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The adventure begins...again. After a substantial absence from the hobby, I dunked my toe back in last fall with a small 60F shrimp tank, a Chihiros WRGB slim, and a Chihiros CO2 (citric/baking soda) system. A lot has changed since I started this hobby in the 90s, and it's been about 20 years since I tore my last tank down. 'Aquascaping' per se wasn't as much a thing back then. I didn't know anyone running CO2, and LED lights didn't really exist. The 60F was fun, and the shrimp seem happy, but I have been itching to get to building something with more elbow room.

I did happen to find a pic of my old 75 gallon bowfront tank a few weeks ago that was taken just before I tore it down prior to a big move. It ran great for 7 years. Was a simple low tech setup, with one hunk of driftwood, no rocks, plain gravel (no soil) a lot of simple plants (the sword plants did great), and some peaceful fish. Algae wasn't an issue, filtration was pretty subpar by current standards, but the tank did well despite that, and algae wasn't really an issue. Aesthetically blah by today's standards, and certainly not my goal for this build, but I remember being proud of how well this tank ran back then, and wasn't too demanding. Important as my life was very hectic back then.



So, the tech plan so far for the new 150U:


I ordered the tank and stand from UNS, and to my amazement, despite the worst mid-January winter storm we had in some years here, it was delivered on time by the freight company. I do not recommend trying to move a 5ft wide 400+lb tank and stand across snow and ice, down a slope, into to basement. Very thankful to have a tractor with forks, but still was a bit stressful getting this into the house. Miraculously we got it in the house in one piece, and I seriously questioned ever getting a tank larger than this in the future!



It did require disassembly outside the basement door to actually get it into the house around a berm of snow, along with some extra muscle from a few friends. (This was originally meant to be a 120P, until I realized the hardscape plan I had wouldn't quite fit. What's a another foot in length? )



Just getting the tank through the snow and ice was enough, and the base cabinet and tank just sort of landed in the room, and stayed there for a few days while devising a strategy for the next step. After recruiting a tall and strong friend, and sourcing some of those giant suction cup handles you use for moving shower glass walls, a few days later the tank was finally hoisted up onto the base.

As there is a dropped ceiling in the basement my plan was to hang the lights directly above the tank from the ceiling, rather than using a light stand. A few tiles were removed to investigate the structure above, and with some 2x4 extra bracing for the anchors, as none of the joists were in quite the right spot, two Chihiros Vivid 3 lights were installed directly above the tank. At this point I discovered that none of the electrical circuits in the basement were GFCI protected, so obviously that was immediately remedied. Too much gear and too much water to mess around with unprotected circuits.




With the ceiling open, I decided to run the lighting cables over the top of the wall to the left of the tank, and down into the mechanicals room there. The advantage being that the power cords are hidden from view after going through the ceiling tiles, and it's two less large power sources cluttering up the cabinet under the tank. Had to add an outlet in that closet, but I like how it turned out.

With the tank in position and leveled, and the lights finally installed, the next big issue is water. The well water here is liquid limestone. That was the initial mistake I made with the shrimp tank. Sure, neocaridina like hard water, but not THAT hard, and I quickly had to shift to remineralized distilled. I knew before even getting serious about planning this tank that the only reasonable option, for any future tanks here, is RO. The well water might be fine for Malawi Cichlids, but that's not my plan for this tank, but it will be great to have flexibility going forward. It's a big glass box, at just over 140 gallons, and it won't be the only one here (I hope), so the water part I want to get right from the start, and to make it easy to do water changes. The basement is a walkout, so draining water during water changes will be easy, and I would like to make filling it just as easy. I sourced two 70 gallon storage tanks for the RO water from Northern Tool, and ordered a Vectra S2 pump which will help with transfering water between tanks, as well as pumping it out through a hose to the aquarium(s) during water changes. Forgot to take a pic when I was done, but the pvc is all glued up now. I will finish installing the RO unit this weekend.



So, aquarium set up, lights in, and RO system with storage in progress. Next up? The exciting part. Hardscape! I have been hoarding Manzanita, Hakkai stone, and substrate for several months, so I'm excited to move on to the next step! Tank so far pictured below (although I have already removed the privacy film on the back in favor of adding the ARC RGB light screen in part due to the stair rail being visible and distracting. First screen was damaged in transit, so waiting on a replacement).

