gjcarew
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Posts posted by gjcarew
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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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On 1/5/2022 at 10:04 AM, Mmiller2001 said:
The good news:
I'm down to 10 species and I think the street is coming in nicely. I will adjust the curve a bit, I think it's too extreme. I'm removing the Bacopa, back right, and putting in a Hygrophila species. Also, the Belem is coming out (this takes the tank to 9 species) and I removed the Helferi. I put Purple Repens in that will be my foreground/ carpet. The little green plant in the forward area is only there temporarly, It melts in my 75 and I'm trying to save it. So ignore them. Trying Wallichii in the back left but it is on the chopping block as it could be a rule breaker.
If you look at the left foreground, I added some extra Purple Repens. See it's normal color versus the same plant covered in GDA just behind it! Wow, right!
For what it's worth I think your composition has vastly improved. I don't think there is too much of a curve in your street, it looks about right to me. I think if you move the nymphaea a touch to the left and moved the walichii to where the spatulata is, your focal points would be pretty much perfect.
I would then put the staurogyne spatulata in the back right, the"formal" upright stems would contrast well with the wild look of the juncus repens. It also has great contrast with light green/yellow of the limnophila aromatica "mini". A light green hygrophila coymbosa varietal would be perfect for back left, since it would offer color contrast with the vallisneria, staurogyne "purple", and wallichii.
Very exciting to see your vision come together. Have you started working on a moss wall yet?
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Regarding plant choices: lay out the bones of your scape, the stuff you really need, and the rest will fill itself in.
1. Pick a focal point plant. This goes at one of the "rule of thirds" points; bottom left, top left, bottom right, or top right. Take the time to either take a photo and draw the rule of thirds lines on it, or draw it on your tank with whiteboard marker and look at the tank from where the photo will be taken. Having these focal points off by just a few inches makes the scape seem uneasy.
2. If you have another visually powerful plant that you really want to use, it by default has to go in the opposite "rule of thirds" point-- for example, if your focal point is bottom left, it has to be top right. Anything else and your scape will be too obviously symmetrical.
3. Pick a "Dutch street" plant and decide where you want it. It should not start dead center, and should curve up and behind a midground group. It can disappear behind one of the focal point plants if you like. If you do not yet have a midground bush to curve it behind, pick a plant that grows dense enough to hide the vanishing point of the street.
4. Add a tall, "grassy" plant somewhere. It's nice to have a rosette as well, but Vin (one of the judges) is a real stickler about "grassy" plants. The easiest place for this is front left/right, to act as a curtain.
5. Decide on 2-4 background plants. These should be big and dense enough to cover a significant portion of the background, without being so strong visually that they distract from the from the focal point plants
At this point, you should have at least five plants located where they need to be. This is when you can start choosing between plants. No plant can touch a plant that looks similar, either in texture or color. Take a picture and turn it grayscale; if you can't clearly tell the plants apart by texture alone, they won't work next to each other. Do the same thing, but instead of grayscale apply a strong blur effect to your photo. If you can't clearly tell them apart by color alone, then they should not be next to each other. This is where you'll find the importance of having big gaps in between your groups, there is no other way to visually separate plants that are similar shades of green or similar textures.
Every group needs to be important to the layout. They should have a visual weight. A person walking by your tank should be able to stop and look at each group and immediately be struck by what a beautiful plant that is. As you start growing your groups to full height, and practicing your strict trimming, you'll notice groups that look weak in comparison to the rest of the rest of the layout, those are ones to consider eliminating. I considered going down to seven species in a 3-foot tank, if I had more time I would have tried it.
The only way to pick plants is iteratively. Grow out a group, assess the contrast with the surrounding groups, if it works then great and if it doesn't, pick another plant. In my last Dutch-style tank, I grew five different species to full height in the same location in the tank until I found one that worked. I would fall asleep thinking about whether Hygrophila difformis and Hydrocotyle leucocephala are too close to the same shade of green.
TL;DR don't try to pick your plants now. Focus on the 4-5 plants that are a definite yes, get them into their positions, and the rest will become obvious.
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On 12/20/2021 at 7:47 PM, Biotope Biologist said:
You may have to mist the moss too while it's growing in. I know when I brought my moss in for the winter it did not take well to the dryness of my home and immediately started melting. I love low slung tanks and anxious to see how this turns out!
Like you said once the moss has matured it can move moisture around via capillary action, maybe this variety will be better suited than christmas moss.
This is something called Dusk Moss Mix, which is a mix of chopped sphagnum, dehydrated tropical terrestrial mosses, fern spores, liverworts, and gesneriad seeds. So I don't even know if it will sprout in the first place!
I don't want something that has to be misted, so anything not moistened by the drip wall I'm not even going to try with.
I thought about getting mosses from outside, but I don't know if the local mosses will do well indoors where there isn't a winter dormancy period. Have you had any trouble with keeping collected mosses alive?
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Nice experiment. Good to see you trying it without plants in your tank. I've seen some other experiments on this subject online if you want to check them out.
