# 75g pics



## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

My only New Year's Resolution this year was to try my hand a aquascaping a bit (I'm not much into New Year's Resolutions as you can probably tell). Here is my first attempt at an actual aquascaped tank for the new year:









The left side of the tank only has Elatine triandra for the time being. I am trying to keep it lower growing but needed to fill the space until I can grow out some E. tenellus (maybe some E. bolivianus too if Jim still has some). I do need something for the back of the tank. I'm thinking some crypts or grassy type plants (E. angustifolius). Any suggestions?

It is going to be temporary until I get some plants in that we ordered through John Sipes. Unless I really decide that I like it, then I will keep this scape and do something else with those plants 

Here is a shot of the left side only:









The background plants are (L. to R.) Lysimacchia nummularia, Rotala macrandra, and Limnophila aromatica. They all need to grow a bit  The midground is Blyxa Japonica, Anubias barteri v. nana, Cryptocoryne of some sort (I'm not even gonna try and ID it) and rocks from around the house and some Ohio River driftwood that Jack left at my place after the September meeting. The foreground on the right side of the tank is Pogostemon helferi (Downoi).

One last shot of the left side looking down on the tank:









Let me know your ideas and I can give them a shot if I have the plants  I'm trying to keep this a low maintenance tank since the baby should be here in the next couple of weeks.

I had to edit the pic sizes as they were too big for the screen


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## dennis (Mar 1, 2004)

Looks good Matt! Hope you don't mind me chiming in on your club forum 
I like your layout and plant choices. I like the composition but would have moved it about 6" left so the center of the mound was about 1/3 from the tank's right side. The chouce fo rthe main plants is good and I like the P helferi foreground idea. I have a similar thing going that started accidently when I did not trim my stand for a while. The higher light of my tank keeps it low and it stays low and spreads along, one plant high.

The elatine should look nice also but moving the composition to the left would allow youto have a little between the mound and the right glass, balancing out the look and giving it that true mound feel.

Congrats on the new little one!!! At this rate you will never have to go to work in the real world again. I can taste college and honestly I am tired of being an underpaid, over worked and unappreaciated furniture maker. I love doing it but I am convinced there is no one good to work for.


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## JRJ (Feb 9, 2005)

I like it. Reminds me of a lot of Oliver Knott's tanks after he visited Amano's training facility (wish we could all go there). I especially like how it's placed slightly to the right side of the tank so there isn't too much symetrical character to the composition. Keep us updated as it grows out. Do you need some moss for the wood? I've got Xmas and Taiwan I can spare.

-Russ


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

I don't mind you chiming in at all Dennis, it is appreciated  This was actually only going to be a test run at a "real" aquascape for a change. I have some plants on the way to try and imitate this layout from the 2004 ADA contest:
http://www.akwarium.org/galerie.php?ID_GALERIA=24&ID_ZDJECIE=547
I am going to need a lot more driftwood to complete the layout in the link and it may prove hard to find during the winter months.

I wasn't actually going to do a mound in this tank, but I do like the idea. Besides, a mound is the only tank I have had any success with in the past. Now that the tank has been up for a whole day, it is starting to grow on me. Moving the driftwood 6" to the left will put it dead center of the tank (the space between the filters is the center brace on the tank). I was trying to avoid having it dead center but I think that is pretty much what you want for a mound layout, am I right?

The Elatine will probably go in favor of E. tenellus. I think the red in the leaves of the tenellus will play off of the R. mac in the background quite nicely. I think there is too much work involved with a foreground of Elatine. I don't want to have to uproot and replant it every couple of weeks. Any more tips you have on improving the layout will be appreciated.

Thanks, the little one should be interesting. I don't think I am ready for her but then again, I don't think you are ever ready to add another crying baby to a household  I figure by the time she is in school, I am going to need a refresher in cabinetmaking and probably a refresher in what it is like to work a "real" job again 

Russ, the tank is not all shown in the pic. I cut off probably 8-10" on the left side, since it was all Elatine. I think that may be skewing the view of it a bit. I like it though and that may create some issues since I have some plants coming for the aquascape I linked to above.

I have some X-mas (I think) from Eric and some more moss that Damon brought to the last meeting for the branches but thanks for the offer. Moss will be added to the driftwood once I move the driftwood to the left a bit. I'm not very good at this aquascaping stuff so it will be a good chance for me to see how it looks with such a small movement in the driftwood. MIght be good for everyone else to see also


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

Here's an update of the whole tank instead of a pic with the left side of the tank cut off: 


As you can see ther has been a lot of growth since Monday! Please disregard the plants in the back left of the tank, those are a few I have been holding for Russ


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## BryceM (Nov 6, 2005)

(another pseudo-intrusion to SWOAPE's site.....)

