TarantulaGuy

So my first aquascape ever, and I must say, I'm enjoying creating the best algae tank on the block. I'll have to get some pics up tomorrow, I just finished planting in all my glosso, so I'll wait for the water to settle down and stop being full of debris. Plant list is as follows tho, its a bit much atm, but being really new to this I figure I'll probably end up losing a few:

Anubias pygmy nana
Limnophila hippuroides
Alternanthera reineckii
Glosso
Heteranthera zosterfolia
Lysimachia nummularia
Crpyt (lutea)
Myrio simulan
Echinodorus cordifolius
Anubias barteri v. "nana"

Lighting is a Sundial T5H0 4x24 watt fixture, koralia powerhead, pressurized C02 running into an elite mini filter (thanks Niko!). Large piece of mopani wood as the high end. Substrate is Active Flora Red, I've always used Eco-Complete in the past for growing plants, so this is an experiment with this. I'll try and get pics up here tomorrow.

TarantulaGuy

I'm not happy with the layout yet, any suggestions are more than welcome, I have an unfortunate lack for this sort of thing, and don't have a very good eye for putting together an aesthetic layout. I'm much too symmetrical for this :/

Vadimshevchuk

Well i'm no expert but a black background wpuld be nice as it will hide the equipment more. You should have gone with eco complete or amazonia as it would make you plants pop out more. I will watch this thread as i have a 29 gallon also.

Tex Gal

I think you have a good start there. Give it some time to fill in and the plants to adjust. I believe your sword will get way to big for this tank. It gets pretty big. You have it just about in the middle of the tank. It will definitely overpower your scape. Other than that, I think it's going to fill in nicely.

TarantulaGuy

I think you're entirely correct, now if it just weren't so darn pretty! Maybe I can grow it up a bit then give it to my LFS for a couple $ worth of credit. I love the variegated look tho....I need to find a smaller plant that has it.

murdocmason

looks a little busy with that substrate but other then that I think it looks great, I also have a 29 tall they are hard to get the right look with having all the top space to fill GL though it looks great so far

xXDOCXx

PS.my first aquascape was no where near that good looking lol your doing great man

TarantulaGuy

Thanks! Its definitely a steep learning curve, but I'm loving every minute of it. The red substrate is an definitely an experiment, I'm gonna give it a couple months to see how I feel about it, I'm on the fence right now. If it comes down to it, I'll swap it out for several bags of eco-complete, which I know and love. I actually got it because we sell it at PetCo (bleagh for working there) and I needed to be able to tell customers if it works or not.

My myrio has already put on a couple inches, and my sword has sent up another shoot. This tank is going to save my sanity over our overly-long winter here.

Vadimshevchuk

wow you are lucky for working at a fish store. thatsa cool job. =D i really like your last picture of that anubias i think.

cah925

I would move the P. stellatus somewhere other than under the Koralia. I'm sure you've noticed by now that it needs a constant trim to keep the leaves from flying all over the tank as they get chopped off. I also think your black ghost knife needs a cave to feel safer.

TarantulaGuy

Yeah, I'm not very happy with the current location of the L. hippuroides (thats what its listed as under aquariumplants.com anyways), the koralia likes to blow it right out of the substrate, so once my other plants root in a bit more I'll probably move the koralia down low and somewhere else, or try and move the hipps somewhere else. My ghost knife had a rock cave I had built for him, but I had to take it out when everything got planted. He's been far more outgoing than most of the other BGK's I've seen and taken care of, he seems to do quite well without it. Even when he had his cave, the only time he used it was when he was sleeping. It may make it back in there tho, who knows. Thanks for the suggestions tho!