfortunate for a scape called Parva Beach.... However patience is the name of the game with crypts right and Parva shouldn't be any more demanding than the Glosso which seems to be enjoying itself and new Parva shoots are arriving. I do wonder why have I got supposedly light loving Rotala, Juncus and carpet plants alongside Anubias and Ferns.... because I like a challenge I suppose!





The phantoms are very happy with the dim grotto created behind the wood and hang out there quite often when they're tired of sparring with each other.

Thread of the week for me has been http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/...rd-water-and-switching-to-alternatives.37923/ from Jack12 who after years of struggle with EI and his hard water switched to RO and Tropica Specialised with surprisingly positive results. This got me curious so I bought a bottle myself and have been using it all this week instead of the half EI dose I had been using. I haven't noticed much difference really but after I few days I doubled the standard dose  because the new growth was looking a to pale and yellowy. The attraction for me of simple pumps of one product is that it is far easier to entrust such a simple dosing to someone else when I'm away and on this size of tank the increased cost isn't a big issue. We shall see but sometimes I think I'm just fiddling about too much! To that end I've also reduced the light intensity a little further because the idea of this tank is for it to be slower and lower maintenance and not require intense flow and CO2 management!


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## Greenfinger2 (28 Aug 2015)

Hi Chris, Love this


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## Chris Jackson (29 Aug 2015)

Thanks! Update coming soon...


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## Chris Jackson (6 Sep 2015)

Well now.... 



 

I've upgraded the pump in my sump to an Ehiem Compact 2000lph because I wasn't happy with circulation I was getting before or with the amount of heat my Iwaki pump was producing. I haven't measured the throughput but it it must be at least 1000lph and the reactor is now working better with little to no burping but rather producing a nice level of micro bubbles instead. I've also made a mark 2 surface skimming outflow that is better arranged to deal with the higher flow rate and also functions better as a skimmer and includes a shrimp proof foam pre-filter.



 



 
The beach however is getting pretty green, rather short on Parva and a little over BBA'd... Yes all this upheaval with flow changes, CO2 running out and hassles stabilising the output from the replacement cylinder and the like has upset the tank balance and made for a brief algae rush a couple of weeks back. The green stuff that made a strong is now well into decline and the BBA / Staghorn stuff isn't spreading. I'm removing bits here and there and just watching what happens while I adjust CO2 ferts etc.  I'm now supplementing the Tropica Specialised with trace mix which seems to be making a positive difference and 

I'm not very happy with the look of the scape though with the mix of slow anubias, ferns and fast stem plants. I'm hatching a plan to crypt the tank out but not rushing into anything just yet. 

One thing that's for sure though is that glossostigma really doesn't need loads of light at all. I have it growing happily into the very shadiest parts of the tank..


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## Chris Jackson (11 Oct 2015)

About a month later. 

I decided that the look of the background stem plants were not what I was after so I trimmed them back heavily and transplanted some more crypts from my other tank back there. They are doing the melt and slow grow in thing just now whereas the Parva is overrun by the glossostigma and making the title "Parva Beach" seem a tad ridiculous. The algae issue I had seems well into decline now so I may invest in another batch.

I've certainly had more algae problems with this little tank than I've ever had with my big 400ltr job and I'm suspecting one of key factors with that is the amount of ambient daylight this tank gets. The big tank is in a very dim hall area under the stairs and gets light almost exclusively from the tank lighting whereas this is in a quite bright kitchen/family room and gets dawn sunshine for ½ an hour or so on a clear morning as well. I reduced the light intensity previously but it still appeared quite bright for perhaps rather more than necessary and whilst the algae wasn't in rampant take over mode it wasn't in particularly sharp decline either. So two weeks ago I decided to switch to a shorter period with a higher intensity peak in the middle and this seems to be working well. The light loving glosso and micranthemum is now growing more strongly whilst the algae has also moved into more rapid decline as well which has to be a like. I've leaned back on fert dosing alongside the reduced light and biomass and am just watching the plants and guestimating which at the moment means just 1 pump of Tropica Specialised twice a week. I've not adjusted the CO2 at all and have a drop from 7.6 and night to 6.7 during the day which I'm quite happy with for a slow grow tank like this with a kh of 5-6.

