20G long

[morrom]

Nice to hear you have some progress already and the plants are taking, from my readings the only down fall of the DSM is the time it takes for the carpet to grow in before you fill the tank. But IMO the problems that can be avoid by doing it are for sure a more then fair trade off. Weekly pics IMO  !!!
I hear you I love the Iwagumi Nano style tanks as well, they are very pleasing to the eye. Nice to sit down in front of them and enjoy your hard work. I like your vision for this tank, I'm sure it will look killer when its grown in!
What live stock are you planning to have? Imo a smaller type of fish that skoals (I do remember your other post about smaller fish  ) and shrimp to keep all that HC clean!
Personally I really like cherry shrimp they are cheap cute and do a good job in the right numbers at keep things clean, and are cute to boot. Amano shrimp are really awesome as well a lot bigger and not as cute tho  lol.

[magnosis]

Exactly.  Small rasboras or tetras, and a few shrimps    I love the chili / mosquito rasboras but they may not like my water (PH 8, GH 3, KH 18 out of the tap) and I'm not really into using peat or whatnot to change the water params unless its a must.

[magnosis]

Week 1:

Still alive ;-)

It's growing 



Except one plantlet died...


Another lost its leaves... then sprouted new ones 



And this bigger one also came back from the dead, in force !




So there. I sprayed the glass twice through the week.  I replaced the dead plant yesterday, and added ~5-10 drops of water near the plantlets that are higher up.  C'est tout.


I has the happy ^.^

[magnosis]

Today marks week 4 of my dry start attempt.

For the most part it's going quite well.  The plants that are higher up (where there's less water in the soil) are struggling.  I might have made thing worst by try to compensate and spraying these areas a little too much... Or maybe its just bad luck, other plants nearby have same or worst conditions, and they are doing ok.

This was taken tonight:


This is the progression from day 1, to week 1, to week 4:


later this week I will add some fissidens, a tiny bit of flame moss, and a few sprouts of grass (I don't have much to start with).

[morrom]

Starting to grow in nicely, glad to see the Dry Start Method is working for you !

[magnosis]

Starting to grow in nicely, glad to see the Dry Start Method is working for you !

Yah I'm pretty happy with it !  Despite a handful of plantlets that melted, there's been absolutely no sign of mold whatsoever.  Temperature is around 27 nowadays (the basement got to 30 in the weekend, I had to perform a series of water changes on all my tanks to bring the temp down slowly, luckily the fish and plants handled it well !)

[androo303]

Extremely jealous that you went this way! I think i may end up copying you once I move into the new place, bah. I like it.

Keep the pics coming as I am quite interested to find out how long it took entirely because when i move the tank, I may end up trying to leave the fish in the bin with filtration and trying to get this up and going... I am a little tired of my setup

[magnosis]

Do you think a tank of this size can host:

- 7x oto cats
- 2x 3" adult SAE
- 2x 2" sailfin plecos

For 4-6 weeks ?
I would probably need to add caves for the plecos, but I'm a little worried about the SAE.  This aquascape doesn't provide much hiding spots.

The reason I'm asking this is that I will be redoing my 59g soon.  Because the Dry Start worked well on this 20g, I'm willing to do the same on the 59g.  Not too sure what to do with the plants & fish in the meantime.  I could use a big rubbermaid tub I guess.  Might be a pain to maintain through 4-6 weeks though.

[magnosis]

The HC carpet is coming along nicely.  Just one area I hadn't originally planned to cover with HC, has been planted in the weekend.  I'll have to wait another 2-3 weeks in order to get at least enough roots to hold it down.

In the meantime I'll work on the moss.  Until recently I was planning on using Pheonix, Flame and Christmas moss, but the more it goes, the more I'm letting myself convinced that mixing different mosses is a bad idea.  I fear it will eventually become one big mess if I don't keep on top of it and make sure the different mosses don't mix.

Most likely I will end up using mostly Phoenix Moss, and a little bit of Flame moss in the background, both will be separated by a few Anubias Nana.

I'm still working hard on finding an easy way to trim mosses without making a mess and ending up with bits and pieces everywhere.  Python doesn't work (it either clogs very quickly, or drains the tank by the time I'm only half done with the trimming).  Maybe just keep a net in one hand and scissors in the other....

What is your best advise for a clean, easy trimming of moss ?

[pm]

I had a very healthy mass of moss growing in my 33 gal.  In tank, the only way I figured to prune without bits flying everywhere was to hold the moss between my fingers in one hand and cut with the other (like a barber trimming the tips of your hair).  Also have your filter off for this in case a few strands slip.  I was fortunate enough to have my moss on a piece of Mopani wood.  So I was able to easily remove the wood, turn it upside-down (over a bucket), and just snip..snip..snip.

I think you are wise not to mix mosses (at least close together).  It WILL become a tangled mess unless you keep it in check 

[magnosis]

I want Utricularia Graminifolia in this tank.

Anybody has this, locally ?  Please PM me asap and name you price, any amount will do.

[pm]

name you price, any amount will do.

I'll bite... one million dollars!!   

Just kidding.  I have been looking for this one as well.  I will be in TO next month and was going to try to get some then... would be too late for you though. 

[magnosis]

That could work; if I can't find any by next week I'll consider ordering from Tropica, and there's no guarantee I would receive shipment before you head out to TO...

Please give me a heads up if / when you go.

BTW thanks for the tips regarding moss pruning. It should be manageable in the smaller tank.  The problem in my bigger tank is that it's too deep for me to reach down with both hands, but that is a story for another thread

[magnosis]

Late update on this tank:

The latest snapshots were taken in late 2011 

Dawn / lights out:



Day / lights on:




I've pulled the plug on this tank roughly 6 months ago, after the fish and most of the HC had been moved into my 59g.  Maintaining an HC carpet is a lot of work and I didn't have time to do that in two different tanks.  Also, I started having problems with one of my CO2 regulator and had to move the whole kit to my bigger tank. This 20g became a low-tech tank, and now it's a stale water tank with plants still growing (slowly) and pond snails having a blast.  I will probably auction it off if someone is willing to start where I left off and take on the challenge of cleaning the substrate, rocks and glass...