Saintly's 120cm 'hill's of desire'

[Mark Evans]

I'm really sorry if I offended you but honestly didn't mean it like that,

dont worry your head mate

Could you please elaborate? Do you mean lighting to shine on the wall behind the tank, instead of a background?

basically mawgan, all i do is place maybe 1 x 54 t5 unit at the rear. place a reflector underneath the light so that the light shines up the back. word of warning! place the light at the top of the substarte level or black out the substrate at the back of the tank. you don't want unneeded light hitting the substrate causing problems such as BGA etc. i've never experienced it, but could cause problems.

i used a grad/blue back ground @ MA and i personally found it to be outstanding in the effect it gave. kind of like this but in real time.....





one other thing. i've used the window diffuser stuff from wilkos, and this stuff is great on white backgrounds, but IME, not so great with black. It renderers the deep blacks, slightly grey ish.

I'd hate to not have that in my own home

tell me about mate. I always left, thinking...." why the hell have my last 4 big tanks been away from home?"

 

[viktorlantos]

too bad this is did not had time to reach the best form had lots of nice details in it especially with the stones, sand and moss transitions etc. but i agree with you the best you can take care of it if you do it at home.

poor guys had a stunning live tank in the past months and now the room will be so empty without this green eden.

looking forward to your next scape Mark. woody one will rock!

 

[Mawgan]

basically mawgan, all i do is place maybe 1 x 54 t5 unit at the rear. place a reflector underneath the light so that the light shines up the back. word of warning! place the light at the top of the substarte level or black out the substrate at the back of the tank. you don't want unneeded light hitting the substrate causing problems such as BGA etc. i've never experienced it, but could cause problems.

i used a grad/blue back ground @ MA and i personally found it to be outstanding in the effect it gave. kind of like this but in real time.....

one other thing. i've used the window diffuser stuff from wilkos, and this stuff is great on white backgrounds, but IME, not so great with black. It renderers the deep blacks, slightly grey ish.

Saintly,

Many thanks for the info.

I had ordered a frosted rear wall in my soon-to-be-delivered new tank, but on a visit to TGM, Graham showed me their stick-on film. Using that will hopefully achieve the same effect, and if I don't like it, I can remove it. Equally, if I am cack-handed enough to scratch the front glass, I can stiil turn the tank around! 🙂 Win, win...

 

[Mark Evans]

Job done! 😀

Tanks is finito! After taking all the plants out, I then started on the stones.

I'm amazed at how well moss travels! clinging to everything in its path.

If you remember the moss were on small bits of slate but they've manage to crawl a good 8 inches from their starting place.

even more exciting for my next scape.

 

[aaronnorth]

Every tank is always nice, but I am always look forward to your next attempt 😀

 

[Ben C]

Great journal, Saintly - thanks. The videos are especially useful - interesting to see just how much water movement you have in the tank. It illustrates how mine is lacking flow and explains a few problems. On to read the next journal now!

 

[Mark Evans]

Ben! You'll be surprised at how little flow is needed in an aquarium. Everyone bangs on about how much flow is needed....the 10x rule etc. It really isn't needed.

Over the last 3 years, I've come top realise that not everything depends on flow, co2 and ferts.

I've run quite large aquariums, and dinky ones with low flow, and they've all done OK!

I may have used plenty of flow in the past, but it's about placement of outlets that counts, not how many you have.

Slow, but efficient flow counts.

 

[sanj]

I think people misunderstand some of the principles. 10x rule is in line with the E.I approach which is not a fine tuned approach to aquatic gardening, its a bit like the 1" per gallon rule with small fish stocking. These are general rules with a significant margin for error. 🙂