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GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant cliff

Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Don't you get that spring/summer feeling when staring at this? Looks like the carpet is nice enough to lounge on and relax under the sun. Or T5 tubes in this case. Hahah!
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

There is not a lot more that can be said about this tank, simply stunning 🙂
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Congratulations my friend :clap:
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

viktorlantos said:
#80 IAPLC 2011 :clap: :angel: :thumbup:
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Very nice indeed 🙂 congrats guys, looking forward to the photo 😉
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Sonnyarba said:
Congratulations my friend :clap:
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Thank you mate, now you know what we hided. 😉

LondonDragon said:
Very nice indeed congrats guys, looking forward to the photo
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Thanks my friend :angel:
I've seen some guys posted their photos already, but as i know at least the winning works need to be hided til the IAPLC party? Still the majority is not published yet.
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

viktorlantos said:
I've seen some guys posted their photos already, but as i know at least the winning works need to be hided til the IAPLC party? Still the majority is not published yet.
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I'll stop checking CAU until the party then!! Have been wondering when they would update their galleries.
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

My friend and co-owner partner at GA (Nigro) made some ad-hoc photo shooting today

The following image were captured in this tank. The tank still doing really well by the way. 😉 Sept 17th ADA Party is close so we will share the IAPLC photo shortly.

Anyway the following macro shot shows a bit of a details from the HC, but the focus on the houskeepers.
Amanos are fencing above a Red Bee Shrimp food. 😀 I guess the red stripe guy in the back is jellous that his dedicated food being eaten by these folks. :angel:

16.jpg
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Hi Viktor
Make sure to detail the trimming of this plant, many fail with over the longer term due to not trimming it, and then it pulls up and looks poor. This will help others not make this same mistake. The trimming of HC is not easy.

HCpruning4weekslater.jpg

And this took 3 hours on this 60cm tank!
HChackedback80liters.jpg

PITA...........

Nice photography on your tank.
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Hi Viktor :wave:

nice shot of Amanos :thumbup:
I know you used to have around 100 of them in this tank, but how many are there now?

Cheers
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Cheers Tom, Thanks for your feedback. :thumbup:

I was worried that we can't keep this beauty carpet on a long way. It was so dense and the speed of the growth was so fast that i thought we will loose it around 3 months. But probably because of the ideal conditions the HC stuck in the soil so much that i can't pull out by hand by now 😀 (AS Powder and cold water temp plays a nice role in that)

The tank is 7 month old now and doing really great. Trimming sessions are on every 3 weeks. I still keep some kind of skirts at the bottom of the stones which makes it nicer. I can't trim it so sleak that you have on your pic but i can live with that. Will shoot an update early next week how it looks now.

3 hours trimming? not bad 😀
Probably because of a great tool (Wave Scissor from ADA) the trimming on this beast around 2-3 hours too. But then hunting for the trimmed leafs takes hours. And i can't remove all of them so takes 1-2 days to do this. That's the killer part not the trimming for me. :angel:

But i can tell you i am in love with this plant now. If it has ideal conditions this is a long lasting beauty.
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Sonnyarba said:
Hi Viktor :wave:

nice shot of Amanos :thumbup:
I know you used to have around 100 of them in this tank, but how many are there now?

Cheers
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Yup we started with a larger ammount of shrimps at the beginning. Then we sold some at some point and got smaller ones back. Now we have around 50-70 Amanos in the tank and 30CRS or a bit more.

In a tank like this even the 100 amanos can hide so much that you will not see only 10-15 if you look for them. So this is really not disturbing to the eyes. Our visitors are really suprised that we have so much in the tank as they are not visible at all.

The carpet is very healthy without any algae so they do not need to work all day 😉
Actually i do feed them daily with shrimp food as they are doing great job for me. :thumbup:

The mass ammount of amanos do a wonder in any tank really.
I think most of us thought that 5-10 amano shrimps is enough for a large tank. Well if this is algae free for maintain maybe, but in the initial 3-4 months when the massive work needed they will be not as good as they should be with a larger team.

I read that earlier Mr. Amano used 15-16 shrimps in a 60L to fight with diatom. That was the idea comes from. And we have larger group of shrimps then on all of our larger tanks in the gallery. They are brilliant house keepers.
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Tom said:
So if you were to make a list Viktor, what would these ideal HC conditions be?
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Cheers my friend. Well i can tell what did the trick for me. Probably i already did that on the forum, but i could not find.

here is what i think helped:

- cool water 21/23 celsius, with frequent water change at the beginning. every 2 days in the first 2 weeks. still keeping the HC around 21/24.
- 4x54w light for 8 hours a day from the start.
- Pure RO water. So super soft water. Of course the Seiryu stones hardened this up a bit. But the plants looks more healthier then in our tap water tanks. Leaf are larger bushier and more vivid green.
- CO2 reactor injection. The best CO2 injection in my oppinion.
- great condition plants. Around 45/50 pots at start
- we used Aqua Soil Amazonia, but the thin layer Amazonia Powder (1-1.5cm) is a must have for all HC tanks. With this the carpet will be super strong and dense.
- 50/100 Amano shrimps. They removed the diatom algae which cover the carpet at the start and cause slow growth or death in HC if this takes too long. They also eat hair algae, so the tank was algae free from the first 3-4 weeks.

