#that's vallisneria nana in the back corners + cryptocoryne in front of the vals (i think flamingo (left) and wendtii smth (right) but shrug)

[databent]

moved fishietank ^_^👍

to Go To Sleepies ... or to Play Videos Game ..... or to Move Fishtank. that's is the questions

[ulkoillafish]

140 L project tank improvement Step 9: RESCAPE! With a new, previously never-reported substrate bag method! 

It’s not a 100% fair comparison. The ‘before’ tank was ridiculously overgrown to ensure that I’d have good quality plants to pick for the rescape. Which didn’t help much in the end because probably 99.999% of the plant mass was vallisneria and the cryptocoryne LOL

To balance this, the tank isn’t 100% done. Moss(es), carpeting plant(s) and background plant(s) are missing, spare the java moss (on drift wood at left. Neither are looking too hot atm but I didn’t want to scrape it to save bacteria). 

We were having a bit of a cold snap and when the temperature hovers around -20 C (-4 F) it’s... not a good time to make an online purchase for plants. Anyway.

How do I feel it went? Could’ve been better, could’ve been worse. I’m hoping things get better when the cloudiness settles and I finish with the plants.

To summarize and further comment the method:

- The substrate bags appeared to work. But when filed, they got a bit rounder. As a result, they got a bit higher and wider -> in the lower areas the mesh it a bite closer the surface then I’d like. It’s clearly better to make the bags a bit too small and top with a larger amount of substrate

Related to the previous, planting on the thin substrate layer on the bags was Not Great. The same made it difficult to balance hardscape

- Due to the unexpected height growth, I under-filled some of the bags not to make them so stupidly high. As a result, the stones “sunk” into the bag. Which moved the substrate to the part that was supposed to be less high. Which ate a lot a difference in height. 

This was purely of my own stupidity, and boy did I want to kick my own @ss for this

I’m betting that maintaining the “dirt road” (wood, coconut pieces and alder cones in the low part between the “isles”) will horrible. There’s just too little height difference

- I made a questionable aesthetic choices with the val and the driftwood by placing them in the highest part of the tank. If you look really closely, you can see the sand the val is planted on left back corner but one shouldn’t have to look closely! Now it just looks like a bunch of val. At the right side of the val bunch is actually a piece of driftwood (covered with very dirty java moss) which is also somehow making the part look less high

I’ll probably move the dwarf sword in front of the val to make the sand show better.

- Small things like plant choices, such as anubias nana being just too big. I wanted var. petite but I’m a small town person and I had to to with what I had

To summarize:  Could’ve been better, could’ve been worse. Mistakes were made but I feel like I actually learned a lot. If the substrate bag system won’t show some unexpected problem (stay tuned!), I’ll be using it in tanks yet to come, with some experience and understanding on what to do and what to avoid.