Steven_Chong

On Saturday my plants from Aquaspotworld arrived (in great shape!) so I was finally able to finish planting the 60cm. You may remember that I did a thread for the initial hardscape, here:

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/f...ell-lesse.html


This is a formal after setup thread though, now that the tank has been planted. The water is still a bit murky but I hope you can still see it alright!



This has got to be one of the most annoying set-ups ever, with moss, riccia, glossostigma, small stem plants and even utricularia gibba (hitch-hiked on some others) all in there. O.o

I got inspired to do this lay out when I went to Japan this last summer. In the summer, the hills (well everywhere really outside of Tokyo) are packed with dense swollen forest of deep green as both the maple and sakura are green in that season-- and this deep green is beautifully highlighted by enormous groups of bamboo. I was mezmerized by those beautiful forests, and wondered how I could re-create them. After many hours of staring out the windows of the shinkansen, with nothing else to do or see or think about but those forests outside the window, the idea of combining Rotala sp. Najenshan with moss to recreate the texture of bamboo and trees came to me. That's when I decided that I'd definitely do a layout like that some day.

When I got back from Japan, I made this aquasketch:



I was tempted to do this as soon as I got back, but I decided it was best to sit on the ideas and let them develop longer. So, I did Hau Coast, a layout based on Hawai'i since then. I'm glad I took those 3-4 extra months to think about this layout, because in that time I realized a bunch of other things:

1) My original idea of attaching moss to a large piece of wood and them planting rotala around it was no good-- it could never give me the sense of "trees" that I wanted. From that I made the decision to go with many sticks instead of blocky wood. I think this will better help me get the two elements to mix.
2) I wanted a grassy plant in the foreground, but e. tenellus (used in Hau Coast) ended up being too freaking huge. There are other grassy plants, like Utricularia grammnifolia, but I decided its texture is a bit too "strange" for what I wanted. In the end I decided to go with riccia. I remembered the feelings of when I first got into aquascaping, and an aquarist in Hawaii had used riccia to make a lawn that, for a person who'd never seen a planted aquarium before, gave the magical sense of a crisp meadow. Because the Nature Aquarium books are also a big inspiration to me, I decided to go with riccia for nostalgia's sake. Glosso also was included for nostalgia's sake.
3) I really wasn't sure if I wanted to include a river or not, but in the end I decided too. The most common site for me from the shinkansen window was to see rolling fields of rice in front of the forests. I wanted to have the sense of water in this layout, and decided that a stream would also give an idea of "size" to my forest.
4) Bringing a tree to the front to give a sense of perspective has always been a part of this idea, but after considering branchy pieces to be used in the foreground, I decided that there just wasn't enough space front to back in the 60cm, so instead I decided to make another "wood" in the foreground with thicker sticks.

Well, I'm sure I'm forgetting some of my other ideas and thoughts, but I think that's enough about what I was thinking for now.

edit: This should go without saying but I want to make it clear that I truly invite any type of commentary and criticism-- bring it on. Just be ready to discuss your opinions.

I hope you guys enjoy this one because I don't think I'll do another like it . . . ever . . . it took 4 Hours to tie moss to all those sticks!!!