The Complete Tank

 Been a little over a month since my last post.  I have been allowing the plants to grow and grow.... and grow.   The grass has spread and carpeted most of the floor of my tank.   My needle grass has wildly grown up, I have had to cut it three times now. You can see it is short right now, I cut it today, bc it keeps growing up to the top of the tank and cutting proper circulation which causes some stagnation.

My cardinalis plants are nice and red and growing thick. The plants are hugging the wood very nicely.  Covering it the right amount.  I have fish now.  Hopefully they stay alive, my first attempt left only one surviver.  Seems that the intake valve to the filter had a problem of sucking up my fish, so I bought a cover for the intake valve so the fish cant get sucked into my filter.  Right now I have 12 neon tetra fish, and I am hoping to buy a few cherry shrimp to eat the small amounts of algae that grow on the grass.  The tank seems to be very healthy right now.  I am hoping this continues.   I need some of the grass on the right side to thicken up.  Other than that it is looking great.  Below you will find some pictures taken after my morning maintenance from today.  I hope you enjoy.

Two and a Half Weeks in

Well, I'm a couple of weeks into the aquascape and things have been going smoothly.  My plants in the back seem to be stunted a little, but overall it is looking pretty great.  This will be a short one with a few pics to show the differences after a couple of weeks.  I do have my new inflow and outflow tubes in, but the 15mm lines I need are out of stock at Lowe's.  Gone twice now to check.

Can see the spreading of the grass between these two pics.









The front cardinalis looks great right now.

 You can tell a pretty big difference between two weeks ago and today.  The water is a lot clearer now, and I feel that the plants look a lot healthier.

Week One

Alright, it has been almost a week since I planted everything in my aquascape.  Learning how to change the water turned out to be an adventure.  I ended up unseating a plant and messing up the front corner on my first water change.  I learned very quickly to pour the water over my driftwood and not over the soil.






My Dwarf Hairgrass is slowly growing and spreading.  I am starting to see little sprouts occurring all over the scape.  They are very small at the moment, but they are there.  Also the grass seems to be creeping a little. spreading out all over the scape.  I am pretty happy so far with the grass.





The Telanthera Cardinalis has seemed to be making itself more at home instead of growing.  The one in the back of the tank behind the driftwood has grown upwards some, but what I am mostly seeing is the growth of roots.  I tried to get a close up picture, if you can see what appears to be the hairs growing out of certain sections of the plant. I am about to look into it more.  This is a fairly common plant in planted aquariums so I am sure there is plenty of information on if I need to do anything else or if this is normal growth.

This next part has me mildly concerned.  I seem to be growing something in the filter tubing.  I know bacteria growth is needed in the filter.  So I don't know if this is normal or if it is algae growing.  My concern follows the fact that my tank has an odd tint to it.  I am told it is fairly normal because of high ammonia levels until the bacteria and plants grow more to help ease the situation.  I did put in some drops of API Algaefix because I have some and I want to see if it clears anything up over the next 3 days.  I mean the tank is looking good, the water discoloration is barely noticeable but hey I want the perfect tank.




Well this is one week down, I have another two weeks to go before I think about putting fish in it.  I am enjoying the maintenance of the tank, it is about 15 minutes or so a day.  Including water changes and then any debris that is floating in the water.  Over the  next couple of days I should get a new inflow and outflow hard tube for my aquarium, the green ones are just too garish for me.  Anyways, here is a picture I took a couple minutes ago of my tank.  Enjoy!

Planting Providence Per Poseidon's Pleasure

Well that was an adventure.  As you can see to the right, I did not know how to put water in a tank with soil in it.  I have now gone online and learned that I should have covered the bottom with loose plastic and poured on that.  But hey, live and let learn.

The trouble just continued after that.  I did not know how to put together the filter.  Eheim makes top brand filters, but their instructions were pretty much unreadable.  So what should have been a quick setup turned into an hour of me online trying to piece together stuff from YouTube.  Come to find out I had it completely backwards, for future reference, inflow is at the bottom and outflow is at the top.  I actually have blisters on my fingers from turning the fasteners back and forth because none of the tubing fit correctly.  I went out and bought clear tubing because who in the world wants green tubing, I mean come on!  Also because the sizes fit weird, my inline heater is in the inflow instead of the outflow, but today the water was much warmer than a bucket I sat out for the night, so I think all will be well.

