During my winter break I rescaped my Aquavas aquarium that previously been setup for over a year. Below is the new scape, utilizing lots of spiderwood and dragonstone. It’s a pretty simple scape in terms of plants, using mostly weeping moss, Anubias barteri var. nana, Hygrophila corymbosa ‘Angustifolia’, and some crypts.

The old scape used pretty much the same plants, but had become very overgrown with moss and I was ready for a change.

The biggest challenge in the new scape is the darker area created under the branches. I like the intrigue that this area creates, but it definitely makes it more difficult to photograph. The fish, just a few cardinal tetras, usually like to hang out there, however. I still need the Hygrophila to grow in more in the back left and perhaps get a bit more moss established on the wood. Comments/critiques welcome!

The 33G Aquascape continues to do well. Since my June update, I’ve added some Bucephalandra motleyana from Aquaflora, which I think add a nice alternative to the usually Anubias barterii var. nana that have been used for years in these kinds of scapes. The weeping moss is doing a nice job consuming the wood/rocks just enough to cover up the gaps.

I’ve reduced the amount of Riccia fluitans as it can kind of go crazy. I’m going back and forth between leaving a more erratic grouping of Rotala rotundifola like in the picture above, versus trimming it in a more manicured way. I kind of like the chaotic look. Your comments are invited!

I posted a picture of my latest aquascape in the Aquavas aquarium recently. I want to walk through how the scape came together.

The hardscape consists of two large pieces of spiderwood and several locally collected rocks made up of quartz and slate. The substrate is from Mr.  Aqua and pool filter sand in front.

I used a selection of Aqvainnova plants that I got in Chicago at Aquatic Experience. These are beautiful plants, some still in tissue culture and others were already transitioned to nursery growth.

I used some beautiful Elatine hydropiper in the front areas under the spiderwood overhang. Otherwise, several different Cryptocoryne species were planted.

I also used a super glue gel to attach Anubias barterii ‘nana’ directly to the wood.

After everything was planted, I filled it up, but did have to place some temporary rocks on top of the wood to keep it from floating up.

Later I tied some weeping moss to the wood to soften it a bit more.

Finally, you can see what the scape looks like several weeks later. It’ll still be several more weeks before it’s grown in. I’m also not settled on keeping the Hygrophila corymbosa angustifolia long term.

Comments / thoughts welcome!

This week I rescaped my 75G angelfish aquarium. I wanted to open up the tank a little bit, while still preserving some of the classic anglefish biotypes by including sword plants as key focal points to the scape. I reused several plants from the previous scape, namely the Cryptocoryne pontederiifolia and Anubias barteri var. ‘nana petite’.

This is the first aquascape that I’ve done using Brightwell Aquatic’s FlorinVolcanit substrate. I completely emptied the aquarium of all of the previous substrate, leaving only the eggcrate to prevent rocks from directly contacting the glass bottom.

Then, I placed the hardscape into the aquarium. I choose to use several pieces of manzanita laying over quartz/slate rock, to simulate a fallen branch in the river, wedge between a rocky riverbank. I wanted to simulate a stream bed where the dying tree branches gave life to other aquatic plants, namely the Kleiner Prinz Sword plants.

Lastly, I filled in the foreground with white pool filter sand. I did plant some Staurogyne sp. ‘Porto Velho’ in the sand that I hope will break it up a bit, but hope to keep most of the plain foreground intact, as it provides a nice contrast to the darker wood. Overall, I’m looking forward to seeing how this new aquascape progresses as the plants grow in. Comments welcome!

This weekend, I decided it was time to rescape my 33g cube. This aquarium has a few other changes, namely that I replaced the 4x24w HOT5 + 250W MH light with two Finnex Ray2 LED bars. It doesn’t take a mathematician to calculate the energy reduction from this change to “a lot.” The amazing thing is that as soon as I put the LEDs on top, the plants in my previous aquascape started pearling more than they normally did with the metal halides on.

For the hardscape, I’m using some new Manzanita from Msjinkzd.com that I got over the summer. If you’ve never looked at Rachel’s stocklist, check it out now, as she carries amazing nano fish and inverts for our planted aquariums. For this hardscape, I wanted to do something a little bit different than I’ve done before. I wanted to have the hardscape flow throughout the aquarium in a more artistic way, while still looking somewhat natural.  You can see the bare hardscape above. Since I didn’t soak the manzanita ahead of time, I tied all of the piece together using florist wire so that I could keep them from floating via angular resistance between pieces, and a large rock that I put on the largest pieces for a couple days.