Nice start. It will be fun to watch fill in. It's becoming increasingly obvious to me just how large the gap between true aquascaping and keeping plants alive is. This looks like a legitimate condender for the former.

Where did you guys (Matpat, Dennis) get all your experience with different species? It takes several months to get the feel for each. One of these days I'd like to find a good place to learn about the various foreground plant options out there. Right now my repertoire stands at about 3, maybe 4 species. Besides the plant finder, do you have any good resources that kind of 'put it all together' for you? Very soon I'll be moving to an area where even a simple LFS is hard to come by, let alone a planted tank club. The internet is a huge benefit, but personal experience & seeing other's tanks (especially in person) fuels good ideas so much faster. 

Matt, I was wondering, did you decide to use RO for this or are you making a go of it with your funky tap water?

Congrats on the new one! Don't worry too much. I have 4 (almost 5) and there is still enough time to monkey with a tank or two.


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

No problem on the "intrusion" at all and thanks for the compliments and congratulations. The tank will probably change a bit more this weekend if the baby doesn't come early. I will probably take Dennis' advice and move the composition to the left a bit. I will update again if all goes well.

This is actually my second attempt at "aquacaping" my 75g. My first one was off to a nice start but there were just too many plants out there to limit the tank to an aquascape. Here is a pic of my first attempt:










I seem to do best with the "mound" style but hope to experiment a bit more on my other 75g in the future.

My experience with different plants has come from having too many planted tanks and a good friend who introduced me to more than just "beginner" type plants  For the past couple of years I have had at least 4 high light tanks, the smallest being a 30g. I am up to 5 tanks now, the latest addition being a 50g (48"Lx18"Dx12"H) mainly for mosses and anubias and any other foreground/shorter plants I find interesting. I've got a lot of plants from my 75g that need to be put in this tank in the near future also. That's a lot of area to experiment with 

This tank, and my 30g are back to RO status now and I doubt I will change the others over to RO but will use them with my tap water and continue experimenting with higher CO2 levels. Since we first started talking about my water chemistry and the use of Calcium hydroxide (thanks!) my algae woes have gone down. I did have a short spike when first switching the tank over to reconstituted RO but they seem to be on the right path now. It is much easier to maintain good CO2 levels when I know that my KH reading is what the test results show. 

As far as a good resource for plants, you have found it! Look at the plants and ask questions about them in the forums. Growing is definately the easy part, at least in my opinion. There are a lot of folks on this site with a lot of knowledge about plants and aquacaping (Like Dennis) so ask questions. I'd pick Dennis' brain quite a bit before you move. Some folks may even be willing to send you some plants to experiment with 

99% of the plants I get are from other hobbyists, mostly from this site, and almost always arrive in great condition. That sounds like it will be your best source of plants in the future.

Good luck with the move. There wasn't a club in the area when I moved here either. All it takes is one person to spark the idea. I don't think there is a better way of learning about plants than through a local club. There are many other benefits too. Free fish, plant trades, group buys on plants, fish, and inverts, other types of experience in the hobby, different bacground (some plumbers, electricians, cabintemakers, etc like aquariums) etc. Definately look into starting a club when you get to where you are going! even if there is only one other person into plants, you will grow much faster with personal experience.


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## dennis (Mar 1, 2004)

Scary that you are taking my advice and movign the layout. Don't know if I should feel honored or scared that something will go wrong and it will be my fault

My impression is that the "mound" is wighted to the right of the tank. Moving the center of the composition, focusing on the V created by the wood, just off of center should work well as the weight of the plants sort of "pulls" the mound to the right. That is a good thing.

Not sure if I explained that well so let me try again..... Consider teh open space around your mound. You want 2x the open space on the left as on the right. I think that, and the balance of the open space around the mound is much more important that where the center if the tank is. Don't worry to much about being close to center; this layout style is not all about the mound....the whole picture is what is important. 

Another trick. Before you finilalize your layout, look at it in photos. A lot of things regarding balance and composition are more aparrent in a photo than in real life viewing. Photos make it easier to focus on the tank itself and sort of put everythign into a perspective you don't get standing there looking at the tank.

Good luck and good luck with the baby!


