Mawgan
Member
How can you presume to start a journal when you haven't even got a tank yet?!
This is a question I have been kicking around for quite a few days now, and thankfully have been too busy before to do anything about it. But now I've got an hour or so on my hands, and look what happens... I start a journal! Please forgive me for I know not what I do - which is probably the only half-decent justification for it.
I have read and inwardly digested as much as I can here on UKAPS, which has to be the single best resource on the net for aquascaping. Now I will probably test your collective patience with a string of daft questions. I hereby swear to do my utmost to research before asking, and will not object to the odd clip round the ear and an invitation to cut along to such and such a topic!
This is my aim:
Now you can see I'm no artist! But this 'design' is intended to fill an Aquariums Ltd 80 x 45 x 45cms optiwhite tank due for delivery this coming Wednesday to be mounted on one of their tastefully constructed cabinets in a pear finish.
A long trip up to Wrexham in snowy January yielded an Eheim 2128 Thermo filter, but much more of value, about four hours or Graeme's time and remarkably good-natured advice!
Since then, I have ordered three 9kg bags of Amazonia II Aquasoil which will be thrown around onto 9kgs of Power Sand. I have also bought up all of the Seriyu stone that Croydon can offer. That will go where the lumpy bits in the drawing are. I also got Graeme to box up anything he could find with a Sera label on it, plus some Brighty K, which I will do my best to keep away from my wife in case she mistakes it for hair conditioner...
I have badgered Dan Crawford into sending a couple of FEs by Wells Fargo or whichever courier he can persuade, and I've done deals with gentlemen in Hong Kong which resulted in them sending me things called regulators with all sorts of dials and taps and stuff. Goodness only knows what I am going to do with them. I blame Andyh on whose infinitely more interesting journal I first saw them, along with an inline CO2 atomizer diffuser thingy. I got that because I hate seeing large chunks of black plastic in the tank. Mind you, when the only growth that succeeds in my tank is some slimy algae then perhaps I will see the sense of Koralia pumps and spray bars, etc.!
The tank will be in a corner and viewed primarily from the left and front. I will top it off with an Arcadia OT2 luminaire with four 24w lamps (Plant Gro is the default supplied, I believe). Graeme suggested that I fill it and leave it with the filter running for a couple of weeks while the Aquasoil divests itself of any ammonia it's not too keen on...
After that, I hope to plant a mixture of HC Cuba and Eleocharis Parvula in the foreground, softening the boundary with the rocks with Blyxa Japonica or Eleocharis tenellus, and maybe some Pogostemon helferi. I'd like to plant the mid-ground to backgound with more hair grass, and have some kind of reddish Ludwigia and/or Limnophila behind the major stone. Just to wrap up my dream sheet, I had thought of something like Cyperus helferi to sway gently to the far right to camouflage the filter pipes. Ooh, and I want to fill some of the fissures in the stone with mosses, maybe fissidens or even riccia if I thought I could grow it...
My purpose in putting this up is to try to be proactive. In other words, I'm sort of relying on anyone kind enough to read this to post something on the lines of 'dream on', 'you must be joking', or maybe just 'get a grip!' However, if you felt like putting a virtual arm around my shoulder and suggesting something much more sensible and likely to succeed then I wouldn't object too much!
I will do my best to put up some 'before' shots when I actually have something to prattle about, and we'll think about the after shots later (either that or leave the country). :?
Yours in hope...
This is a question I have been kicking around for quite a few days now, and thankfully have been too busy before to do anything about it. But now I've got an hour or so on my hands, and look what happens... I start a journal! Please forgive me for I know not what I do - which is probably the only half-decent justification for it.
I have read and inwardly digested as much as I can here on UKAPS, which has to be the single best resource on the net for aquascaping. Now I will probably test your collective patience with a string of daft questions. I hereby swear to do my utmost to research before asking, and will not object to the odd clip round the ear and an invitation to cut along to such and such a topic!
This is my aim:
Now you can see I'm no artist! But this 'design' is intended to fill an Aquariums Ltd 80 x 45 x 45cms optiwhite tank due for delivery this coming Wednesday to be mounted on one of their tastefully constructed cabinets in a pear finish.
A long trip up to Wrexham in snowy January yielded an Eheim 2128 Thermo filter, but much more of value, about four hours or Graeme's time and remarkably good-natured advice!
Since then, I have ordered three 9kg bags of Amazonia II Aquasoil which will be thrown around onto 9kgs of Power Sand. I have also bought up all of the Seriyu stone that Croydon can offer. That will go where the lumpy bits in the drawing are. I also got Graeme to box up anything he could find with a Sera label on it, plus some Brighty K, which I will do my best to keep away from my wife in case she mistakes it for hair conditioner...
I have badgered Dan Crawford into sending a couple of FEs by Wells Fargo or whichever courier he can persuade, and I've done deals with gentlemen in Hong Kong which resulted in them sending me things called regulators with all sorts of dials and taps and stuff. Goodness only knows what I am going to do with them. I blame Andyh on whose infinitely more interesting journal I first saw them, along with an inline CO2 atomizer diffuser thingy. I got that because I hate seeing large chunks of black plastic in the tank. Mind you, when the only growth that succeeds in my tank is some slimy algae then perhaps I will see the sense of Koralia pumps and spray bars, etc.!
The tank will be in a corner and viewed primarily from the left and front. I will top it off with an Arcadia OT2 luminaire with four 24w lamps (Plant Gro is the default supplied, I believe). Graeme suggested that I fill it and leave it with the filter running for a couple of weeks while the Aquasoil divests itself of any ammonia it's not too keen on...
After that, I hope to plant a mixture of HC Cuba and Eleocharis Parvula in the foreground, softening the boundary with the rocks with Blyxa Japonica or Eleocharis tenellus, and maybe some Pogostemon helferi. I'd like to plant the mid-ground to backgound with more hair grass, and have some kind of reddish Ludwigia and/or Limnophila behind the major stone. Just to wrap up my dream sheet, I had thought of something like Cyperus helferi to sway gently to the far right to camouflage the filter pipes. Ooh, and I want to fill some of the fissures in the stone with mosses, maybe fissidens or even riccia if I thought I could grow it...
My purpose in putting this up is to try to be proactive. In other words, I'm sort of relying on anyone kind enough to read this to post something on the lines of 'dream on', 'you must be joking', or maybe just 'get a grip!' However, if you felt like putting a virtual arm around my shoulder and suggesting something much more sensible and likely to succeed then I wouldn't object too much!
I will do my best to put up some 'before' shots when I actually have something to prattle about, and we'll think about the after shots later (either that or leave the country). :?
Yours in hope...