Welcome to my new project! I bought this tank this week and thought I would share with everyone how I will build this aquascape. Watch each week as I build the substrate, terrace the floor, and arrange the plants!

The plan at this point is to have a heavy emphasis on grassy plants, with lots of Vals, Dwarf Sag, and tenellus, with a couple of solitary swords, and a few fast growing bunch plants, accented with wood, rock, and corkbark. The substrate will be Terramineral and Estes Bits of Walnut gravel, Thermal float heating cable system, four 40 watt full spectrum flourescents, (may be upgraded later), one 300 watt heater, Hydrologix CO2 system with daytime running, and a power hanging filter. Join me next week when I begin the substrate! 4/15/00

4/29/00

I finally got my Estes bits of walnut gravel. Today I am beginning the work on the right corner of the tank.

I took a peice of corkbark and attached it to two clay bricks using stainless steel wire, and used rocks around it to support the gravel behind it. The wire should be adequately covered by plants later. The sand you see is the Terramineral fertilizer. I have decided not to use the substrate heater in this project.

5-7-00

Saturday I siliconed some pink and white quartz and other rocks together to create a rock wall.
The next step today will be to attach some corkbark via styrofoam to the rear glass

I am getting anxious to get this planted! Its cloudy and gray here in California today, so I have no excuses to get the work done!

5-13-00
What I ended up doing was attaching the corkbark directly to the glass with aquarium silicone made by Dupont in a nice, squeezable, toothpaste like tube. Styro was too awkward, and the corkbark was not flat enough to fit flush on the styro. I also discovered using full size silicone tubes in a calking gun is a big pain! These little tubes of silicone are more expensive if you need a lot of it, but much easier to work with. Unfortunately I got a little silicone on the glass where its not supposed to be, and even after scraping with a razor blade there is still some residue there, but I think this should be easily covered up, and the dark background that I will eventually have should cover it up as well. Now here is my first planting:

This isn't a terrific picture, but it gives you an idea of what it looks like. I need to take a picture tonight when I dont have all the reflecting light from a patio door.

The plants are: Rubin sword on top of the stone wall, (which is only there temporarily), tall thin grass on either side is Dwarf sag, the right foreground is E.tenellus currently with emmersed growth leaves, (round, spoon shaped), Center is Australian Ambulia and a plant Tom Barr gave me which I forget, to the right of it is ludwigia repens, next to that is two Aponogeton ulvaceus, and in the rear right is a thick stand of Contortion valisneria, in front of that is Wisteria and Anubias nana. The line on the right side is a reflection. Also on front of the dwarf sag on the left is a small group of C. nevilli.

There is a space between the vals and the corkbark which I plan on filling with Cryptocoryne plugs, and I plan on putting some more anubias on all the corkbark. The rubin sword will be taken out, (once I find a home for it) and probably replaced with Cryptocorynes and a small group of stem plants. The empty space in the foreground I am not sure what I am going to do with. Any suggestions? Better pics to follow
 

8-6-00

Sorry for the long delay! Its a long story....lets just say my digital camera was lost, and it took a while to buy a new one.
As you can see, a bit of re-arranging and much growth! The sword was replaced with a mother bronze wendtii, the aponogetons were replaced with red foxtail and tall sag, and the tenellus and Ambulia grew like crazy! I never hooked up any CO2 system of any kind. The lighting is four 40 watt NOs. The background is actually blue, but for some reason looks black...maybe the lighting? The tank is full of happy rainbows, one loach, one cory, and one female American Flag killie.

Over the last couple of months, I did have a little green thread algae. I scooped it out and fed it to my cichlids in the 100 gallon showtank, and the American Flag took care of the rest.

The final pictures and story!

In June 01 I had to tear down this tank to move to Oregon. This is how it looked in its' final days! What I learned in this aquascape was it is far more interesting to look at when keeping the entire foreground and middle-ground as low as possible. The overcrowded stem plants were replaced with a group C spiralis. The corkbark on the back left glass was covered with Anubias as was originally intended. The corkbark on the right substrate was covered in Java moss, with a nice thick ball of it on the end of the corkbark. I think the tank never looked better than at this point.