As of yesterday there are also 4 rather pretty Corydoras Napoensis in there but they steadfastly refused to pose for the camera this evening preferring instead the cosy quiet of the grotto behind the tree...


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## Greenfinger2 (11 Oct 2015)

Hi Chris, Its all a learning curve  
Crisp clean Scape Love the DW and planting


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## Chris Jackson (19 Oct 2015)

Generous trim of the mosses and tidy up this weekend. Sadly I lost two of the Cory Napoenis, one jumper dead on the floor and the other I suspect being the one I rescued from having jumped onto the floor.....eek open topped tanks! The two left then seemed rather sullen which I concluded was down to lack of company so I nipped out to the relatively nearby Pets At Home and picked up 3 "Peppered Corydoras" and now all five of them seem very happy messing around together and hanging by the beach plus the ottocinclus seem to like mixing it up with them as well which has all gone towards giving the tank a more playful feel..

The Parva is now starting to make a bit more of a showing but it is well known for being slooooooow.... In the background is some new Crypt. Nevilli/willisi courtesy of my preferred plant supplier Aqua Essentials who lured me to order with a discount so while I was at it I bought some Easycarbon out of curiosity because I keep reading positive reports on it. This tank and sump excluding hardscape add up to about 80ltr so for now I'm adding a light dose of 1ml per day in the evenings compared to the 1ml per 50ltr recommendation. The BBA is already nearly gone and so this should only help finish it off.


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## alto (19 Oct 2015)

Sorry to hear of the losses - hope you can find more of the _C Napoenis_ sometime, were they just a lucky find or had the shop actually ordered them in?

The background looks stunning (I've just plain black   )


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## Chris Jackson (19 Oct 2015)

alto said:


> Sorry to hear of the losses - hope you can find more of the _C Napoenis_ sometime, were they just a lucky find or had the shop actually ordered them in?
> 
> The background looks stunning (I've just plain black   )



The C Napoenis came from Maidenhead Aquatics Truro. marked up as C.Manus but the manager thought that was wrong. There may yet be some left...

The background is actually just the white wall behind the tank but there is also a thin flexi strip of LED lights (ebay) stuck to the very top back of the tank which creates a pleasing effect reflecting off the wall. I still love a classic black background though.


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## rebel (20 Oct 2015)

Nice and crisp scape! well done.

I've never seen an outflow in the bottom of the tank like that although I've thought about it to give my carpets the first dibs on CO2. Never been game enough to try because I don't have a sump but a canister.


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## Chris Jackson (20 Oct 2015)

rebel said:


> Nice and crisp scape! well done.
> 
> I've never seen an outflow in the bottom of the tank like that although I've thought about it to give my carpets the first dibs on CO2. Never been game enough to try because I don't have a sump but a canister.



Thanks! Yes it seems to work well for the glosso at least and guarantees a good deep input of fresh CO2 for that and other lower plants as you say. Part of my hope for the low level inflow was that the Corys would spend a fair bit of time swimming into the stream...as it happens they don't do that very much. I'm sure it could work equally well with a canister filter but just requires a bit more effort with priming it. There is a 5mm anti syphon hole just below the water surface on my set up with a short length of clear co2 hose inserted in it to save overflowing the sump in a power outage and also to create some surface circulation.


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## Paul Kettless (23 Oct 2015)

Love the look of this tank, very well done


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## Chris Jackson (24 Oct 2015)

Thanks Paul!


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## Chris Jackson (21 Nov 2015)

So a little update. I decided to uproot the glosso on the beach and set about giving the pava a better chance to grow in, so now it can actually be seen!
I've also added more inhabitants. There are now 8 cory napoensis and 3 peppered plus 12 black phantoms and an indeterminate number of shrimp and ottos. The corys have set about redistributing the aquasoil amazonia and whilst I could rake it back to sand I've grown to quite like the effect as is. They are also giving the remaining glosso around the wood a bit of hassle and causing some up-rooting but so be it. I've noticed some Monte Carlo growing as well that must have been left over from the previous scape and I'll see how that develops.

