20 long rescape

Just added some more plants and finished the rescape.

alll beginner plants, no co2, no plant substrate, just a shallow tank with decent lighting. Liquid fertilizer and root tabs.
A few of the new plants are from pet smart, best quality I could find in the area, especially driving through a snow storm, didn’t cost me much, so if they don’t work out, I’ll just try again

whoa, that looks amazing! what did you use to attach the plants to the driftwood?

The only original plants that haven’t been added today were the christmas moss. I bought them tissue culture, and they came in a mess. So I used gorilla brand gel super glue and just dabbed pieces on. They recovered nicely.

Today, I glued 2 pieces of anubias nana. The one of the far left is partially friction fit in between branches on the wood. It may be hard to tell, but the other anubias that was glued was onto a rock on the bottom right. The plant at the middle right, was friction fit into a crevice in the wood, so I’m going to see if that one just attaches itself naturally before becoming loose.

the gel glue I’ve found to be tricky to work with. It cures very slowly on wet surfaces, but if you submerge it in water, it’s almost instant. Just have to careful not to glue your fingers together or to the plants.

Original plants:
Tissue culture Christmas moss. These have come back well from not doing so well.

Added today:
anubias nana x3
Green Crypt wendtii x2
Wisteria x5
Red Ludwigia x6
Corkscrew vals x1

This reply is mostly for my own notes, next steps in the build.

Next weekend is soldering wire connections and clamping wires, for the under cabinet lighting system. all materials for that have been purchased.

if time allows, the acrylic lid build can begin. I have the 1/4” sheet glass. Acrylic hinges showed up today. I opted for a clear epoxy bonding glue. Typical acrylic bonding solvents seem to be difficult to find in Canada right now. If anyone in Canada reads this and knows where I can get weld-on 4 or an equivalent acrylic welding cement, let me know.

Next step is custom frame for the power bar and switching out the outlet for gfci outlet.

aside from acrylic cement, all current and future projects have been paid for, are here and ready for work.

also need to order my new cories and ottos, so I can start them into quarantine.

In the meantime, it’s time, it’s time to start stripping and cleaning the 30 gal, to get ready for re-sealing and painting.

Thats gonna look really fantastic when it fills in the background! make sure to trim that wisteria and get it really bushy

Fishmar said:

Thats gonna look really fantastic when it fills in the background! make sure to trim that wisteria and get it really bushy

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I let the the new plants settle for two weeks I think? I’ll have to check the original post...

The wisteria has been rooting like crazy out all the leaf nodes. Most of the original leaves are melting.
So I went ahead and trimmed up both then wisteria and ludwigia, got rid of all melting leaves, chopped them up and re-planted.
I put some of the cutoffs into the 10gal quarantine tank as well.
I may have created a monster as now I have 8 rooting wisteria plants and 6 ludwigia plants in the 20, as well as 4 wisteria and 2 ludwigia in the 10.

here is what the 20 looks like after trimming:


based on what I’ve seen so far, that wisteria is going to be back up and sprawling in no time....

I’m going to let the 10 gal quarantine tank go for a week and see how it does before I snap some pictures of that one

Holy cow that looks amazing!!! I'm so impressed! This is low tech, right? Gives me hope as I begin my own plant journey....

mcordelia said:

Holy cow that looks amazing!!! I'm so impressed! This is low tech, right? Gives me hope as I begin my own plant journey....

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Totally low tech. I’ve got some
Pretty nice led bulbs, or tubes, whatever you want to call them. But it’s also a very shallow tank, only 12” deep, so most of the plants get plenty of light.
A few squirts of liquid fertilizer/week or whatever the bottle says. And a couple root tabs. Lights on 11.25 hours/day. No CO2. All beginner, easy to grow plants you can readily find.

Awesome, awesome. So when I fail my first round of plants I'm coming to you for advice

mcordelia said:

Awesome, awesome. So when I fail my first round of plants I'm coming to you for advice

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And I’ll be asking you how the hell you managed to kill wisteria... hahaha

January Tank of the Month contest will feature tanks sized at 17 to 30 US gallons. Will you be in it? I hope so.

How does the glue affect the plants, I have only ever used a bit of nylon fishing line to tie plants to drift wood. Never thought of using glue. Doesn't that bind up the roots.

You only use a small bit of superglue. For anubias or java fern you put it on the rhizome, not the roots