Hi Folks,
After a lot of years fishkeeping I wanted to try something different and stumbled on the world of aquascaping. Wow! I have been amazed at the beautiful creations, particularly from Japan and the pioneering work of Takashi Amano; some wonderful tanks and I love the way George Farmer has made it really accessible to normal folk like me. Anyway, cutting a long story short I was inspired to make a tank but wanted to try and use local materials for the hardscape, more because I enjoy being out in the countryside of which there is a lot here and enjoy the foraging as part of the creative process.
I bought a Juwel lido as it fit the space I had a nd looked good quality, it is generally fine but I do have a bug bear with the filter not being easily moved and in hindsight might have gone for the Oase equivalent and an external filter, ah well I might remove it yet and go the external route.
I didn't appreciate that getting local materials and having a square tank woild make life difficult but for me at least it seemed to. The excellent dead oak I found was from a single limb and once cleaned up is rock solid but long and thin and I wanted to make a trunk from the bits which meant making long tall heavy bits of wood stable. As the Juwel has a light and lid getting the pieces above the water line and below the light was a challenge too.
I messed up in a couple of areas due to my own impatience, the backing vinyl has bubbles as I put it n after scaping - doh! and my plan of using only Tropica soil for the main substrate went awry when I couldn't source any locally and had only one 9 litre bag of fine soil so have added this to an inert gravel base giving 1-3 inches oof soil cover. SO my rather long winded question is - is this enough depth? I am waiting for plants to arrive all 'easy' ones as my skills are lacking and I am not using CO2.
Thanks for the advice,
Cheers
After a lot of years fishkeeping I wanted to try something different and stumbled on the world of aquascaping. Wow! I have been amazed at the beautiful creations, particularly from Japan and the pioneering work of Takashi Amano; some wonderful tanks and I love the way George Farmer has made it really accessible to normal folk like me. Anyway, cutting a long story short I was inspired to make a tank but wanted to try and use local materials for the hardscape, more because I enjoy being out in the countryside of which there is a lot here and enjoy the foraging as part of the creative process.
I bought a Juwel lido as it fit the space I had a nd looked good quality, it is generally fine but I do have a bug bear with the filter not being easily moved and in hindsight might have gone for the Oase equivalent and an external filter, ah well I might remove it yet and go the external route.
I didn't appreciate that getting local materials and having a square tank woild make life difficult but for me at least it seemed to. The excellent dead oak I found was from a single limb and once cleaned up is rock solid but long and thin and I wanted to make a trunk from the bits which meant making long tall heavy bits of wood stable. As the Juwel has a light and lid getting the pieces above the water line and below the light was a challenge too.
I messed up in a couple of areas due to my own impatience, the backing vinyl has bubbles as I put it n after scaping - doh! and my plan of using only Tropica soil for the main substrate went awry when I couldn't source any locally and had only one 9 litre bag of fine soil so have added this to an inert gravel base giving 1-3 inches oof soil cover. SO my rather long winded question is - is this enough depth? I am waiting for plants to arrive all 'easy' ones as my skills are lacking and I am not using CO2.
Thanks for the advice,
Cheers