An island with a beach

[alexge]

Hiya,

I've re-scaped my previous 75P ADA driftwood jungle [1] because I wanted to move the tank to the living room. I decided to take that opportunity and go for a somewhat different type of aquascape, mixing driftwood, Iwagumi grey stones and an island-type setup. The design follows a triangle shape in both horizontal and vertical (from top overview, front-view and sideview).
The plant's I'll be using are:

* Micranthemum 'Monte-Carlo' for foreground - carpet
* Rotala Wallichii foreground/midground - I love this plant but its been difficult to get it to grow
* Anubias Coffeefolia - midground
* Eleocharis sp. - background

I might also salvage some Alternanthera Reineckii Rosanervig which I'll place midground.

The fishes are the same as before, a small school of leopard danios, another school of diamond tetras,
a few pseudo juli cories, dwarf ottos, a pair of female rams, one very friendly betta and three kuhli loaches.

Here's some pictures from today; I am open to suggestions regarding stone placement - driftwood position can't be changed due to it being buried in the soil.





[1] http://www.fishforums.net/threads/ada-75p-140-liter-driftwood-jungle.439139/

 

[BettaBettas]

cool, update us soon!

 

[alexge]

So I spent last weekend planting the newly arrived plants.
Water was still full of tannins although the driftwood has already been in my previous aqua scape for over a year. The fishes seem to like it, although today I found them gasping for air at the surface, so I eased up on the CO2. I'm thinking of adding Rotala rotundofolia on the top right corner and making it a bush. Other than that, I'll wait and see how it progresses.

 

[alexge]

Well, my lovely betta whom I adore and have kept for a year now in his own small tank, is becoming aggressive. He is chasing my gold rams and my honey gourami. The poor gourami has lost his colours, and the rams are trying to hide wherever they can. If this keeps going on, I may have to move him to another tank.

 

[fishmad135]

Stunning scape, excited to see what you do with this and how the plants take shape!

 

[alexge]

Yesterday I decided that the rotala walichii had gotten too tall. In my previous experience when plants approach the surface, I get algae breakouts, so for this tank I'll keep them shorter and bushier. Furthermore (and knock on wood) it seems to be doing fine, which is a first as it has always been very hard for me to grow walichii without it melting or dying.

Some of the plants (alternanthera reineckii) were moved from my previous aquascape which had black beard algae problems. I did dip them in a solution of hydrogen peroxide and liquid carbon before replanting them, but some apparently still have the BBA, so they had to be removed.

Sadly, I may be overdosing CO2. My previous CO2 setting was a heavily planted tank, but now that there are not many plants, I had to ease up. Fish are near the surface, and lethargic or stressed. I adde an airstone, tuned down the co2 injection rate and added some surface movement. I'll also do a water change today, so hopefully I'll be able to fine tune the injection rate.

Here are a couple of pics from yesterday (before and after).
The pruned tops had their bottom leafs removed near the cut section, and then I replanted them in a bunch in the rear and right side of the tank.

Finally, I moved the betta to his own tank.