After looking at a mess of algae and java moss for far too long, I decided to tear down this tank, and give it a new aquascape. The wood is a wonderful piece of bogwood for apistogramma breeding because it is completely hollow, and has multiple entrances and exits through it’s core. The slate was collected locally before the October meeting down in Virginia, and the substrate is ADA aquasoil.

The plants are ludwigia repens var. ‘narrow leaf’ (back left, didiplis diandra (back right), baby tears (mid ground), and utricularia graminifolia in the foreground. I do have one restrictions that may somewhat limit this aquascape:

• Make sure there are enough nooks and cranies for the apistogramma viejitas that I’m going to attempt to breed in this tank. (Hence the bogwood, even though it may not be the perfect center piece)

One other thing to note. We all know that aquasoil grows plants like crazy. Well, apparently, it grows trumpet snails too. I have some of the largest trumpet snails I’ve ever seen in this tank. I’m trying to pull them all out since they’re disturbing the utricularia that I’ve so carefully planted.

I have been wanting to consolidate some of the tanks in my office for awhile. Previously, I had them on an old bowing bookcase, a wire stand, and the floor. After seeing the current GWAPA president’s tank setup (Aaron), I decided that I wanted the same thing. So, the problem with most of these racks is that the standard ones available in your typical Home Depot or Lowes only support about 200-300lbs per shelf. A standard 20G aquarium weighs about 230lbs filled with water. So, just a single 20G would be pushing the limits.

I happened upon this shelving unit at my BJs, which holds 600lbs per shelf. There is a little bit of bowing, but I hope I’ve negated that by putting down hardboard with a layer of 1/2″ Styrofoam insulation on top of it. This should pad the tanks enough to even out any slight bowing of the shelf. The unit itself is very sturdy, and easy to put together. So far, I recommend this style of setup to anyone wanting to keep a few tanks in a small area.

Somehow, without me realizing it, my 40G tank has turned into more of a farm tank, than an aquascape. There’s a little bit of everything in this tank right now, most of it doing surprisingly well!

This is part of the problem when you have a tank with ADA aquasoil in it. You know that just about anything will grow in it! Therefore, when I see a plant I’m interested in trying, but don’t have room for in my normal aquascapes, where does it go? Well, of course, in the 40G, where the amazonia will keep it alive until I do find room for it! The only problem I ever have in this tank is occasional blue-green algae, when I don’t dose enough nitrates. As you can imagine, all of these stem plants suck up some nutrients! I’m currently only dosing SeaChem products in this tank because they work well, and don’t cost that much to maintain a 40G tank. I pretty much follow their recommended dosing chart as far as frequency of dosing goes, but I dose more than they recommend of everything. To the right is the pogostemon stellatus from Jeff in GWAPA (bigstick120 online) that’s waiting for the right aquascape to go in. The time will come soon I hope!

So what’s in here? I’ve got the usual plants, such as limnophilia aromatica, baby tears, didiplis diandra, stargrass, blyxa japonica, blyxa albertii, rotala magenta, and rotala pusilla.

A few more exotic ones like ludwigia cuba, ludwigia pantanal cuba, cyperus helferii, and rotala macrandra var. ‘green.’ Don’t forget pogostemon stellatus, and pogostemon stellatus ‘broad leaf.’

Not to mention a few ground-cover plants that are not getting near the light they require! Then, I have a few plants that I’ve collected locally, including creeping jenny, ludwigia palustrus, and an eleocharis species.

With all of these plants, I rarely see my beautiful apistogramma panduro fish that I love so much. Fortunately, the dwarf neon rainbowfish juveniles that I picked up at the catfish convention seem very much at home in this tank. They’re always racing around the tank, from end to end, darting in-between plants and rocks as they go. I think they like it in there!

After getting back from my trip to California for the AGA conference, my tanks are in turn for a little bit of change. The first tank on my list is the 75G, where the glosso and ranunculus had run their course of planting, trimming, trimming, trimming, until finally it was too overgrown to really trim. In some places, the mat of glosso on the right side of my tank was over 2″ thick! So, I decided to rip it all up and replant it, hence, starting the next cycle. Below is what’s leftover after replanting the 75G. It’s amazing how you can rip up well over 2 liters of plant material, and replant the exact same area with about a baseball’s worth of plant material.

 

Erik Olson gave a short presentation about the future of the AGA at the concluding banquet. Afterwards, he led straight into the results for the 2006 AGA Aquascaping Contest. There were a number of great entries in this year’s contest, including a couple quite innovative ones that didn’t win anything. I have to say that I don’t necessarily agree with all of the awards, but that’s true with any contest. I did notice a dearth of quality U.S. entries, so I would like to encourage everyone in the U.S. to submit their tanks next year, regardless of the state of it. (I’m guilty of not submitting this year as well, so I’ll be the first to take my advice next year.)

There were a number of excellent entries from Asia, including this aquascape to the left that one first place. As they were going through the entries, the judges of the contest were up front giving their comments on each of the winners. It’s always good to hear what the rational for judgment is, even is you don’t necessarily agree with it. To me, the most innovative entry in the contest is one that didn’t win anything. This entry by Gary Wu in China features a waterfall that is quite impressive.

The final part of the banquet involved the IronMan Aquascaping Challenge between the two ADA store staffs in the U.S: Jeff Senske and his team verses the AquaForest team. There were limited rocks, manzanita wood, and plants to use.  Right from the get go, the competitors, grabbed the hardscape materials that they wanted to use. Jeff decided to use more of a X pattern for his wood, and probably started on the short end of the stick with his hardscape due to a lack of materials up to the quality he’s used to. (If you don’t know, his rock and wood pile is supposed to be of legendary proportions down in Texas.)

Ultimately, the winner was the AquaForest team. (poorly pictured below)