ADA Mini Three Set (S, M, L) Setup at the Home;

[fwazeter]

Due to my slightly masochistic nature (tending to planted aquariums in the gallery, and then at home, is well, masochistic) as well as a gross-over dedication to ADA, I've ended up with the beginnings of my own mini-gallery at my apartment pretty much dedicated to aquascaping.

Although, in all fairness, the Mini S and the Mini L setups were pretty much purchased over the last 2 1/2 years, with the Mini M being the recent addition about 3-4 months ago. I still have a major grudge with the Mini L as there is no real appropriate lighting solution nor is there an appropriate stand solution, so it sits on a kitchen counter for the most part. Although, this initial post won't be covering the Mini L, because currently we aren't seeing eye to eye.

Anyway, over the past 6 months or so my philosophy in the approach for nature aquarium has been up, down and around the bend quite a few times - resulting in more than a couple aquascapes that were thrown up, then torn down, then thrown up, then torn down, before I finally settled.

First, the Mini S (crappy cellphone picture warning ahead of time) :



The initial hardscape - I went for a simple, single stone Iwagumi here to stress to myself my own personal roots in minimalism. Creating a layout with just one stone is an entirely different challenge all in it's own, due mostly to the fact that your one stone has to say -everything.-



Filled, day one with cliff notes for errors in an overly-perfectionistic manner.



The effects of Penac W: pearling substrate! Who knew!

Filled, Day One:



Melting, Day Three:



One Week later, some-what recovering from melting:



I got the Riccia from Kwc - with a forewarning that it -would- melt as it was from the San Marcos river, but lets hope I won't have to retie TOO much riccia once it completely converts back to submerged growth. That's an exercise in zen Nature Aquarium technique practice that requires quite a bit of patience.

The routine is as follows; every day for the first week, the tank gets an 80-100% water change. Without fail, whether it needs it or not - as a preventative measure against algae. I also dose Brighty K and Green Bacter daily, and at the start of the second week, to play by the ADA book I should be dosing Green Brighty Step 1 starting then, but I'm going to wait for more plant mass to recover before doing that. I'm also supposed to go to water changes every 2nd day, but I'm going to continue with the once a day water change - again because of the conversion process. Once things settle into submerged growth then I'll dial back down to every other day water changes and begin dosing Step 1. Otherwise I may be asking for an algal nightmare. Yay Riccia!

Tech Specs:
ADA Mini S
Solar Mini S (lighting)
Mini S Clear Stand
Eheim 2211 Filtration w/Mini V-1 & P-1 ADA Lily Pipes & ADA Clear Hose
Co2: ADA Co2 Advanced System + Do!Aqua Music Glass 10D diffuser
Substrate System: Penac P, Penac W (oxygenates substrate a lot!), Bacter 100, Clear Super, Tourmaline BC, Amazonia I Powder Type 3L bag.

The Mini M:

This layout is more of an experiment for me - given my roots in iwagumi, and my utter frustration in finding a piece of driftwood to fit the Mini M, combined with a want to use stem plants heavily, I ended up with the beginnings of a somewhat new style I'm attempting to develop based heavily on ikebana and japanese moss garden principles.

One Week in (ignore the temporary bucephelandra until I find a more permanent spot) :



Here i'm following the same routine as the Mini S - and will dial this one back to once every other day water changes since it can handle that right now, but will also hold back on adding ECA (iron) for the moment - until the stem plants become more well established. Again in an algae preventative maintenance move. There is a slight iron deficiency showing in new growth on the plants, but they are working well so far.

Of the two, I'm very excited to see where this one goes, for me personally, it's a beauty to watch.

Tech Specs:

ADA Mini M
Solar Mini M (lighting)
ADA Mini M Wood Cabinet Stand
Eheim 2211 Filtration w/Mini MV-1 & MP-1 Do!Aqua Lily Pipes & ADA Clear Hose
Co2: ADA Co2 Advanced System + Do!Aqua Music Glass 15D diffuser
Substrate System: Penac P, Penac W (oxygenates substrate a lot!), Bacter 100, Clear Super, Tourmaline BC, Amazonia I Powder Type 3L bag.

[gotticgs]

nice info

[Mzungu]

Nice, Frank!

Let me know if you want some Mayaca mini something-or-other. Trying to get rid of it, since I don't want small stem plants in my EcoPico, but since I don't know of anyone else here who has it, I'm not willing to just toss it.



