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1000+ iaplc 2017?

11K views 45 replies 9 participants last post by  Yo-han 
#1 ·
My 1000L tank is running for over 1,5 year now, and everything is working the way I would like to. This combined with the fact that I finally got some time to maintain the tank, did made me think of rescaping the tank for IAPLC (or another contest). I will try to update this journal as often as possible and with DSRL photo's as much as possible, to give you a good impression of my tank. You can find a thread about the build and first scape here: http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/large-aquariums-ponds/93554-1000.html

Here some specs about the tank:

Tank: 195x80x80cm (water level roughly 70 cm), optiwhite glass and black glass overflow and backwall, build in the wall.
Filtration: Bean animal black glass overflow, with a 450L sump in the room behind. 2 filtersocks, followed by filter mats and 100L Bio Rio powered by 2x Ecotech Vectra M1 (8000L/u, not running full power) do the job.
Heating: 4x 300W glass heater (if 1 gets stuck on, it won't boil the tank, if one is broken, the other 3 can still heat the tank warm enough.
Lighting: 4x custumized DSunY LED + 2x20W flood lights on the side. Running for 8 hours bright and 4 hours dim.
Co2: Pressurised via 2 home made Cerges Style reactors and a 7,5/15kg bottle pH controlled and a second magnet valve to shut it off at night.
Aeration: 10 hours a night.
Fertilzer: Home made mixes automatically dosed 3 times a day by a dosing pump to keep the water parameters steady.
Hardscape: 8 large pieces of river wood and about 100 kg of Grey mountain rock.
Substrate: ADA Amazonia and and Tropica Aquasoil mixed and decorative sand.

Fauna: All current fish: pencil fish, dwarf harlequin rasbora, simulans tetra, dwarf congo tetra's and all the Otocinclus, Hisonotus and L-numbers and different species of shrimp.

Flora: This tank will use only plants from the Dutch nursery Aquaflora:
On the wood:
Taxiphyllum species
Microsorum pteropus 'petite'

On the stones and just behind:
All sort of Anubias and Bucephalandra mixed
Cryptocoryne becketti 'petchii'

Middle and background:

Cryptocoryne retrospiralis
Cryptocoryne spiralis var. caudigera
Cardamina lyrata
Pogostemon quadrifolius (octopus)
Proserpinaca palustris 'cuba'
And 1 or 2 Aponogeton
 
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#3 ·
I can't wait either, will be working on the moss on the wood friday and saturday. Emptying the tank on sunday and hopefully do some hardscaping. More hardscaping and planting on monday. And hope to finish it before tuesday.
 
#4 ·
The preparations started... I brushed the wood and started wrapping Taxiphyllum sp. from Aquaflora around the branches with moss cotton. Here some teaser photo's:



Cling foil to keep the moss wet till monday:

 
#5 ·
And we're off!!



Tropica soil this time and plants are powered by AquaFlora.
 
#6 ·
500m ADA Moss Cotton later (they should sell sixpacks or something) I finished the last piece of wood.



Neglected tank before emptying:



Plants and spiderwood out:









Filling up again and emptying to rinse the soil:





Rescaped the soil:



The stones:





See whether the wood fits in:





My wife checking the new scape:



Result after 12 hours of almost non-stop working on the tank:



Tomorrow some final adjustments and planting and filling up the tank.
 
#8 ·
Me too! (off course) and must say that I've never been so happy with an aquascape as I'm with this one, and I haven't even started planting! Will update photos later.
 
#9 ·
Unwrapping the wood after some final adjustments:





Adding new soil and sand:



Although I'm no small guy with 1.87m, you can clearly see this is no small tank:



Add some water to make planting easier:



Plants for between the stones and just behind them:



Behind that some cryptos:



Background (plus Pogostemon qaudrifolius from my previous scape):



On the wood a few ferns beside all the Taxiphyllum (800 gram!!!):



Feedback is always welcome during scaping:



Happely I new the wood would float so I kept close to the tank when filling it:





Full of water:





Right now all fish are swimming again and the filter is running. Water is almost clear but the lights are already dim so I'll post more photos in the next few days when the water is crystal clear again!
 
#12 ·
Photos from this morning, only two plants floating, too bad the big rocks on the wood take up so much attention...





 
#14 ·
The wood on the right side doesn't float anymore so I removed the stones. So here a closer photo from the right side

 
#15 ·
The wood has sunken, plants and moss is growing, so far I'm happy:

 
#17 ·
Battled some algae in the moss (which did poor). but I'm winning and everything is getting better again!

 
#20 ·
Normally it's the end of May. They didn't announce it yet, but I don't expect it to be different this year.
I was aiming for top 200, but I've just seen the contest book from 2016, and if you were no. 200 in 2015, you were 500 last year. The skill level keeps rising! So realistic, I'm now aiming for top 500.
 
#22 ·
Thank you! I've taken pictures from other tanks before. It takes patience and a lot of light. These pictures are all with normal light and only for forum purpose.
 
#24 ·
Looking good. A school of Altums would look super cool in there, but it would ruin the scale you have created. Fantastic scape! Keep working!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Please don't say that! I would love to have a school of altums in there and we've some beautiful F1's in the lfs I work. But it would ruin the scale indeed.
 
#26 ·
Thank you very much!

I made some pictures for you. Overflof over the entire right side of the tank. Made of black glass. Bean Animal overflow to the room behind the aquarium where the sump is situated:





Water comes in on the left via 3x 50mm PVC, wet bean animal overflow minimizes CO2 loss, and it end below the surface of the water in the sump to minimize it even more. It gets heater in the first part, flows via 2 filter socks in the next where 100L biological filtration media and a few filter mats are placed. and the right end it gets pumped back up and CO2 is injected in the reactors. Nothing really special. Active carbon and purigen to clearify the water and home made ferts are dosed by the ARKA dosing pump.

Latest picture of the tank:



I entered a Dutch competition where they pay house visits, so the judge will come to my house next week to grade my tank. Looking forward!
 
#27 ·
Made an extreme HDR today, by making a picture during the day from the 'cabinet' and from the aquarium this night. A little photoshop (which I'm not good at) and this is the result:



#iIlikeit
 
#30 ·
It looks a little too fake in my opinion, but all in all it gives a nice idea about how it looks in my living room.

Amazing filtration setup. Thanks for taking those pictures! Even with the design to minimize gas loss, do you find yourself having to inject more CO2 compared to other filtration methods?

Also I notice you have some Aponogeton. I'm guessing you hope they don't go dormant until after the contest pictures have been taking?
You're welcome! I still think I loose more compared to an external filter. But having a sump with a reactor to dissolve CO2, or an open tank with an external filter and a diffusor, I don't know. I think the loss from a diffusor is larger than the loss from a sump.

About the Aponogeton, these are in my tank for over 1,5 year. I got three species, and I've had Ceratopteris and other plants that should go dormant in my tanks for years as well. I don't see how a plant could now it should go dormant in our tanks as long as you keep all water parameters the same all year round. I feel the trigger is missing although I don't even know what the trigger is. Perhaps temperature or the amount of light in nature. But does anybody ever experienced this is an aquarium? And even if it does one day, that's ok, as long as it isn't the day before a contest or something:p
 
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