Green Thumb Aquatics

this was before de rim and when intial planning was going on

then de rim and wood setup



little substrate before the intial rocks, also added more slate to build up back island



placed rocks and added a support to divide substrate on other side as I wanted smaller rocks over there



added these two things in combination to build the riverish sand thing : )




after that prepped to add worm castings and osmocote plus, flourish black was laid on bottom, did not rinse at this point



added osmocote and rocks





added worm castings after boiling and let settling and running water through till it was clearish, the worm castings that is, then added them to tank, mixed in a little old substrate from another tank to add some bacteria

capped with flourish reg, black, and black sand that was taken from another tank, soaked in part glutaraldehyde to kill any algae lurking, and thoroughly rinsed, for a good twenty minutes to make sure it was all out and all roots lurking were rinsed out as well leaving a very nice and clean flourish mix...



you can see how nicely the large part of the DW goes over the river in the middle where no plants will be planted



initially this was the scape, the top layer of soil is UP aquasoil



finished hardscape before planting

pwolfe

thats a lot of osmocote!

Green Thumb Aquatics

yep yep, much too much.. about double what should be... thats what I get for not weighing it out first.. looks like large daily water changes for the first 2 months for me...

ChadRamsey

wow, that is looking great.

subdcribed!

Green Thumb Aquatics

here is a teaser, still needs a little work... will take better pics tomorrow...

kimcadmus

excited to see how it develops!

Green Thumb Aquatics

kimcadmus

Looking good!

Where is your filter outlet. Curious how the direction of circulation will effect the flowing plants.

A plant list would be great as well!

Green Thumb Aquatics

the outlet along with the CO2 atomizer is in the back of the stream/sand area, and points down the stream as I have a eheim 2075, which they recommend for tanks up to 160 gallons and has 330ish gph... so its alot of filter for a tank this size, however it is the apporiate flow rate and media capacity I am looking for, you just have to be carefull on where you place it so it does not blow your plants out before they root... I even cut the lower holes smaller so it directs the bubbles blowing down the stream a little lower under the driftwood, looks really cool..

plants are HM, a local PA plant which looks alot like elataine triade(sp?) DHG, DHG belem, riccia, riccia grass, anubias nana and petite and another slightly larger, all bundled together under the driftwood and a few other nana petites around the scape, marsilea minuta, glosso, micro sword, vesuvius sword, dwarf hydrocotyle, hydrocotyle verticalla, B pennywort, blyxa japonica, java moss, christmass moss, fissidens, didipilis diandra, star grass, crypt wendtii green, some random crypt, crypt parva, will also have some ferns, not sure if lace or needle leaf or possibly bolbitis.... those are going in in about a 2 months...

Green Thumb Aquatics

here is the emersed growth...




trimmed the E Belem, took out the glosso, should have some E trandra (sp?) here prob tomorrow from Tom I am planning on planting

here is current shot of tank, all of the DHG and E belem was just trimmed so it looks a little bare...





it went through a really rough period of 6 weeks where I had no growth at all and tons of a really weird possibly diatom or red algae, its not easy to get off like diatoms, but thats what it looked like, almostly completely ditched the build and started over.... but now its starting to level off an all plants are growing, it took over 2 months to get any growth out of the hydrocotyles, which I grow even in non CO2 pretty well....