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Hi folks, it’s been a while! This tank is still going. It’s changed over the years and I’m now of a mind to redo the whole thing. I’ll follow up with more detail before I rescape it.

Hi Harry. Yes, thanks for asking. Here’s the situation; All the flint has disappeared under a layer of algae! The plants I’ve enjoyed most are the frogbit and buce. The plants I’ve enjoyed least are the grass and the ceylon. The cleaning routine is fairly relaxed & water changes are 50%...

1 year anniversary since the start of the thread! [emoji322] The tank is struggling with algae lately, I’ve come to view it as more natural to have a dusting of green on the wood & stone. The Otos and other inhabitants don’t mind. There’s been some highs and lows, I’ll spare you the details...

What is in the wine glasses? It’s certainly not wine!

This is awesome. Makes me want to up my game

Yo! newb here but FWIW I had one at startup, took it & the nano out after a few months, as the planting grew in I felt they cluttered the tank & look artificial in the scape. 6 months on they’re both back in! My own mini cycle if you like.

Hi Ralfred, I have a very similar layout in the same tank. Very happy with how it’s turned out. Do you intend to plant in to the foreground substrate?

Thank you Harry [emoji3] Another one? No it’s the same one, it’s still going even though it’s been in the water a dozen times [emoji23]

19 weeks Come a long way since day 1! The shrimp are loving it, almost as much as the snails. Even the kids love it. Some of the creatures have names now, like umbrella the oto. My twinstar seems to have given up and just flashed a blue light without doing anything. Probably the biggest...

This is brilliant, love it!

Haha brilliant! Hmm tempted to be a ‘have a go hero’ [emoji848]

Nice clip, thanks for that. I can’t tell you anything about the water other than the suppliers report which is on my journal. I don’t test the water & now the tanks setup & mature I ditched the drop checker. The only issue I have is damn snails. When I redo the tank I am going to make sure no...

Some phone pics I just took. The red offspring are growing rapidly, I estimate they’re around 3 or 4 weeks old. The black offspring are a week or so & around 3 to 5mm long.

Hi Miss-Pepper, I wonder how it looks with a smaller (or no) wood? The wood looks a little too big imo perhaps it’s just me.

Hi Chris, I have a 100l tank, heavily planted & add fertilisers daily. The only other addition being prime with water changes. I too am in a hard water area (near Guildford) and my red stripy & black stripy shrimp are breeding happily. There are some catappa logs in the tank also.

16 weeks The pest snails took a beating today! They were winning until now. Their eggs are on all the hardscape & I now realise they arrived on the bottom of a bit of driftwood with a fern attached. Such a nuisance! In other news the crystal bee shrimp had babies. I’ve seen 2 ... there could...

I got a Qanvee after recommendation on here & it’s been a definite improvement on the in tank diffuser I had prior.

I siphon it all, poop, cuttings, algae sand and gravel at the same time & replace with new. The gravel & sand come in 20kg bags for £5 each from Homebase. Shout out to @Marc Davis for that tip [emoji3][emoji106]

12 weeks Feels like the tanks been running longer. Every 2nd week I swap the glassware over & change some of the sand & gravel. I broke the drop checker whilst cleaning it, the CO2 setup is fine so I’m not in a hurry to replace it. The air stone has been turned off (so noisy!) twinstar nano...

It’d be good to see what you do, with costings for time and materials for comparison to the ADA product.

Yes! There are a few stockists listed in ADA website but they don’t all have stock [emoji848]

Had to check & I got 1 petite & 1 narrow. The narrow is the one in the photo at the top of the thread. Is it ok to trim the roots of these when they get too long? Had them both out the tank & removed most of the little plants. The narrow has new growth & seems in good nick but the petite...

Yes @alto correct I used tropica soil. The crypts are all dwarfed by the growth of the other plants. I perhaps planted too densely & then added more plants! Now they’ve grown in there’s some winners and losers.

Thanks for the advice. I went deep on the dennerle system so I’m committed, liked the idea of not having to dose fertiliser daily (before I started adding liquid carbon). There’s tropica root tabs in there and I can up the dose by filling the osmosis devices more if needs be. The rotala and...

On a side note I took delivery today of the same type of controller you use on the twinstar s @Siege thanks to your recommendation on another thread. It’s on 3% after the usual lights out which gives a fantastic blue for a nightlight

V30 S7 & E15 in the 2 of the dosators

I had a closer look at this & the little plants are all concentrated on 1 area covering about 1/4 of the plant. It’s an area that’s closest to the filter outlet which also gets the most light.

Thank you all for the replies. I didn’t think the plant was stressed until now. It is on driftwood and placed at an angle, the tank has a twinstar s on 2/3rds power 8hpd & heavily planted with CO2, WC 50% per week, dennerle fertilisers, adding gluterhalderide & everything else is growing at...

LED light panels in all sorts of sizes for low ££ on a google search. I imagine would work well with a frosted background, the blue graduation on the ADA one could be replicated by a specialist acetate printer.

