Introduce yourself and tell us what do you keep?

ScottM

New Member
Sep 18, 2021
5
2
3
SoCal
Hello all, I'm Scott from Southern California. Im still very new to planted tanks and found this site looking for info about water peramitors and nutrients levels. Seem like everyone is very friendly here so i decided to stay awhile.. anyway i have 2 tanks currently a 20 gallon and a 10 gallon the 20 has a few mix of fish, shrimp, snails and plants the 10 gallon is just shrimp, snails and a few plants.
 
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jwitt

New Member
Sep 22, 2021
6
5
3
Belleville IL US
Greetings from the St. Louis area!

When I stumbled across this forum the other day I remembered barreport from long ago. I was getting out of the hobby but planning a "biotope lite" tank for some time in the future when I had the funds and the location to do it. I remember sitting up pretty late a few nights reading and learning from "that site where the really smart folks are." Fast forward from the early / mid 2000s and after a year or two of occasional research and dreaming (the hobby and knowledge have progressed nicely) I came across a used 110 gallon in the area. Well, here goes nothing! More or less picking up where I left off long ago, reading about the complexities of aquarium nutrients on this forum.

I set up my hardscape today - the water's still clearing but that's per the norm for new setup pics. Needs a bit more rock and I might need to yank one piece out of the really dense tangle, but wouldn't it be so much more fun to leave it in there to obsess over for a few months as things mature? A nice shipment of plants comes tomorrow and a good light should show up next week. Once things are established I'll add a nice school of rasboras, Siamese algae eaters, and a shoal of an as yet undecided rainbow. Was thinking one of the bigger ones, but looking at the space the driftwood takes up I'm rethinking. Plenty of time between now and taking the plunge on high quality stock.

20210923_140610.jpg
 
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eduardo.goflores

New Member
Nov 10, 2021
3
1
3
Mexico
Hi everyone!

Greetings from Mexico. I started the hobby as a child, but it was until 2008 that I got my first "acceptable" aquarium where I started playing with plants. Currently I have 2 aquariums, the smallest is a 25L tank that I customize to make it good enough for growing plants, the second is a 60H ADA that I used as a competition tank in IAPLC 2020.
I'm here because of the wealth of information and expertise available in this forum and because by reading the several posts by Mr. Tom Barr, I've been able to understand few things that I considered once well learnt.

By the way, my name is Eduardo (Edward in English)
 

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Eduardo, I had 15 years in Mexico, all in Sonora. First, Guaymas, then Alamos. Presently, I reside in southern Arizona, but long to return to Mexico.

It was challenging to find acceptable live stock during those days, so I sometimes kept wild fish harvested from tributaries of the Yaqui and Mayo rivers.

Your planted aquarium is stunning. Just gorgeous. Where in Mexico are you located?
 

eduardo.goflores

New Member
Nov 10, 2021
3
1
3
Mexico
Eduardo, I had 15 years in Mexico, all in Sonora. First, Guaymas, then Alamos. Presently, I reside in southern Arizona, but long to return to Mexico.

It was challenging to find acceptable live stock during those days, so I sometimes kept wild fish harvested from tributaries of the Yaqui and Mayo rivers.

Your planted aquarium is stunning. Just gorgeous. Where in Mexico are you located?
Thank you Fisch, and sorry for taking too long to answer. I live at Mexico City. Since the 90`s it´s been easy to find livestock here, but what was really a nightmare was to find the hardware, fertilizers, lights, necessary to build a decent planted aquarium. The tank in the picture I uploaded ran smoothly for 2 years, but on May, I decied to turn it down and rebuilt it with a highly intense light (Vivid 2), so what I thought once well understood (ferts, light, water parameters), after the change was all challenged because the algae that appeared next made me realized that I´m still a newbie...
 

Miles James

New Member
Dec 10, 2021
8
5
3
Westside1
Hi All,

My name is Miles I have been aquascaping for 8 years, exploring developing scapes in a number of styles. I have owned a number of different tanks, with nearly all being low-tech till now.

