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Frankenstein

I wanted to upload these pictures so they were in the journal at the right time and not months later sitting in my camera roll lol. I'm re-learning how to use my DSLR after not picking it up for about 5 years. Also had to compress them quite a bit to upload so hopefully it still looks half-decent on your end! 👍

Thanks for looking. 🤓

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Really stunning pictures, what camera/lighting setup do you use?
 
Really stunning pictures, what camera/lighting setup do you use?
Thank you noodles! For the majority of the pictures I use my iPhone 12 but the most recent string of photos were taken with a Nikon D3200. Really basic entry-level camera.

I don't use any supplemental lighting though.
 
Things are on the up...

I seem to be winning the war against staghorn algae! Whilst it's not gone it doesn't appear to be actively growing and if it is growing then it's doing so at a snail's pace. Some of the things I did was;
  • Remove the Purigen pouch which has increased the flow quite considerably but I've fitted a tap into the pipes so it's not a tornado and just gently blows the leaves.
  • Cut out as much staghorn as possible. There's more in the back from the original stems which I should have done already but I'll do that on the next maintenance.
  • Started double dosing liquid carbon to spot treat the affected areas.
  • Increased my CO2 slightly.
  • Kept my fertiliser consistent.
  • I didn't reduce my lighting intensity. I actually increased it but moved it slightly higher to get a better spread and the plants seem to be happy for it. The Monte Carlo is finally growing quickly and healthy to compete with the Marsilea.
  • Cleaned the rocks somewhat as although I liked the look I realised that the algae on it was dying and probably contributing to DOC which wouldn't be helping the m situation.
Aside from the algae, the female cherry shrimp gave birth to the shrimplets in the last few days and survived her slightly worrying molt just fine. There's also 2 Amano shrimp in there which ironically are a lot more calm in this tank. Active but calmer, maybe because there's no females.

I'm a bit conflicted on whether I should let my background stems grow emersed or trim them back. On one side I like the sculpted look but I also like the emersed growth. I was thinking maybe to wait until the shrimplets were a bit more visible and then trim it? So I don't accidently scoop any out.

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Hi Mate,looking great is this. Love the Monte Carlo!! How green it's looks 👌 Hope you manage to finally overcome the staghorn Algae!! Your background plants let um grow, do you keep to the whites on your lights? Or do you mix it .
 
Hi Mate,looking great is this. Love the Monte Carlo!! How green it's looks 👌 Hope you manage to finally overcome the staghorn Algae!! Your background plants let um grow, do you keep to the whites on your lights? Or do you mix it .
Thanks mate, I'm glad it's finally growing well. Yeah that staghorn is definitely backing down.

There isn't actually a white option on these lights, just RGB. Is that what you meant?
 
Hi mate, could you explain to me what RGB is ?
On our superfish 45 I've raised the whites to 75% and the blues still at 25% I realised that by doing this I have a minimum of brown diatoms along with 40% water changes twice a week. No other algae issues so far! Due to add livestock within a couple of weeks, to start with can't decide if snails or octocilinis. Glad to see your set up looking so lovely👍.
Cheers,
 
Hi mate, could you explain to me what RGB is ?
On our superfish 45 I've raised the whites to 75% and the blues still at 25% I realised that by doing this I have a minimum of brown diatoms along with 40% water changes twice a week. No other algae issues so far! Due to add livestock within a couple of weeks, to start with can't decide if snails or octocilinis. Glad to see your set up looking so lovely👍.
Cheers,
Ahhh I see, I'm not using the stock light that comes with the superfish home, I'm using a Chihiros C2 RGB light unit. The RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue which are form the colour spectrum for LED lights. So the diodes can produce a mixture of red, green and blue depending on your settings.

Some LED units are white only, white and blue (like yours), RGB or RGB + white.
 
I almost called curtains on this scape but a friend convinced me to hold on a little longer and I'm glad I did.

I did some minor adjustments in to get it back from its wild look and make it more clean looking again but also committed some schoolboy errors.

I lowered the substrate at the front by half, forgetting that I have Tropica Substrate (base layer) underneath which needs to be capped. That, followed by haphazardly inserting root tabs into a soil which has poor hold and removing almost all the Rotala and hacking everything back. Needless today I had a huge ammonia spike. Imagine Pompeii but ammonia instead of lava.

Sadly but luckily I lost only 2 shrimps (although both berried females) and the tank has stabilised again. Well... somewhat. That ammonia spike contributed to an outbreak in BBA which I'm now winning the war against. Unfortunately I feel that this substrate does an excellent job of collecting waste and so I'll be constantly battling it in some way.

The shrimps are breeding well too despite the high CO2 levels. I've got shrimps of all sizes and there always seems to be little ones.

The plan is to keep this tank running, and scape my 45p which the shrimp will move into. It'll be a slow process over a couple of months but for now Frankenstein is not doing too shabby.


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Long Update Alert: Frankenstein is born again!

I wanted to keep some plants in a holding tank in their submersed form for my contest scape for a couple of months so I've made some changes. I've removed the CO2 from this tank and have put that on the holding tank. The C2 RGB is now also illuminating my propagation station.

In this process I fitted the LED that originally came with this tank (glad I didn't bin it as it was one day away from going to the dump!). The lighting is quite poor but the centralised spotlight effect created a very moody feel that got me thinking...
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Since this is now a low tech setup, why not get experimental and do things I normally don't do. That's when a blackwater setup came to mind. I have plenty of botanicals and manzanita laying around, and I'm sure the shrimp and pygmy corys will appreciate it! (Oh yes, I forgot to mention I have pygmy corys in here now 😅).

So last night I made a quick hardscape using manzanita. I had this vision long ago for the jungle tank to use the huge manzanita logs and just lay them in a pile like it had fallen there, and fill it with botanicals. I've essentially created a smaller, slightly more polished version of that dream. The goal is tannin-stained, low maintenance and simple.
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Today I started to break down the old scape, so it could be cleaned and rescaped. I originally put some Tropica Soil in the background but I realised 3 things;
1. I don't have anything to plant there yet.
2. I can't be assed with rooted plants.
3. I also can't be assed with a potential ammonia spike.

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As a result, it is just sand in there. I've got some rocks weighing down the wood which is spoiling the look a bit at the moment but for now here's how it's looking.
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