Jimbooo's Vision 450 Journal

[Themuleous]

Coming along nicely Jim

 

[kamber]

Looks fantastic! Love that wood cave its mint!
So... when can you come do mine then

 

[Esfa]

Wow, that's amazing. The hairgrass is going to be really nice when it fills in.

Are you not worried about the common plec uprooting everything?

 

[jimbooo]

Thanks Kamber, if you were just a little closer i would gladly lend a hand. glad you approve.

Thanks Esfa. in a word no. they dont uproot established plants in gravel only sand. that is why the sand corner is there the plan is he can play about in that all he likes and wont touch the rest of the plants. he wont go in there until the carpet is well established. if he was in there now then yes he would make a mess as the roots have not spread yet.

 

[Esfa]

Ahh, fair enough.

 

[SuperColey1]

Liam has a madagascar lace plant growing in his tank here so he should be able to answer the hard water issue:
http/www.fishforums.net/content-page/174...nation/page/60/

I might just pinch your idea of positioning r.e. the diffuser and see if it works with my Lily Pipe (although I do have it absolutely rippling the water to bring oxygen in whilst probs pushing 40ppm of CO2.)

Scape looking good now and is benefiting from the excellent hardscape you started with.

Andy

 

[jimbooo]

cheers andy. regarding the diffuser, it is the combination of both filter outputs combined which gives the cyclone effect dont forget that. it should be okay with just one though certainly worth a try

in all honesty i am having some algae woes at the moment. i have only just recieved my placement regulator so co2 pumping back in again at 5bps. i'll take a before and after pic tomorrow when i do the clean up to show what one nutrafin cannister on a 100G for a month produces lol. tbh the plants look healthy but so does the algae grrr.

 

[George Farmer]

Nice jungle look, James.

I wonder how big your Apongetons will grow...? They're almost taking over already!

 

[jimbooo]

tell me about it mate, they are huge, now spread the entire width of the tank and also front to back. i am in a bit of a qualdry as they are really healthy but shading out way too much of the forground. i was thinking of literally stripping off all the leaves leaving just the bulbs and let them slowly regrow. i always prefer any leaves in my tank to have grown in that tank and not just put in there straight from the LFS if you know what i mean. i have always thought that was cheating a little. what do you think, will they survive a total chop down? each plant has about 15 leaves and 3 to 4 flower stalks (in bloom)

 

[George Farmer]

I've no experience with Aponogetons. I guess they'd survive a brutal pruning session. Bulb plants are normally very good at recovering due to the massive nutrient reserve in the bulb.

Me? I'd replace with C. balansae, Cyperus helferi or Vallisnera nana. But that's me - not you...

 

[rabbut]

Thats one ace tank. The corrys are cool, and I love angels. Briliant hardscape, and planting u've even changed my mind about the jewel backgrounds

Rabbut

 

[phistar]

just read all of your posts in thsi thread so far jimboo

your tank is absolutely amazing! can't wat for updates

 

[jimbooo]

Hi Everyone, Sorry i've been AWOL for 3 months, been rather busy. As to the tank i have had a bit of a roller coaster ride with it. all sorted now thank god. i'll let the pictures do the talking as usual.

This is Dec/Jan when the algae plague was at it's worst. i was changing water and manually removing it but it kept coming back. i kept telling my self to have faith and it would pass. thank god it did.

it got so bad that my living room started to smell of algae. not good at all....

anyway enough of that depressing stuff. if any of you are at this stage and the tank is relatively new please DO NOT give up. keep on at it removing algae and changing water and it will pass. After a big final clean up we ended up almost algae free. in case you are wondering 90% of it came out using a carefully handled narrow syphon tube. even the hairgrass, i just wiped it over the tips of the grass and it sucked up the algae leaving the grass rooted.

So here we are around mid Feb almost algae free. i had heavily pruned everything to make sure the algae leftovers on the leaves were at a minimum.

since then i have added some more E. Stellata which pretty much filled the tank. i have stripped the aponogen's (sp?) right down to bulbs to regrow and they are each now showing 3 or 4 leaves each. The hairgrass has come on well if a little patchy but it will get there in time. HC has completely disappeared apart from a large clump which has taken root on the very top edge of the background tile, above the water line. it looks great when you open the rear flap it's starting to spread right along it.

I made a trip to wildwoods today to pick up some L-Numbers i forgot to note what i bought though, Doh. one is a blue phantom plec about 5 inches. stunning fish cost a small fortune but i really do love them. i am a little worried as it jumped straight from the bag as i opened it into the tank so no acclimatisation whatsoever. he looks okay but i dont really know what to look for. he is breathing and swimming about sucking the glass, fingers crossed. I also bought 2 L-Numbers both black bodies with white spots. a little dumpy in shape like a gold nugget in fact pattern wise it's the same as a GN with white in place of the yellow. pics below, i'll get some better ones when they have settled in and the Blue phantom turns around when he's done with the glass!!!

So that just leaves a bang up to date set of tank pictures. the only remaining algae is on the wood which i actually am fine with i think it looks much more natural than "clean" wood, what do you people think? oh and there is some engrained on the filter box it's really hard to reach it without taking off all my lighting so i left it be.

"when two become one!"

i cant remember if i have already mentioned this in previous posts but i have added 2 LED strips for moonlighting. they are siliconed to the front glass above the water line. it's impossible to get a decent pic with my crappy camera but you'll have to take my word that it looks fantastic at night, especially over the sand substrate for reflection.

i have just pruned again so i will take some more pics when the E. Stellata has grown back and filled in all the gaps at the top.

Thanks for reading, hope you approve! Any and all comments welcome.

 

[RadaR]

Woah, James, that algae was insane. BGA, I rekon you weren't dosing enough nitrate. The L-Numbers will help you out there though..
They look lovely.
I see the sand has blended with the black gravel. Did you expect that to happen?
The fuzzy algae on the wood actually looks quite nice lol.

 

[jimbooo]

Hi Mate, great hey lol... as to the sand er no in a word. it's because of the sprey bar outflow in the rear left corner (vertical placement) it blows the sand into the shape you see. looks okay in the flesh, kind of makes a beach / shore line almost. there is only a thin layer on top of the EC the deep sand is only the left 5th of the tank.