Dark River Aquatics

@Beardedbillygoat1975 right on all counts! UGF plates with some light diffuser & window screen on top, and not using the lift tubes this time - other experiments have shown that just adding the void space alone gets the job done, and the tubes are ugly & hard to hide. Substrate will be Safe-T-Sorb again, I’ve had some charging in a bucket with caso4 / mgso4 / dry fertilizers, so that’ll be the base with a layer of laterite and I got a container of Brightwell Aquatics Laterin VF to try. All capped off with a thick layer of Landen Soil, plus probably some cosmetic sand in front. I also have black blasting sand, and Flourite black sand to use so those may be above the Landen Soil. Then these alder beaches & root ball, and seiryu for the hardscape! The goal is do most of the scaping in the front portion to (hopefully) give it a sense of scale and depth, and then the midground & background will be dedicated to plant mass Getting started on the plenum layer now! The sp Black Borneos have landed in the states as of a few weeks ago, but apparently experienced some melt in transit - they’re recuperating now before getting shipped out again, and this is the pic Jenny West posted of them regrowing It’ll end up in this tank somewhere, the goal is to have this tank be incredibly lightly stocked with fish and use it as another home for the rare plants… the 75g is not enough space for everything at this point 😝

After a full weekend of tank tear downs, moving things around, and setting things back up…. 40g redo is finally happening

Work has been slowing me down but the Wabens are in their tank, they’re skittish and still small but they’re eating well and seem to be settling in Haven’t made a lot of headway with the nano cube, and still haven’t found enough hardscape to use in my 40g but exercising patience with both tanks is probably not a bad thing Still playing with the hardscape and everything other than the structure on the right is just in there to help figure out placement, including the substrate… first time using dragon stone, and first time gluing together that much of an intricate structural scape so it’s been fun but still feels a little clumsy. Good practice though I guess! Found the two mini HOBs on Amazon, frosted the back glass with a stick-on film, ordered all the necessary things to remineralize RO water for this setup, and trying to figure out a plant list. Ramosior Florida is a definite and Xyris Red, Blyxa Japonica, Riccardia, and HC are on the “probably” list, with a few on the “possible” list like Erio Quing, Blood Vomit, and Erio Rat. Planning to run it at 0kh, remineralized with caso4 & mgso4 only and keep it soft & acidic with a lot of Ca & Mg for the Ramosior and then the other plants will depend on the final scape

Distracting myself with endless side projects but the supply pile for this 40g redo is growing - co2 regulator, 5lb tank, Rex Griggs reactor, 90cm Chihiros WRGB2 with mirrored shades, 4 bags of Landen Soil, a growing pile of hardscape, and several other odds & ends are waiting to be used in addition to already having the tank/lid/heater/cycled canister filters for it plus a lot of plants ready to be moved 💪🏻 For the endless side projects, the regulator I got for the 40g has two outputs so the logical move is to redo my 3g cube as a proper high tech mini scape. A Chihiros C2 White and more hardscaping supplies are in the mail and the tank still itself needs a bit more cleaning, but it’s almost ready to go. I’m going to take a whack at gluing together tiny bits of rock for a structural, hardscape heavy look this time And! I crossed Wabenmusters off the bucket list today with a group of 6 juveniles 🥳 Theyre in fish jail in my Green Dragon tank waiting for their new home to season a bit - the two bottom tanks in the cinderblock rack will be 20 talls, one with my existing group of Rio Paraguays and the other with the new group of Wabens. Very excited to have more honeycombs 😄 (and not looking forward to needing more grow out tanks but that’s a problem for future me) Lastly, I took a pic of a random stem of Buce Brownie Blue that I threw into the Green Dragon tank a little while ago and it has no business looking this good under a basic Beamswork light but here we are Edit instead of making another post - the light has arrived for the nano 😍

It’s suuuuuper pale, but not in terrible shape all things considered - current status is “rescued” and it will now reside in my 75g because dang, talk about a confined life, so here’s an upgrade

