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My new scape. It’s been a while. I’ve been busy finishing my novel. It’s published now so back to scaping.

It’s a classic triangular scape and I’m calling it Quantum Entanglement. It’s a working title, so I might change that. Sorry mods.

The real star is the light. Off Amazon for around $130. Fully controllable with a remote. Great value. https://amzn.eu/d/0eRX5eCo

I want to plant it with mainly buces and small anubias spp. on the rocks and wood and MC carpet, with some crypt nevellii or C. X Willisii, and stauro in the shady parts and maybe a ludwigia mini super red highlight behind the last rock on the left.

I have read an awful lot of warnings and conjectures by people. And “I used bdbs and a shrimp died so I got rid of it…”…

My personal experience with the product has been uneventful.

I have put rare earth magnets through a quart sample with no hint of any attraction and then washed it with no hint of oil slick or dustiness and then added the rest of the bag to a new aquarium with no treatment, no ill effect…

I have probably employed 7 bags by now with no hint of a problem. Dozens of corys sifting through the stuff as well as khuli loaches and yoyo loaches…. No hint of problems with them…

Other than it self leveling itself and being totally incapable of holding a slopeI love the stuff. The black always looks great. It costs about 1/4 aquarium specific substrates. I really haventexperienced anything negative about it…

I know it is popular here…. Has anybody here had bad experiences with it?

Time to start a new thread.

I’ll fill in some details later, but I’m working on the hardscape now. Any and all criticism is appreciated. The vision is nothing more, and nothing less, than something appealing to the eye.

90cm x 30cm x 30cm Lifegard Aquatics ultra clear bookshelf tank. Buce and anubias on the hardscape, stems towards the back and center, mid to front carpet with some changes in shade and texture down to a flat grade on the right side of the tank.

Lily pipe inlet and skimmer will be in the back left corner with the outflow in the front left to hopefully achieve circular flow. I’ll be running an in-line diffuser. Light will be the P600 Pro that I regrettably did not upside to 900. Oh well. I’ll mount it high and hopefully it’ll have enough spread.

I have some dragon stone and red lava rock rubble I’ll use at the base to blend into the substrate, as well as some stratum I may or may not cap with.

As some people may know I had a long running journal on another forum. Glad to see Art get this new site started. A fresh beginning and loads of possibilities ahead. I'll be updating with thoughts here but for today just wanted to share my latest tank pics.

Like my no-tech bowl scaping thread where I have a list of inspiring bowl scapers, I thought it would be awesome to do the same with a Dutch-inspired / True Dutch thread! I have a ton, but I'll post them over time. If anyone else finds good examples of dutch tanks, post them here, too!

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First up:



I translated the transcript and got as much info as I could. Here's the things I find interesting:

50% WC weekly

He front-load doses the incoming fresh water volume to:

• NO3: ~30 ppm
• PO4: ~4.2 ppm
• K: ~34 ppm
• Mg: ~3.4 ppm

Meaning, his accumulation numbers can never exceed these values (that's the benefit of viewing his front load in terms of incoming ppm values vs total water volume).

If you were to look at it through full-volume dosing lens, it's:

• NO3: ~15 ppm
• PO4: ~2.1 ppm
• K: ~17 ppm
• Mg: ~1.7 ppm

GH booster is used but not described, so IDK how much Ca/Mg he uses.

Micros are dosed 3x per week, but nothing specific provided. Probably ~0.3-0.5ppm/week? He does say the iron is all gone/undetectable by the evening.

Beautiful tank! I love the balance of colors, textures, and plant groupings. That tiger lily is amazing. Very little algae, too!

Welcome to ScapeCrunch, @tṛtīyāya!
We would love to get to know you. Please tell us about yourself. What tank do you have?

