gjcarew

There is a decent chance it would. I want to be careful about using super vigorous plants like Monte Carlo, hydrocotyle tripartita, and ficus pumila, since they might take over the wall. I'd first like to see if I can get some moss and slower growing plants to work.

There a saying in Seattle startup culture that if you're going to fail, fail quickly. So that's what I did. The christmas moss was too far gone and the drip wall not dripping evenly enough to keep the moss moist. It was smelling kinda funky after a couple days so I took it off to prevent it from fouling the water for the fish. I built a new dripper out of rigid airline tubing that seems to work better. Rather than Christmas moss I bought some Dusk Moss Mix, which is often used in terrariums. The only downside is that it is gonna be at least a few months before it grows in. It also painted on kinda patchy, but when it comes down to it that is how moss grows in nature so I'm not upset about it. I lined the entire bottom of the wall with raphidophora hayi, a shingling epiphyte. My hope is it will grow up the sponge backing.

This is a build I've been wanting to do for months, but just got around to putting together this weekend. First off, here's the build (at least as far as I've gotten). My inspiration was a moss wall I saw on the Epiweb website. Epiweb is an inorganic material used for rooting epiphytic plants. Ive attached a pic of the inspiration below. I'm more known for aquascaping, but I really love everything around water as well, be it wet rainforests, riparian areas or mountain brooks. So this drip wall really inspired me. I had a tank at work that hadn't had a rescape in a year or so, so I decided to try my hand at it. For a backing material, I used 1/4 inch foamed PVC. I used PVC cement to glue it up so that the front piece overhang the tank, so there would never be any leaks. I then siliconed three of Aquarium Co-op's coarse sponge pads to the board. I don't know if this will work, but it seems similar enough to epiweb and it's way cheaper and easier to find. The water would get to the top of the wall with the airline tubing attached to a small pump. I punched holes in the airline tubing to create the drip emitters. I then cut in a groove around the sponge material and stuck the airline tubing in for a finished look. Here it is on the tank, before planting After that, I just had to hang my moss walls. The tank is a low tech, pond style tank with some of Dean's medaka. This is very much an experiment in that I don't know if the moss will survive. It was in poor shape as I took way longer than expected to get this planted, so the moss has been in a bag for about two months. The holes in the airline tubing were not all straight, but in the end I don't know if it matters. The moss has capillary action that spreads the moisture around. If the moss struggles, I'll replace the Aquarium Co-op tubing with some rigid airline with more precise holes. I'm hoping to plant some small plants on there like ferns and maybe small philodendron. I also need some springtails to prevent fungus (and be opportunistic fish food). This is just the start of the journey!

In my experience using the Aquarium Co-op airline tubing for CO2 makes it brittle and it's more likely than CO2-specific tubing to blow the diffuser off the end.

The way I see it the only thing that really matters for filtering a high-tech tank is that you get flow all around the tank to properly disperse CO2. You will have small fish and huge plant biomass so there is really no need to worry about processing fish waste.

If you have a spare hour, check out his journal. It's a goldmine of information. My biggest takeaways were daily maintenance (pruning old and dying leaves), and 90% water changes twice a week!

Is the plan to see what is growing best and then pick from those? What are you planning on using for your street? Something to consider is that if you use a light green plant on the back wall like hygrophila serpyllum it will be tough to make any green background stem plants stand out against it. In my opinion darker backgrounds also help lend a sense of depth. One of my favorite examples is how Joe Harvey uses dark bucephalandra in the background to let all the other plants stand out. That said I have seen tanks with hydrocotyle tripartita backgrounds that look wonderful. So I suppose it all comes down to execution. The one below is an example. I don't know if the hydrocotyle actually helps in the background here, or if it is just a halo effect from the generally excellent plant husbandry. Edit: wanted to give credit for the above tank and picture to the immensely talented nntnam who started keeping planted tanks like 2 years ago, made some absolutely amazing scapes, then as far as I know quit the hobby. Undoubtedly the quickest rise to mastery I've seen.

Trim the dying leaves. You can remove every leaf off a crypt and as long as it has roots and the rosette is intact it will grow back.

Buce can melt when conditions change. The new leaves will be better adapted to the new conditions. You can trim leaves, but I'd keep the whole rhizome intact. A lot of time if I have all the leaves melt off a buce rhizome I just stick it in the back of the tank and forget about it, then a few months later you'll be surprised to find a healthy plant!