So I’m cleaning underneath/behind the stand of this 40g because after a couple of years it’s all dusty and cobwebby and gross… and there’s a canister under here that runs the above-tank sump over my Rio Paraguay parent colony tank right next to it, with a sponge guard on the intake and I always pull the caves full of eggs out to a grow out tank…. And somehow, some way, against all odds there’s a juvenile Rio just chillin in the intake hose of this filter, just vibing… just, what? How? I mean I know how just…. Wow 🥴

I am unwilling to admit that getting them was a mistake, BUT…. I may have just discovered a threshold to the idea of “you can never have too many crypts” by adding another large patch of jacobsenii pink, and nurii pink lines 😬

Demolition day for this tank

Bye bye mini butterfly! Did a snip snip and finally threw in the towel 😜 The Hulk Juice is definitely yielding better/faster overall growth; been procrastinating the trim all week and the stems have been going off Everything’s all trimmed and replanted now though! Still adoring the Jacobsenii Pink + Marsilea combination too And! Long story short I did a thing and have another Chihiros light and a co2 regulator in the mail…. This weekend might be the weekend that I finally start redoing the 40g upstairs, or at least finish tearing down the old setup and get it ready for the rebuild. Side note, if anyone wants some leftover trimmings of Rotala H’ra, the slightly sad but recoverable bush of Rotala Mini Butterfly, and some cuttings of Pogo Sampsonii please feel free to shoot me a pm - pay the $10 shipping and it’s yours for free 😄

Long story short I got squirrelly over the last few days and ripped a bunch of stuff out of my 75g, got sick of all of the stem trimming 😪 The background is going to be all tall things like crypts (spiralis, spiralis tiger, and retrospiralis), along with cyperus helferi, Crinum calamastratum, and the monster aponogeton purple. The left side is going to get some fresh aqua soil mounded up into more of a hill, with thickets of medium sized crypts / blyxa japonica again / plus maybe a few other things. It was just getting so overgrown that it felt good to do an overhaul with things that will require less maintenance Although, I did find an older pic from January when the tank was still stuffed full of like a hundred+ species before it was totally overgrown and now I do sort of miss the jungle… but it’ll grow back Also! The Brownie Ghost 2010 has arrived, as well as a Godzilla original from Jenny West 😄 Pulled the Xyris out because the Hulk Juice has definitely increased the growth rate of the stems and I’m straight up not gonna keep them tame enough to keep the Xyris receiving enough light, so they got replaced by the Ghost 10 for now and moved. The ghost is emersed grown so the partial shade will hopefully keep it happier while it converts 🤞🏻 Chantz sent me a bunch of emersed grown stem cuttings to experiment with as potential replacements for the rotala mini butterfly; it’s still cranky and I’m not sure that I want to disrupt the whole tank just to make one plant happy, so I think replacing it is the move. He sent some different types of bacopa - more salzmanii, a variegated one, and a few that I think he collected - plus some aciotis acuminifolia, gratiola ramosa, and a couple that I have no idea what they are. They’re all in the now-empty space in the 75g for now, so we’ll see how they do and whether or not I kill them before deciding what to use in the cube 😂 Lastly……. I maybe kinda sorta did a thing….. preordered a Crypt sp Black Borneo that will be imported in June and I’m excited to hopefully not kill it. These are the pics that were sent of what it will look like and I’m so excited!

@Minanora I will definitely document the process! Trying to pace myself with it, and apply some of the things I’ve learned about how plenums/anoxic filtration behaves in a high tech setup. It’s almost too effective and consumes a ton of nitrate & phosphate, so I’m going to (attempt) to tailor this tank around slower growing root feeding plants - the goal is to use a plenum and very rich/deep substrate, co2 injection, and only moderate light with hopefully minimal fertilizer dosing and see what happens. I’m hoping that if I assemble the substrate correctly and let the Safe-T-Sorb soak up the right nutrients prior to using it, then I’ll be able to get away with a fairly low maintenance, low stocked tank but we’ll see how it actually plays out in practice! So…. Is there such a thing as rehab, or peer support group for people with a problem compulsively buying plants?! I did a thing, and have already paid for a second thing that’ll get shipped this weekend… Right in front of the rock is a tiny Buce Brownie Helena 2013 added a few days ago and already doing a new leaf 🙌🏻 Also have a Buce Brownie Ghost 2010 getting shipped this weekend, it will be emersed grown but I was sent this picture of how it should look converted to submersed growth - it’s supposed to have a rounder, slightly larger leaf shape compared to Ghost 2011 and I’m excited 🥳

