Details?
Well, I had an algae farm for over 8 months fighting a losing battle following advise given on youtube…. Very frustrated at never getting it under control….
And there was this guy on a forum who kept commenting on accepted wisdom of plant keeping that what was being spouted was nonsense…. He had an Avatar of a braying donkey….
I sort of thought he was full of it, but looking at pictures of his tanks….. they looked like tanks I wanted to have…. And then I looked at tanks of the folks on youtube who were held up as experts. Their tanks didnt look any better than mine….
I PMd this guy and asked if his tanks were for real…. I was actually starting to doubt that anybody could have a tank largely free of algae…. He assured me they were for real…. He turned me on to the 2 Hr Aquarist and the blogs about Algae…. I had run across them before, but wasnt sure they could be trusted and relied on…. They said different things then the reputed Youtube experts…. I figured I had nothing to lose as 8 months of efforts following the “experts “ advice hadnt gotten me to the dance I wanted to be at…. I dove in to
@Dennis Wong Blogs and read, reread, studied, took notes….and then I mDe a whole bunch of changes all at once and not “make one change at a time”….. And by golly, I started having success. I started having healthy plants growing that defended themselves against Algae…
I held my breath for months certain that the bottom would fall out and I would wake up with algae infestations again, but with time I started gaining confidence…
So then I started turning my attention to getting some structure to my tanks and improving Aesthetics…. I was attracted to Dutch Style more than nature or diorama. Before I bit the bullet to go with a 75 gallon I decided to use my two 29 gallon tanks to use as a sandbox and painters pallette to see If I could learn some of the concepts and techniques of Dutch scaping….
I culled my species count down to 7 plants with 2 veils.. a 29 in my estimation is an awfully awkward size for Dutch scaping due to it being 2 1/2 feet, and being only 11 1/2 inches front to back…I placed masking tape to divide the tank in thirds side to side and bottom to top, chose red plants to place in the intersections, put in a cardinal Lobelia street , planted veils, and foreground and then pondered background plants . I went through a few iterations with plant substitutions…
I still need to make ugly moss walls which I hate personally. It all needs manicuring and opening up a bit between groupings., and the foreground plants need trimming and manicuring and then show some new growth…
I need a better light to look better, currently running 2 Finnex Planted Plus ALCs one in front, one in back…. The Limnophelia Aquatica needs to grow in a bit more and the Moneywort Veil needs to gain sone height and be trained more toward the wall….
But, It is close enough I can see the end product in my mind….
Livestock is a hodgepodge assortment of torn down tanks…. It may well be curated better to better conform in time…
Still very much a work in progress.
I never drink Miller beer, but I do owe
@Unexpected a debt of gratitude for mentoring me to this point…
I also have a debt of gratitude to so many on this forum freely sharing their expertise and knowledge in their posts on the forum. I have learned a lot studying and reading
@Burr740 posts and journals,
@GreggZ @Dennis Wong ,
@Jeff Miotke ,
@Koan and many, many others…
.
