Hi everyone!

This is my first journal in this forum. In November 2017, I came across a craigslist ad about someone selling their unused 40 gallon breeder tank. This was perfect because I had a beautiful wooden cabinet that perfectly matched the dimensions of that tank. So, I decided to set up a new planted tank.

Hardware used in this set-up:
Eheim Classic filter
T5HO lighting fixture
Aqueon heater
CO2 regulator
Ista Inline CO2 Reactor
CO2 drop checker



I decided to go for a Dutch set up in order to challenge myself to keep up the tidy rows of plants to mimic Dutch streets. I know it requires tedious trimming, which I don't mind.

The first thing I did is that I painted the background into black.



The Substrate

Next, ADA Aquasoil Amazonia arrived in mail. Three 9L bags were a perfect amount!



The Dry-Start

The tissue culture plants arrived a few days later, and I planted them according to the plan, which has changed so many times since then. One of the few parts that remain constant is the curving "street" of Staurogyne repens. The other plants here are Althernanthera reineckii 'Mini', Hemianthus callictroides 'Cuba', Hydrocotyle tripartita, and Lobelia cardinalis. I planted, sprayed them thoroughly, covered with plastic cling wrap, and left them alone for four weeks to allow them to root well and grow.



The most important part was to leave one corner of the tank slightly open for ventilation and to make sure that there is always enough condensation within the tank, which meant it was humid enough for the plants to thrive. The lights were on for 9 hours a day, and the plants seem to like that.

Hello everyone! A post on a new ground-cover plant is up on my blog AquaBiota! Here is an excerpt of what you’ll find there, for the rest click on the link below! Thank you for taking the time to check out this post ☺ Enjoy!
Inspire91

The most defining characteristics of this plant is that the leaves (almost 1/2 inch max in diameter) are perfectly round circles that come out in pairs at each node along the stem. The lack of any petiole connecting the main stem to the leaf, makes for a very compact-look. When this plant is grown to its fullest it looks like a tight mat of circular leaves. At this time there really isn't any other ground-cover plant like it in the hobby.

Well I don't think I have ever posted my emersed setup on here.
And if I'm going to be an active member, I basically need to give you all an entire tour of my property I live on right?
well to bad your not going to get it. *loads shotgun*

Instead however ill give you a tour of my Greenhouse, of which consists of my Absolutely Stunning and Beautiful, Never Ugly, Astonishing, Amazing, Great looking, Phenomenal, Astronomical, Economical, Emersed setup.
Sorry for the bragging. Cant help it.

lol.

Ok here are the pics, I will label certain plants as I go.

Get your popcorn ready!

p.s. my good camera broke just recently, so this is a less-better camera (English...)




Above pic, is of Rotala Indica 'true', just planted it the other day. Tried to grow stellata type 2 emersed as well in this bin, but I'm pretty sure it can only be grown submersed...


This is a new trimming of S. Repens in the same bin.


This is Hydrocotyle sibthorpioides


Next bin!


Well darn... brain farting right now... OH, hygrophilia corymbosa compacta.


Rotala 'Gia Lai'


I want to say.. this is Crypt. Lucens...


Next Bin.


Bocopa Carolinana growing in a flooded forest fringe of Bacopa Monierii


Ludwigia Arcuata carpet


One of my three pearlweed carpets


Bin of Althernanthera reneckii (fablau is properly ID-ing the variety for me)


Bin consisting of:
Brazilian pennywort
marsilea hirsuta
Ludwigia rubin
Hydro. Sib.
And some fragments of Pearlweed.


My Marsh looking bin of Marsilea Hirsuta and Ludwigia Repens


New Ludwigia arcuata and Bacopa Carolianana experiment I'm doing, full sun.

Hi, So Im new to the forum just starting out with my new 30gal planted tank, I have it running with plants just stuck in to grow a bit, this weekend im going to change the subtrate to dirt capped with black sand, I was wondering if you guys had any good ideas for a layout with the plant I have, these are the ones i have: so I sort of want to follow this layout, but with the plants i have, no wood or rocks either, thoughts??? http://tropica.com/en/inspiration/layout/Layout10/4851
Bacopa Carolina,
Stargrass
dwarf lily
Green Hygro Siamensis
sunset Hygro
baby tears
ludwiga rubin
Green and brown crypt
Staurogyne repens
Lobelia cardinalis
and hopefully some downoi and postgen erectus, they were pretty brown, so I dont know if theyll make it, but i can hope, if not ill prolly just get another cup of downoi, Thanks for the help!! heres a quick shot of what it looks like now,

Figured as my build is going incredibly slowly I may as well start a pictoral journal! This is a 75 I picked up off of craigslist with the stand, T5 NO dual lamp, and Aqueon 75 HOB filter along with various supplies for $150. The plan as this point is to collect the majority of my decorations, flora and fauna around NC once it's up and running. I want to build a planted riffle tank (Vallisneria sp, etc) with a mix of darters, shiners and chubs with some crawfish or some arthropod that could survive with but not eat the fishes and plants. Looking to go low tech.