I hadn't seen it mentioned by others that attended Aquashella, but if you hadn't already heard about it or seen it in Aquashella videos, ADA has come out with Amazonia Pro. It's not a replacement for Version 2, but an addition. It is essentially Version 2 on steroids with higher nutrients and of course the negative side effect of potentially higher initial ammonia leaching and, if your not prepared and skilled, more chance of algae. That's even from the mouth of Homma-san himself. The scaping competitors were using it in the competition and AFA was selling 9l bags at the show. They said it would be available on the website within the next couple weeks.

I understand that the process of aquasoil neutralizing kh is basically it turning it into co2 through chemical reactions.

However, in practice it just seems to raise the ph if the soil if the ph buffering capacity is exhausted?
If I pre-acidify RO water with HCL the aquasoil seems to raise the ph back up to around where it normally is after a day or 2.

Welcome to ScapeCrunch, @Forest Alex!
We would love to get to know you. Please tell us about yourself. What tank do you have?

This tank was a Dutch-ish tank before we moved 2 months ago. This was one of its last pictures, very overgrown I know.



This time I want to make it a true Dutch, so anyone can chime in and help me.

After we moved, it ran low-tech with just a few tissue cultures until this week when I finally had time and materials to finish setting it up. This is what it looks like now:



I know there’s some bubbles showing in the vinyl cling. I’m having trouble reaching back there to smooth it out. I’ll have to think about how to fix that, although when the plants grow in it may not be visible anyway. I did read that you can have 1 rock in a Dutch scape, so I kept one. I may put Monte Carlo on it again, I haven’t decided.

So, details…

Tank: UNS 90U, 68 gallons

Light: Week Aqua P900 Pro, current settings R 40%, G 51%, B 20%, UV 0, Fan 100, Power 51%.
8 hours of light with 30 min ramp up/down
Par—no idea

Filtration: Fluval Fx4, currently running at 75%. Any higher blows the fish around. I expect to be able to increase it when the plants are grown in.

CO2: Yugang stainless steel reactor, 370 mm long, working really well. I had to turn down the CO2 a bit today because the drop was more than I expected (from degassed 7.4 to 5.9). I’ve already changed the end cap to the medium setting, but I think I’m just going to make further adjustments with the regulator. Call it laziness, but since there aren’t any double taps available for the Fx4 tubing that’s going to be easier for me. Anyway, I really like it. It’s completely silent and does its job well.

Substrate: Aqua Natural Galaxy sand, with a few Aquarium Coop root tabs.

Other: Oase CrystalSkim 350 skimmer, Kactoily 6-in-1 water quality monitor

Fertilizer: Until today I’ve just been using Easy Green. Today I installed the Chihiro’s dosing system with PPS-Pro, 6 ml macros and 3 ml micros daily. On water change day, I’ll add another 2 ml macros. I’m currently changing 20% of the water once a week. I’ll increase if necessary.

Parameters: Ammonia and Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10 ppm, gH 6, kH 2, TDS 222, 70-74 F

Plants (mostly from @Burr740 thanks!):

Leopard Val
Echinodorus Aflame
Hydrocotyle Tripartita (coming)
Penthorum Sedioides
Crypt Wendtii Sindoor
Lobelia cardinalis mini
Bacopa colorata
Rotala (? back left corner)
Limnophila wilsonii
Nymphae Peru Puerto Maldonade
Rotala macrandra Kochi
Nymphoides Taiwan

I’m not sure I like the Leopard Val in there. Should I put it in my 125 gallon instead, and move the Limnophila wilsonii to that spot?

Fish:

1 Honey Flame Gourami
4 Ember tetras
8 Otos
2 Pygmy sunfish
4 Red neon blue-eyed rainbowfish
9 Pygmy Cory catfish
9 male Lime Green Endlers
1 Leopard Danio (last of a group)
A few random Amano and Neocaridina shrimp and snails

The fish list will change as I get more tanks set up. I would like to end up with just the gourami, Otos, Rainbowfish (but more of them), and Pygmy Cories.

Well, that’s a start. Thanks for reading!