The journey begins!!!

[prakash]

If you havent seen my thread in General freshwater, I have been worrying for the last few days as my Strata council changed the ruling on keeping aquaria. This was at the time i had ordered plants for my voyage into better planting in my aquariums. Luckily it got sorted and I can keep it.

Mosses and crypt pondeifolia(?) spelling. Came yesterday and they looked fine though they have to be confined until my clown barbs leave. Today the pellia and flame moss, weeping moss and one other cant remeber at the moment. Havent checked the state of them yet.

To the point of this thread, I am going to keep a record of the changes I will make and use it to take advice from you. There will be pictures when i get to access my other pc. I will take photos of the whole thing and some random ones of the fish that i like if you will indulge me that. The fish choice have been made some current stock is staying and the rest will be gone. Im going replace them with a big shoal of cardinals 30 and some espei harlequins to mix with the current standard harlies.

If you want to keep watching please do. Any advice on this road will be very helpful. Im aiming for simple planted preferably no co2. Will have good lighting and putting in flourite. To help the current ailing plants that are staying.

[bushwhacker]

i read your last thread and was very glad to hear you were able to keep your tank.. will really like to see what you do with it now

[prakash]

It turned out that as the council were formed before 2000 they had to go by province bylaws. Which meant they had to give a grandfather clause whatever plus they are nice people and they dont care about how many fish and changing/replacing them.

A building near us 6 owners with cats were given verbal consent to have cats and a new company has bought the building and have given them till feb to lose the cats or leave, plus they are raising rent by 600 can$.

Im going for simple with lots of branches and flame moss, crypts, swords etc. It currently looks like this plus one of my bn pleco and the container with the crypts in to protect them from those barbs nice fish but they eat everything

[pinkertd]

Congrats to you for being able to keep that tank! I was watching your other thread too. I'll be following here to see the changes, your existing tank looks good too!

[prakash]

the photo makes it better than it is, not enough light so straggly plants and lots of half chewed plants and its just messy and it bugs me

[bushwhacker]

the photo makes it better than it is, not enough light so straggly plants and lots of half chewed plants and its just messy and it bugs me

i think everyone on this forum feels that way about their tanks at some time, i know i'm constantly in my tanks trying new arrangements.

[prakash]

well heres some pics of the packages and the wood i'll use, this is going to be turned into a tree like form with flame moss for leaves. Havent decided how to get it to stand yet. I will zap tie them at the base and bury it under stones and gravel may tie fishing line to the top of them to stop any slippages, good idea?

[prakash]

Just bought another 56w lights so it will be 112w of corallife t5s on a 90gal, not going for high light demanding plants so i think i will be ok. Also bought 15lb of flourite to add to the substrate. How should i support the branches as they will be wider in spread at the top than the base.

Im going to bury the base in inches of stones and sand and wedge it behind stuff they arent heavy but id rather it not fall over.

[prakash]

Was thinking of slate base but its multiple pieces and some dont have flat bases/ends and dont have the tools to cut and drill them to slate

Please advise! was thinking if they are secured together at the base i could use fishing line to tie the top of the largest one to a nail in the wall behind the tank?

[prakash]

how do i go about putting in the flourite after its rinsed. Im trying to keep some water in for the fish that wont be leaving in the overhaul. But i dont want to disturb the current sand bed too much although it has only been running 5mths so the base shouldnt be too anaerobic.

Any ideas?

[prakash]

Any advice on how to go about it?

[prakash]

Well after 6hrs of grovelling in the bottom of the tank and a large water change, it is finally clear and the flourite and new scaping has gone in. Post pics later. The new surroundings have i think sent my plants, particularly the mosses into shock with some sort of white/grey slime appearing on them, its slowly clearing but im thinking maybe a blackout will help. Still a lot of planting to do but this will be done slowly through the week to stop huge amounts of cloudiness.

[prakash]

well here is the first post overhaul pics, though some of the plants are planted now. Currently my bulbs are facing off the clown loach attack but we will see who wins that battle. Loving flourish excel and the flourite(not how cloudy it made the tank, bad washing on my part) the swords were only out of the substrate a day or so and the roots tripled in length so i plant them before the roots took over the tank.

[prakash]

sorry for the poor pics.

[prakash]

I like this pic its the best ive got of my indian drape fin barbs, move way too fast, the two males are dead centre in among my young boesmanis. The barbs are a relatively new species got them more by chance but love them. A little weak though lost a few when i had clown barbs who stole everyones food but now they are gone all is well, so far. The new espei harlequins would never have lasted a day, they are so small. They look great among the common harlies so 22 harlies in all. 4 clown loach, ram pair 3 boesmanis 6 barbs were 10 and a few bn plecos

[prakash]

nice eh