I had 100ml in my 100l tanks filter & wasn’t noticing anything so upped it to 600ml & still wasn’t noticeable (to me) compared with a water change.

I love the term ‘polishing water’ but unfortunately I don’t notice any difference when using purigen.

There’s lots of mini ferns growing on the leaves with roots dangling. Can I just pick them off or is there a better way to remove them? Thanks

Thanks @tam & @Ian_m there was an amano shrimp picking through it & for a moment I thought about leaving it be. I expect it’d take over the tank soon enough though?

Hi, can anyone ID this for me please? Little hairy thing growing on these rocks in my aquarium. Thanks.

Winchester is hard to beat! I really like Shrewsbury but it’s a trek from Pompey.

I have the Oase Biomaster 600 thermo with the supplies helix in the bottom 2 trays, alfagrog in the next 3 trays then the little orange one in the shallow top tray. Prefilter has the replacement 30ppi orange foam. Today I drilled the prefilter return pipe as seen on the pondguru YouTube review...

Don’t leave the plastics soaking in the 5050 bleach/water too long or they’ll whiten [emoji20]

The pondguru clip started well, I get the desire to increase flow & improve the filtration but Oase aren’t going to honour a guarantee once you start messing about with their product like that, are they?!

The pets at home near me has an assortment of size Amano. They said the small ones are juvenile. The bigger ones are in the tropical section at 26 degrees and they have freshwater at 21 with a noticeable difference in activity. 2 for 7 or £3.99 each in that shop.

I can imagine this looking great with the carpeting plant & everything else grown in.

Wow nice setup & ‘scape [emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]

7 weeks Enjoying my planted aquarium very much, 1st trim of a stem plant this week. Chopped the Pogostemon in half and replanted the cuttings. Since I binned 90% of the frogbit and salvinia it had grown across the waters surface & top leaves had gone a lovely shade of crimson. Hopefully the...

The overall impression is good, pleasant to view. I will offer my input as you ask for it. The rocks on wood looks unnatural to me, I’d look at attaching more plants to the wood (or covering the rocks on the wood) & getting a few more foreground plants in along the front. Can you get your...

Thanks folks, that’s what I needed to know [emoji106]

Hi, I noticed a shrimp in my tank looks like it’s carrying eggs, if so do I need to do anything or do the eggs just get absorbed into the system? Thanks.

message the seller your requirements?

There’s some on Amazon for the USA

The new rock on the front left with the plant growing out sideways needs something else going on, not sure what though...

Always interested! Throw them up [emoji3]

Hi Tam, thank you! You’re right, the otos are eating on the leaves & resting amongst them, they’ve been in over a week. I’ve just left the veg in overnight so I’ll try longer, thanks for the tip.

6 weeks Lots going on in the last 2 weeks. I added 10 Crystal Red Bee shrimp, unfortunately one didn’t make it & was hauled out the next day. The rest settled in very quickly. The floating plants took over the surface & the flow was sweeping them under, they piled up in a corner. I had to...

I think it was @Daveslaney who had the idea Credit where credits due and all that. We need some photos of it now [emoji3]

Nice! That Rotala is growing strong, love the fresh green look of it.

It’s filled in well. Love all the activity! The black background has grown on me, I really like it. [emoji106]

It’s reminiscent of when robin thicke & pharrells blurred lines caught a lawsuit for ripping marvins got to give it up although that was the entire track not 1 riff

Wow listening to that for the 1st time I think Bill Withers used the opening piano riff to make ‘Lean on me’

Maybe the best song ever made.

Thanks @CooKieS I levelled up the tank in the middle of a 80% water change (before the Otos) and filled it to the brim to check it out. The little fish have settled in & are cleaning the glass for me! The shrimp love the catappa logs, excuse the poor photo.

Various concentrations of the active ingredient glutaraldehyde

I recently started adding this, tank is 100l & the label says 1ml per 50l every day. So I dose 2ml once every 24 hours.

Trick question? Follow the manufacturers guidelines!

Do it!

Thanks for that @tam I got 5 acclimating now, the 6th died in transit. Shop said it could’ve been a knock whilst being netted.

Is 1 month in a bit early to add some otto’s? I haven’t tested the water for anything other than TDS and the temperature (plus the drop checker)

I used the forum upload but I’ll need to find a different way... sorry! I’ll stick to Tapatalk

1 month I'm having some algae issues. Not sure which type it is. It seems to like the carpeting plants & there's some stringy slime on the rocks and wood. So I've upped the co2 a little and added another java fern and am dosing liquid carbon. The black spots that were spreading across the...

What light have you got planned? The ADA ones with the little mirrors would look awesome.

I’ve found that the skimmer (on the EA version) works best when the inlet is perfectly level. It takes some fiddling to get the flow right.

Hello Tommy

That growth looks lush

Looks sweet Harry. I particularly like the transition of planting from background soil area through the rock to the sand.

That’s a handsome piece of wood, makes me think of a drizzly wind swept moor landscape.

day 21 Earlier this week I addded Tropica root tabs & a 1-2 Grow! Pot of Salvinia that’s now circling with the frogbit. Today 11 red bee shrimps arrived & I acclimated them using the drip method, learned something new as last time I floated the bag & spooned water in gradually. Also added...

