gjcarew
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Posts posted by gjcarew
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I'm moving my journal over from another forum. I've made intros here before, this is my most recent project.
I managed to win the AGA Dutch-style aquascape competition last year. I am hoping it wasn't a fluke, so I'm going to try again this year.
In its current format, this tank is not Dutch-style. But you must learn how to grow before you can garden, and I am still learning how to grow. This tank uses 6 T5HO lights and inert gravel, both of which are new to me. I need to get a handle on what plants do well in these conditions before I start massaging this to actually look like a Dutch-style aquarium.
What other projects? I also dabble with ponds, wabi kusa, and living walls. I am interested in trying my hand at a really great paludarium and biotope someday, but for the time being I don't have the bandwidth. Most aquarium projects are on hold right now as I bought a house last fall that has needed pretty constant repair.
A few warnings: I'm not a great writer. I have given up on trying to be super scientific and precise, so if you ask me a specific question my answer may be hand-wavey. Try to keep in mind that the way I do things is only one of a whole spectrum of ways to keep successful aquaria. I am no an expert, just a guy semi-obsessed with one of the nichest hobbies imaginable.
Current dosing:
15 ppm Ca, 12.2 g CaSO4,2H2O
7.5 ppm Mg, 14.4 g MgSO4,7H2O7.2 ppm NO3/ 3.33 g
2.8 ppm PO4/ 1.5 g
15.2 ppm K2SO4/ 5.19 g
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I won't pretend to have expertise on mattenfilters but I clean the sponges on my pre-filters and and in my HOB's fairly regularly and they still seem to end up super dirty. I would bet it would be worthwhile to take it out and give it a squeeze at least.
I love canister filters. They are great for dispersing CO2, and they don't take up any space on the floor of a tank. Sure, I wouldn't want them in a fish room, but for just one or two tanks they are great.
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This should be your Dutch tank! The whole left three-quarters of the tank is 90% there. I love the combination of the hygrophila serpyllum, hygrophila angustigolia and rotala wallichii. That rotala macrandra "mini" bush is also amazing.
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That is by far the purple-est lobelia cardinalis I've ever seen!
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On 2/25/2022 at 2:01 PM, Mmiller2001 said:
Oh boy! Hopefully it's not too costly, yet! 😂
Nothing that can't be fixed with a little elbow grease!
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On 2/25/2022 at 12:30 PM, Mmiller2001 said:
Even the pros have problems? I take a sigh of releaf 😅. But I know you will get this sorted eventually!
You don't know the half of it. My 75 gallon is an absolute mess right now
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Four weeks since the last update and things are going.... OK. You can see some of the aquatic moss is green and appears to have grown at least slightly. The sphagnum mix, despite the new watering regime, does not appear to have sprouted.
There is some moss growth on the wood, but I don't know if that is new growth or just the existing aquatic moss growing upwards.
The raphidophora hayi has some new growth points, but growth so far is still fairly small and weak.
One of the frustrating things is that on the same day I did this moss, I threw some dried long fiber sphagnum and the remaining dusk moss mix into a deli container, and it is doing great.
This tells me either I need the light to be shining more directly on the wall (rather than at an oblique angle) or that I just need humidity, in which case this setup just isn't gonna happen.
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On 2/17/2022 at 12:06 PM, anewbie said:
I love the look of peace river but for fishes like apisto and geo that like to poke in the substrate for food it is not good for their gills (a bit too coarse). I need something like that but much finer 😞
One substrate that I really liked but took a bit more work was the regular 60 lb Sakrete medium-grade sand. I sifted it through a regular kitchen strainer to get rid of all the dust-like particles and what came out was a coarse, greyish, natural looking sand. It seems like it would be small enough for geophagus, and the plants I planted in there did well. It's what I used in the tank below, but it got kinda mixed with the aquasoil I used in the background hence the larger particles.
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On 2/17/2022 at 9:13 AM, Mmiller2001 said:
My wife did a redo on her 20 tall. I thinks it's pretty good all things considered.
From
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The irresistible allure of CO2... is that the Peace River gravel?
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On 2/4/2022 at 3:49 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:
Sorry @Odd Duck, that's awful. I wish you a speedy recovery. On this end of taking care of COVID patients it is always frustrating, and the patients are always feeling so much worse either mentally or physically it is a hard balance as they are so connected. Bummer.
@gjcarewI think the open nature of this is difficult and without a constant source of humidity it could be difficult. Perhaps a humidifier like setup like @Odd Duckis suggesting could be part of the magic sauce.
Could you need to wrap the foam in something to get a better constant moisture? Is that epiweb stuff expensive?
I got a lot of recommendations to use hygrolon, which is a wicking material. At this point the milled sphagnum is constantly wet so hopefully that will work in place of hygolon/epiweb. I was hoping to get away with using cheap materials (the Aquarium Co-op sponge filter mat). I'm gonna give it another month or so to see if the new moss slurry grows, if it doesn't start growing by then I might just need to tear the whole wall down and come up with another plan.
@Odd Duck my sympathies on Covid, most of my family got it and despite being "mild" it still sounds horrible.
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@Mmiller2001 and @Guppysnail thank you for the suggestions, an I think that would be a better way to go. Or keeping this in a terrarium. One of my goals though was to keep it minimalistic and completely open. I wanted to be able to touch the moss on the wall. As a result I don't really have a method for spraying/ humidifying built in. If the moss just doesn't grow, I will have to figure out a way to work in a sprayer!