Keep us updated on here!

[fwazeter]

Sure, I'll find a spot for the Mayaca Mini.

[Mzungu]

Awesome! Yay. I'll bring it in either today or tomorrow. :)

-MB

[kwc1974]

where is the mini L?

you know what the tank needs? Fissidens!

[davemonkey]

That stone in the first tank is AWESOME!! I like the bright colors of the second tank.

[koi]

what are you going to stock the tanks with?

[fwazeter]

HEy Koi,

I have no idea yet. I've been pondering what to stock in them for a while yet, but i'm still at least a week or two from stocking anything.

Dave,

I like how the contrasting styles of the two layouts ended up working out in the apartment as well, fortunately they decide to have problems at different times and not all together.

kwc,

The mini L is up and running, but i'm probably going to tear it down again before long, I can't seem to settle on what I want to do with that one.

[fwazeter]

Now at the start of the third week - and ironically, as so often happens with planted aquariums, the ones giving me hassles have completely flip-flopped. So i'll start with the one that's not arguing with me at the moment, the Mini S:



That riccia is coming in nicely now - and I think it may be my favorite plant at the moment for a carpet. I'm highly tempted to incorporate it into the Mini M in lieu of Moss. But not goign to go in on that one quite yet. The hydrocotyle is also forming up nicely in the back (as if it ever needed much encouragement, truly may be the easiest plant to grow ever). The end goal of the hydrocotyle is for it to kind of drape over the top left side of the stone and form a background of sorts in a similar way to the way hair grass is used. This is possible because hydrocotyle kind of "floats," as it grows, hovering over the substrate / objects as opposed to densely covering them.

The main stone seems to be having a little bit of diatom/brown algae and cyano growing on it, on one of these water changes next I'll end up hitting some maracyn into the system to remove the cyano, and if the brown algae remains a problem, i'll dab the stone itself with h202 (hydrogen peroxide) by essentially diluting some h202 with water and dipping a small brush into the mixture and dabbing it over the rock while the aquarium is drained. This is also a good technique for removing BBA off of driftwood and stones.

Currently the dosing regime is Brighty K x1 squirt and Green Brighty Special Lights x1 (every other day).



Also had the first cleaning of the lily pipes last night, I've found that if you're proactive with cleaning them out every two-three weeks then they are easier to keep clean and the clear tubing stays pristine / perfect much, much longer.

When it comes time to trim the riccia, I believe I'll replant some HC more in the front and re-tie the riccia to stones, the reason being is that since the riccia melted the way it did, it may be unnecessarily prolonging the carpet not flourishing completely and evenly, and this could speed things up. Also using a few smaller stones to tie riccia to in the front could increase the visual appeal with the way riccia grows up - but so far, so good!

Now, onto the Mini M:

This is after a full water change:



there isn't much for algae problems in this setup, however the stems went into an extreme deficiency pretty quickly - and admittedly it was in part due to my hesitance to increase dosing regimes and in part because co2 wasn't being distributed enough evenly.

I had to replace the MP-1 Do!Aqua lily pipe with a P-1 ADA lily pipe, since the MP-1 just wasn't putting the flow in the appropriate spot for this aquarium and it was causing some starvation since nutrients as well as co2 weren't being properly pushed through the stem plant mass. The ADA P-1 is definitely vastly superior to it's Do!Aqua equivalent, and I'm kind of annoyed I didn't decide to go with this option first.

The stems never really bounced back from the first trimming, but after doing the water change I replaced the lily pipe, dialed up the Co2 and dosed

3 squirts Brighty K, 2 squirts Green Brighty Special Lights - tomorrow will be 2 squirts Green Brighty Step 1 and it'll be an alternation day by day.

I should note that within 3 hours or so of the co2 distributing properly and dosing, the stems appeared much healthier in the way they were standing back up, and hopefully they'll bounce back pretty quickly.



I'm also choosing to not talk about the moss carpet yet. I'm going to wait a little while before coming to an official opinion on that.

On a side note - it definitely feels the more and more I end up practicing these same techniques, the more 'zen-like' it all becomes and the easier it becomes to do so / more habit based it is.

[Mzungu]

I'm also choosing to not talk about the moss carpet yet. I'm going to wait a little while before coming to an official opinion on that.

Frank, you're so funny.

But thanks for the update - some really informative stuff in there! :emt_thumbs:

Tanks look pretty darn good, too!