A Bold Endeavour - A Two Faced Tank

[joshuatang]

Hello Everyone,

Inspired by the recent Aquarama and all the wonderful ideas from our AQ community, I've decided to get off the comfy sofa and revive my half dead tank. What started out as a joke became a reality after today's long but fun day.

Here's a picture of my old very messy tank.



Things went out of hand in my three-feet tank when I was away for a month. My fissidens were algae-fied and the conditions weren't exactly very ideal. So I cleaned it up today and decided to rescape.

My ideas aren't exactly very creative and new - mostly inspired by someone else's scape. I wanted to try a bit of everything and see what works for me. So decided to give it a go!

Here's DAY ONE of my Bold Endeavour.

Left half shot - Adopting the a triangle slope from the right.



Right half shot - Triangle from the left.



A Frontal Shot - The Two Faced Island. A more affectionate name would be Sungei Buloh meets Punggol Waterway.



Today is Day ONE, so water is slightly cloudy and I realised the partition is causing dead water on the left. Will reposition the rain bar or add another canister for the left. Though I don't quite like the latter idea as it would defeat the purpose of fully utilising one tank's set up for two different scapes. Open to other suggestions.

Would add more plants to the foreground as it seems rather bare now but slow and steady! And need more cash!

Open to any suggestions from you guys. I'm 50-50 with Hairgrass and Glosso.

Lastly, I am also experimenting on the DSM with HC in a 2ft tank.

Day ONE as well - Nothing Fanciful, A humble attempt at something very new for me.




I'm very open to your comments, feedback and opinions! Let me know what you think!

[cobrafish]

Nice work, imho, you should take out the center divider as the scape looks full without it. It's not very "two-faced" thus, the center divider may look awkard inside. What i mean by that is because the subtrate and wood used in both size are more or less the same, only the rocks are different thus, if you really want an effect of the two faced tank, maybe you could use a different subtrate and different scaping wood . Just my two cents, hopefully I didn't offend you.

Anw nice work! I especially like the left side work!

[joshuatang]

Rushed home from work to check out the tank! Haven't felt like that in a way! time to let work take a backseat!

Water has cleared home and personally feel the colours are nicer! Maybe I'm biased! Haha.







Will check parameters in a bit!


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[joshuatang]

Nice work, imho, you should take out the center divider as the scape looks full without it. It's not very "two-faced" thus, the center divider may look awkard inside. What i mean by that is because the subtrate and wood used in both size are more or less the same, only the rocks are different thus, if you really want an effect of the two faced tank, maybe you could use a different subtrate and different scaping wood . Just my two cents, hopefully I didn't offend you.

Anw nice work! I especially like the left side work!

Hey bro! thanks for your kind words! And no worries I take no offense at all! in fact, you make a lot of sense!

Maybe an entirely different set of foreground plants will give each "face" a more distinctive character? I was thinking of doing a path with white peddles for the left. What do you think?



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[cobrafish]

Thanks bro for taking in my suggestion. Me personally never liked white pebbles or more "artificial" stuff in my scape. They make the scape " less" natural.

In my opinion, I'd suggest the right side to be densely planted and the left to be simple and less dense.

For the left side, I would abit more bogwood, and bogwood only, maybe get one that looks like a tree or roots with some lava rocks and tie moss and fissidens on it. Make it simple and graceful. Then transfer all those tall ferns at the back to the right side.

For the right side, I would maintain it's look and add those plants from the left into it and make it more dense.

For the right side I'd keep schooling fishes like rummy nose n tetras.

For the left I'd keep one or two territorial fishes such as ram, aspito, CPO or maybe shrimps.

Lastly the blue oyama looks a little awkard, maybe can change it to black?

Make the side look extremely different. Left peaceful and swaying and right mysterious and secret keeping.

[joshuatang]

Hmmm.. Food for thought! That's a good one. Peace and serenity at one side while the other is chaos.

Will have to stick with the blue oyama, simply because can't tear everything down for the sticker. My recent rescape already got warning from CO.

But yes, thanks bro - I like your suggestions, keep 'em coming!


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[cdckjn]

To create 'more' water flow, instead of having a full height acrylic, you can have a quarter height acrylic - hopefully this will still give the illusion of a two-faced tank. The other way is to drill several medium-sized holes into the acrylic - this will also generate the water flow. else you can cut 10 or 20 slots at the top of the acrylic, this creates a sort of buffer wall and allows water to flow through. Good luck and a cool aquascaping job.

[felix_fx2]

trying to drill holes now to allow more flow might be a better idea.

dead spots in the tank will give rise to algae in future. i met with similar problem with i joined 2 tanks with water bridge. and its really bad in one tank.

[joshuatang]

Hey thanks guys! I've removed the partition 2 days ago because the water was really stagnating.

Anyway, I recently bought a lily pipe for the outlet (water back to tank part? - I get confused with the in/out parts) and the current has dropped significantly as compared to the use of a rainbar. Is this normal?

Please advise.


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[Urban Aquaria]

Lily pipes generally tend to create a more gentle current (compared to rain bar systems).

There are actually many different designs of lily pipes which cater to different current speeds. For example, fast current (jet or violet design), medium current (lily design) or slow current (spin or sphere design).

Usually the wider the mouth of the lily pipe, the more spread out the flow would be and therefore the more gentle the current.