In planting the tank, I had a bunch of plants from the previous aquascape that I wanted to carryover, namely the Anubias barterii ‘nana petite’, Java Fern ‘Trident’, Cryptocoryne lucens, Limnophila repens ‘mini’, and chain sword. I also pulled some Ranalisma rostrata, Gratiola viscidula, Syngonanthus anomalous ‘Madeira’, Fontinalis hypnoides, Nymphaea micrantha, and Didiplis diandra to the tank. I’m still figuring out exactly what direction I want to take this time in terms of how the plants should fill in, but I’m happy that the first planting is complete and looking forward to see how the LEDs perform in their first aquascape. Comments welcome!

Last Saturday, Viktor hosted GWAPA’s April meeting. Viktor has a half dozen aquariums in his apartment, all of which are beautifully planted. We show tank is a 6 foot, 120+ gallon aquarium with a soil substrate that is thick with Cryptocoryne and several other easier plants.

I always look forward to meetings at Viktor’s house because he is constantly adding new and interesting fish to his tanks. The fish that I now want the most is a hovering loach that stays about 1.5″ long and has vertical stripes on the body.

Viktor’s 75G was lush with plants planted more Dutch style, without many hardscape items. The plants are all extremely heathly, and his tank are fairly low maintenance with soil substrates.

He has another 75G rainbowfish tank with some old M. bosemanii rainbowish that are stunning. Given the cover of Val. nana, the rainbowfish streaked from end to end of the aquarium showing great coloration.

After viewing the aquariums for awhile, Cavan Allen talked about plants from the Eriocaulaceae family, describing several plants that are not yet in the hobby. We had a good sized auction with rare plants that rival any club in the country. Yet another good GWAPA meeting!

After months of neglect, the previous aquascape in my 75G had gotten completely overgrown. What started as a few strands of hitch-hiker Riccia fluitans eventually covered the water surface in totality, shading out most of the plants below it. So, I decided to turn lemons into lemonade, using that pest of a liverwort as a foreground in my new aquascape.

I reused much of the same bogwood for the hardscape, but rather than showing the knobby side of the wood, I kept everything smooth-side-up to look like tree roots weaving up out of the Riccia lawn. I had lots of Cryptocoryne pontederiifolia in the previous scape, which I spread out as my background plant. The gaps were filled with Anubias barterii var. ‘nana’. Obviously, it needs to fill in a bit, but I’d love to hear your initial comments/critiques!

Ghazanfar Ghori hosted GWAPA’s January meeting last weekend, and I wanted to share a fantastic video that our recording secretary took of Ghazanfar’s 90-P aquarium and aquascape. The wood in this aquascape is a special wood from Southeast Asia that maintains its bark underwater without releasing too many tannins. He complements the detail in the wood with lots of Riccardia chamedryfolia (Mini Pelia) , Fissidens moss, Bolbitus, and Anubias barterii var. ‘nana’. The foreground is a very shallow layer of pool filter sand, with ADA Aquasoil in the background to provide nutrition to the plants. Check it out!

For more information about this tank, and the rest of the meeting, please see GWAPA’s website.

On Saturday I attended the Capital Cichlid Association’s September meeting, featuring Chuck Rambo, who spoke about dwarf cichlids. I’ve always been fascinated with cichlids, but due to my even larger obsession with planted aquariums, I’ve been limited to keeping smaller dwarf cichlids, with a few exceptions like Angelfish. Nevertheless, I had marked Chuck’s presentation on my calendar all summer long, hoping to learn about a few more species out there; he didn’t disappoint!

Chuck began his presentation by showing a few African shellies before going through the Pelvicachromis genus, since many hobbyists keep Kribs as their first dwarf cichlid. Interestingly enough, the fish that intrigued me the most was the non-dwarf, Pelvicachromis sacrimontis. These fish sometimes get mixed in with regular Krib shipments, but as they grow, they turn into 6″+ beasts. The way to differentiate them from their smaller cousins is that P. sacrimonits always have blue patches on their cheeks.

One of the other striking fish he showed from the same genus was Pelvicachromis humilis, but unfortunately these are extremely aggressive fish who need a minimum of 40G per pair to keep peacefully.

