viktorlantos
Aquascaper
Cheers guys, i thought i share the following tank with you. We're quite busy setting up a fancy store in my country which some of you may seen before on flickr. This is an aquascaping store fully focusing to planted tanks, but the topic is not about the shop, more about the experiences.
We have a few tanks there already. Some of them started 2-3 weeks ago so we can see some progress already.
One of the tank is a 120P (120x45x45) tank with 10mm opti white glass. Open top with a hanging ATI light.
The 2 weeks progress is significant as you can see below, but before i jump to the photos let me share with you some other details.
The tank created to be a minimal japanese style iwagumi. Fully with Seiryu stone and HC as a carpet plant.
Used ADA Power Sand spec with some additives and Aqua Soil Amazonia and Amazonia powder as a cover layer on top of all the substrate. Fertilizing with ADA ferts. Using 2 Eheim 2075 filters and AM1000 external reactor for CO2.
We're using 4 tube lights from the begining with 8 hours lighting per day. Of course we moved up the light unit a bit as ATI lamps are quite powerful.
The scape started with a 12 hours marathon planting. First the substrate and stones were set up in the tank.
I had really good experiences with Aqua Soil Powder before as a cover layer with HC. Hemianthus spread extremely good and fast with this small soil.
After the hardscape nearly 50 pots HC were planted. The majority of the time spent on to divide each hc to plantlets and plant them into the tank equally.
The result did not looked good as the plantlets was not that much visible for the first time, but we knew this will look awesome later and the long hours will end up with a perfect carpet on a short term.
This is how it looked 2 weeks before after the fill up:
Only 7 days after the setup the HC spreaded so fast. First we got some green water because of the light. Used UV for 2 days to eliminate it. Then we got a massive diatom/rizo attack and in 2 days the full carpet was covered by this mess.
10 days with a massive algae attack
With daily water changes with full RO water (colder) the HC continued its run. (The water temperature is a bit below 25 celsius on our tanks just FYI, but fresh water is around 18). 50% water change daily. Not reduced the light of course.
Water changes happened with an Eheim pump, but we used an electric toothbrush to help suck out the algae from the carpet. 😉
Black out was not an option for us and the above method only helped for a few hours with this kind of algae. On the other day the carpet was full with algae again.
So we throwed in 50 amanos (adult ones) to help with the mess.
This was the first time when i've seen amanos working in a team. Probably because of the massive number they worked in a group of ten with different patches. Unfortunatelly the photo not gives back the moment, but i captured one of the group at that time. This was last friday.
I can tell you next morning that corner was free from algae fully. 😉
From day to day we've seen big improovement on the clean up. Til we've seen the following status today.
Only 17 days after the setup. Beat the algae attack and completed the carpet 😉
I never had such a quick success with this plant. So i had a thought why we succeed with it.
- Aqua Soil Powder. Much easier for HC to lay down in this soil with its small roots
- Plant with plantlets with as much HC as you can. Yes it takes 10 hours maybe so split the pots and plant it carefully but worth it.
- Full light from start.
- External reactor helped with the optimum CO2 all the time
- Continous water changes daily with colder water. HC just loved this. In overall HC goes much better below 25 celsius.
- Soft water. I guess this helps to speed up the process. At least was my experience before. Maybe would worked with harder water too. But may played a little role here.
- Ferts... not really matter in the first 2 weeks, but we used ADA ones from the beginning. Brighty K, Step 1 only.
- Put in as much amanos as you can. Algae will come, but they helped us a lot to clean up the mess before HC would damage.
This is not the perfect guide of course. It is just those things we used and some of them may played a role to do better.
For now we're thinking about what kind of fish to use in this tank.
But i thought i share this tank with you guys hopefully some of you will like it. 😉
Any feedback appreciated, or assistance with the fish selection.
We have a few tanks there already. Some of them started 2-3 weeks ago so we can see some progress already.
One of the tank is a 120P (120x45x45) tank with 10mm opti white glass. Open top with a hanging ATI light.
The 2 weeks progress is significant as you can see below, but before i jump to the photos let me share with you some other details.
The tank created to be a minimal japanese style iwagumi. Fully with Seiryu stone and HC as a carpet plant.
Used ADA Power Sand spec with some additives and Aqua Soil Amazonia and Amazonia powder as a cover layer on top of all the substrate. Fertilizing with ADA ferts. Using 2 Eheim 2075 filters and AM1000 external reactor for CO2.
We're using 4 tube lights from the begining with 8 hours lighting per day. Of course we moved up the light unit a bit as ATI lamps are quite powerful.
The scape started with a 12 hours marathon planting. First the substrate and stones were set up in the tank.
I had really good experiences with Aqua Soil Powder before as a cover layer with HC. Hemianthus spread extremely good and fast with this small soil.
After the hardscape nearly 50 pots HC were planted. The majority of the time spent on to divide each hc to plantlets and plant them into the tank equally.
The result did not looked good as the plantlets was not that much visible for the first time, but we knew this will look awesome later and the long hours will end up with a perfect carpet on a short term.
This is how it looked 2 weeks before after the fill up:
Only 7 days after the setup the HC spreaded so fast. First we got some green water because of the light. Used UV for 2 days to eliminate it. Then we got a massive diatom/rizo attack and in 2 days the full carpet was covered by this mess.
10 days with a massive algae attack
With daily water changes with full RO water (colder) the HC continued its run. (The water temperature is a bit below 25 celsius on our tanks just FYI, but fresh water is around 18). 50% water change daily. Not reduced the light of course.
Water changes happened with an Eheim pump, but we used an electric toothbrush to help suck out the algae from the carpet. 😉
Black out was not an option for us and the above method only helped for a few hours with this kind of algae. On the other day the carpet was full with algae again.
So we throwed in 50 amanos (adult ones) to help with the mess.
This was the first time when i've seen amanos working in a team. Probably because of the massive number they worked in a group of ten with different patches. Unfortunatelly the photo not gives back the moment, but i captured one of the group at that time. This was last friday.
I can tell you next morning that corner was free from algae fully. 😉
From day to day we've seen big improovement on the clean up. Til we've seen the following status today.
Only 17 days after the setup. Beat the algae attack and completed the carpet 😉
I never had such a quick success with this plant. So i had a thought why we succeed with it.
- Aqua Soil Powder. Much easier for HC to lay down in this soil with its small roots
- Plant with plantlets with as much HC as you can. Yes it takes 10 hours maybe so split the pots and plant it carefully but worth it.
- Full light from start.
- External reactor helped with the optimum CO2 all the time
- Continous water changes daily with colder water. HC just loved this. In overall HC goes much better below 25 celsius.
- Soft water. I guess this helps to speed up the process. At least was my experience before. Maybe would worked with harder water too. But may played a little role here.
- Ferts... not really matter in the first 2 weeks, but we used ADA ones from the beginning. Brighty K, Step 1 only.
- Put in as much amanos as you can. Algae will come, but they helped us a lot to clean up the mess before HC would damage.
This is not the perfect guide of course. It is just those things we used and some of them may played a role to do better.
For now we're thinking about what kind of fish to use in this tank.
But i thought i share this tank with you guys hopefully some of you will like it. 😉
Any feedback appreciated, or assistance with the fish selection.