For what it’s worth my in experience (17 days!) the flow dropped dramatically when I left cleaning the prefilter 3 days past a week. It’s the Oase Biomaster 600 with coarse prefilter sponges. Once cleaned it was like new regards the flow.

Good point @allto I’ve seen bloskas (?) puts black paper behind & the colour photography looks superb. Looking at the tank like this shows up everything on the back side, all the algae I missed in my weekly maintenance.

Nice tip but I’ve just removed a background & I’m loving the seethroughness.

Trying out some new ambient lighting, makes a great silhouette, using the newly spare timer means it’ll be on as a kind of nightlight & when the grow light is off. It’s fun to watch even as a shadow, the frogbits doing a waltz round & the occasional shrimp spring across the scene. The gas off...

Day 15 A few days ago I upped the light output from 46% to 66% and removed the light screen from day to day routine. Sadly I ended up losing 5 shrimp from my co2 mistake. Their bodies and the melted crypts increased the decaying material & despite fishing most of it out bba materialised. I’ve...

I think it looks better in person than it does in pictures, pictures look pretty good though.

Hello brother! Any photos? Love to see the tank [emoji3]

Hi Dave, it’s a good job you’ve done, like the look of the tank, poor little goldfish must be much happier! I’m a total novice but perhaps you’re getting algae due to the 10 hours of lights on. It’s striking how much better a tank looks with more plants in [emoji6]

Hi Ian [emoji2] some very fine established aquaria you have there [emoji122]

Not bogwood but I got some wood from the Hugo Kamishi brand called desert wood & its got loads of slime and dark patches after a fortnight in a tank. Not sure if there’s much leaching of tannins with it though.

Looks great Dave [emoji106] I see the magnetic glass cleaner, do you need to use it much?

Been waiting to see this since May! Looks really good, those lights & that reflection on the back walk are awesome. Love the convex island composition.

Good idea, I did consider if it would affect the pressure on the joins & cause a failure. It’s on a solid wood parké style floor with a concrete subfloor so 100l on the floor would likely destroy it! (Goes to check insurance) if I had levelled the cabinet using shims or similar I suppose that...

More newb mistakes to add to the ‘don’t do it like this’ list. Never thought to check the tank level with a spirit. Now it’s full (I cba with the glass lid) & the water level shows it up. I’m talking 4mm difference front to back & 2 mm side to side, when full to the brim it’s more noticeable...

Maybe I was exaggerating with 5% could’ve been 1% I was tense it was a tense moment... Lucky escape # 2 this evening. As I was maintaining the tank I propped the glass lid up (with a fork, I know I know) turned round and bang! Fork on the floor glass lid 1” into the tank, luckily still in 1...

When I 1st setup the tank i plugged in the heater & turned it to 22 degrees. 12 hours later I checked the temp. it was nearly 25 & i turned the heater down to 18. Next reading was nearly 24 so i unplugged the heater (will look at calibration in due course). The next reading was just under 23...

Really appreciate the advice @alto & @ Zeus. thank you. I can walk to my lfs but it’s a Pets at Home so I doubt they’ll barter, can try though. 10 amano from an online store is under £30 but posting shrimp??? Poor little crustaceans.

That’s what I thought! It’s only 4 days old but the tank already has that funky aquarium smell. I’ll work on getting 10 Amano shrimp, in a week or so.

Full plant list: Cryptocoryne (Sri Lanka) - willisii - walkeri - wendtii ‘brown’ - Nevelli - Becketti Pogostemon stellatus (Cultivar) Pogostemon quadrifolius (India, Thailand, Indonesia) Rotala rotundifolia (Sri Lanka) Ceratopteris thalictrodes (China) Juncus repens (North America)...

Thanks for the tip Matt, any particular moss? Would chunks of the moss ball work? Day 3 90% water change to enable planting of: Marsilea Hirsuta, Pogostemon Stellatus, Persicaria ‘Sao Paulo’ & Rotala Rotundifolia ‘Ceylon’ Dropped the light in the tank before draining, by accident, no harm...

Great tank great photos [emoji106]

I used tropica. 1 amano per 5l = 20 for my tank, at a cost of £70 in my lfs. Don’t they get to about 4cm? That’s a lot of shrimp for a 60cm tank!

Sounds like you & the missus have a lot of aquariums! That Tropica 90 day guide says on day 3 put amano shrimp in, 1 per 5 litres. I’ll have to have a proper read all the way through. I thought I’d done enough research but clearly not.

Brilliant advice, so simple, why didn’t I think of that. Tropica even have a 90 day app! Love it, thank you!

It’s a lovely piece of wood, it’s throwing some large shadows though. Could that be an issue for a carpeting plant?

I’ll change 50% every other day for a while and add seachem prime (diluted in 250ml first) before refilling with fresh water from the tap.

I did something similar- orange prefilter sponges, kept the plastic but replaced 2 blue ones with alfagrog and left 1 tray empty.