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!

Below is a picture I snapped today while working in on my tanks. It’s been three weeks since I posted a picture of this aquarium, and as you can see, the Lilaeopsis is growing in very nicely. I’m getting a few leaves with fuzz algae, largely in areas that aren’t getting a ton of flow. That’s definitely one of the problems with this tank size. I have to used nano-sized powerheads, so they don’t push a ton of water. If I upgrade to the next size, the powerhead disturbs both the substrate and the water surface.

So, I’m going to simply re-position the powerheads I have to try and fix the problem. I’ve also dimmed the LEDs just a tad to slow the growth a little bit. I have to say that I love that this is possible with many LED fixtures! Let me know if you like how it growing in. (Or if you don’t!)