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I apologize for my hiatus-- life has kept me busy as well as my other hobby projects. Some of you may have read my other journal on my Nature/Garden style hybrid, where I decided to switch pace from fast growing stems and rescape the tank to a traditional Nature style scape, which better suits my busy schedule.

I wanted to wait to post my initial pictures until I had gotten most of the plants in and arranged. Some plants were reused from the old scape and new ones were added. I'm still waiting on some Trident Fern, Blyxa, and Crypts to arrive, but those will be the final additions and then the scape will just be set to maintain and mature mode.

The hardware is still all the same, but for the purpose of starting a new thread I will reiterate the list of hardware.

Tank and Hardware:
Landen 100p
39" X 17.71" X 17.71" ~50 gal
Two Week Aqua T90 Pros
Oase Biosmart Thermo 600
GLA Dual Stage Regulator with inline diffuser
Fresh UNS controsoil, Black Fine
Beach Driftwood and Ancient Stone

Flora:
Eleochari Ascicularis'mini'
Staurogyne Repens
Elatine Triandra 'Fluorescence'
Bucephalanda sp 'Brownie Ghost 2011', 'King Devil', 'Neo 2015'
Anubias sp 'Nana Jade', 'Chili', 'Stardust Mini Coin'
Rhaphiadora Beccarii
Hygrophila Pinnatifida UK Variant
Java Fern 'Needle Leaf', 'Needle Leaf Mini', 'Orange Narrow'
Ranunculus Inundatus
Blyxa sp Japonica
Cryptocoryne Spiralis Tiger 'ADA Variant'
Nymphoides 'Taiwan'
Nymphaea Micrantha
Nymphaea 'Zenkeri'
Homonoia Riparia

Fauna:
15 Cenepa Red Pencilfish
15 Platinum Rummy Nose Tetras
2 Wild Type Honey Gourami
~25 Blood Orange Neocaridina

I'm basically running the same photoperiod as before, but added in a half hour ramp up and ramp down, so 1 hour ramp and 6 hours on, 45% Intensity on a custom color setting. Co2 injection rate was adjusted to account for slower growing plants, but still set to come on 2 hours before lights on. I'm dosing 5mL of APT 3 daily and 8mL of Seachem Advance to try and get my hairgrass carpet recovered.

I was a but worried about a mini cycle since I had to replace all of my substrate, thankfully due to the lower ammonia release of Controsoil, the bacteria were able to handle it with no issues. The plants don't have any algae, but since startup with the last scape, I'm still dealing with a lot of GDA and hair algae buildup on the glass by the end of the week. I'm assuming it's due to the spread of the pendant lighting, so I'm not sure what to do about that other than to just wait until after WC day to take tank photos

Maintenance has been far more straightforward as the tank works towards balancing. The first few water changes were time consuming as I move plants around and try to solidify an appeasing layout, however I think I have now finalized my planting groups and am happy with things. Now I will wait for some Trident Fern mats to add behind the driftwood, Blyxa Auberti variant from Joe, and a Cryptocoryne Albida 'Costata to fill out the background, and then let things fill out.

Now for the fun part! Photos. I won't be taking many until the plants start to recover and fill in, but I did take a few of the more uncommon plants I have in here as I find those to be interesting to document.

Tank shot:
Java Fern 'Orange Narrow', which I've spent an incredibly long time trying to find and was finally able to track down 4 rhizomes, 3 of which are in here on nutripads and one in my farm tank as a backup. Some leaves are already getting some nice orange coloring on the tips, I'm very excited about this one and can't wait to see what it will do.

One of my Brownie Ghost 2011 clumps I've been farming, which I decided to use as a midground plant for some contrast:

Nymphaea Zenkeri, super common but showing such pretty colors under these lights that I couldn't resist:

Homonia Riparia, stuffed into the crevices of the driftwood. Waiting for it to gain some red and orange tones, but won't happen until my aquasoil finishes leeching, as this plant only develops very vibrant red coloring when under nitrate limitation:

Nymphaea Micrantha, a lily that I have not yet kept before but am really enjoying. The multicoloring speckles on the leaves are really beautiful and tie all or the other colors of the tank together on one leaf:


Let me know what you all think! I'd especially love to hear from those who were following the other scape.

Started a new tank with the idea of show casing Lagenandra meeboldii which I have not showcased before. Wanted to feature Hygrophila lower Hlaingbwe, but I removed it later as I think it would be too large for this tank.

