flygja
Member
For those in the know, Kaizen is a Japanese word for "improvement". This scape is based on continuous improvement for me. There were 4 objectives:
1. Use river gravel as the main substrate. This was to facilitate easier feeding of my discus. It used to rip up the grass carpet when the frozen bloodworms fell on them.
2. Multiple levels of plants. Instead of just placing shade plants in the shade and stems in the open, I wanted to try something else, which was to bring the light-loving nearer to the light by planting them higher up
3. More swimming space. Why? Because I plan to get some more discus for my tank. It's gonna be mainly discus in this tank with smaller dither fish.
4. (Hopefully) less maintenance. Stretch goal would be to get water changes reduced to once a month. Intermediate goal is disassociate maintenance from just algae removal.
Onto some specs:
120 x 50 x 50 cm - 300L
2x Eheim 2080 Pro 3 filters
6x 54W T5HO, currently running 2 tubes only 7 hours a day
CO2 through inline Up/Intense diffuser at 5 bps
EI dosing
ADA Amazonia aquasoil where the plants are rooted
I didn't take pics of the setting up. Had to rush a bit while my daughter was taking her naps. Also aren't you guys bored of setup pics yet? 😛
Here's the hardscape. Only partially managed to create different levels for plants. Couldn't do any better without violating objective no 3.
IMG_20141207_101602 by flygja, on Flickr
And a top video showing the rock formation. You can sorta see the high light areas I've set up at the back and the front. I planned for this to have some light loving plants. Although I'm afraid the driftwood may have been positioned wrongly for this. The sides of the island would have shade for both plants and fish.
IMG_20141207_094043 by flygja, on Flickr
Fish were added back the next day. I was fairly confident I didn't need to cycle the tanks because my canisters were full of beneficial bacteria and I had only used 1/3 bag of new aquasoil. The rest were reused soil from my old setup. Also did 50% water change just to safe. I still have a few handfuls of my beloved Anubias barteri var nana... not sure where to place them at the moment.
IMG_20141208_215916 by flygja, on Flickr
Comments welcome. In the meantime, I'm gonna go rest my sore feet some more...
1. Use river gravel as the main substrate. This was to facilitate easier feeding of my discus. It used to rip up the grass carpet when the frozen bloodworms fell on them.
2. Multiple levels of plants. Instead of just placing shade plants in the shade and stems in the open, I wanted to try something else, which was to bring the light-loving nearer to the light by planting them higher up
3. More swimming space. Why? Because I plan to get some more discus for my tank. It's gonna be mainly discus in this tank with smaller dither fish.
4. (Hopefully) less maintenance. Stretch goal would be to get water changes reduced to once a month. Intermediate goal is disassociate maintenance from just algae removal.
Onto some specs:
120 x 50 x 50 cm - 300L
2x Eheim 2080 Pro 3 filters
6x 54W T5HO, currently running 2 tubes only 7 hours a day
CO2 through inline Up/Intense diffuser at 5 bps
EI dosing
ADA Amazonia aquasoil where the plants are rooted
I didn't take pics of the setting up. Had to rush a bit while my daughter was taking her naps. Also aren't you guys bored of setup pics yet? 😛
Here's the hardscape. Only partially managed to create different levels for plants. Couldn't do any better without violating objective no 3.
IMG_20141207_101602 by flygja, on Flickr
And a top video showing the rock formation. You can sorta see the high light areas I've set up at the back and the front. I planned for this to have some light loving plants. Although I'm afraid the driftwood may have been positioned wrongly for this. The sides of the island would have shade for both plants and fish.
IMG_20141207_094043 by flygja, on Flickr
Fish were added back the next day. I was fairly confident I didn't need to cycle the tanks because my canisters were full of beneficial bacteria and I had only used 1/3 bag of new aquasoil. The rest were reused soil from my old setup. Also did 50% water change just to safe. I still have a few handfuls of my beloved Anubias barteri var nana... not sure where to place them at the moment.
IMG_20141208_215916 by flygja, on Flickr
Comments welcome. In the meantime, I'm gonna go rest my sore feet some more...