FEATURED ARTICLES FOR THE WEEK.

On my wishlist.

Posted: March 25th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | 2 Comments »

I’m dreaming of getting the Eheim Professional III external canister. This baby will be enough to sustain the filtration demands of my five-footer! The LFS around the corner of my place is selling one for S$634 which is a BOMB! I currently have 2 crappy Jebao 918 external canisters. Although it is serving its main purpose, which is behaving itself at the moment and being a mechanical cum biological filter, I believe that M.I.C (Made in China) products don’t really last long.

These are the tech specifications of the Eheim Professional III.

Features

  • Dual inlets for perfect water circulation
  • New self priming principal
  • Maintainence and flow rate indicator
  • Large pre-filter – extend servicing cycle
  • Adjustabe flow rate
  • Castor wheels for easy maintanence
  • Ideal for Arowana and big fishes

Technical data
2080
Aq. size up to approx
1,200L
Pump output approx
1,700I
Del.head approx Hmax
2,6M
Power consumption
30W
Canister volume
25L

Filter volume approx
12 + 1,5 ( pre-filter)cm3

Dimensions HxWxD
567 x 330 x 330 mm

Oh well, I have to wait till the price drops at least. Spending S$634 on a canister filter is madness. First things first, I will need to purchase a proper CO2 tank first…


Latest addition.

Posted: March 23rd, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | No Comments »

I’ve decided on whether to have altum angels or discus and the decision is final. I bought 2 juvenile brown discuses today from the local fish shop around my place. They’re still showing the stress bars and are quite timid at the moment. Hopefully everything will be fine over the next few days.


Sumphysodon aequifasciata axelrodi, AKA Brown Discus

One of the two brown discuses in my tank


More fauna.

Posted: March 20th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | No Comments »

O.K as promised in my earlier post. This is an update of the fauna I could capture with my camera.


Barbus titteya, A.K.A Cherry barb

Crossocheilus siamensis, A.K.A Siamese algae eater

Danio rerio, A.K.A Zebra danio

Parambassis sp. ranga?, A.K.A Pygmy glass fish

Hyphessobrycon megalopterus, A.K.A Black phantom tetra (female)


Tank update.

Posted: March 19th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | No Comments »

This is the update of my tank, one day after having Efhi Substrat added in, it’s still not very clear but there has been improvement.

Now, to wait for the bacteria to fully colonise the Efhi Substrat :)


Front view of tank.

Tank update as at 19 March 2006. Right to left shot.

Left to right shot of tank.


Echinodorus osiris.

Posted: March 18th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | No Comments »

In the 1970s coloured aquarium plants were rare, which is why Echinodorus osiris with its red colour quickly became popular. A nutritious bottom promotes growth, and when there is a shortage of micro-nutrients new leaves turn pale, thus indicating that fertiliser may be necessary. It is generally an undemanding plant which is suitable for both soft and hard water. The red colour of the leaves grows stronger at higher light intensities. It used to be sold as E. rubra. It is not eaten by herbivorous fish.

I’ve finally found out what is that echinodorus species in my tank.


Echinodorus Osiris. The one in my tank has spawned HUGE leaves!
Footnote: Photo and sypnosis of Echinodorus osiris courtesy of TROPICA.COM


Saturday water change + more!

Posted: March 18th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | No Comments »

I’ve just added the Efhi Substrat to my canister filters. Before adding it in, I disconnected the pumps, siphoned about 50-60 gallons of water into a large bucket, carried this to the toilet. I then proceeded to bring in the canisters to the toilet, took out all the filter medias as the bio balls were on the last tray.

Removed the bio balls, washed the Efhi Substrat thoroughly, was about to dump in the Efhi Substrat but saw quite a number of ‘things’ jumping in the filter, lo behold I found shirmplets in the filter! A rough estimate was about 20-30 of them still alive and another 50 or so dead ones, there were 2 bigger Malayan shrimps in the filter which I then proceeded to scoop them up and dump them back into the tank.

So with this livestock in my filter, I can say that the filter media is still healthy. The shrimplets were about 1-2 mm in length, some around 4-5 mm, I believe all of them were Malayan shrimps. Hopefully they will survive and not be fish-food.

So with the 50% water change, I dosed 1 1/2 teaspoons of KNO3 – Potassium Nitrate, 1.2 ml of KH2PO4 – Monobasic Phosphate and 2 1/2 teapsoons of K2SO4 – Potassium Sulphate for Potassium + Nitrate, Phosphate Salts + Potassium respectively. This should roughly be 9.05PPM of NO3, 1.42 PPM of PO4 and 12.53PPM of K.

