Kirb

This was my first aquarium that started the addiction and most neglected tank. This piece of spider wood caught my eye and I grabbed a few river rocks. It was a 5gallon topfin split tank, I removed the waterfall divider. I toss the tank back together last week with a quick scape. I looked at it for a few hours over the week and ordered a few supplies. This is the end result.

Had a lot of new plants come in so redid the 60p. Little picture dump for how things are looking for the new year.

Bought some extension tubes to play around with macro photography. Tested them out on my fauna

Been a busy few months and tanks have been a bit neglected. Did a big cleaning on the small tank this weekend. Everything looks great minus erio quin. Uprooted most the plants to clean the substrate. Plan to move some stuff around in the 60p this week when I do maintenance.

Managed my to propagate Xyris sp red, chia and split the erio quins up this weekend. Erio sulawesi is struggling a bit as it's been fighting a lot of algae as it transitions to sub. Moved everything around but not really happy with it. Going to give it sometime to settle in before I mess with it again. Hoping the pogo erectus will take off but it's been struggling.

First month down. The Tonina are doing great and have given me a lot of babies. Added a few other plants just to help get the tank stable. Fighting a little bit of staghorn since a lot of the plants melted back. Increase water changes and cleaning before I adjust lighting or ferts. Thinking I'll move a lot of the plants around in here over the weekend. Some bugs have been eating my plants like crazy but these bins are doing great.

Got the water box mini10 back up in running. Still looking for a few more plants for it. Had some erios come in before I was ready to fill the tank so they'll grow out a little in the 60p for now.

Down the 10 gallon goes for a bit. Got netlea soil and netlea at5s in for it. Going dark for a few weeks while I figure out what plants I want to try. Rough idea of what I'm thinking.

Received some cool new plants yesterday. Some tonina fluviatilis, Bacopa colorata, purple staurogyne, and cuphea anagalloidea. Slowly moving the 60p into a mostly rare plant tank. 10galon tank has turned into a holding cell for now. Plan on selling all the plants in it and resetting the tank.

First attempt at diy wabi kusa balls. I had everything minus coco fiber ($5) and 2 container from goodwill ($2.50 each). I'm not happy with the initial result as aquasoil seems to be leaking out but I'll see after a few weeks. I'll likely go with a sphagnum moss outside layer next time. Used some left over uns soil and mixed with a little water till I got a consistency I liked. This was messy and a long process. I should have used a coffee grinder to break the soil down. The coco fiber was a bit tricky to manipulate. I use some old 4lb mono fishing line to wrap them. I used some emersed clipping from my little plant farm along with some moss. Grabbed a few Ludwigias, Rotalas, downio helferi, and s. Repens. One of my grow bins is fighting some mold so I had some empty space for a temporary home.

Got back from a 9 day vacation and took a few days to get everything back in order. Traded some trimmings for more buce, purchased a nice clump and some anubias nana petite. Close to 50 epiphytes in here now. Attempted to make a few wabi kusa balls with some leftover aquasoil and emersed trimmings.

Sold a ton of plants this weekend but probably didn't trim these two bins back enough or my tanks. Still have way to much Rotala oj and good bit of s repens. New tank is pretty much full farm status. My bins inside haven't been doing the greatest. Got hit pretty hard with a mold out break a few weeks ago. Been working on transitioning everything outside with more ventilation. Using a bush for shade. So far it's been working out. Started a new bin for Ludwigia natan super red and Rotala h'ra. Slowly trying to get everything its own box. Bin with Bacopa caroliniana, Ludwigia repens x arcuata, myriophyllum roraima(not liking the heat tho), and a few Rotala ramosior Florida.

Started another farm tank project. Turned my 4 gallon desktop tank into a buce farm. Will be removing the stems this weekend and looking to add a buce or moss wall. Believe I found some Ludwigia palustris in the ditch at work

Did a pretty massive trimming over the weekend. New tank it being a little annoying fighting some start up algae, I should have dark started. Love watching one stem turn into many

Emersed bin went pretty wild over the last 2 weeks so I had to add a few more boxes. One of the new boxes has Ludwigia repens, natans, and Rotala Florida. Started with 2-3 stems of each a month ago and they've multipled nicely. Trying out a different soil with worm castings mixed in.

Finally got a "big" tank, well, to me at least. Had great luck with my off brand, ledstar aq-s, led on my 9 gallon. So I went with another less talked about light, netlea at5s Need to put some finishing touches on the stand but excite to have more room for plants. Been playing around with plants in the yard as well. Been doing great but the bugs are loving them as well.