Next, Chuck began walking through several fish in the Nanochromis genus, including Nanochromis dimidiatus shown above. One of the tricks to keeping Nanachromis is that they are actually algae eaters, who scrape algae from rock surfaces like Mbuna do. Therefore, a varied diet high in spirulina or similar algae tablets are recommended.

There was a lot of time spent discussing various types of Rams, but the next group of fish that really interested me as a planted tank guy were the checkerboard cichlids, or Dicrossus. Chuck mentioned that Dicrossus maculatus are newly available in the hobby, and actually easier to keep than the more familiar Dicrossus filamentosus. Both species prefer soft acid water, and often spawn on leaves. It’s important to consider your aquarium temperature when spawning these fish, as temperatures above 80 degrees tend to produce more males, while lower temperatures yield more females.

Dwarf pikes became the next topic of discussion, where Chuck quickly pointed out that few pikes are actually dwarf varieties, as they will grow quite large if given the proper conditions. One exception to this are the Teleocichla species, who do stay quite small. Unfortunately, they are also one of the least colorful varieties of pikes you can find.

An old stand-by cichlid for planted aquariums are the keyhole cichlids, or Cleithracara maronii. These are peaceful, elegant, cichlids who are easy to spawn when in soft water. They get their name from the distinctive keyhole pattern on their bodies, but due to significant line-breeding, this pattern may not be as distinctive in some strains as in the wild-caught fish.

One of the next dwarf cichlids I would like to get my hands on are Laetacara dorsigera, who are small shy, but brightly colored dwarf cichlids from South America. I think they could be fantastic little fish for my 33G rimless aquarium.

Chuck only recommended a single species of jewel cichlids, Hemichromis cristatus, as they are a bit easier to keep and slightly more tolerant than some of the other species in the genus. I really enjoyed keeping the jewels I collected in Florida previously, but you definitely only want to keep a them alone in a tank to avoid dead fish.

Finally, the presentation concluded with a long section on Apistogramma, one of the most widely known and diverse group of dwarf cichlids. Incredibly, scientists now believe that this genus may consist of over 500 species in the wild. Chuck relayed a fascinating study by Uwe Romer who discovered that Apistogramma may be partly dispersed from one area to another by feeding Kingfish birds. Uwe left a pool outside in South America under a Kingfisher nest, and monitored what fish ended up in the pool. Apparently, Kingfisher young will refuse to eat dead fish, so if the parents bring back a deceased meal, the young will spit them out. Romer hypothesized that some Apistogramma may actually play dead in order to avoid becoming a meal. In his experiment, he actually found quite a number of live Apistogramma in his pool from the birds. Incredible!

I really enjoyed Chuck’s presentation on dwarf cichlids, learning quite a few things. This writeup is really just a small subset of what he covered, so I highly recommend inviting him out to your club to do a similar presentation. He’s actually part of the ACA’s speaker program, which can help subsidize part of the cost of flying their speakers to your club meeting. Take advantage of it! Comments welcome!

Note: All photos, except for the last one, in this post were taken during Chuck’s presentation. Photo credit belongs to the original photographers.

This weekend I decided to rescape my 20H aquaruim. Previously, I had been running this as a Riparium, but while I really did enjoy setting up the Riparium, I was ready to go back to a more traditional aquascape. In addition, I am doing a 20H aquascaping demonstration this weekend, and was told that I would have bogwood to use, so I wanted to practice a little bit in these dimensions.

I started by setting up the hardscape using a combination of African bogwood and slate. I was going for a large broken root system look in some form of a loose mound setup.

I also wanted to keep this aquarium somewhat low-tech using plants I had on hand, so I pulled out some standby Trident Java Fern, Anubias barteri var. ‘coffeefolia’, and assorted Cryptocoryne.

In the foreground I placed Ranalisma rostrata, and in the background I used Blyxa aubertii and Rotala sp. ‘Hra’. Of all of the plants in this tank, I would probably replace the Anubias with a smaller nana or petite variety, as the coffeefolia is a little bit too large. I should also probably tie some moss to the wood to make it a little bit softer.

Above is the aquarium shortly after filling it up. It’s definitely not the best aquascape I’ve ever done, but for simply toying around for a little while, I’m not too disappointed with it. Comments welcome!