Yep, I’ve been dosing with a pipette! Been trying to ride a fine line (that I’m not sure is entirely possible) of dosing lean enough to keep the H’ra looking nice and red, but also not cripple the Mini Butterfly. It was going ok for a time but it’s clearly pretty unhappy now so hopefully a slightly richer fertilizer input will help! If not, I may just replace it with more Bacopa Salzmanii Purple because the few stems sprinkled in there have been doing well so far 🙂

I really appreciate all of you that read my rambles and like them enough to keep reading 🥰 @Tihshho I’ve always had them grow like weeds, maybe it’s a function of my harder well water? In both high tech & low tech setups, Marsilea Crenata always chugs along and Marsilea Minuta is an absolute weed - maybe it likes the alkalinity? I haven’t given it much thought, although I have heard from a few people that Marsilea really likes phosphate so hopefully that helps - I hope you end up figuring it out to make it work! Played with some more new plants today, and will put in an enthusiastic plug for Chantz Cramer - amazing human, amazing plant grower, and if anyone wants fun/rare plants he will be starting up his website again soon! Until then he’s on YouTube, and is selling a few things via his Facebook and some of the Facebook plant auction groups Planted out the Crypt Spiralis Tigers that he sent with the Xyris, they’re buried in the back of the bigger tank now out of camera view but they arrived in beautiful emersed condition! Also continued playing with the little cube, and crammed a few cuttings of Buce Brownie Blue from another tank back next to the Xyris… not sure if I like them there, they’re a little big but the blue pops against the red so idk - they might stay? Also noticed that the Rotala Mini Butterfly in there is looking increasingly sad on the old growth so I need to change up the fertilizer Currently the cube is running cool in the low 70s, with only 6hr of light and it receives a very lean 1ml dose of Easy Green twice a week. The lean fertilizer has brought out a lot of color in the Rotalas and algae has been virtually a nonissue in this tank, but the Mini Butterfly is saying it’s not quite enough juice. My friend has been experimenting with a DIY All-In-One mix using dry ferts that he calls “Hulk Juice”, so I sweet talked him into giving me the recipe and will be trying it out with this tank! Mixed up a bottle, it very closely mimics APT Complete with the NPK ratios and uses a combination of Miller’s Microplex and supplemental iron from DPTA, so it’s still relatively lean in terms of N & P and slightly higher in K. Going to give it a whirl for a few weeks and see if we can get the Mini Butterfly to recover, and will probably up the water changes to a few times per week and re-dose the Hulk Juice after every WC 🤞🏻 Lastly, one of the more recent batches of baby Green Dragons are aaalmost at a sellable size and all of the short fins will probably need to get pulled out and sold soon, both to thin the herd and to help finance the next tank project - I’ve got plans to redo one of my 40g’s and turn it into a dedicated space for the growing collection of different types of Echinodorus Opacus as well as some of the rare crypts, plus some Starlight BN’s to attempt to breed them 😄

Xyris sp Red

After much frustration and off color language, my 75g officially has a Rex Griggs co2 reactor, no more obscenely dense Hydrocotyle Verticillata taking over 1/3 of the tank, and the middle section of the background plants ripped out to make way for a combination of Crypt Balansae and Crypt Spiralis Tiger. There’s also significantly less crud in the substrate after multiple surface vacuums and overall it was just a productive day for this tank No more sprite water! Still moving some things around, and waiting for the Tigers in the mail The reactor was a breeze to assemble just following these instructions (but was a royal pain to plumb in with the cramped working space behind the stand) https://rotalabutterfly.com/rex-grigg/diy-reactor.htm The local derps have decided they do not care about the changes and are ready for dinner