Some others what helped probably, but we will never know:
- ADA Additives, Penac P, Penac W
- ADA Fertilizers
- Trimming at every 2-3 weeks.
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The most important ones are the cool temp, powder soil (so hc grows more dense) and the best CO2 injection you can have.
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Really interesting stuff viktor. Thanks for sharing!
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

viktorlantos said:
Cheers Tom, Thanks for your feedback. :thumbup:

I was worried that we can't keep this beauty carpet on a long way. It was so dense and the speed of the growth was so fast that i thought we will loose it around 3 months. But probably because of the ideal conditions the HC stuck in the soil so much that i can't pull out by hand by now 😀 (AS Powder and cold water temp plays a nice role in that)
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This is where precisely understanding why, how plants grow and what specifically controls their rates of growth REALLY helps. Basic horticultural questions really.

I have about 1-2 month trim session with Starougyne.
It's very nice to deal with.

Still, the point here is that will less reduced light, you can reduce the trimming frequency. However, you might wish to sell the HC, which will give a lot more motivation to produce as much as you can. I will trim and maintain my tanks more......if I know I can sell the trimmings :idea:

This is a human trait, not a horticultural one 😳 Still, sometimes slowing the growth rates down on a weed like this is very useful and desirable. Light has been the best solution since it is almost the most stable and easy to manage of the big 3 :light, CO2 and nutrients.

You might consider trying less light intensity and/or less duration.

3 hours trimming? not bad 😀
Probably because of a great tool (Wave Scissor from ADA) the trimming on this beast around 2-3 hours too. But then hunting for the trimmed leafs takes hours. And i can't remove all of them so takes 1-2 days to do this. That's the killer part not the trimming for me. :angel:
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Yes, same here, I hate that part, it's like removing duckweed.

But i can tell you i am in love with this plant now. If it has ideal conditions this is a long lasting beauty.
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Well, you have what? 7 months? haha, when you get to 4-7 years, then see how you feel!
Or chose fish that will pull up such small plants.

ADA often does not use HC, I think it's due to the labor involved. Many of the ADA scapes are using easier to grow foregrounds and fewer stem plants, more ferns etc. Amano's own home tank uses no foreground plants, only ferns and very few stem plants of any sort. I would need to be able to sell and get a fair $$ for the HC to do this type of scape for long.
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

That's why you fail at aquascaping mate, you regard it like a business. :lol: Stop selling trimmings and you'll improve your skills, trust me. 🙂 I have a saying "there goes again another 30$ of cuttings down the toilet".

Viktor I use fine fish net after trimming, turn on the powerhead let the leaves reach the surface, turn it off, use the net, I do this a couple of times until I catch all the leaves. Be happy you don't have a blyxa or riccia lawn there, HC is super easy comparing to them. 🙂

Unfortunately I didn't use Powder and it's kinda painful rising HC in normal size Amazonia so I need to be extra careful not to pull it when I trim it.

3 hours to maintain that monster is not much. Hope you find trimming relaxing like I do, I could do this all day. 🙂

Cheers,
Mike
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

Cheers guys thanks for your comments.

Tom, i partly agree to slowing down the growth. However HC is very different from Stau. Stau is not that light demand plant and still looks very nice in many lighting range. Frankly if i would have a stau carpet like i've seen in your tank i would not use this much light. But for HC, Glosso i kind of like if they are never leggy so i burn them to push as much as i can to the soil.

We could sell many plants from our cuttings which we do sometimes (mostly with runners or crypts) but it's not the goal in a shop. Sometimes we do that to our friends and give them for free or a very low cost. HC is a different thing. As that is mostly leaf, less rooted plantlets.

On planting side i am much more the person who use a lot of plants from the beginning. As much as i can. Especially as we do not have time to wait for 6 months to have a better look. In a demo room this is needed. Still need 1-2 months but the best shape evolve in 3-4 months usually.

Mike, thanks for the tip on the fine fish net. I use the Tetra ones but they are still not enough fine. So will look after a finer one based on your feedback. Thanks mate. 😉

3 hours to maintain that monster is not much. Hope you find trimming relaxing like I do, I could do this all day.
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i hear ya mate, i gave up my IT business for this. 😀
 
Re: GA in-store display 120P Iwagumi - Fly above the giant c

viktorlantos said:
i hear ya mate, i gave up my IT business for this. 😀
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Oh man, that's my life's goal too. :lol:

You can try a plastic coffee filter strainer if you don't find a suitable fish net 😉

Cheers,
Mike
 
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