Supercoley1

Technical Specs:
23Ltr aquarium
OEM 'pink' internal filter
No heater
7.35W 5500K LED lighting 8 hours a day

Dosing via the EI method plus Easycarbo

Plants: Microsorum Pteropus sp 'needle', Microsorum Pteropus sp 'Philippine, Flame Moss, Bolbitus Heudelotii, Anubias Barter v Nana 'Petite'

Livestock: Colony of Cherry Shrimp. Corydoras Schultzei 'black' fry (when I have them)

Substrate is plain old inert gravel with playsand along the front third.

I was getting a little bored with the way this little tank looked. It has ben for quite a while just a tank that I put my unused plants into however I decided on a whim yesterday to scape it.

Ianho from Tropical fish forums lives near me and a few months ago he brought a load of cobbles and pebbles around as I had been saying I was going to use lots of grey rocks in a new scape. They weren't what I was after however so they lay in my garden until now. I decided to utilise them for this scape and didn't really plan ahead at all. What you see below was positioned as I worked. Not much was moved around.

Then I decided that as I was putting some Rotala stems in the rear of my main tank I would remove the 'modular' plantmass I had in there and put 5 of the Bolbitus Heudelotii in the rear of this one as the background. The Philippine Fern has been suffering recently and so I chucked a lot of it only saving some of the younger bits.

Then in went the usual 'signature' Needle Fern a couple of flame moss stones and finally some Anubias 'petite'.

Some of the Anubias may actually be smaller shoots from a larger anubias that will look silly so we shall have to wait and see on that one.

This scape took me all of a couple of hours. The shrimps stayed in the tank, the thin layer of gravel was pushed to the back, water level lowere to an inch of the bottom, then sand added at the front, then I did the scaping and filled it back upwith half of the old water and half fresh water.

Was pretty cloudy for a few hours but this little filter is quite good considering it came with the tank.

I may get another mini external filter at some point and will definitely need to get a heater if the Corys start breeding well again.

In the pictures you can see I added a simple backlight. This is temporary as I am developing a new LED backlighting system for both this tank and my main tank. I may make it commercially eventually selling it around £25. Might sound a lot but wait until you see what it does That will be next month though.









Regards
Andy

DishyFishy

I really like your rock scape!

Michael

This is the second very simple composition of stream stones and restrained planting recently posted here on APC. I really like both of them--looks like I better set one up for myself!

nap83

love seeing rockwork like this. very different from the norm... i started using round rocks as well. i think they bring a different feel for the tank.

Supercoley1

Starting to progress with this scape. I want to enter it into competition to see what feedback I get so there will be no full frontal shots for a while however some 'detail shots'.

The Bolbitus was removed in December and replaced with Rotala Rotundifolia. In the pictures below it isn't really visible because I pruned it prior to working on the scape.

The plantmass has also increased significantly with the addition of more Needle Fern. This should help combat the GSA on the rocks. That is the only algae in this tank but just like with 'Portinho' I left it with low plantmass for too long.

I wanted to create a river/path that bends around at the rear of the tank. I also wanted the 'banks' either side to slope upwards to where I hope the Rotala once pruned a few times will provide a nice bushy appearance.

So I superglued little 'rolled' balls of flame moss to individual pieces of gravel and positioned them to make a nice smooth curve. I have used flame moss because it grows straight upwards and I can then just give it an angled 'haircut' to achieve the slopes I want.

When I get to taking final shots for competition I will drop sand on top of the gravel on this path/river area through a filter funnel. If I do it now then any slope will just disappear.
























Regards
Andy

Supercoley1

At this stage I know this little scape won't be ready for competition this year however I still intend to take it to it to that level and enter it next year so I'll put a few update pictures onher now.

The pictures don't show the path which is coming along and you can see the Rotala is slowly getting to the stage where it will it get it's second pruning.

I have been continuing with my LED obsession and trialling the SMD RGB LED strips that I used in for the ambient lighting in my lounge as backlighting for aquascapes. While I haven't yet managed to use it on my main tank due to the power of the LED luminaire above that tank it works quite well with this smaller tank with it's more focused LED luminaire. I will have to work on the large tank idea.

The many pictures below show several of the different colour options you can use from a single RGB light strip as it blends the red/blue/green LEDs together to achieve each colour. You can also increase or decrease their brightness to achieve a gentle glow rather than the full on 'fill' you see in the pictures below.












Looks quite good but have to see what I can do on a larger tank with much more powerful lighting. I had also been trialling this kind of strip as main lighting on a tank however these samples are nowhere near as good as the original ones I used as ambient lighting in my lounge and can't really make a fair assessment on if they would work. I think they will just not if they are the same quality as the samples I have on hand. One for the future.

Andy

Zapins

I think you have provided several really good examples of an aspect of aquascaping that people almost always forget. That is ambient effects.

Nice work!

niceseol

I like your tank!