Also below shows my filter layout:


Now to wait for the beneficial bacteria to colonize the Efhi Substrat.


Update of tank.

Posted: March 15th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | 1 Comment »

Something I posted on AQ.


Tank Dimensions (LxWxH, specify units): 5 x 2 x 2 feetLighting Intensity(No of Watts) :432W
Number and type of Lighting (FL/PL/MH) : T5 HO 4 x 10,000K + 4 x 6,500K
Age of light bulbs : 2 1/2 months
No. of hours your lights are on : 10 hours

CO2 Injection Rate (bps) : 5-6 bps
Type of CO2 (DIY/Cylinder) : Cylinder
Method of Injection (e.g. Diffusor/Reactor) : Internal reactor

Liquid fertilisers Used (Product name. E.g. Seachem Flourish) : LushGRO-AQUA, Seachem Flourish Iron, KNO3, K2SO4, Fleet Enema (Phosphate)

Fertilization regime (Frequency and amount per dose) : 4 x weekly (KNO3 + K2SO4 + Fleet Enema) 3 x weekly (LushGRO-AQUA + small bit of Seachme Iron)

Other fertilisers (Product name. E.g. Root Monster) : Basefert Sera Flowderpot

Other additives (Product name. E.g. Seachem Prime) : N.A

Type of Filter (overhead/internal/canister, Product name/model if possible) : 2 x Jebao 918 External canisters @ 1200hr/L each

When was the filter last washed : 2 months ago
Filter media used : Bioballs, ceramic rings, filter wool, glasswool.
When was the media last changed : 2 months ago
What was changed : Filter wool + disposal of activated carbon

Age of setup (i.e. since initial setup or last major re-do ) : 3 weeks since last major redo

Water change frequency : once per week

Amount changed : 50%

Water surface movement (None/gentle/turbulent) : gentle
Circulation (None/gentle/turbulent) : gentle

Tank Temperature : 27.6 – 28.5

Chemical Properties (Fill what you can)
————————————-
KH (dKH): 4
GH (dGH): ??
pH : 6.6
NH4 (ppm): ??
NO2 (ppm): ??
NO3 (ppm): 9.05PPM
PO4 (ppm): 1.42PPM
Fe (ppm): 0.84PPM

Bioload (Number and type of fish and plants)
——————————————
Java Fern, Blyxa, Hairgrass, Windelov fern, e.tellenus, e.rose, e. amazon, neon congo black widow rummy nose, etc

Describe your problem : The water seems cloudy. Could this be due to the filter media or is it just a bacteria boom due to weekly 50% water change? Flora & Fauna are all really healthy, except for the case of BGA in gravel line, no signs of hair algae, bba, etc. I feed the fishes once a day. Also before the major re-do, the water was clear, however after this major re-do, I have not been able to clear up the water.
———————-

Please note that I am not aiming for crystal clear water. The question is directed to the fact that since following the E.I schedule of fertilization, having a 50% water change be too much by killing the beneficial bacteria and having to re-culture it again? Such a bacteria boom would be present in newly set up tanks, thus the cloudiness. Maybe I should try a 25% water change instead this coming Saturday or wait a fortnight.

It’s just that it pisses me off to not really find out what is causing the problem. *grumbles*


Water quality, a little cloudy yeah? I have kept this picture as a JPEG format in order not to loose its color, might take a while to load


Round 1: Me vs. B.G.A

Posted: March 13th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | 2 Comments »

B.G.A stands for blue-green-algae. The mother of all algaes. Not only is it a nuisance, its toxic and kills the beautiful aquarium plants that you spent hours on ends trying to maintain. The worse part of it all, its almost impossible to mechanically clean it (vacuuming, pulling, etc) reason is that it is slimy and soft, so upon trying to net it or catch it, it’ll break into a few hundred pieces and probably land somewhere else to again multiply.

The B.G.A that I am facing is at the front of my tank, in the gravel line, probably due to the afternoon sun that hits just the base of the tank where the gravel is and considering that I do not have an undergravel filter plate installed, the circulation there is pretty bad. The only thing I need to add in now are Malayan Trumpet snails I guess.

Anyways, I have performed the following counter measures.

1. Pushed down/scraped the B.G.A using my credit card.
2. Taped up the glass to the gravel line with newspaper, performing a minor blackout.

I posted my question at AQ and received several feedbacks & replies.


