Added E.vivipara and Riccia

Latest update: I added E.vivipara at background and Riccia here and there around the stone. HC need major trimming but if I do now, it wont be ready for IAPLC which end on May. Curently the tank is maintain by my colleague. We have one to one exchange my tank and his new empty tank with a note that he need to return the hardscape one he bored with this scape.

Serenity

Finally got the chance to make a proper photograph, no fish, will put back the fish soon. The Eleocharis parvula has just start to grow, it suppose to fill the gap between rock as well as behind rock. It is not a final scape yet, still have some idea to improve or maybe end-up make it even worst.

Title: Serenity

Tank Dimension (LxWxH): 60x30x36 (cm)

Lighting: 110 Watts

CO2: 3-4 bps with inline diffuser

Substrate: ADA Aquasoil Amazonia

Flora: Hemianthus callitrichoides 'cuba', Eleocharis parvula

Fauna: Caridina multidentata, Neocaridina heteropoda var. red

2 Weeks After Flood The Tank

It has been more than 2 weeks since I flood the tank. What do you know, growing HC emerse does work. I did see some of the leaves are turning yellow and rot but most of them are not. In my previous 2 attempts, HC was totally melt within a week. This time I can see new leaves are forming.

What did I do differently? This time around I use 110W light over 2ft x 1ft x 1.2ft (~18 gallons) tank, way above 3W per gallon. Also I inject CO2 as much as I can. Drop checker shows yellow color. There is no fauna inside at the moment, so it should be ok. Previous attempt I'm using 18W light over 30cm x 18cm x 18cm (~2 gallons) tank. Since it is a small tank, I use Seachem Excell instead of CO2 injection.

This time around I try siesta, 4 hours ON + 2 hours OFF + 4 hours ON. I was reading from Dernele website, it suppose to help preventing algae but it doesn't. It does not work at all. Algae still growing, not sure what algae, it is fine strand and green in color. It is different than hair algae that I normally see, the strand is much finer. Either way nothing to be worry about, I use tooth brush and put Yamato shrimps, it clear over night. Someone on forum sugesting 4 hours OFF recently but too late, no more algae, Yamato did a good job.

Time to Fill in Water

I did some slight rescape on the left side. Replace the left rock mounth with new rock. Also, I added hairgrass in between the rock. Unfortunately the photo isn't that clear, that what happen when you use free digital camera.

Now switching to auto mode and wait until hairgrass grow covering the rock base.

View from Left:

View from right:

Venture to Iwagumi Scape

I started my 2ft office Iwagumi scape around end of October 2008. The plan was to use Hemianthus callitrichoides (HC) as foreground, Eleocharis parvula as midground (in between rocks) and Eleocharis vivipara as background. I planned to grow HC emmerse.

Advantage of growing emerse:
- Not need to worry about CO2
- Can out as much as light to speed up growth
- No need to worry about algae.

I’m curently using 2 x 55W PL light. The important thing is to keep it wet. I'm using cling wrap to cover the tank top and trap the moisture inside. Initially I do not use cling wrap and all HC dried up over the weekend.

It has been a month and Hemianthus callitrichoides (HC) have grown nicely, almost cover the whole foreground.

Initial setup:


After 1 month:

Next update would be after fill in the water, at the current growth rate, it wont be long...