Rico’s New Aquascape

On Saturday, a fellow GWAPA member, Rico, invited a few of us over to help him aquascape a new 75G aquarium that he had just bought. Originally, we were going to aquascape his 90G aquarium, but a leak developed in that tank, and he had to replace it with the 75G. My friend Cavan and I showed up mid-afternoon and helped Rico finish transferring stuff out of his 90G, bring in the the new 75G, and off we went. Rico had some manzanita wood and dark river rocks to use as hardscape items.

It took us a little while to figure out what direction we would take with the hardscape material at hand. The problem we originally ran into was figuring out how to get enough height in the hardscape, but we ultimately discovered the right combination of manzanita branches, zip-tied them together, and solved that problem. After the wood was in place, we filled in underneath it with the river rocks. Never having scaped with river rocks before, I wasn’t exactly sure how it would turn out, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The rocks match Flourite Black Sand almost perfectly!

For plants, we used Ranalisma rostrata in the foreground, which should fill in as a nice short grassy lawn. In the mid-ground, we used Blyxa japonica and Hygrophila sp. ‘Kompackt’. As a transition plant between the foreground and mid-ground, we used Staurogyne sp. ‘Porta Vehlo’. Finally, in the background, we used Blyxa aubertii and a broad-leafed Sagittaria species. Ultimately, I hope Rico will remove the Sagittaria altogether and replace it with just Blyxa aubertii, but we didn’t have enough of that plant to do it in the beginning. Finally, for a little bit of color, Rico had some stems of Limnophila aromatica, which aren’t visible in the picture, but should be very nice to the right of the B. aubertii on the left.

Above is the picture a few hours later after Rico filled it up and added back in the fish. Please ignore the three rocks placed on top of the manzanita to keep it from floating — those will be removed in a few days after the wood is waterlogged. So, how did we do? Comments/suggestions welcome!