I'm back with another new setup! Well, sort of new. I ran out of space in my 20g long farm tank, to the point that I had bucephalandra suction cupped to the tank walls. Not only that, but the buce wasn't as happy as it should have been with inert sand, as I felt it isn't fast enough in regards to nutrient absorption that it was able to take what it needed just from the water column.

The buce that I keep are all rare collectors species as well, which really benefit from a more acidic environment to reach their full color potential. Taking those things into account, I knew my collection would benefit greatly by swapping over to a tank with aquasoil and RO water.

Here's the details of the setup:
Landen 90p (44 gallon)
36"×18"x18"
Netlea AT5
Netlea soil capped with Samurai Soil
Inline co2 diffuser
Oase Biomaster 350

Current water parameters:
76F
pH of 6.5, gH of 7, kH<1

The lights are currently running 8 hours, though I wish I could afford a PAR meter rental right now. For what it's worth, my Netlea app says my custom setting is at 70 watts. I'm aiming to run this tank at about 100 watts eventually, but since the buce is going to need some time to settle, slow and steady wins the race on this one. I did dark start the Netlea soil for about 2 weeks, using cycled filter media. When I break down the old farm tank, I'll be taking my Fluval canister off and adding it to this new tank and running 2 filters, to keep flow on the moderate end. I also made the decision to run my co2 24/7, to keep things as stable and consistent as possible for the buce. The only inhabitants I'll be keeping in this tank will be some ramshorn snails and my CRS colony.

Currently I have a little over 40 rare to incredibly rare species in the tank, though I do have more on the way as you can see, I'm already running low on floor space.



I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the ID stakes I made, truthfully I'm able to ID them by leaf shape and size, but I thought it may make things look more organized. That being said, they're itching my brain in a bad way, so I may end up removing them.

Here's some photos of species that managed to maintain some good color even in a more alkaline setup, so it can only get better from here! I've spent countless hours translating articles and posts in Chinese to figure out what kind of parameters the Chinese collectors use to get their crazy colors and leaf forms, so this will be a very interesting experiment for me!

I have always liked Rotala florida as plant due to its strongly colored leaves, but realized that I haven't actually aquascaped much with it - meaning to integrate it as part of a layout and not just growing a bunch of it in farm/collector style tank. Using plants in a layout in tighter bunches, and in competition with surrounding plants/hardscape is much harder than growing it farm style in a single patch - it also means be able to shape/trim the bushes to match the overall curves of the layout.

Back in 2016 or so when I first received Rotala florida samples from north america, I could only grow it in sparser bunches. It looked nice in macro photographs but I could not envision using it an bush that would show off well as part of a layout unless I can grow it much denser. In the recent years, there were two main discoveries that I found in my experimentation, the first is that it grows better in moderate GH (5 dGH+) compared to super soft water (say <3dGH), and that it grew better in certain soil mixes (I experimented with different garden soil mixes when engineering the composition of APT Feast). Eventually I integrated some of the soil data into APT Feast's composition, and paired with the higher power lights readily available today, I find that I could finally grow the plant the way I envisioned as part of overall layout. I could prune it dense, as the base stems were healthy enough to sprout dense side shoots after trimming - and the secondary/tertiary shoot tips were as fully colored and sized similar to a primary shoot tip that hasn't been subjected to topping yet.

As a midground stem, it works very well due to its slower growth rate vs other colored stem plants.

Against the deep purple of Rotala florida, I found that Golden white clouds worked quite well. So now they are the main inhabitants of the tank.

Tank this week (25/6/2025)



Tank started out like this:

A week or 2 after initial planting (5/5/2025). I reused old aquasoil from the previous scape, so I planted all plants up front rather than waiting more time for the tank to stabilize, with the idea that I could out-grow any algae issues. Initially wanted to add H. Chai but it really didn't fit the overall color scheme, and the bushes by the side were too invasive to be compatible with having a chai patch I think.

Since it was going to contain Rotala florida, I thought I might as well throw in other high demand troublesome species such as the Red Eriocaulon quinguangulare, blood vomit. I settled on Rotala tulunadensis for the background as I wanted something dense and shapeable.

Tank specs:
60x36x36cm
Filter: Oase biomaster 250, all sponge media
CO2 injected through inline atomizer
Substrate: APT Feast
Water column: APT Sky to raise GH to 5dGH, 2ml of APTe per day.