Posted by |squee|:
It grows on low lying plants, driftwood, stagnant water flow areas. Take up some of it on your finger and smell it. Smells disgusting?

After sneezing a couple of times, check your nitrate levels, they’re bottoming out. Add more, or on a more frequent basis. Suck up the stuff now before it becomes a pest.

Bottom line, my NO3 is depleting too rapidly? Not likely the case as I found out….but I did do a re-vamp of my EI-Schedule, apparently the one thing that I was missing or rather found out was I was under-dosing the K properties. (by the way, not relevant to the B.G.A attack)

Tank Size: 5 x 2 x 2 feet
Tank Vol: 566.34 litres / 149.63 gallons (US)
CO2: Maintained at 30-35PPM daily
Lighting hours: 10 hours

Mondays: KNO3 + KH2PO4 + K2SO4?
Tuesdays: Lushgro-AQUA + Seachem Iron
Wednesdays: KNO3 + KH2PO4 + K2SO4?
Thursdays: Lushgro-AQUA + Seachem Iron
Fridays: KNO3 + KH2PO4 + K2SO4?
Saturdays: 50% WC, KNO3 + KH2PO4 + K2SO4?
Sundays: Lushgro-AQUA + Seachem Iron

Cycle of composition
NO3: 4 x weekly
PO4: 4 x weekly
K: 4 x weekly (from K from KNO3 + K2SO4)
Fe: 3 x weekly
Micros: 3 x weekly (Flourish traces, Flourish, LUSHGro-Aqua)

Composition of each dosage at any one time.
KNO3 – 1.5 teaspoon (7.8ml) ~ 8.48PPM
KH2PO4 (Fleet Enema) – 0.15 teaspoon (1.2ml) ~ 1.42PPM
K – 5.35PPM from KNO3 + 12.73PPM from K2SO4
Fe – 0.51PPM from K + 0.87PPM from Seachem Iron (20ML)
Flourish Trace Elements – 30ML each time. (once finished to move to LUSHGro-AQUA)
LUSHGro-AQUA – 55ML each time. (once finished to move to Seachem Flourish)
Flourish – 10ML each time

Composition of dosage per week
KNO3 – 33.92PPM
KH2PO4 – 5.68PPM
K – 72.32PPM (from KNO3 + K2SO4)
Fe – 3.12PPM
Traces – Mg, Cu, Ca, etc (unknown range – instruction as per Seachem traces of 5ml per 80 litres)

I might need to increase the NO3 dosage considering that I am using high light ( 8 x T5 HOs ).

After reading up more in the AQ forums, I found out the different causes and more. So PeterGwee ( seems to be an expert in the field of Fertilization, Algaes, etc in the forums advised me on the following )


Posted by PeterGwee:
Vac the substrate…..unlikely to be an NO3 issue unless you are getting loads of plant cuttings out of the tank.

…and my response


Hi Peter,

Currently there are no cuttings and the plants look really healthy, other than the BGA in the gravel line, there are no other signs of algae (BBA, Hair Algae, etc) I read up further and there is a lot of feedback indicating that this BGA in the gravel is normally due to access sunlight hitting an area where no/poor circulation is found AKA the gravel. Am I right to say this?

Should I also stick to the current routine without increasing the NO3? And K should be alright to does correct without any side-effects?

..his reply


Posted by PeterGwee:
Stick with your routine….just vac the substrate to clean things up if it bugs you.

So that kinds of answers my query about B.G.A for the time-being. |squee| AKA Terence also helped with the following suggestion.


Posted by |squee|:
From all good sources, I’ve read that low NO3 levels trigger this algae.

Some credible posts by Tom Barr:

http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum…4&postcount=42

http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum…69&postcount=3

I don’t know about the potassium part, but additional potassium won’t harm. Furthurmore, no one has ever accused potassium of being a algae trigger isn’t it?

I agree with the add more NO3 part. At high light and CO2, you’re gonna need lots of it. It’s already shown in your tank… your plants are taking up so much NO3 that BGA has appeared.

As for now, what I can do is wait for 3 more days to remove the newspaper from the gravel line and hopefully the damn B.G.A will disappear…..


Is this B.G.A??


Tank updates.

Posted: March 10th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | No Comments »

Just trimmed some of the vallisneria, they grow really fast. Not to mention, the rest of my plants are started to shoot a lot of sister plants as well. The hairgrass, E. tenellus, nanas, windelov & java ferns as well as the e.rose/oriental (still unsure what is the correct species), blyxa japonicas and amazon are doing really well.