It’s growing! Took some pics from above tonight, very happy with all of the special plants in here! Crypt Jacobsenii Pink, Buce Hellfire, Buce Kedagang, Buce Marble, another random tiny buce from Jenny West that I forget the name of, and Anubias Pinto in this pic: Anubias Broad White, and some random tiny purple buce: Anubias Congensis Mini growing up and over Buce Brownie Ghost 2011: Buce Biblis Pink: And some wider shots 🥰 Going to add a big Xyris Red in the bare spot cleared out in front of the patch of Rotala H’ra this weekend, and there are some new stems in each of the back corners growing in - Potamogeton Gayi, and Ludwigia Senegalensis to hopefully add more orange and break up the wall of red

Traded a head of Brownie Ghost 11 for a head of sp Hellfire today and I’m already obsessed with it - hopefully it doesn’t dead 🫠

Still working on continuity, and searching for different/better foreground rocks for the tank on the right… but they’re still fun to play with 🙂 The crypt collection is doin well too, only some of the new batch went into this tank but the reinforcements filled it out pretty nicely compared to what was already there, and the new ones are settling in nicely with no signs of melt

Did a science today, measured the par in a bunch of different tanks when a friend showed up with a Seneye meter and the results were a little surprising! The readings in my 75g (with a Chihiros WRGB2 at about 80% settings) were somewhere around 55-80 umols down near the substrate level depending on what was above/shadowing out the specific areas, with the heaviest shadowed areas in the corners reaching as low as 15-30. Then the middle to higher areas were somewhere around 215-300, with crowns near the surface receiving as much as 320-340. The surprising thing was, the cheap Amazon LED floodlight when run at the same time as the Chihiros WRGB2 cranked up the umols at substrate level from 60ish to just over 100 - those lights are crazy bang for the buck at $40 for two! My buddy did most of the readings while I documented, and it turns out the par in the cube (with the settings of the light at roughly 50%) ranged from 30ish in the foreground above the substrate (shadowed by the rocks) to roughly 100-135 farther up where the stems are. Another interesting result was in the 40g with the basic 100w bulb - the reading was 256 at the surface directly under the bulb, but then dropped down to 10 at substrate level also directly under it, and virtually 0 off in the corners. So while it’s slowly growing the plants in that tank, the penetration strength & spread of the bulb are garbage and the takeaway is that I should stop procrastinating and install the floodlight. It wasn’t an unexpected result for a simple bulb setup but it was interesting to see the actual readings. The last science project of the day will be gluing together a DIY Rex Griggs co2 reactor for this 75g to increase efficiency and do away with the Sprite water effect of the inline co2 diffuser. Planning to assemble the reactor tonight and spend the day tomorrow dialing it in And finally, because why not, a glamor shot of the crown growth of Ludwigia Curtisii and the Ludwigia Glandulosa/Repens hybrid before I trimmed them earlier today. 300+ umols seems to agree with them 😄

Perfectly normal! It’s called biofilm, it’s harmless and very common on newly submerged pieces of wood and will disappear as the wood ages - shrimp, snails, and some species of fish love to snack on it too

Yes! Was just playing and dry fitting the rocks, scaping is so much easier when everything is dry 😄 The second tank has water in it! Need to boil up more botanicals, and it’s driving me crazy trying to wait to bulk order plants and not just fill each tank up immediately… but it has water, the hang on planter works like a charm and has some parlour palms and monstera adansonii with space for something else, and it’s a little cloudy still but is officially up and running. Scaping lengthwise has been a surprising amount of fun, and for this one I tried to give it a lot of depth with a big line of sight block from the rocks & hygrophila at the back to have a lot of cover - this is probably going to house some Pygmy Sunfish when it’s more mature and I want them to have plenty of hidey spots Currently running a 48” Finnex 24/7 over the tanks plus the fixture overhead with a Phillips 100w 6500k bulb, and I’m hoping it will work well enough for low light setups. Have a friend coming over tomorrow with a par meter to check out the readings on all my tanks so we’ll measure these too and try to suss out whether it’ll be enough 🙂