New substrate, new filter, squeezed filter mulm from the other matured tank, then ran the tank one week day before planting. 100% water change after planting, then 100% water change every other day since then. Dosing 1ml APT3 after water change day, and remineralizing to 5dGH using APT Sky. Trying out the low water column dosing approach for the initial period.

Filter: Oase 250
Lights: Week aqua a430 80%
Substrate: APT Feast

Was going to Journal about startup issues, however, it seems like the tank has already stabilized, skipping diatoms and green dust phase.

Freshly planted for a couple of days:
13/2/2026


Replanted the tops for Myriophyllum roraima, Cut and replanted Rotala blood red to begin building up the bush form. Trimmed old leaves
Foreground seems a bit blocky for now, so I think I'lll move stuff round again. Probably when the BV grows out some more.
Pic on 23/2/2026

Readings at this stage:
Potassium: 2.3ppm
Ammonia: 0.1ppm

reduce water changes to 2 times a week.

I’ve been wanting to do a tank for a while that focuses just on finnicky plants -erios, lud. panatal, tonina and the sorts. So this is my detailed journal of how I start my planting process all the way from cycling to planting, fertilizing, water changes and the pitsfalls, lighting and what processes work best for me.

Equipment:
Oase biomaster2- 350
Fluval Visi-white 60P tank
Fzone CO2 regulator and a 2.5lb CO2 tank
Week aqua L600Pro Series Light
Fzone Brite60 Light
Yugang reactor made using a 375 mm PC cooling reservoir - will post another journal detailing this.

CO2:
1.3 pH drop from a baseline of pH 6.8.

Aquasoil:
Three 5L bags of APT Feast

Cycling:

APT Feast being a high organic content soil - I like to cycle it for a full month at least using the dark start method before planting anything. This is even more important for me as I almost exclusively use tissue cultures for my plants. Because I will be injecting CO2, the tank was also getting injected with CO2 during its dark start. I know there’s opinion out there that it’s a waste and what not, but I think CO2 levels in the water might affect microbial ecosystem development in the long run, so I like to start off by exposing the microbial community of the tank to CO2 levels it will be seeing in the long run.
The water parameters 2 weeks after start dark cycle were as follows:
Total ammonia : 10 ppm+
Nitrite: 10 ppm+
Nitrate : unreadable as the nitrite levels were interfering with the API test. I eventually used a 25% dilution to read 30 ppm+ nitrates.
At this point I did a large (100%) water change to remove some ammonia and speed up the leaching process. The steeper the diffusion gradient between the soil and water the quicker the ammonia leaches, hence large water changes facilitates that.

After 4 weeks I did another water test and the parameters were similar as above. Proceeded to do another 100% water change.

After 5 weeks I did another water test and this time the parameters were:
Total Ammonia: 1 ppm
Nitrite: 2 ppm+
Nitrate: 40 ppm+
Decided to give it another week to see if the nitrites would drop to below 0.5 ppm.

One week later the nitrites had vanished. I did another 100% water change.
So it takes about 6 weeks to fully cycle a tank with APT Feast if you don’t use any old media or cycling aid.

Next step is to plant the tank. I wanted this tank to focus on mostly uncommon species:
1. Ludwigia Pantanal
2. Ludwigia Arcuata
3. Tonina fluviatilis
4. Rotala Macrandra
5. Macrandra Mini Red
6. Mayaca Fluviatilis
7. Rotala Florida
8. Rotala Bonsai
9. Ludwigia Cuba- white edge
10. Ludwigia Senegalensis
11. Lysimachia Parv. red
12. AR mini
13. Bacopa compacta white
14. Erio Vietnam
15. Erio Quinquangulare
16. Crypt Flamingo for my centre piece

Here’s a photo after planting. Not all the species listed above are present in the photo but I did eventually add them once I was able to acquire them.

I’m also trying to make a carpet with buce needle leaf on the left side, we’ll see how that goes. I plant on planting clumps of ratnagiricum in the carpet once the carpet has settled in.

OK, so parameters after planting:
1. CO2: 1.3 pH drop from a baseline pH of 6.8. About 55-60 ppm possibly. The verify by making sure my drop checker is yellow before lights on. I turn on CO2 4 hours before lights on and turn it off 1 hour before lights off.