I personally find Novak frustrating because he never offers any proof of what he's saying. The science is mumbo-jumbo, and when you ask him to explain why he thinks this type of denitrification should work he cites a website he wrote, and concepts that are apparently unknown to the rest of the scientific community. He demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of basic scientific concepts, and has never said where his PhD is from... I would be VERY surprised if he is even a doctor. Seems to me like a kooky guy with a mostly harmless grift.
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On 12/20/2021 at 10:33 AM, Mmiller2001 said:
What frame work do you use in the tank?
Basic construction for the backing can be found here. The one change I made from Joe's design is I used green nylon produce netting that I found on a bag of garlic at the store to secure the moss to the needlepoint mesh. I found it WAY easier than the fishing line method, which I've also tried. This is the page from my journal where I set it up.
I haven't tried Cory's method of attaching moss to matala mat (underwater at least). I had serious space constraints so it wouldn't work for me.
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On 12/20/2021 at 12:50 AM, xXInkedPhoenixX said:
I was wondering about it since I recently got some and am debating on whether or not to put it in my tanks since it's prolific- though I'm not sure if it would be in my low tech tanks. You kind of have my mind working for a similar small build but using the Monte.
It's much more manageable in low tech tanks, it really only takes off when it has unlimited access to CO2, such as when it is grown emersed.
On 12/20/2021 at 4:33 AM, Mmiller2001 said:Is this the same material used for your moss wall in your AGA win?
Yep, same moss. I had it sitting around in a bag in the basement WAY too long.
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On 12/20/2021 at 12:44 AM, xXInkedPhoenixX said:
@gjcarew bummer on the first attempt! I'm sure you'll get it. Just curious, would a plant like Monte Carlo work on this kind of thing?
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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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On 12/3/2021 at 9:13 AM, Mmiller2001 said:
I'm installing the Eheim spray bar today as well, and I'm still hoping the Eheim Classic 2215 is enough on this tank. It's just shy of 5xturn over. Probably more like 4xturnover with head pressure. I honestly don't want to put a bigger one on the tank. I'm growing tired of spending cash! But I will if need be. Should I? @gjcarew
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.
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On 12/2/2021 at 12:41 PM, Mmiller2001 said:
That second tank is off the chart. I'd imagine that will take me a lifetime to achieve.
On 12/2/2021 at 4:24 PM, Patrick_G said:I agree! That tank is fantastic. The Hydrocotyle side walls are like ivy covered walls in an English garden. Amazing.
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!
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On 12/2/2021 at 2:51 AM, Mmiller2001 said:
So far, the hardest part has been plant selection. I was told to look for slow growing plants and I've also been looking for very dark green plants. This is not easy!
Here's the plant list so far:
- Althernanthera Variegatus
- Althernanthera Bettzickiana Green
- Didiplis Diandra
- Bacopa Australis
- Cabomba Aquatica
- Aponogeton Ulvaceus
- Micranthemum 'Monte Carlo'
- Rotala Manipurensis
- Nympaea Stellata
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Hydrocotyle Tripartita - Limnophila Aromatica
- Acmella Repens
- Pogostemon Erectus
- Rotala Bonsai
- Myrio Guyana
- Limnophila Vietnam
- Althernanthera Reineckii Cardinalis/ Ocipus
- Hygrophila Serphyllum (to be my Dutch wall)
- and fingers crossed Staurogyne Spatulata
Some how, some way, I have to reduce this list down to 9 species!
Also, I have no idea which fish to add to the tank. Taking suggestions! Just have to be soft water fish!
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.
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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.
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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!
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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
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On 11/23/2021 at 12:08 PM, Mmiller2001 said:
I'm overly compulsive as im trying to really understand how to resolve these problems. I've given up on my 40. That's getting a complete redo, the whole 9 yards redo!
I've also decided, I'm going to enter any contest and see what happens. So I ordered aquasoil, lights and Dutch style appropriate plants!
Now I have to learn Dutch style rules, uughh.
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.
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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.
On 11/22/2021 at 8:49 AM, Jennifer V said:@gjcarew yowza! Pretty incredible work! How long did it take you to make that beautiful tank a reality?
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.
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On 11/21/2021 at 8:23 PM, Brandon p said:
A six year old should not be left alone. I hate to say this but it was your home and your responsibility what goes on in your house. If that child was hurt by anything in your home guess who is responsible? No, the six year old and not the neighbor, would not. Maybe as an adult you should have know better than to leave a small child with things you treasure. Six years do dumb things, and instead of being a rattle-cap, poltroon, skinflint, maybe should have used some of those child rearing skills and taught the child in the moment. Hopefully you are not near children much, they would not want to draw your ire for spilt milk
On 11/21/2021 at 8:52 PM, Monocentropus Balfouri said:@lindabee53 this is a public forum that you decided to state your “annoyances.” The issue is you prefer an echo chamber rather than other people’s opinion. Nothing @Brandon p said is offensive at all, simply facts.
I understand why you would be annoyed, however there are parents on this forum that would never have reacted the way you did. You prefer to scold as other may see it as a teaching experience. There’s a huge difference.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.
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The Dutch tank from last August
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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?
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Moss drip wall
in Photos, Videos & Journals
Posted
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!