Light distance. Interestingly, not crazy high PAR - just around 200-250 umols PAR at the substrate level.



Trimming and shaping: Most bushes were shaped by cutting individual outlier shoots one by one. Only Rotala blood red and the Rotala tulunadensis was straight trimmed across the entire top once.


This is how the Rotala tulunadensis looked like after a straight trim on 29/5/2025. About 3 weeks from when the top picture at top of this page was taken. It took the plant a whole week + to show new shoots. It seems straight trimming slows down the plant quite a bit, but allows for a very dense & neat canopy afterwards.



There are some interesting plants stuffed here and there. Some Eriocaulon caulescens? bolivia? that local hobbyists passed on to me. Carved out a patch for Syngonanthus vichada - slow grower, but the couple of babies that came have doubled in size so I think they should be alright. I think I will move them to a larger tank with more space.









Only discovered the color combination with the Golden white clouds when the tank matured, but its one of my favourite fish-plant combinations now. I think that while some of the species are a bit picky about growth conditions, one thing I really like about this tank is that most things have moderate/slow growth rates, which makes maintenance with regards to removing excess growth less tedious.
Elatine triandra is used as a low growing green filler plant - it does this role well. As it does not root very deeply, I can easily cut and pull off excess growth easily. Its the fasting growing plant in the layout that requires frequent removal of excess growth.

Some more close-ups.








I'm trying to replicate concepts of this layout (slowing growing bushes) into my 4ft tank.

Era of AI slop is truly upon us. Firstly, no one holds the Oxyguard analyzer's probe as it takes 15-20mins to get a reading.
Size of the box is wrong and no shadows below the box, caps missing and a strap that goes nowhere. Aquarium looks fake as well. Real pic below for comparison.

Ive reorganized the order of my tanks so I can better keep track of them ie. Tank 2 moss tank is now tank 3. This helps in any confusion I had when tracking tanks they are in a sort of order now. Rather than taking time editing my old journal id rather create a new thread. Pics will be current (for the most part) as they are posted. I am not aquascaping. I am just farming.

theres limited 2 per order.
Bought 2 a few days ago and just got it, pretty nice unit and very large. I'm actually putting it on a 10 gallon so its comically large filter.

$16 each, probably the best deal I've seen so far.

Not affiliate link, just google pasted.

Hi All,

This is something I've been wanting to do for years, and I think I finally found a sensor that will work. I've always had trouble reading the API tests, and I've always been miffed that the reefers get the cool digital test readers - and wanted to take a crack at building one that could potentially read any freshwater test given a blank/known concentration as a calibration.




A sensor came out from ams (AS7343) in 2022 that unfortunately has been made EOL, but has a replacement (TCS34488M) with a similar package that might work for future versions.


I recently got my hands on a qwic version of the AS7343 sensor from sparkfun, and figured its time to put together something.

Goals:

• As cheap as possible
• Universal as possible
• Fit API glass/plastic vials (not sure yet if the plastic vials will read ok)
• Start with Nitrate/Phosphate and see if I can add more there

I figure I'll need 2 light sources (warm white, and IR for reading the phosphate test), but can use the same sensor array across most tests. I can use a small-form ESP32 as the MCU to give it USB-C power, wifi/bt connectivity if needed, and keep it small. Small/cheap ~1.3" OLED screen for displaying results/selecting tests.

Enclosure will be 3d printed.



First pass at a sketch - I might drop the screen if I can give the device a web interface though, which will make the device even smaller/cheaper, reduces the need for physical buttons on the unit, and a 2nd pcb entirely. Also not sure if it will need a cover for the top of the vial, or how much ambient light will affect the reads. TBD. Will order some XIAO ESP32S3 to play with and see how far I can take it.

I'll log progress here, and am very open to suggestions and ideas. If successful, I'll release the files so it can be easily replicated.

Uh oh! Made the leap and purchased a UNS 60L aquarium today to replace my UNS 5N. It's going to go on the edge of my kitchen island, so keeping equipment minimal and attractive is going to be a priority here.

The aesthetic goal is something resembling an Iwagumi that can be viewed from 270 degrees. Biggest inspiration currently is this scape by @qball_aquatics in Sydney. I'm not a huge Iwagumi person and I normally like substantial hardscape, but something about the plant selection here scales so perfectly in this long shallow tank, so I'm simply going to copy it.