2. Lighting at 80% strength. I hadn’t hooked up the week aqua yet at that point so it’s just 80% on the fzone which would amount to about 60 umol of PAR at the substrate. After a week, I installed my weekaqua L series and increased the PAR to around 100 umol at the substrate. I’m a big fan of using high light (80-110) umol from day 1 of planting, I think this gives plants the best chance at fast growth. The faster the plants grow adapt and generate mass the higher my chances on skipping the diatom/GDA phase. Here’s an 8 gallon tank below where I used a 100W grow light from Day 1 of planting and you can see how the tank is algae free and growing rapidly at the 3 week mark.


This method has worked really well for me, although the key to this method is to maintain very stable nitrate levels. Your nitrates could be anywhere between 0-30ppm, and it won’t matter as long as it is kept stable. A common mistake is to not replenish nitrates after a large water change.

3. Fertilizers:
APT 1 - 1.5 ml per day

4. Water parameters:
KH - 0dKH
Nitrate: 10 ppm
Phosphate: 0 ppm

Here’s the tank now after 4 weeks of growth:


The macrandra on the left had been trimmed last week and replanted, they had almost reaching 80% of the tank height. The tonina at the back has settled in well, some diatoms on the lower leaves which I’m not worried about. Although I don’t think that’s where I’ll kepp the tonina long run. I might use it as a midground plant and maybe move the panatal where the tonina is. You can barely see the quinquangulare behind the AR mini, but they seemed to have settled down as well. I planted 6 crowns and lost 3 within the first 2 weeks. I suspect damage from transportation - they smelled like cooked spinach when I received them.
So as is evident from above, even though I’m supplying higher levels of lighting, diatoms and GDA haven’t really taken a hold yet. The key has been regular water changes to remove detritus produced by the ramshorns, keep a stable nitrate level of 10ppm, stable CO2 at 50+ppm and good plant husbandry. I always make a point of trimming away older and emersed leaves so they don’t attract algae. The ludwigia white is actually emersed. I have removed all of its emersed leaves except the ones from the top 2 internodes and as soon as I will see sideshoots grow and develop past the 2nd internode, I will trim them and replant them and uproot the emersed stem and toss it. The plant arrangment is a little “block-like” as of now, but this isn’t really the final arrangement. I prefer to grow the plants out in a rough layout before I arrange them once they’ve all taken off.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I will add to it as the tank develops in the upcoming weeks.

was travelling for the past 3 weeks, so this tank hasn't had any trimming, water changes, or maintenance.
Frankly, I'm liking this jungle look a bit more than my usually well-trimmed tank.

Would love to build a Hillstream tank for some of these guys but a quick search indicates they're not easy to come by in the U.S.

Well I’m done talking about it, it’s time to get this journal started.

I have been really out of it the last year or so in terms of maintaining my own tank, mainly out of frustration with time constraints and inconsistency with dosing etc. However, I have now acquired a dream tank, rimless and with low iron glass like I’ve always wanted. While I loved having a sump and prided myself on putting it together, I’m past that desire. The AIO allows the same benefits with hiding equipment, and overall easier maintenance without climbing in and out of cabinets. Now onto the details of this build.

Tank: Planet Aquariums Tideline 62 Gallon AIO Lagoon

Filtration: (2) 250gph pumps on either side of the tank with center overflow into socks (I’m going to punch holes in the socks for now and stuff with polyfill, reviews state the socks clog way too quickly and there is no replacement sock as the insert is not the common round style). The baffles will be stuffed with the poret foam I have already from my sump for extra mechanical/biological.

Substrate: The bottom layer will comprise of bagged pond soil/peat/earthworm castings/ STS. This will be a thin layer and will mainly act as filler to raise up the cap of APT Feast. This is similar to a substrate setup I did when I first started back up in 2020, And that tank did very well. While capping with sand and relying on the dirt to feed the stems worked well, it did require a little more effort on my end with dosing. I don’t trust myself to be as diligent as some members on here are with their inert subs, so I’m taking the mulligan and using aquasoil as a cap, hence, “dirty soil.” This will be another island style layout, and the surrounding substrate will be comprised of Caribsea Carolina Creek Sand.

Hardscape: River rock (local hardscape center sourced) and malaysian driftwood. I have recently acquired another large piece of wood and I’m sourcing new stone this week, as what I have just isn’t meshing with my current vision for the tank.