More livestock means more food, more waste maybe ammonia and less need for additional ferts so I've slipped back into the fert method that has served me well for many years. Simply adding KNO3 and traces as and when I feel the need by observing plant growth, algae and surface films. Currently this means a generous pinch of KNO3 post weekend 50% water change and around 20ml of EI Trace mix mid week. I like a lean approach, it seems to work better for me. Surface film is minimal to none for about 5 days of the week but adding traces always seems to increase the film which collects as a white scum in the overflow box, so be it.


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## Chris Jackson (29 Nov 2015)

One week on and sporting a more grown in look, with and without backlighting. Amazing how a stray little thread of riccia can take off


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## dw1305 (29 Nov 2015)

Hi all, 





Chris Jackson said:


> Amazing how a stray little thread of riccia can take off


 Certainly can. 

cheers Darrel


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## jakkals (6 Dec 2015)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all,  Certainly can.


Yip, just add CO2....


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## Chris Jackson (22 Feb 2016)

It's been awhile since I posted an update so here we go. Certainly the Parva part of things hasn't really taken off which just highlights the dangers of naming a scape after a plant! I've let the the stem plants grow back in and am now considering how to further adjust the scape more to my liking.

I recently increased the lighting intensity and this does seem to have helped a little with some stronger new growth but still I really don't think the corydoras snuffling around in it are really helping very much either. 



A relatively new addition is a small Tunze powerhead sited in the back left hand corner to help with water flow through that densely planted area. It's remarkable how calm it seems in this tank considering how much water is actually circulating. The sump pump is rated to 2000lph and even allowing for the restriction of the CO2 reactor is still outputting around half that and the Tunze is set on full at a supposed 300lph. Algae wise the one continuing minor issue is a certain amount of BBA on the struggling Parva and some old growth Anubias. Reducing traces has certainly improved things (increasing traces didn't) I'm half tempted to put some of the rosy barbs from my Lazy Asian scape in there to munch on it but I doubt the Phantoms would be too happy about that...

The huge nest of Riccia will be getting ousted before long but I'm still just wondering how much further it can grow before it floats away on it's own, or lifts up the wood....


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## Alexander Belchenko (22 Feb 2016)

Nice tank!

What is the name of green delicate stem plant on the last picture?


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## Chris Jackson (22 Feb 2016)

Alexander Belchenko said:


> Nice tank!
> 
> What is the name of green delicate stem plant on the last picture?



Thanks Alexander,

The plant was purchased as Rotala Wallichi but I think it is actually Rotala Nanjenshan.


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## Chris Jackson (26 Feb 2016)

Some corydoras like to rest in red..


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## Joe Turner (26 Feb 2016)

Beautiful stem growth, the red on that rotundifolia is impressive!  I was tempted to take some wallichi recently, however took rotala green instead. Yours looks brilliant!


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## Chris Jackson (26 Feb 2016)

Thanks Joe!


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## tim (27 Feb 2016)

Really like this a lot Chris, maturing nicely.


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## Chris Jackson (27 Feb 2016)

Thanks Tim...done some work on it today; new update soon


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## Chris Jackson (29 Feb 2016)

Well I enjoyed a pleasant Saturday afternoon tweaking this scape. Some zen time was spent picking loose white bits of gravel out of the aqauasoil one by one with my prized ADA long pincettes. Next up was dealing with the birds nest of riccia and rather than discarding it as I'd first planned I decided instead to superglue it the pebbles at the front of the scape and create carpet. I rather like the effect and the colour contrasts but I'm not convinced that it's a long solution due to lack of light down front there. 
It will probably get a bit thread bare and leggy but we'll see... I'm using the red rotala to shade the ferns on the wood but I'm sure it would look better trimmed to a more bush like design. All in good time...




 

Had to try an arty B&W version...



 

Not forgetting some of the crew...



 

And...


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## tim (29 Feb 2016)

Can't beat a nice riccia carpet, interested to see how it does superglued not seen that method used for riccia before, nice images too Chris.