I still have 2 pieces of green tubing, the inflow and outflow pipes, but I just bought some really nice glass ones on Amazon in order to preserve the minimalist style I am going for.  I also don't like the black on the CO2 bubble counter and diffuser on the left of the tank, but since it is mostly clear I am going to keep it up.

Well all the little patches of grass is called Dwarf Hairgrass and I will be using it to "carpet" the bottom of my tank.  Planted on each side and to the back of the driftwood is some Telanthera Cardinalis that I am hoping will grow up around it and kind of surround the wood. You can also see one of the two Green Cryptocoryne that I am putting up in the front of the driftwood, hoping to give it a weeping affect from the wood down to the grass, just to keep the eye flowing from top right to bottom left.  In the back left corner, I am trying some Umbrella Papyrus in the back left corner, should hide some of my stuff and I felt it would be too bare on the left side of the tank.  We will see how I feel once everything grows in on whether or not I keep it.  I am on a wait list for some Java Moss that I want to put on the driftwood.

Well enjoy the couple of pictures I have below.  I will post some more in a day or so, once the water clears up.  And here is hoping to some plants a growing!

Setting up the hardscape

Yesterday my supplies arrived and I couldn't wait any longer to get started.

 First I laid some power sand down.  I put it mostly in the back and made it a little deeper in the back right corner.  I decided to do this because my larger plants will be in the back right corner behind and to the side of my driftwood piece.




 After that I laid down the Amazonia substrate. I made this a flat layer of substrate deciding to build my mound out of the Amazonia powder.  While I was doing this I started in on boiling my driftwood.  I really didn't need to boiler it for too long because I bought it already sanitized.  All the reviews on Amazon said just give it a quick boil to get the dust off.



From there I started building my mound in the back right corner.  I am going for a triangle display.  Having the eye look at the top right and follow down and right along the piece of driftwood.  Most of the colors will be at the top right, transition from red to green.  And I am thinking of putting some microsword in the back ground just to offset it a bit.  Will probably plant it and see if it jars the sight or flows alright. Well I have a finished view of the hardscape below, I am off to buy my plants and I hope to plant them later today.  Fingers crossed that I find some type of moss to grow on my driftwood, I have yet to come across any and might have to put it in at a later date.

It has arrived!

My soil finally arrived today.  This was the last bit needed to start aquascaping.  Here is a list of the items bought to start my aquascape:

EHEIM Classic 150 external canister filter
24/7 digital timer power center
Fluval Pressurized CO2 Kit
Hydra CO2 Paintball Adapter
Empire 20 oz CO2 canister
Hydor Heater for external canister filters
Aquarium Tool Kit
ADA Power Sand
ADA Amazonia Aqua Soil
ADA Amazonia Aqua Soil Powder
Zilla Malaysian Driftwood
Garden Mat
ADA Aquarium
Archaea Slim Pro Aquatic Plant LED fixture
Bucket
API Freshwater Master Test Kit
API Algaefix
Do!Aqua Relax

Well that is it, definately not a small list to get started.  Let it be noted that you can start aquascaping without most of this stuff, I just wanted to make a high-tech high end tank.  This is where the fun begins.

My Venture Into Aquascaping Begins

Well, Jeremy and I have been looking into aquascaping for a couple of years now.  If you do not know what that is, I would go to Pinterest to check out some of the scapes.  I have spent the last several days ping ponging ideas off of my brother and spending money like a lunatic.  So over the next week my supplies will be coming in and I will start trying to find a place here in the metro area that sells the type of aquatic plants I need.  Most people who start aquascaping tend to post about the experience, and so I thought I would give it a try.  A day to day (or so) on my experiences in this noble venture.

Aquascaping can cost anywhere from on the cheap to very expensive.  Those of you who know me, know I do like my toys to be expensive.  It is the consumer in me.  I bought a top of the line ADA 60-F High Clarity Glass Cube Garden for my first aquarium.  It comes in at about 9 gallons and is pretty freaking cool.  It is rimless and doesn't have the green tint that comes with most aquariums.  I love how they call it a cube since it is a cuboid and not a cube.  The light is an Archaea SLIM-PRO aquatic plant LED fixture for 60cm tanks.  As you can tell from the picture it adheres to the minimalist design that I find so appealing with aquascapes.

What I find so awesome with aquascaping is that it is a living painting.  I am not artistic enough to sculpt, paint, create music, or even draw, but for some reason I was once pretty good with plants.  I appreciate art, mostly because I have never been good at it.  So here I go, and as the great Carl Sagan once said, "Come with me."