I will be doing the weekly 50% water change tomorrow, once I am back from work. Just some pictures for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to comment if you have something or any suggestion to share.


View of tank

Right view of tank

Left view of tank

Growth of hair grass

Stomata of amazon

Growth of E. tenellus


All hooked up.

Posted: March 8th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | No Comments »

I have hooked up all the power points to have “The Ben” timers connected to it. I did not take a photo of it as it is pretty messy, but a hidden mess. :) Also, I have fixed up the solenoid and tested it out. My cheapo CO2 tank is really useless. I had to turn the main valve almost 3/4 before the gauge detected any sign of CO2.

The gauge that showed the content of the CO2 was not displaying, needle still at the zero mark, wonder if it is going empty since it is only a 3L CO2 tank…

Oh well, I will wait till it almost runs out before going down to N.A to get the 5L tank.


More money money….

Posted: March 7th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | No Comments »

I went down to Nature Aquarium (N.A) after work to just purchase some more KNO3 (Dr. Mallick) but ended up spending a total of S$250.00. I should really kick myself sometimes. Chan from N.A gave me a measly S$0.45 discount plus a big bottle of Ferka K (Potassium) he mentioned that this has a S$20 shelf value (don’t know how true this is…) Anyways these are the items that I bought:


“The Ben” programmable timers, 5 of these

“JBJ” solenoid (w/o splitter).

“Atman” 2000L/hr internal water pump for the chiller.
Really money damage…. S$250… oh well. Looks like I have got to starve for a day to recover the loss. By the way, I also bought the following (did not take photos).2M 16/22 tubing for chiller
1KG Dr. Mallick KH2PO4
1KG Dr. Mallick KNO3

*Sigh* :( plus the fact that I will probably get the 5L CO2 tank @ S$80 once my current 3L tank runs dry. Urgh.. more money.


Fauna & Flora.

Posted: March 6th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | 1 Comment »

O.K, so as mentioned in my very first post, I will be having a post with all (shots which are decent and not blur…) flora and fauna that I have. It is really difficult to have all the fauna snapped (as you know fishes do swim and don’t pose) I really respect those who have managed to capture super clear macro shots of the fauna! (All photos taken have been converted to GIF format for faster loading)

So anyways, enough talk. Here are the flora and fauna that I managed to capture. By the way, I am using a Minolta Dimage A1 5.0 Mega Pixel Digital SLR camera. Still don’t really know how to use it well enough.

Fauna pictures


Emperor Tetra Nematobrycon palmeri. I have four of these :)

Black Widow Tetra Gymnocorymbus ternetzi. I have six of these :)

Congo Tetra Phenocogrammus interruptus. I have two of these :)

Neon Rainbowfish Melanotaenia praecox. I have two of these :)
The rest of my fauna shots were really poor and blurry. Zebra/Spotted danios are the worst to shoot, somehow all my shots of the pygmy puffers, neon tetras, bleeding heart tetras, bumblebee gobies (you get the drift) are super duper blur.Flora pictures


Echinodorus tenellus. Foreground plant

Echinodorus bleheri?. Two of these.

Echinodorus ‘Rosé’/Oriental ?. Another Echinodorus species.

Microsorum pteropus ‘Windeløv’. A bunch attached to my driftwood.

Microsorum pteropus. A bunch attached to my other driftwood.

Vallisneria americana (natans). These grew to an amazing 1 meter plus!

Blyxa japonica. 3 shurbs beside a granite rock
I forgotten to take pictures of my hair grass Eleocharis ”parvula’….Anyways, with the CO2 at 30PPM, these are the shots of the stomata in action. Took quite a number of photos but only two of these are the clear ones.


Echinodorus bleheri(?)blade showing signs of stomata

Microsorum pteropus ‘Windeløv’showing signs of stomata too.
Anyways, with time to come and more knowledge of the Digital SLR is learn, I will take better shots and have them posted up here. :) Hope none of the scientific names are wrong for both fauna and flora, if I am wrong with the description, let me know, leave a comment. :D


My first planted tank.

Posted: March 4th, 2006 | Author: grey_fox | Filed under: Oldies - post of yester-year! | 2 Comments »

First of all, a warm welcome to my blog and a big thank you for reading my first (long) post. Nothing fancy here but just thought it would be good to have my planted tank actually documented online (for my personal viewing or those who want to view it). By the way, if any of your fancy having your own blog with a subdomain, I can help sponsor one for you as I am running a web hosting business as a side line, of course, it will be hosted on my server and a sub domain will be given to you (yourname.vantagehost.net). Let me know if you’re interested. :)

The tank sits in the dining room and originally housed a Red/Golden Arowana of my dads’ that died a while back. After which I decided to take over the tank and have it planted. Initially I thought that it would be a walk in the park…. how wrong I was to assume (ass-u-me?) that. Anyways, enough with the introduction. Time to get back on the topic.