@Torrey I will have to collect some moss next time I'm in the woods and see if this setup will work for it
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Some feedback I got is not to let the moss get saturated, unless it is aquatic moss. So I cut up some Christmas moss, mixed it with a bunch of the Dusk Moss Mix (terrarium moss) and applied it. Good news, a day later and it's still almost fully damp! I'm hoping this means things are on the right track. Unfortunately it might still be another month before I see growth, since I essentially just did another hard reset on this project.
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@JimmyGimbal do we get Brandon unboxings now?
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Pretty much how I feel about this project right now...
It's been 5 weeks with no growth. I went and asked a question in a terrarium group, but the gamut of answers I received made it somewhat unhelpful. I suspect that rehydrating then dehydrating the mix did some harm to it. I suppose as well that the moss mix MIGHT come back, and I just need to wait a while with the new, better spread drip wall.
That said, it's a bit too patchy. There are some sections that are isolated from the dripping because coverage with the chopped sphagnum is not good enough. I'm going to reapply more moss mix and see what happens. I'm also making a backup by just putting some long fiber sphagnum in a bunch of light. I've gotten it to reanimate in the past by doing this, so I'm pretty sure it will work.
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On 1/18/2022 at 5:08 PM, Patrick_G said:
I just got caught up with this thread. I’ve been wanting to do something like this after being inspired by Steve Waldron’s drip wall at Zen. I bet he’s have some advice.
Is that a UNS 60S tank?
Yeah, it's a UNS 60s. I've been playing with living walls for a few years now. I think Steve gave up on his for the most part now and just lets the ficus pumila grow wild. I asked him about it and he said that it just doesn't work that well-- the nutrient demands of aquatic plants and the nutrient demands to grow terrestrial plants hydroponically are just too dissimilar.
I've never done a constantly wet drip wall. I hope it works out in the end but it's a pretty unique setup so I just don't know.
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Looks like the work of Shrimpery on IG: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJWWaQAsiwt/
He inspired me to get a low boy!
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laser forks, or some kind of laser-guided forks, would be cool
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On the other side of the spectrum I bought a $50 regulator, inline diffuser, and CO2 canister from some random Chinese brand off Amazon and it has been running fine for the past three years. Overall cost was $150 and it does the job as well as any other system.
I don't recommend DIY, for many of the reasons Vanish mentioned above. But if you want to go that route, Christel Kasselmann has a decades-old method that is sound.
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On 1/22/2022 at 9:57 AM, Mmiller2001 said:
Photo update:
Wallichii improving, Hygrophila is actually doing something now, though deformed and the Cyperus Helferi has popped new growth. I was worried it didn't make the trip.
Today I will twirl some algae spaghetti, move the lily right a bit and trim the street.
@gjcarew Contrast okay here?
I blurred this photo to try and focus on colors.
The wallichii and the limnophila aromatica are pretty similar right now, as are the the syngonanthus and the hygrophila siamensis. The first two will probably start to differentiate in color as you add more light. The syngonanthus you may want to move, potentially into the empty area to the right of your lily? Depends on if the hygrophila siamensis turns a lighter green as it grows, which it does in my tank. I think the lily looks great where it is.
The textural contrast is great. The myriophyllum guyana kinda throws things off but the otherwise you can very clearly identify the different plants groups by texture alone, and no two groups anywhere in the tank look particularly similar.
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This was my tank one month before taking the final picture last year. I had just installed the moss walls, none of the groups were the correct size/shape, and I was still swapping out species. You can definitely have a scape ready by September.
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I was gone for just over a week for Christmas, then my wife got Covid so I had to quarantine another 10 days. Long story short the fish at the office were fed but that's it. Stray particles clogged up the rigid airline tubing, and the background completely dried out. Luckily I'm no stranger to abject failure.
I made a little box for the pump out of coarse filter sponge, hopefully that will keep large particles out.
Unfortunately that airline hose is hard to clean so the water spread on the wall still kinda sucks. I need to figure out a way to clean it.
I will figure out drip walls if it kills me. If anyone has advice, I'm all ears!
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Sorry to hear about that. If you're looking for another clay-based substrate maybe super hard akadama would work for you? You can find it at many garden centers, especially if they sell bonsai and bonsai materials. It will lower PH and has a high CEC, like Safe-t-sorb, but is harder and less likely to break down (from what I've heard).
Everything I've read says that Fluorite is inert. Seachem claims it is made of clay but it does not seem to have the properties of a clay-based substrate.
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We have indoor cats since we live in the city. We don't get wild animals, but they do want to get involved with everything I'm doing. Here's the boy "helping" test a new aquarium light...
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On 1/5/2022 at 2:54 PM, Mmiller2001 said:
Should I shift the base of the street a bit left along with the Nymphaea? And it's okay to have the pink color of the Wallichii mostly center?
Waiting on this algae problem to resolve, then I will start it.
It looks like you might have to shift the street a bit. You can always make the street wider or skinnier so it's not exactly centered.
The staurogyne is not dead center, and neither would the wallichii be. The idea is that you don't want something that visually divides the tank in half, but that doesn't mean you can't have groups near the center.
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Road to the AGA Dutch Style Competition/Ended
in Photos, Videos & Journals
Posted
Sad to see it, though I understand why you would make that decision with all the issues you've been having. It's pretty baffling.
Like @Patrick_G said, I'm hoping this is a setback and not throwing in the towel for good. You have a real talent for aquatic gardening!