My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

[Ramius]

If I can just figure this OOOOOONE thing out.

I really should take an aquatic floral arrangement class, i can look at other tanks and say "you know... thats pretty cool looking" but I look at mine, and it's always dumpy in my eyes.

I'll be the first to admit, I do not have an artistic eye, however, I think I've been able to figure something out.

I think what I'm missing is layers.

All I have is a flat bottom tank, I think I need to add elevation in it.

For a while I DID have some really awesome pieces of driftwood in there, which was cool, unfortunatly, I have a raphael catfish that likes to burrow into small places and hide during the day, he burrowed into one of the pieces of drift wood and got stuck, I got him out and he's fine but I'm afraid to put the wood back in there now for fear that it would happen again.

I DO have, however, a few pieces of holy rock, which I'm thinking about stacking in the tank to create a hill of some sort.

If I did this, or however I do this, I will want to have the pieces covered heavily with plants.

I'm really talking to myself outloud on the keyboard at this point and if your still reading I apologize, anyways, what I'm wondering is, how would I get a plant to thrive on a rocky elevation? I'm using eco-complete as a substrate and it is good, but, how would a plant do sitting on a rock?

[rrocket2002]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

You can use pieces of slate for elevation.

Raul

[Mzungu]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

Sitting on a rock, you've of course got your mosses and ferns which will attach themselves. I think the final product all depends on how you arrange the rocks. If it's rocks without many holes sitting by themselves, you might be pretty limited. But if you construct something with a lot of dimensions, crevices, etc., in which the plants can take root, then you're really not that limited at all.

The only thing I can think of is that some plants don't seem to appreciate not having their roots completely covered. What I've noticed (and remember, this is just what's happened with me, not necessarily a universal truth) is crypts don't like to be out of the substrate. The smaller Echinodorus species don't like it either - since I have smaller tanks I can't really try the larger ones. But the "bunch" plants, like Cabomba, Anacharis, etc., will shoot out tons of roots with good lighting. Same with Rotala species. So, thinking about it, stem plants will probably do well, rosettes will probably not.

Did that help at all?

[Ramius]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

YEEEES! That was exactly what I needed to hear, both of you!

I can use slates to build a foundation, and stack the holy rocks on top with the holiest on the toppest!

Oh man, This is gonna be great, I'm gonna have a dungeon made out of slate.

[Ramius]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

I will be sure to get pics of the process for your amusement =)

*Recalls the fish in the bathtub incident last time I had an 'idea'*

[eklikewhoa]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

Layer your plants....

low growing up front, mid growing to the sides/middle and stems/tall plants to the rear.

You can get the hilly effect by lowering the substrate up front and pushing it to the rear/corners and planting on them or burry a stone in the substrate to elevat it some that way you can still plant in the substrate.

Another option is to get some branchy driftwood and use it as a focal point and even plant some ferns/anubias/moss on it like Mzungu mentioned.

[Ramius]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

Hmmmmm, I've done the sloping effect and it was nice, something I will have to redo when I go into this (the fish wallered out their 'spots') But I still need more drastic effects, I like the idea of puttinga couple large  rocks underneath the substrate, and I can still use one piece of driftwood I have (it doesn't have any nooks/crannies) so I may incorporate that... you know what, I'm going to have a lot of fun planning this out =)

[Tiapan]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

sounds like a really cool tank. get picture up, and i really like a little structure to my tanks too, i couple of small pieces of slate sticking out of the substrate sounds cool too.

[Ramius]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

Ok, Here are a couple of quick photo's taken with my crappy camera, my good camera is in the shop... come to think of it.. if it's in the shop, wouldn't that make _it_ the crappy camera? Anyways...


King triton was busy.... but he did send Neptune to pay hommage instead, He was a very nice guy, but shorter than what I thought, I was so surprised I barely had time to capture him coming up out of the substrate..



Ok, The tank has been in stages A B and C.. stage A was how it sat for a really long time and just at this second, I can't find a photo of that, I think it's on the memory card for the camera in the shop. This is a photo of stage B.. when I scootched everything over to half of the tank basically.

You can also see the addition of the overflow in the back.. this was the first day I had it set up and of course, it has not been level adjusted properly which also allows you to see how UNlevel my tank is. Also please excuse the mess :P



Remember how I was discussing the filter location in an earlier thread, and how the only solution I had would be to do something like this...



Well what I ended up doing was similar, the filter wouldn't fit underneath the stand anykind of way, so I moved it to the side, ghetto style for now :P





BTW, the water looks mooky because it's been running on a WAAAAAY undersized filter for the last week or two. Nothing got sick or died, but the water definatly looked swampy.




These are all pictures that should be considered taken "under construction". The tank basically was halfway decent looking. The right half was bare and while deciding what to do about it... My good friend Log said she had a spare Log for the tank. So the plan WAS to put said log in the tank. I'm still going to do that, but in the mean time, I also got a pretty good deal on some holey moley rock.

[Ramius]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

If you look to the left of the tank, you can see a "tree" shaped stick.

Using some plants from mr EK, I decided to make an attempt at a willow type effect.

First I stuck the stick in a bucket of water to hold it upright.. then I layed the moss on top of the 'branches' as evenly as I could...



Then I took some cotton string and wound it tightly around the moss, fishnet stocking style, to hold it in place





Then.. I took the stick, and stuck it in the middle of a giant hole in a piece of holy rock that is sticking out of the ground, voila, hopefully the end result will be something like...

Ok


Here is a picture of the plant doing it's best.. now, imagine that same thing, on the green slimy parts of my stick.. and you'll see the tree like effect I'm shooting for..

[Ramius]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!



So basically this is where we are sitting right now folks.


My opinions are, the right side is overpowering the left, along with half a dozen other infractions.

However, the tank is still 'under construction' and nothing really has a permanent home just yet.

That wont come until I get the log in there... then we'll see about re-arranging to a more suitable setting for everything.

however, as is, blast away for any improvement ideas, and don't say buya  door for your stand, I have it, I just detached it to make crawling underneath easier for all this stuff :P

[eklikewhoa]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

you are too throwed!

[eklikewhoa]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

Well here is the blueprint or rough Idea of how I think a planted wet/dry should be to minimize outgassing of co2.

[alexarae]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

Ek...you are so hardcore. It's baffeling.

8O

[Ramius]

Re: My tank will be so awesome King Triton will pay hommage!

He's the mcGyver of fishtanking :P