These are the specifications of the tank and its equipment.

Size of Tank: 5.0 x 2.0 x 2.0 feet
Volume of Tank: 566 litres / 149 gallons (US)
Filtration system: 2 x Jebao 918 canister filters
Peripherals: Surface skimmer, JBJ thermometer, internal CO2 reactor, bubble counter, CO2 tank (? litres), cheap solenoid (changing to dual guage (splitter?) solenoid, Resun chiller CL650 (:P thanks to Billy from AQ for loaning the unti to me – have yet to test it out; still searching for a external water pump)
Substrate: Sera Floredepot (x5 canisters) Lapis sand (x9 10KG bags – need more in future, thinking of having it changed to Seachem Onyx)
Fertilisation: E.I (Estimative Index) schedule, KNO3, KH2PO4 (Fleet Enema), Seachem Trace Elements, Seachem Flourish, Seachem Flourish Iron (Fe), Seachem Potassium (K), Dr. Mallicks LushGRO-AQUA (routine table shown below)
Water PH level: Before CO2 injection, 7.1, after CO2 injection, 6.3
Water KH level: Kept at 4 (no bi-carbonate added)
CO2 level: 30-35PPM
Mineral levels: Unknown
Artificial Lighting: 8 x T5HO tubes (Solite) 4 x 10,000K + 4 x 6,500K @ 10 hours daily

With all the items that I have (most were added during the initial journey), I first started the tank on January 1 (New Year’s day) from 9P.M all the way up to 3A.M in the morning.

The first plants I purchased from the LFS (local fish shop) around my place are as follows (reference pictures courtesy of Tropica.com)

Echinodorus tenellus
Echinodorus ‘Rosé’
Hygrophila difformis (bloody weed like plant)
Cabomba caroliniana (another weed like plant)
… and a lot more other plants (I was drawn to the different colorful and weird looking plants…)

I had 2 puny drift woods that were given F.O.C from the LFS (after purchasing so much things from them….) and came up with this design. (looks really awful… by the way, I could not locate the initial photo I took on 2 January 2006. The photo below is a later shot about 3 weeks after its initial start up. I added in the internal CO2 reactor and fishes by then)


So that I won’t embarrass myself, I kept this picture small :)
Ugly huh? I did not practise E.I then and faced problems with algae(s) (yup I had black beard algae, staghorn algae, green spot algae, brown algae, etc) you name it, I had it. After getting much assistance from the helpful bunch at AQ, I soon discovered about E.I and its practises. That I will cover a little later. After the advise I received, I added more plants to combat the algae problem and came up with the following ‘design’.

Same ugly design but more plants
During this period, my canister filters were spewing gunk back into the tank. It came out like a fountain, not only from 1 cansister but both!! The week after I decided that it was time to clean the filters and to add new bio media in. After the filter wash, I faced my second challenge. My fishes started dropping like flies. I initially bought 60 neon tetras, within a week, the number dropped to 45. I posted my problem in AQ and found out that it was actually my AC (activated carbon) that was leaking back the toxins. I found out that my carbon was about 1 1/2 years old when its expiry is a mere 6 months… So I immediately removed the AC and everything was back to normal.So came problem no. 3. Plant eating worms! I believe this was transported into my tank from the Blyxia Japonicas I bought from the LFS at my place. $#%!

Nice shell huh? They made cacoons out of the Blyxia leaves. Killed a total of nine.
Next came problem no. 4, weed control. My taiwan moss started growing this weird looking weed. Initially I thought it was new moss growing but to my shock, it was some weed. Below are the pictures.

