Serenity

40Gal Fluval Canister Filter Sponge filter Standard gravel and some eco-complete on the sides where the plants are. Stocking swords, pennywort, some grass and one other I can't remember atm. This is my angel tank with some yoyo loachs and hillstream loachs. 75Gal Fluval Canister Filter Fluval Stratum substrate 4 T5HO for lights Hydor Koralia powerhead Pressurized Co2 with regulator Basalt rocks Hc, Weeping moss, and Dwarf Hairgrass It was just flooded last weekend so it still has a long way to go. Sourcing some other plants that I would like to try in there but getting my LFS to get them in is a bit of a challenge. Hope you like!

Flooded this past weekend and the tank was doing great! Did a 50% wc and cranked co2. Everything was pearling and loving life. The moss doesn't seem to know what it wants yet so still waiting on it to jump on board. I have been dosing using the EI approach but need more ferts to get all the levels up properly. 3 days in though I started to notice some BGA in one section and it was frosting the tips of some of the grass. I siphoned out most of it and then treated excel in the target areas. Now I have it wrapped up in some blankets and will do a blackout for a while. I'm really nervous about any type of algae bloom so I'm watching like a hawk. So far everything is doing great though. Next week I will do a trim on the grass to motivate it. Will the clippings float to the surface like the HC or should I follow closely with a siphon to grab it?

Well that's embarrassing....I didn't know that was the name of a location. I thought you were saying find a garden center that is open year round Called them and got pricing thanks guys!

I tried calling and looking around in my city but no one has anything. I could probably source something through a vendor (we have a garden center in my store) but I was looking to get something soon as I recently flooded my tank and am running out of resources. I'll do some hunting for places in Edmonton but was curious if anyone had a place they used and liked. Thanks!

Looking to find a seller in the Edmonton area for dry powder fertilizer to dose my tank with. I was planning to do the EI route. im not local but will be in town this weekend. Any suggestions would be appreciated!!

Welcome!!

Love it, great job! Very nice set up I like the flow of the layout.

Quick update. Another 30 days roughly and the HC has really taken off. Had to do a fair bit of trimming tonight. I'm starting to see a good push from the grass but I'm almost starting to wonder if they would do better if I flood the tank? Any suggestions? They have really great roots and are super bushy but it doesn't seem that they are sending many runners imho. I have to go and buy my CO2 tank and get everything rigged. Other then that I have all the equipment I need so I might just flood when I get some time to do it properly this weekend. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated as I don't want anything to melt or die. I know it's a good idea to really crank the CO2 after flooding to help adjust the plants to the transition. I'm currently running 14hrs with lights a day but once flooded is 8 okay or dial it back a bit more? Thanks in advance!

Thanks everyone! And thanks DragonNeko, it's gonna be exciting

Unreal pics, thanks for posting them! Sidenote - love Red Deer it's such a beautiful city. It's where I grew up before I moved to Lloydminster.

HC is looking good! What substrate are you using? Are you using any ferts currently? The roots start off small after a couple weeks with proper light and ferts they should get as long as an 3/4"

That's a beautiful tank!! I love your selection of plants and the layout is done really well. Is that HC 'clouds' floating up at the top? Any updates? Hope your BBA is gone now!

Aqua flora is 10/10 I wrote this before I saw everyone else already posted saying aqua flora heh heh "I've bought plants from all over and finally had success from a nursery that my local pet store was able to source from. Here is the website of the nursery: http://aquafloranurseries.com/ If you can I would highly recommend any plants from here, well worth the price!! Most pet stores should be able to source from them. Read this section to get their pitch on how and why they grow their plants the way they do: http://www.aquafloranurseries.com/about_us.php Key benefits that sold me on it were: Plants are completely free of disease-causing bacteria and fungi, as well as snails, nematodes, and other pests, ensuring the highest standards of health. Uniformity of plant size and quality is assured. All species of plants are available year round. Our plants will not melt. Using micropropagation, we produce a wide range of species, and so none of our plants are wild-collected "

If you have a facebook account you can also create albums with what ever images you want and then just restrict the album to "me only" if you don't want to share it on your profile. Then you can just grab the URL link from each image and post in here as well. They allow you to upload a standard photo or a high res version as well.

Kinda like those radar trailers the city puts on the side of the road that tell you how fast you are going. My best score is going from 54 to 97 before passing it. :rofl: That's awesome, I've never tried that but now I think I have to!