I had forgotten about this post. A few months after this the tank started to look really good I got lazy. I let my CO2 run out and stopped doing water changes for a few months. Algae took over, plant over grown/decaying at the bottoms but shrimp were thriving. In February I found the motivation to start putting the time back into my tank. I lost most of my plants and that sparked the idea of keeping some emersed so I'd have backed. Here's a picture dump of 2023. Last picture I took in October before letting things go south. February, the restart. Replanted what I could in hopes of saving them. Add little hardscape to fill empty space. Had to pull the hair grass out since I couldn't get the algae to go away. Added new plants. About this time my shrimp population start to plummet. Thinking due to constant changes in parameters maybe, idk still. February 8th And here we are today 3 months ish later.

Updates will probably slow down now. This week I moved some plants around again and almost have everything where I want it. Need a few things to grow some more so I can propagate them. Added some R. vietnam and myrio Roiama to my 5 gallon tank I plan on adding to the 10 gallon onces I get some trimming and it converts from its submerged form. Also gave away all the endlers fry out of the 10 gallons which worked out great. Gave them to a local who sells drifwood for a living so that could be nice resource in the future. I took a trip to the lfs and did something I've never done... test my water. Everything was great minus my kh, so I added some crush coral. They had an amazing select of nano fish come in this week, which made it difficult to finally decide on a small school for the tank. I ended up with 6 emerald eye rasbora. They weren't the most eye catching out of the choices or really on my radar, but enjoyed watching them. I've never had a schooling fish, they are so mesmerizing to watch. Almost like sitting infront of a camp fire.

Wanted to do something with the trimmings and diftwood I had planned to us so I redid my 4gallon tank. I made the original hardscape take up to much room so couldnt plant on that side of the tank. I never want to pull hair grass up, split it and replant ever again.

Lily pipes arrived today. Changed the tubing out on the fluval filter and installed Aquario neo flow. Canister filters still makes me nervous. I hope I got the tubing on the out flow enough but it was tough as dirt getting it on. Just shy of 4 weeks running and did my first trimming. Very happy with how things are going. Hoping the Lobelia mini in the forward ground will start to fill in some more or I may need to think about what to do with that corner. Otocinclus have destroyed all the diatom and seem to be doing well.

I need to learn to leave the plants alone but I keep finding myself moving them around. I had a few plants I felt weren't getting great light and getting over ran. I moved them out of the back line in hopes they'll do better. Put 3 otocinclus in the tank and they are knocking the diatoms out. Woke up to a mystery snail that went sky diving... The endler/guppy fry are starting to color up. My first aquascape attempt is finally starting to like nicer as well. Hair grass wasn't doing to good but has started to carpet.

Took the light down 10%, hopefully it'll help. Old lady took me shopping for my birthday. Got her to get me a fluval 107. Being new to this I didn't have much filter medium laying around to cycle the filter. I used what I could and hoping it'll be ok. All I need now is some clear hose and lilly pipes to make it look nicer. Hoping this will help with the background plants that were getting pushed over by the hob's flow and move the co2 around better

Cleaned erio off and removed the old growth, wasn't looking to hot The slow growers aren't doing the best. Getting a little bit of algae. Added 2 snails to help out and my add an amino shrimp. Need to be a little more consistent with my ferts. Also still getting the CO2/light dialed in, trying to push it more. Hoping everything will settle in once the tank is more established.

It looked good in pictures but was very 2d looking in person. Was 5 or 6 small Manzanita. Using fluval stratum for substrate. So far everything is exploding with growth beside the erio Vietnam

I'm typically just a lurker on forums but figured I'd like a place to track my progress of my tank. I've been enjoying all the co-op podcast and reading everyone journals. I got into planted tanks and aquarium's in general a few months ago. I found a great deal on a 10 gallon water box on Facebook. Was suppose to be a cheap low tech tank but it spiralled out of control. Ended up getting a fzone CO2 generator and ledstar aq-s 40. My next purchase will be a canister filter, currently using a filter from a different tank. I played with the hardscape for a few hours but was never really sure about it. I changed route and just went for more of a dutch style. I was very lucky to find a local person who was able to supply me with all the plants and a ton of info. Here is day 1 after planting and filling the tank up All the plants came from a green house with very high humidity. Only a few had a little melt. I let everything adjust to it's emersed form for a week. I ended up trimming the tops off and replanting a few. Also moved a lot around. Here is 10 day in and where I'm at today. Not sure what I will stock this with. Thinking cpd or phoenix rasbora if I can find some. Put a few endlers hybrid fry that was getting gobble up with my other tank.