UNS 60L Dimensions: 24" x 8" x 8"

Tentative Equipment List
Filter: Oase Filtosmart 60
Inflow/outflow: ASG 10mm Stainless Steel Inflow/Outflow pipes
Light: Chihiros CII RGB or ONF Flat Nano - intentionally going for a short light for more of a spotlight effect with shadowing on the outer edges
CO2: Paintball setup, potentially mounted horizontally with brackets under the counter

Plants:
Glosso or HC carpet
Eleocharis parvula for height around the stones
Echinodorus 'Aflame" centerpiece plant

Livestock:
Blue dream neocaridina
Maybe chili rasboras

How does this setup sound? Very open to suggestions.

After a bit of hiatus from the hobby, I'm jumping back in with a high-tech UNS 60S as a pond type scape. Normally one would have a nice set of images next with the initial setup. Currently mine is an empty tank and shelves of parts and equipment. I'm determined to take it slow, research each bit and have everything on hand before adding water.

I've found the in the past ~20 years there has been quite a lot of change in the hobby. So many more products available, my last high-tech tanks was T5's and Metal Halides. My have things changed.

My Plan

Tank /Stand​

UNS 60S

Lighting

Chihiros WRGB II Pro 60
Chihiros WRGB II Pro 60 Light Shade /w Mirror
Chihiros WRBG II Pro LED Light Hanging Kit
Week Aqua Arm Stand /Black (L Stand)

Filtration​

Oase BioMaster 2 Thermo 250
Oase Shutoff Valve 16/22 mm - x 2
FZone 3M Grey Tubing 16/22 mm
Stainless Steel 16/22 to 12/16 reducer
FZone 3M Grey Tubing 12/16 mm
FZone Mini Lily Pipes w/ Skimmer

I found that to use Lily pipes that fit this tank size, I'll need to use something small, hence the reduction in tubing size.

CO2​

5 LB CO2 Tank
CO2 Art Dual Stage Regulator /w Bubble Counter and Solenoid
FZone CO2 Proof Line
CO2 Check Valve
NilocG CO2 Drop Checker /w Solution
Timer
Qanvee M2 Inline CO2 Diffuser

Lucked out with CO2, found someone on Facebook Marketplace selling 2 complete CO2 systems. With full tanks, for less than the price of a new CO2 Art Regulator. Snapped them both up.

Hardscape​

Rock - Black Lava Rock
Wood - Dragon Wood

Substrate

APT S - Base layer
UNS ControBase 2L
APT Jazz Caps
UNS ControSoil Black Fine 10L
UNS Mojave Extra Fine 8L- Open areas
UNS Sequoia 3L - Accent Rocks

Plants​

Rear Middle
Hygrophila pinnatifida
Ceratopteris thalictroides
Ludwigia palustris var Super Red

Under Wood and Rock
Cryptocoryne parva var Mini
Bucephalandra (assorted varieties)

On Rock at Water Line
Micranthemum callitrichoides var Cuba

Left and Right Sides in Sand
Eleocharis acicularis var Mini
Hydrocotyle verticillata

Floaters
Red Root Floater

Livestock​

Wish List: at this time, nothing is set in stone
Shrimp
Pygmy Cory
Otocinclus
Exotic Pleco
Red Neon Blue Eye Rainbowfish
Badis? Once plants grow in
Goby
Snails

That's the plan.

Started collecting bits in April, then found out I'd have to be in Dallas for most of May for some family matters. While in Dallas, Aquashella was in town along with an aquascaping demo of an LFS, Fish Gallery, by MJ Aquascaping of YouTube fame. Being my plan is based on the Guppy tank MJ created, I could not miss this opportunity. Learned a lot and had the opportunity to ask MJ a lot of questions.

My intention is to Dark Start, then plant.

I'm held up by the need of one part. The Week Aqua Arm Stand /Black (L Stand) base is too wide for this tank. In need of a 3 mm spacer. My neighbor, a metal shop, made me one out of ABS plastic. It works perfectly, only they made only one. I need two. My fault for not being clearer. I'll hit them up once they are back in the shop after the weekend.

More to come...

Sorry, but I just find this hilarious! Perhaps they'll ask scientists if there's a way to turn down the brightness and photoperiod of the sun.

Headline:

"Reflecting Pool woes: Trump administration turns to hydrogen peroxide in latest bid to beat back algae"​