My friend told me about this forum and the advice I got off it with minimal visits was amazing so I quickly signed up! I live in Lloydminster which is a city that resides (and is literally split 50/50) on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Luckily I live on the Alberta side I'm getting married this August 18 and we just recently built our first house which allowed me to upgrade from my single tiny 1g betta tank to 3 tanks (and looking to get more up) Currently I have a 10gal for guppies of all kinds, mostly for my fiance as she loves them. I have a 40gal planted with swords and grass and stocked with yoyo loaches and some pearlscale veil-tale angels. My latest adventure is a 75gal Dry Start Method heavily planted tank that's about 6 weeks into it's growth. Happy to be here and looking forward to learning from everyone and sharing my experiences! p.s. - Jeremoose is the friend that told me about this site and is currently sitting on the fence about making the decision to build a custom 140gal tank which I promised I would help him with. Help me give him that extra push so he will pull the pin and we can get the project started

Snapped some shots but didn't have a background up yet so they are not the greatest. Hope you like them! On that note does anyone have suggestions on getting the best possible photos of the whole tank? I've heard of putting up black construction paper or lighter blue paper to help contrast works well. I've also heard of using a blow dryer on the surface of the water to create the rippling effect. Any other suggestions? In that last shot is a little mini humidifier I bought that runs off a water bottle I have it plugged into a timer that kicks in for 30 minutes every 2 hours to hydrate everything. For lighting I have a 4 bulb T5HO fixture that I run 14 hours a day. I also use a spray bottle to mist ferts on all the plants. I started with a 25% diluted flourish comprehensive mix but after 2 weeks I jumped it up to 50%. I found that keeping the tank as air tight as possible works best so far but I do open it up for 15 mins in the evening just to let it breathe and cycle out the air Today when I was about to take the pics my fiance pointed out several locations where my HC is growing in completely random places that I never intended it to! The odd thing is that some of the places where in a dark shadowed location and would be hard to get to had I not put them there. I was very careful when planting the tank as I don't want everything to grow and mix to much and yet I keep finding these little shoots growing happily all over the place! I'd hate to say it but it's almost starting to act like a weed lol. A lot were mixed in with my grass even though I bought all my plants in a sealed container from a supplied that guaranteed no snails or other plant mixing. In the end I'm just grateful at how well it's doing. My first attempt at buying and planting it didn't work out to well, my angels enjoyed a nice $30 salad. :cry:

Amazing tank! I really like your use of the weeping moss, it's looking really good. How often do you find you have to prune it?

Currently my plans are to carpet with the Dwarf Hairgrass (Eleocharis parvula) as I was going for the natural nature type look. For the rocks I'm using HC cuba (Hemianthus callitrichoides) and Weeping moss (Vesicularia ferriei) Set up is almost complete, I'd like a little more moss in some places but the moss I got in from my supplier took 3 weeks and when it got here it was almost black and mostly dead and in rough condition. I've slowly been able to nurture it back to some semblance of health but it is far from what it can look like. I'll give it another 30-45 days depending on the progress of the carpet of the grass then I'll flood the tank and the real challenge comes. I'm extremely nervous about the balance with light/ferts/co2. I just battled a bad breakout of BBA in my other tank and had to sacrifice a lot of grass/growth. I'll snap some perspective shots soon and post them. Something I have been thinking a lot about lately is using my waterproof GoPro camera in the tank once flooded and travel through the tank from a fishes viewpoint. Haha seems silly but it has got me curious and would make an interesting video I think I'm torn between leaving it just as an aquascape which makes it easier in regards to the balance of water parameters or if I should put some type of tetra in there with some oto's and amano shrimp. I recently got some beautiful amano shrimp from Aquarium Central in Edmonton and they are doing a beautiful job in my Fluval cube at work. Thanks for the compliments everyone!!

Hello! I've been meaning to post pics of my latest adventure but I'm getting married soon so time has been short! I had a 40gal tank with some swords, grass and other plants and played around with DIY CO2 and had some great success so I wanted to take things to the next level. After looking online at some of the amazing aquascapes out there I got really excited and wanted to give it a go. I tried to find some inspiration that I thought would be easy to model my tank after and found 2 that I loved. I left the decision up to the availability of hardscape materials. Thanks to this forum and the advice of some members I found the perfect stone in a landscape company in Edmonton. Also reading the article for doing a DSM planted tank I got excited and I figured I'd try my hand at that as well It has been just over a month of growth but the tank it really starting to take off and I'm excited to see what the next month holds. Here is a shot of just the hardscape I'm getting a little worried as the HC is growing faster then everything else and I don't want to trim until it's flooded but it's starting to get out of hand haha Here is some photo's of the HC comparing the 1st day it was planted and 30 days of growth. I'll post more later

I've used the vinegar test and my rocks 'failed'. I really loved the shape and look of them so I researched them on the internet to find that they were in fact safe for the aquarium and my bubbling was most likely from organics or soils on the surface of them. Scrub them really good or use lots of vinegar to clean and test them. Also be careful as the surface could be porous causing small bubbles at first until they are filled. RebelThunder hit the nail on the head: Always boil them.