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## Chris Jackson (1 Mar 2016)

tim said:


> Can't beat a nice riccia carpet, interested to see how it does superglued not seen that method used for riccia before, nice images too Chris.



Thanks, yes glueing riccia is new for me also so we'll see how it goes. I'm thinking that if I trim it pretty low so that the light continues to get in then the glued part may stay put for some time. However I suspect I may well have to swap it out with some kind of moss in due course...


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## Chris Jackson (28 May 2016)

Well it's been some time since an update...



 

At this time of year with long daylight hours it becomes very hard for me to take a photo without lots of reflections from the windows opposite the tank showing up. The above is on of few angles that work but doesn't really do the tank justice. Anyway as you can see it's a bit of a jungle but there's plenty of luxuriant growth and little in the way of algae issues beyond a bit of BBA on the some of the older anubia leaves and parva leaves. 

Fert wise I've made up a batch of James' planted tank All In One Solution and put it an old ADA dosing bottle. One pump a day seems to do the trick.. plus a little extra Fe occasionally.

The dense planting has given the tank a rather sleepy feel with much less water movement and the water has developed a very slight glow or milkiness to it which is something I've had before and also something Dennerle used to say was an indication of a healthy well established system....

It's certainly going to be time for a trim v soon. I am plotting a new scape in the next couple of months though when I should have more time on my hands..


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## Aqua360 (29 May 2016)

That's absolutely stunning


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## rebel (29 May 2016)

Great stuff. Very peaceful. What's the plants right and middle right at the back?


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## Chris Jackson (29 May 2016)

Thanks!

Back right is micranthemum umbrosum and to the middle is rotala wallichi "green" or "nanjenshan" I think they're the same thing.


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## Chris Jackson (3 Jul 2016)

Well then...

This is following a generous trim yesterday. All is growing well and BBA has gone from everywhere! I didn't have a big BBA issue but it was always tending to grow on the edges of the ferns and anubias as well as in the parva. What have I changed? 

Ferts, I was dosing pinches of KNO3 and adding traces or Fe here and there primarily according to how pale or yellow the plants looked. Some weeks back I switched to James's Planted Tank All In One solution and again dosing that according to the look of the plants which is currently working out at around 3ml a day.



 


 

The other thing that I mentioned is a slight milkiness to the water well this developed further into a full blown bacterial bloom by about 20 mins after a water change



 

Interesting! This was happening regardless of whether I'd done any trimming or tank disturbance or not and initially took around 12 hours to clear back to the originally slightly milky look. So I added some drops of ADA Green Bacter, as I happened to have a bottle sitting around doing nothing, and went off to read up on bacterial blooms. 

The Green Bacter certainly sped up the clearing process. It seems strange that my nice filtered Cornish tap water should be adding organics for the bacteria to get all excited about but who knows, so I installed a fresh high quality filter cartridge into the under sink unit and also added Prime to my water change water and rinsed the first pre-filter sponge in my sump, and put a carbon pad and a new fine sponge in the final output section and kept adding Green Bacter daily. Still got the initial bloom but it then cleared within 3 hours.



 
My somewhat excessive filter post cleaning! 

Now as everything seemed so happy in the tank and with no algae issues I've been a little loathe to do much else in case I inadvertently upset the balance but heck nothing ventured nothing gained and as I haven't actually cleaned all the levels in my filter since it was built over a year ago it might be time for some work! 

So yesterday I used my water change water to rinse out everything except the final output layers of foam, carbon and floss. Fresh Prime treated water was then added and I then had the merest of blooms that quickly cleared to leave the water looking more sparkly than it has for some time. Hopefully the balanced growth continues.

Moral of the story...rinse your filter media more often than annually!!