Built sliding glass canopies






The river manifold is 3/4in PVC with two 1" inlets and two 3/4" inlets. The hob is attached the inlet and the caps are only temporary until I order my JBJ SP2500 powerheads (530gph) and filter pads from Swiss Tropicals.

First test fit and fill with driftwood that had been soaking for several weeks...





I do still need to build a canopy to properly mount the light and need to order proper bulbs.

For gravel I used Quickrete Pea Gravel as a cap over a mixture of Scotts Topsoil and Special Kitty cat litter.





The soil is only across the back half of the tank.




The Hygrophilla difformis is planted in what I'm hoping will be a good current break. (sort of native, introduced species in Florida according to USDA) It was grown emmersed so I'm waiting for the leaves to shed.





Looking for comments, ideas, constructive criticism.

Well after viewing the thread up top, and a lot more in here, I've decided to give this a go. This thread will be a copy and paste from my other journal, but I would welcome comments here as well since I know there's members on here who aren't on the other and vice versa

Wish me luck!

My parts list!

• Scissors
• Clear Plastic large bin
• Shoebox size bins
• Topsoil
• Light Timer
• Humidity Meter
• Water
• Lights
• Some time

Well I needed some space, so I got rid of my moss growout which wasn't doing anything but growing algae...



Then I got myself a plastic bin from walmart ($16.77)



And I def took the humidity guage idea to heart($5.97 @ Petco, I could have gotten cheaper on ebay, but I'm impatient today....)



Drilled many many holes, used a pair of nail clippers to take care of the ugly hole blocking plastic that happened with many of the holes



Cleaned out the bin in the bathtub



I then took the lids that came with the shoe boxes and cut them to act as free dividers for multiple species (plus they're free since they came with the box!)



Fill up the dirt



Get your hands dirty and have fun



Add water, I've added about 4 gallons here, also added dividers...I've now reduced about a half gallon of water out of the setup since the soil seemed to be super-saturated this morning



Added the lights -- These are the walmart plant lights that they have locally, they seem to be doing the trick so far (I had these laying around, I'm planning on adding a few more possibly, IDK yet)



Humidity showing about 95% about 2 hours after letting the lights run and closing the top, checking everything tonight, plan on adding a few plants tomorrow!



UPDATES FROM TODAY

So everything seemed stable, I've worked plants into 3 out of the 4 bins now.

Humidity was at about 92% when the photo period started, I added a bit of dirt to the bins to take care of the settling/saturation and then reduced the water just a hair, I'll be watching the dirt over the next few days to see if I should add a bit of water back or not, currently the water is approx. 1.5-2" under the surface of the soil.

Found some decent looking HC at the LFS (was very surprised to see that) bought a planter worth and got it in there. Here's hoping it takes off



Also found some pigmy chain sword, I've wanted to try these guys in the past but have had no room in any of my tanks, so I said why not and decided to go to town with the planter, here's hoping I get some runners Also decided to try some rotala macrandra japan red in this bin as well.



Some Moneywort and some CW Green, they're small but who knows, if these guys don't work out I'll transplant a bit from my bigger tank, or if they work out maybe I'll transplant some red or bronze over from one of my submerged tanks into the empty bin



Full bin shot as of about 20 minutes ago. I may open up to mist the plants down in a few days but that will be it, going to try to run this guy sealed for 72 hours and then open for gas exchange and mist and then close.



Comments and suggestions are always welcomed Thanks for dropping by, be sure to subscribe since this will be quite easy for me to update versus a lot of my tank journals.

Going to give a diy ada style stand a try. I'll post progress in case anyone else is interested in doing the same project. The drawing is loaded on sketchup. Following the guide below:

http://www.projectaquarium.com/plant...riumStand.aspx

page 1 by gfiske, on Flickr

page 2 by gfiske, on Flickr

page 3 by gfiske, on Flickr

With a new 140ltr Opti-white aquarium replacing my old 125ltr and a complete redo of my lounge to a very minimal modern appearance I thought I would make a new luminaire to match the cabinet and other furniture in my lounge.

The MkII version was still working well after 3 and a half years. It hasn't been ditched. All the electrics and LEDs have been re-used in my emersed cupboards meaning that now all 11 of my aquariums are lit by LED.

Originally I was looking for a slimline unit and planning on either using MDF (painted white) or using some steel sheet that I have left over from another project. First I found the TMC modular mounting with the tiles and thought something similar but then.........I stumbled upon the 'Vitrea Bridge' and instantly fell in love with it.