The DIYing continues and I’m having a ball doing up these 10g’s. Made more plenums with a goal of having a continuous, blended “scape” and substrate lines between the all tanks, and hopefully it will work out as planned Repurposed an old HOB breeder box into a little planter box with a mini plenum, and what will hopefully work as a drip wall for emersed moss. It needed to be cut down and modified a bit to fit on the end of a 10g, and I made the mini plenum out of the usual items - PVC legs, plastic light diffuser, plastic knitting mesh, and fiberglass window screen. There are layers of Safe-T-Sorb, Laterite, and a small amount of Landen Soil near the top just to give the plants a kickstart. Planning on putting some Monstera Adansonii and a few other vining things in this so they’ll grow up the wall, and I suspended a basic 100w 6500k lightbulb over this area a few days ago to grow the emergent plants Pretty pleased with it, it was a good way to spend an evening working on a craft project while watching a movie 🙂 now we just have to hope it’ll work as well/look as good planted as it does in my imagination! Also found a very cool rock in the park the other day to use for this tank - hoping to have this setup finished and running by the weekend so that work on tank #3 can commence

Just cut up a plastic gallon jug to make splash guards for the electrical and I’m super pleased with it. The one for the wall outlet is cut to have a small tab that fits behind the outlet cover, and then the outlet cover is tightened over it to snug it into place. It lifts up for easy access to the outlets but makes me sleep easier knowing there’s a barrier against splashes, plus a little roof over the power strip (and of course drip loops in all the cords). Very pleased with the outcome for a 5min DIY

Treat time! This is the babies’ first experience with watermelon and so far they’re all over it but mom keeps hogging it 😂 And the first of the 10g’s for this new rack has water in it! Made a DIY plenum and it came out pretty well for a first attempt, wanted to use up some supplies I had on hand and it went together pretty quickly. It’s an 8”x17” piece of plastic light diffuser, five 1” lengths of 1” PVC legs superglued into place, and some plastic knitting mesh as side skirts with everything zip-tied together and a layer of fiberglass window screen wrapped over everything and also zip-tied in place The substrate is Safe-T-Sorb with a layer of laterite powder, garden lime, and osmocote plus sandwiched in the middle and a sand cap over the top The sand is Super Naturals Sunset Gold cause it’s amazing - so soft & fine, and the color is lovely. Chucked in some rocks from outside, boiled up some mixed botanicals, planted a medium sized peace lily pulled from one of my planted sumps, added a small light/heater/sponge filter, squeezed in a bunch of crud from some established sponge filters and called it a day. Tossed in a few random plants and now we let it percolate for a bit I’ve been telling myself I’ll be patient and wait until all six tanks are set up, then do a bulk wholesale order of low tech plants to add… but I couldn’t help it and already ordered some Vallisneria Torta and Potamogeton Gayi for this tank 😅 Not sure if this will end up being the future home for my Petco rescue Betta, or for my small school of cw010 Gold Lasers so they can have a spot of their own…. I’ve never put any effort into breeding Cories and maybe it’s time to try? There’s still plenty of time to decide though and I’m looking forward to adding more plants to this little tank and making it look like a weedy creek before figuring out the residents

I love my GLA reg, hopefully you find the same! What I’ve heard about their quality recently has just been anecdotal rumblings in some of the high tech tank Facebook groups I’m in so take it with a grain of salt, my regulator purchased back in 2018 is still going strong and hopefully you have a similar experience with yours! And the more plants the better IMO, especially with co2 and decent light + nutrients. Fast aggressive growing plants can help a lot with reducing algae 🙂 plus more plants is just more fun!