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## Chris Jackson (16 Dec 2016)

Ok so I've had a lazy summer aquarium wise and just let things grow in mostly... with this scape the effect was been quite soothing with he dense grow apparently contributing to a pretty complete absence of my longtime host BBA









Finally however something had to be done and a minor trim turned into a massive removal of mostly mosses and old growth stem plants. Evidently that massive change in plant biomass caused a shock to the aquarium balance and I got a mega outbreak of BBA that I don't have a photos to show the full magnitude of but anyway I decided to leave it largely be and see what happens. My theory being that the algae had turned up for a reason and that that reason may not necessarily be "bad" it could just be that it had a job to do and that with patience the tank should return to balance with minimal algae... This approach seems to be working because the BBA is in decline with fresh new growth being far less susceptible





It's not a good photo but you can clearly see the BBA down in the Parva and Micranthemum





New growth





When the tank was chocker with plants I was dosing 6ml daily of PMDD+PO4 but now I'm back to the 3ml level I was using previously.

Frankly I'm bored of this scape!

My "Lazy Asian" tank is a delight for me and I'm seriously contemplating how to create similar type of fast moving type scape in this tank but life is also rather full just now so it may be a while yet...plenty of time to visualise however..


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## Alexander Belchenko (16 Dec 2016)

Chris, in last months I've turned one of my tanks (pet shop one) to mainly crypts tank, inspired by your lazy jungle. What a breeze is a tank without much stem plants!


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## Chris Jackson (16 Dec 2016)

Alexander Belchenko said:


> Chris, in last months I've turned one of my tanks (pet shop one) to mainly crypts tank, inspired by your lazy jungle. What a breeze is a tank without much stem plants!



Great, thanks, 
Indeed. Stem plants are so much work, especially in a big tank..


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## Chris Jackson (30 Dec 2016)

After today's trim...bba still in retreat
The Neons were arrivals from my daughter's discontinued little tank


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## Chris Jackson (5 Feb 2017)

And so another grow in



 

And another trim..





A new scape is calling me ever louder...!


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## Chris Jackson (23 Jun 2017)

Lush neglect...

So I've been lazy with my tanks the last few months doing little more than daily feeding and ferts plus fortnightly water changes. The tanks don't care...

Here's "Parva Beach" today... I really am expecting to re-scape come the autumn but right now it is a pleasing virtually  maintenance free jungle.


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## Chris Jackson (28 Jan 2018)

So life changes have meant less time for tanks and this tank is now on slow tick over mode with just moss and easy care plants. CO2 dialed right down as well though lighting is unchanged but was not been high in a long time. Moss, ferns, anubias, simple but still a pleasure. Note the ancient Neon with half it’s tail missing and a bent spine...must be 8 years old at least...and been this way for many many months....

At some point I/we’ll be moving house and starting a new project....hopefully before the summer!


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## alto (28 Jan 2018)

Chris Jackson said:


> Neon with half it’s tail missing and a bent spine


Funny ... if we see this fish in a shop, it tends to reflect badly upon the shop when it may easily just be a fish that arrived in a sad (ly permanent) state
I have a Betta that I purchased who looked to have swim bladder issues but I hoped were just constipation/stress etc - several months later he is still much the same, despite attempts to "heal" any possible bacterial/parasite contributions 
- poor guy struggles to swim, but his fins are clear & he seems cheerful enough ... especially at dinnner time


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## Chris Jackson (29 Jan 2018)

I tend to suspect too much in-breeding is weakening many of the most popular species. I think my ancient neon maybe suffering from the “diseases of old age” more than anything else.


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## kadoxu (29 Jan 2018)

Chris Jackson said:


> I tend to suspect too much in-breeding is weakening many of the most popular species. I think my ancient neon maybe suffering from the “diseases of old age” more than anything else.


A few of the last ones I bough have the same issue... I'm suspecting they came with Neon Tetra Disease? I'm really bad at diagnosing fish illnesses though...


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## miah431 (14 Mar 2018)

Chris Jackson said:


> View attachment 112940 So life changes have meant less time for tanks and this tank is now on slow tick over mode with just moss and easy care plants. CO2 dialed right down as well though lighting is unchanged but was not been high in a long time. Moss, ferns, anubias, simple but still a pleasure. Note the ancient Neon with half it’s tail missing and a bent spine...must be 8 years old at least...and been this way for many many months....
> 
> At some point I/we’ll be moving house and starting a new project....hopefully before the summer!


What happened to the parva lol?

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk


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