With the Vitrea costing circa £1000+ for my size I decided to try and do something myself whilst using the Vitrea's design to house my electrics. Mine will have much less LEDs and wiring is a lot cruder. I will be using 3 seperate plugs each going to a driver that runs 6 x 3W. A total of 18 x 3W LEDs. Of course mine won't have the controller or anything techincal either.

Rather than a glass sheet I will be using acrylic.

So with the design decided upon I drew up a plan of where I want the LEDs over the tank and then came to the measurements of the acrylic piece I will be needing.



The Opti-white is 80cm x 40cm and the acrylic are for the lighting is 60cm x 28cm. Adding 3 cm to each end to fit in the 'brackets' I ordered a 12mm thick piece of acrylic with the dimensions 66cm x 28cm.

When the acrylic sheet arrived I set to work on it, drawing out the LED positions and then routing some 21mm holes for the lense holders to fit in.

After purchasing the veneer for this project about 3 years ago I finally started on it this past fall. It's been slow going, but here's the progress on the stand thus far. The stand is a little bit longer than the tank (an ADA 90-P). Rather than the usual holes on the sides of the stand they will be on the top of the cabinet so the inlet / return hoses go straight down into the stand. A bit like the design on the bottom of this page, but only on one side.

The construction was done using 3/4" MDO plywood with the exception of the front header, which is solid cherry. All joints are rabbeted and screwed and glued using pocket hole screws. I'm still in search of some veneer that is wide enough to do bookmatched doors on the front. Excuse the glue residue. I applied the veneer using a veneer hammer and hide glue and have yet to clean up the excess. The solid cherry header is backed by a piece of 3/4" MDO plywood and is super strong. I can sit on the front in the middle and there is no flex and I'm about 185 lbs. The header has yet to be veneered as well. I chose solid wood there because at one time I considered doing a very slight bevel on it to mimic the bevels on the glass of the aquarium.

The inside will be painted either white or light grey as a nod to the ADA tank it will hold.

I figured I’d start a journal here now. This is post beginning, the tank was setup May 11, 2014. So starting at July 8th, 2014.

Specs
30”x30”x13” standard glass cube ?frag? tank (equivalent to around 50gallons)
Lighting: 2 30” finnex planted plus, 1 finnex original fugeray (started 1 month with the 2 planted plus only)
Filtration: SunSun I believe 303-b, uv sterilizer does not work, rated for 75 gallons I think
Co2: cheap unknown to me regulator, atomic gla largest diffuser, feeds into the filter intake
Substrate: ada Amazonia (2 9l bags), ada Africana (2 9l bags)
Water: pure ro water reconstituted w/seachem equilibrium

Fauna:
Pair japan blue endlers
Some royal blue tiger culls

Plantlist:
Some of these are single stems, looking to be propagated
Syngonanthus hybrid
Syngonanthus belem
Syngonanthus manaus
Syngonanthus madeira
Syngonanthus lago grande
Tonina fluviatillis
Tonina fluviatillis lotus blossom
Eriocaulon japan shiga
Eriocaulon aussie type II
Eriocaulon sieboldanium
Trithuria blood *****
Eriocaulon parkeri
Ludwigia tornado
Ludwigia senegalensis
Ludwigia North Carolina
Ludwigia …. pantanal
Rotala Mexicana goias
Rotala pearl type?
Rotala Mexicana green
Rotala Mexicana bangledesh
‘monte carlo’
Elatine hydropiper
Rotala macrandra green
Rotala macrandra japan red
Alternanthera reineckii variegated
Buce brownie red
Lileaposis Chinensis 'Maryland'

Some key tips on how I was successful:

I must of tried like 5 times or so and failed each time with algae or plants melting. Well, try try and try again, I gave up many times, wasted a lot of money, but passion to grow the syngonanthus plant alone kept me coming back.

First off if your gonna use ada Amazonia then you must do water changes. Water change is a must anyways, I believe in low tech and high tech, high tech being the greater amount. I did almost daily water changes in the start. Ammonia leech may or may not melt plans but it will cause algae, which nobody wants unless its that red algae.

Pack as many plants as you can in there

O2, Co2, get this right and it will solve most of your issues, I didn’t need to fertilize the first month or so on, diffusion method is vary important too. You can blast a glass diffuser and all the bubbles are going to do is rise to the surface with less diffusion rate. I’d suggest not adding fish right away so you can really mess around with the co2. Lots of flow is a good thing, keeps o2 levels up and mixes the co2 in the water level too. Proper mixing is important when doing a co2 tank.

Photoperiod, start off with 5 hrs a day, make sure you don’t get algae(it can get bad very fast), plants will do fine, then when the system is ready you can really up your lighting period

Start off with lower light, you may have a lot higher light then you expect.

Learn to trim, plant. This will keep things neater and not let your tank get too overgrown(I am guilty of this). Propagation? Trim a sideshoot and replant or however a plant produces, do it fast and you multiply that plant fast.