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

dennis said:


> Scary that you are taking my advice and movign the layout. Don't know if I should feel honored or scared that something will go wrong and it will be my fault


Well, it looks "off" somehow to me also. "Off is the best way I can describe it with my limited experience in aquascaping. It is easy for me to see something isn't quite right but it is hard to put a finger on it until it is pointed out. If moving things turns out to be not such a good idea, then I won't blame you. I was thinking of doing it anyway 



dennis said:


> My impression is that the "mound" is wighted to the right of the tank. Moving the center of the composition, focusing on the V created by the wood, just off of center should work well as the weight of the plants sort of "pulls" the mound to the right. That is a good thing.
> 
> Not sure if I explained that well so let me try again..... Consider teh open space around your mound. You want 2x the open space on the left as on the right.


So, I have about 18" of open space on the left and none on the right as of now. I would need 12" or so of open space on the left and 6" on the right to make it seem a bit more balanced.



dennis said:


> I think that, and the balance of the open space around the mound is much more important that where the center if the tank is. Don't worry to much about being close to center; this layout style is not all about the mound....the whole picture is what is important.


I have been reading on the golden ratio and was trying to place the focal point (the R. mac) in the sweet spot. It may be better to move the composition so the "V" in the wood is the focal point as the wood seems to overpower the R. mac.



dennis said:


> Another trick. Before you finilalize your layout, look at it in photos. A lot of things regarding balance and composition are more aparrent in a photo than in real life viewing. Photos make it easier to focus on the tank itself and sort of put everythign into a perspective you don't get standing there looking at the tank.


More good advice! Something that beginners don't think about doing. Thanks for the tip.



dennis said:


> Good luck and good luck with the baby!


I think I'm going to need it with the baby, no big deal with the tank, it can always go back t the way it was before


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

Here's an update on the growth of the 75g. The stem plants were trimmed weekly but the Blyxa, was left to grow wild. I think I like the look of the blyxa but wish I had planted moreof it in the middle of the driftwood. The Blyxa has shaded almost all of the anubias 




I'm thinking of separating the Blyxa and spreading it around a bit more. I hope to remove the Downoi and E. tenellus and replace it with A. nana and Marsilea.

Any comments on my plans?


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## BryceM (Nov 6, 2005)

Looking good. It's amazing how fast blyxa grows once it gets going. I kind of like the effect of the downoi. Looking from far away it seems like the stem plants are shooting straight out of the top of the blyxa pile. If you trimmed them differently or re-arranged them to break it up a little it might help.


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

guaiac_boy said:


> Looking good. It's amazing how fast blyxa grows once it gets going. I kind of like the effect of the downoi. Looking from far away it seems like the stem plants are shooting straight out of the top of the blyxa pile. If you trimmed them differently or re-arranged them to break it up a little it might help.


The Downoi is nice but it is starting to get shaded and I don't want to loose it. The R. mac and L. aromatica were trimmed to the height of the Blyxa on Sunday...they grow fast! The L. nummularia on the left doesn't grow so fast and that is why I like it.

My plan was to either fill the center area that now looks blank with more Blyxa or bring some of the R. mac and L. aromatica up into those spots. I was short on time (as usual) during my last trim so I just plunked the plants into the substrate without giving it much thought. I am tempted to remove the R. mac and L. aromatica due to ther fast growth but I have to think about what to use to replace them.

Any ideas? What do you think about the Anubias nana and Marsilea sp. combo???


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## JRJ (Feb 9, 2005)

Matt,

I am very envious of your very green Blyxa albertii thumb! You could start a world supply of the stuff.

Honestly, I like it and your tank. Put a very gentle flow on it, let it "blow in the flow" and the tank will be beautiful as is. That's my vote.

-Russ


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

Thanks for the comments Russ. Everytime I look at the tank I feel that something is missing. I can't say what it is but the right side just doesn't look "right" to me and I can't put my finger on what it is 

Maybe I need to go back to what Dennis said and try moving the whole composition more to the center of the tank and see how it looks. I'll wait to try that until we get the sand and I dismantle the tank.


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## molurus73 (Apr 15, 2005)

Looks nice. Makes me think about a mound of just blyxa and ferns in the middle. Would look real nice with some red melon discus swimming around in there.


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## ctmpwrdcamry (May 23, 2005)

Matt how are you adding Co2 into this tank, are you using the air stones?


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

Right now I am using an Azoo difuser undernaeath the intake of my Magnum 350. It seems to be working better than the DIY reactor I was using previously. I am using the airstones on my other tanks and "misting" the CO2 around them. I like the mist method but the Magnum works just as well as near as I can tell.


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## ctmpwrdcamry (May 23, 2005)

Sounds like i may need to take a stone off your hand next time im down there, and fix my plumbing issues with this new way of thinking.


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