I always thought it was funny how Petco will sell a 1.5 gallon tank for a betta, but their "betta bulbs" are better suited for 40+ gallons

Could it be the result of reversing flow on your reactor? I'm excited to talk about Dutch-style aquascaping with you. Not many people really go for it! The hardest part by far is having to pare down species to only 12 in a 75-gallon. Here are the best resources I've found: - Bart Laurens wrote an article on the Dutch style. He is Dutch and most of his pictures are from NBAT tanks. This is my favorite resource to really get that Dutch-style vibe. It should be understated and serene. The spaces you don't fill are as important as the ones you do. It's better to go with fewer, impactful groupings-- to the point where I might describe the Dutch style as minimalist compared to what one would find in a typical "Facebook" tank. - Vin Kutty (one of the AGA judges) wrote an wrote an absolute wall of an article about Dutch aquascaping do's and don'ts. There are over 70 tips, and you may go crazy trying to follow them all. The main takeaway is to focus on contrasting colors and textures. He gives some great examples of plant groupings that do and do not go well together. - In terms of people that consistently do great work, look to Joe Harvey who goes by burr740 on a number of forums. He's a plant health wizard. He also always keeps his tanks thoroughly manicured. This is important because you really need a lot of practice to get groups to look right.

Thanks everyone. I called it "Community" because everything I've learned has been through the community in my local club (GSAS) and through online forums. Quite a few of the plants also came directly from Aquarium Co-op, which I'm lucky to live relatively close to. I had done a Dutch aquascape in 2020, then added some driftwood and switched to a nature-style layout over the winter as it's less maintenance work. I started working on this one in March of 2021, and took the final picture in late August. In terms of hours worked, it's generally one to two hours a week on average. When it's getting close to being ready, it takes a bit more time. All the plants need to reach the optimum height and spacing at the same time, and many of these are fast growers. In order to keep the plants from being "scalped," I need to trim by uprooting the plants, trimming the bottoms, and replanting. I try to do 15-30 minutes of trimming per day, then do a gravel vac and big water change once a week. This keeps the maintenance feeling much more manageable.

Guideline 1 of the forum: First and foremost, be kind and helpful to one another on the forum. I don't think either of you are being kind or helpful. Using archaic (and nonsensical) insults to avoid the profanity filter is lame, BTW. If you can't be nice, just leave the thread.

The Dutch tank from last August

I'm also a member of GSAS. For $15 per year you get: - Breeder's award program -Horticulture award program - Conservation award program - Access to video archive of speakers (many of the same people that Aquarium Co-op has) - Monthly newsletters - Checking out aquarium-related books and DVD's from the club library - A club PAR meter - Monthly auctions - Moderated facebook groups and a separate buying and selling group - Annual home show I realize with Aquarium Co-op's decentralized club idea some of these can be harder to pull off, but $5 per month/ $60 per year is not even in the same ballpark as other aquarium clubs in terms of value. I know YouTube has a flat "channel membership" fee, but it's too high for me to justify. Forgive me if this has already been discussed, but any thoughts?

If you're local the Fish Store in Lake City Way sells bulk crushed coral. You can buy by the pound

Tank is looking wonderful. How are you liking the lower macros? I imagine they are close to 0 by the end of the week, it can really bring out some great color in plants. Cool to see that working in a tank without active substrate. I can't tell what that left side plant is-- some kind of persicaria?

Setting up a tank with live sphagnum seems like a successful way of doing it. I was listening to Rosario Lacorte on The Aquarist podcast and he mentioned that's how he breeds emperor (maybe it was ember?) tetras. He has a thick Jersey accent so it was a little tough to tell. The gist was that the fry can survive in the moss layer where they won't be predated on. This is the episode: https://aquariumcoop.libsyn.com/ep-86-rosario-lacorte-on-fish-food-peat-moss-and-breeding-tetras The talk about breeding tetras came in the last 15 minutes, I believe. Shouts out to @Randyfor the podcast btw, I'm loving it! I also found some anecdotes saying the same thing from The Krib. https://www.thekrib.com/Fish/tetras.html Randy Carey wrote a book on breeding egg scatterers, and gave a talk at GSAS where he said the highest success rate was with building a false bottom on your tank for eggs to fall through, but that it is also a lot more effort. That's how Greg Sage breeds his Odessa barbs.

Cleaning glass lily pipes. I've broken them before, it's stressful every single time.

Wise. The cause of algae has never been "not enough glutaraldehyde" I think it looks much better. Allows you to "shape" groups as well when there is more room for them. This is my 22-gallon when it was more Dutch-style, with only 9 different plant types. It's a 3-foot tank and towards the end I was thinking of paring it down to even fewer species.

Constant anxiety

Not sure if it's the same in the UK but gardening is an old person's hobby mainly because young people can't afford houses with gardens. I've been renting my whole life and doing guerilla gardening around apartment buildings just to scratch the itch. We have finally managed buy a house and I can't wait to "dig in"!

Crazy camouflage on that shrimp!

I use Hikari First Bites until they can take BBS

Man, I find this so much more interesting than a standard coral tank.