Damn bladderwort weed.
I threw away the entire moss and reset the moss by tying new ones on it. I then found this weed growing all over my tank. So, I began the clearing up of the tank from this weed and all the visible algae too. This took me a back-breaking 5 hour job to do so. Once this was established, I then began to start to ask in AQ about the Estimative Index and finally understood how it worked and came out with the following schedule.Mondays: KNO3 + KH2PO4
Tuesdays: Traces + Seachem Iron
Wednesdays: KNO3 + KH2PO4
Thursdays: Traces + Seachem Iron
Fridays: KNO3 + KH2PO4
Saturdays: 50% WC, KNO3 + KH2PO4 + Seachem Potassium
Sundays: Traces + Seachem IronCycle of composition
NO3: 4 x weekly
PO4: 4 x weekly
K: 4 x weekly (inclusive of 1 major dose from WC on Saturday)
Fe: 3+1 x weekly (inclusive of Fe from Flourish Potassium)
Micros: 3 x weekly (Flourish traces, Flourish, LUSHGro-Aqua)Composition of each dosage at any one time.
KNO3 – 1.6 teaspoon (7.8ml) ~ 9.05PPM
KH2PO4 (Fleet Enema) – 0.15 teaspoon (1.2ml) ~ 1.42PPM
K – 5.70PPM from KNO3 + 8.86PPM from Seachem Potassium (100ml) (Saturdays)
Fe – 0.57PPM from K + 0.27PPM from Seachem Iron (15ML)
Flourish Trace Elements – 30ML each time. (once finished to move to LUSHGro-AQUA)
LUSHGro-AQUA – 55ML each time. (once finished to move to Seachem Flourish)
Flourish – 10ML each timeComposition of dosage per week
KNO3 – 36.20PPM
KH2PO4 – 5.68PPM
K – 31.66PPM (from KNO3 + Flourish Potassium)
Fe – 1.38PPM (from Seachem K + Seachem Iron)
Traces – Mg, Cu, Ca, etc (unknown range – instruction as per Seachem traces of 5ml per 80 litres)

You may download my E.I schedule here. Click here to download

After practising E.I, that was when the algaes started reducing significantly (manual removal of weed was still done) and the plants started growing like mad (the Difformis was an evidence of this).


The difformis grew to a mini tree and the vallisneria grew to about 1+ metre!
After getting a foothold on the E.I and getting a hard look at my tank, I decided to have the layout re-scaped. I knew it was going to be messy and had to sacrifice an entire Saturday or Sunday to do it. Since my own work keeps me busy from Mondays to Fridays, this was the only time I could do it. Before I started rescaping, I looked through some reference sites (due to my lack of creativity) and found Amano scape to be magnificient! Takashi Amano is a genius when it comes to aqua-scaping. His marvellous scapes were excellent designs and I was pretty much in awe about it! So I decided to come up with a rescape layout and to have the following. Credit goes to Goondoo (Billy) from AQ for his advise and ’secrets’. :)

I decided to have the ‘Triangle” layout
I went down to Teo’s Plant Farm at Lot. 50 Lim Chu Kang Lane 9 to purchase the hair-grass, java fern & driftwood. After returning back home and cleaning, soaking, etc the plants and driftwood for about a week, I finally took that one Sunday to do the entire re-scape. The mess was horrible, the roots from the difformis was everywhere in the substrate, not to mention the cabomba too!, What was worse was the tenellus, as it had ’sister’ planlets, it was really entangling. I had to cut, pull and replant all the tellenus. The total time spent on this was a total of 9 hours and after the re-scape, there was only 1 casualty, that being a hillstream loach. And the results are as shown below.

The final outcome
Later I received some feedback on improvements and hand a helping hand from standoyo (Stan) from the AQ forums. He gave me some recommendations on how I should improve. I have since followed his instructions and this is the latest outcome of how the tank looks like today.

The final outcome 2
I have shifted all the JF to the driftwood on the left and have replaced the JF on the right with Windelovs and petite nanas. The amazon sword plant on the right was pushed back and the blyxias (thanks to Knightx for the free blyxias) were shifted towards the front. As of the moment, I am satisfied with the current layout that I have but I believe I will slowly harness a better understanding of the Aqua Scaping world and have better ideas in future. Until then I guess I will keep a look out for better designs that I can take after or better, to come up with a design that I can really call mine. Until next time :) P/S: I guess in my next post, I will have the names of the flora & fauna that I possess listed out. Don’t really know the scientific names :P At the moment, these are the general names for the fauna I possess.*/Fauna Specs*/
neon tetras rummy nose black widows pygmy puffers emperor tetra spotted danios zebra & spotted danios black phantoms neon rainbows congo tetras flame tetras cherry barbs corys otos SAEs hillstream loaches yamatos malayan prawns ‘fresh-water’ prawns threadfins lampeyesReferences related to this entry:
Questions, questions, questions. Beginner at work (Part 1)
Healthy fish dying… :(
ID: Algae on my moss?
Beginner at work Part 2
Estimative Index by Tom Barr
Tropica Plant I.D