900x450x600 Come back Aquascape

[Radevski]

Hello,

So happy that this forum stands cos you guys have no idea how much I missed aquarium lover/aquascaping forum
I've been out of the aquarium hobby for a while ( 6-7 years ) and now is time to get back! 🙂 In the past I was not so active here mostly cos I was working on local forum in North Macedonia but its time to change that! 🙂
I used to know or I used to think I know a lot but now I think I know nothing so this forum will refresh mine memory and get me back on the right track 😀

Starting with new tank since the last was full of scratches and it was time to place it in the basement and maybe use it as breeder or starting up some mini plant farm in future :O :O :O

Tank size 900x450x600 optiwhite custom tank
Light Unit : Twinstar SP900
Filtration: 2 x Oase Biomaster 350
Co2- 2 tubes 5L and 8L with Co2 Art gear
I've missed this type of presentation so much! Sorry if this is not the way its being done now 😀 In mine defence it used to be like this in the past! 😀

 

[Radevski]

The main idea was to create two hills with sort of passage in between using mainly old school plants like microsorum trident, anubias, bolbitis , some buces and rotalas in the background for some detail
Wood type is red moor and stone type is black lava rock
For this project I had help from my dear friend Babis Bloskas aka Urban Scaper
I'm aware that its not the perfect proportion but given the time that we had to work with make me more than happy with it! Its good comeback project for me.
Since I'm using tap water I get a lot of surface foil so I had to instal the surface skimmer on such aggressive spot ( there was no other place where I could place this surface skimmer and I didnt know it will trow the water from the bottom 😀 )
In close future my plan is to invest in inflows that have integrated surface skimmer on them.

This has been set up on 28/10/2024

 

[Radevski]

Before starting to cry about and yell help help lemme show few nice photos 😀
(trying to make good first impression before algae hits 😀 😀 😀 )

 

[Connswater]

Looks great both as a planted composition and in the context of the room as a complementary focal point - algae might not prove a problem with CO2, sensible use of nutrients etc., though personally I would leave the skimmer out until the tank is mature and use lots of floating plants for at least a month. I honestly feel floating plants are the best defence against green algae issues in a new fully equipped high tech planted tank. Skimmers in my experience are great on the first day to clear the surface of scum and then reintroduce a month or two later, once everything is balanced and floating plants aren't being used. However, more recently I keep floating plants permanently in the tank and avoid the skimmer, I think harvesting floating plants and using the 'Duckweed' index just makes life easier, but of course not everyone likes floating plants and they do in some ways limit carpeting plants and red plants.
Thanks for posting your pictures and details. Best of luck.

 

[Radevski]

After the scaping was done I decided to go with some light schedule that I was not very familiar with it... back in the days there was no sunset sunrise,there was timer that turns on and off 😀
The idea was to use dimmer/controler on mine Twinstar sp900 and to drag the photoperiod over 12 hours in which it will start with 10% and after 2 hours will go on 30%...then 100% for 4 hours...and go back
Everything was good until week 4

Week 4 first diatom apeared but it went like crazy all over the tank. Till that point the tank did not had any fish or organisms in it.
There was no ferts dosing only massive water changes in order to help the system since there is a lot of lava rocks and a lot of denerle scaper's soil.

Main idea was to go in some order like shrimp,oto,small fish and main fish...which at the given time it was not really decided what type.
Felt like its really time oto to be introduced so thats what i did,20 brave and hungry oto catfish entered the tank and they masacred the diatom in few days! 😀
Few days later I noticed that hair algae is apearing on the top of some of the wood and usualy in my past experiance hair algae apears when co2 is fluctuating.
I gave it few tries to solve it but in few days it felt like i'm failing badly.
The whole tank was suffering from hair algae and I've noticed a lot melting especialy on the smallest anubias
The fert dosing started and the choice was APT 3

Hair algae was expanding so i decided to introduce 5 amano shrimps ( 4 today cos one decided to take a walk )
That did not help a lot...maybe I felt scared so I decided to lower the light photoperiod and the light % so i went to 6 hours in total on 60%
In order things to be interesting for me surface skimmer felt and it made a little mess which for mine luck did not cause too much issue.
If you think that this dramatic event ends up here nooope, I didnt know that the flow is adjustable ( I KNOW ON EVERY SITE IT SAYS ITS ADJUSTABLE,BUT HEY ITS ME 😀 ) and yeah seems like somehow i turned it on minimum and that caused few days oily surface while I was on working trip.

We kinda come to today where I have clean surface, light 6 hours on 60%, , fert dosage with APT 3 and tweaks with the co2 in order to hit it on the right spot 😀

I'll take picutes once i come home in order to present the current situation better

Btw is there any mobile app for the forum? Sorry if mine questions are stupid I havent been active on forums for a very long time,things are changed!