I have been focusing on nano dutch aquascaping over the past 3 years with varying levels of success

Recently I have started a dutch style scape in one of my more high tech tanks which I call "Fidelia squid" after what grade it would get at competition.

I personally have enjoyed developing dutch style aquascapes previously, so hopefully, this new one will be as successful and I can share my progress with you all.

Miles James
 

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brocule

New Member
Dec 10, 2021
1
1
1
UK
Hi All,

My name is Miles I have been aquascaping for 8 years, exploring developing scapes in a number of styles. I have owned a number of different tanks, with nearly all being low-tech till now.

I have been focusing on nano dutch aquascaping over the past 3 years with varying levels of success

Recently I have started a dutch style scape in one of my more high tech tanks which I call "Fidelia squid" after what grade it would get at competition.

I personally have enjoyed developing dutch style aquascapes previously, so hopefully, this new one will be as successful and I can share my progress with you all.

Miles James
How beautiful!

btw can I know the places you often bought those kinds and the equipment
 
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Miles James

New Member
Dec 10, 2021
8
5
3
Westside1
How beautiful!

btw can I know the places you often bought those kinds and the equipment
Hi Brocule,

Thanks for the interest, when it comes to equipment, plants, stocking, etc. I'm afraid I do alot of bouncing from store to store. My main are listed below:

Maidenhead aquatics Shrewsbury:- Plants, ferts, stocking
Maidenhead aquatics Newport:- Stocking/tanks
Ripples telford:- plants, Co2, lighting, tanks
Shirley Aquatics:- plants
Aquarium gardens (online) - plants

There are alot more but these are my regulars due to location.

Do feel free to follow my progress with the new scape I will entitle the journal "Fidelia squid". I will be sharing all the good and the bad, trust me it's not all going to be good given my history.

Attached a creative shot from today, it's had a heavy trim since first shots to bring out it full health.

Let me know what you think.

Miles James
 

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Trin20k

New Member
Dec 19, 2021
4
1
3
Nowra, NSW, Australia
Hi all, complete newbie from Australia here, I have three tanks, but only one currently running.

It's a very basic four foot tank with flourite black, an inline co2 and basic LED light that came with the tank. I'm not even 100% sure what it's planted with as everything was in such poor condition when I got it a couple of days ago due to a BBA outbreak. I've culled a lot of the plants because it was a mess, and done an excel dip, scrubbed down the hardscape, changed out the gravel substrate and added another filter (partly to help with get things under control, partly to seed extra media to get my other tank started quicker). I think the plants in the tank are mainly amazon swords, and one or two very sad looking crypts (they were completely covered in BBA, I had to cull and prune most of it...hoping the random clean leaves left are able to resurrect). I have to do more research to be sure which is partly why I joined here.

The original fish inhabitants are one fairly largish featherfin, two bristlenoses and two yoyo loaches. I have added three more small yoyos as the two in the tank were tormenting each other and I know they do better in larger groups. This has settled some of the aggression, but I know this tank will eventually be too small for them, so I'm setting up my other tanks.

My other two tanks are a 5ftx1.5x1.5 tank I've had sitting empty for the past five years, and a project tank 7ftx3x3.5. I'm going to fill the 5ft today and leave it for a week as a leak test before setting it up properly with its fx5 filter, a co2 reactor I have on order and a full spectrum led plant light I've had in storage for a while. I'm planting that one out with mainly anubias, crypts, ludwigia and HC ground cover. It's going to house cories and clown loaches (grow out for them) with a few turquoise rainbows and guppies as dither fish.

Once these two are running smoothly (haha), I'm turning my attention to my huge project tank. This one I'm going to set up as a river biotope for my clown loaches when they get too big for the five footer, with shrimp living in the sump maybe and a lot of hardy plants well established hopefully before they get there. When the clowns move to the project tank, the yoyos will take over the five footer.
 

felipemillhouse

New Member
Nov 12, 2021
1
0
1
Canada
Hi All,

My name is Felipe I have been aquascaping for 8 years, my background is software developer and I have done a mobile aquascaping app called Aquamind to compose my portfolio.
I hope to get more knowledge and ideas to add new features to it.