Plants: …. I have not solidified my vision of what this scape will look like just yet as I haven’t been able to setup the hardscape to outline the island. The plan is to use a good amount of colorful stems, epiphytes, and potentially moss.

Lighting: I will be ordering the Week Aqua Z400 this week and am excited to test it out.

That’s all for now, more pictures and details to come. I should hopefully have the hardscape setup by the end of this coming week after acquiring more stone and wood.

CO2: Almost forgot, for Co2 injection I have made a DIY Yugang with a locking food storage container. It will be stored in the cabinet and the hook will feed into the return pump chamber on the right. I initially was bummed that I had to sacrifice storage to fit a 5lb CO2 tank under the stand, which also meant getting rid of of the 20lb tank I’ve only been having to fill twice a year. @GreggZ Will appreciate this, my awesome father in law suggested that I hide the co2 tank in the pantry closet which is directly behind that wall and just drill a hole for the co2 line. Since my father in laws word is pure gold in my wife’s eyes, that suggestion was approved! He’s just as much my dad too so I appreciated him supporting the project

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.

Hi guys!

I'm new here, but not entirely new to planted tanks though I've been out of the hobby for the better part of the last decade between kids and moving a couple of times - but finally in a spot where I can do something again. I'm mostly going to be making things up as I go along, but plan on a lot of automation (I want to integrate everything into home assistant) and a lot of DIY as I love the challenge of building things out myself.

The starting point:

I picked up a 90P rimless, low-iron tank on a great deal.



I have a rough idea in my head for a stand to be built from plywood - just have a couple other house projects to finish off before starting that built.

Wife says I can only have one aquarium, so for this tank, I want to go all out with a sump to allow for auto top off, and auto water changes, auto fertilizer dosing etc. etc. I have half a plan in my mind.

I've also started on the light fixture which I've modeled up in CAD, and plan on making out of an 8020 extrusion, and some 3D printed bits.

I'm using bridgelux gen 3 thrive CW (3000k) and WW (5000k) LED strips which have super high CRI at 98+ along with some specific XPE2 wavelengths that I'll solder onto some starboards. Far Red (730nm), Red (654nm), Cyan (495nm), Blue (455nm), Visible UV (415nm). Each segment of the white channels will be on its own driver so I can adjust left to right brightness in thirds, and each colour channel on its own driver so I can vary each channel on a time-based approach.

These will be run from a custom PCB board with Meanwell N-LDD drivers, and will run ESPHome on an ESP32 so it can link up with my Home Assistant installation.


That's it for now, this will probably be a very slow build so be warned if you follow along!

Hi all,

Recently I planted my 17L low tech nano. This is the second tank that I have, so I'm a bit anxious but I hope to learn a lot (from you too!).

Specs:
Soil: ADA Amazonia V2 (with Bacter 100) + La plata sand
Stones: WIO Titan stone
Filter: Oase filtosmart 100 thermo
Light: Chihiros CII RGB
Fertilizer: roottabs with NKP, none in watercolumn
Water: RO with Glasgarten GH+ (GH~6)

Plants (all in vitro):
Anubias mini coin
Buce kedagang
Buce needle leaf
Buce pygmaea
Crypt parva
Lileaopsis brasiliensis
Marsilea hirsuta
Monte carlo

Start up:
One month dark start with 2 weeks of large water changes followed by 2 weeks of no WC.
After plants were planted I did a 90% WC. Light is currently on R20, G20, B17 for 6 hours. I will continue with 50% WC 3 times a week coming weeks. TDS is stable around 130ppm.

The par layout with current setting are visualized in the drawing below, the height difference is quite challenging. MC receives par around 100, crypt and lileaopsis around 30-50 par. Anubias and Buce targeted between 20-30 par.



The wood is there for biofilm, not for aesthetics, so maybe I will remove it of keep smaller pieces of it since I noticed it makes cleaning more difficult.

I would love to hear your opinions and feedback, as I am highly inspired by aquascaping (my 35L is a high tech tank to practice on). Would you do anything different with this nano tank (fertilization, light etc)? I'm tempted to add potassium in the watercolumn. Also, does someone have experience with keeping clithon snails in KH<1?

Welcome to ScapeCrunch, @drjekyll2k!
We would love to get to know you. Please tell us about yourself. What tank do you have?