Today is the day for me.. yah..

[StanChung]

haha cool... i've been procrastinating on the hanging of the lights thing as well...but haven't been as busy as you. haha

[Nicky]

A Quick Update:

Have been difficult and slow to get the tank up and running; kids always there to be 'involved' and messed-up things.
All purchases were done without any hiccups. We worked about 3+ hours on Fri night into Sat morning only to fixed the lights and put in the base fert and substrate.

The hanging of lights are no joke if you want to do it 'properly'. We balanced the light on the 2 edges of the tank. Then using a long-fishing-weight tied to a strong fishing leader line, one of us suspended the weight over the tank and the other 2 guys aligned the weight by viewing the weight from 2 sides of the tank. There's lots of 'left a bit, more, 3 mm more, too much, etc, etc'. Then as expected the false ceiling cannot hold the screw of the suspension cable well.. So one of us have to climb into the ceiling and place a piece of wood when another drill the screw through the ceiling.. damn siong

On Sat afternoon when the family is out for CNY visiting, I put in 4 hours of work to tie plants onto wood. All seems well and good and I was pretty pleased with the layout. Then when I put in the water, 7 out of 13 pieces of wood floated...... I am now using brick to hold the wood down but no matter what I am not able to put those damn wood into the original pattern anymore.. am sure you people encountered that as well..why har?? damn..

Then when I hooked on 1 of the 2026 to the chiller, the o-ring gave way.. and water is all over the place..

Note that the planta T5 has a 'burn-in' period of a few hours. During that period, the light is pink color (almost reddish). Yes it is like those 'luo-han light'.. quite shocking. But after that initial 3-4 hours, the light is now the regular daylight that we are familiar with.

Another thing is that those M-reflector for T5 has very sharp edges. Of the 3 person working on my lights, 2 got cut on their fingers.

That's all for now.. with the cloudy water and the bricks in the tank I don't think the pic is anything to crow about. Will take some pictures when the wood sinks and when the water clears up. That's probably gonna take a while.. hopefully the plants will grow nicely in time for the ADA competition.

[Fei Miao]

Wow, beautiful tank! remember to document the process and post it in the Aquascape section, will be a awesome journal!

[Nicky]

Here's some pictures on that tiring night..


These 4 supports took forever. Used fishing weight attached to nylon lines to mark position before screwing the support into the ceiling.





This is the final result. The hgt of the light can be adjusted easily. Thinking of changing the wire to those transparent type. Anyone knows where to buy those wire?



ChanCK's hairy legs . He is partially in the roof access to connect the electrical wires. Allen is hidden in the ceiling. He was the one who held on to the wood while I do the easy work of screwing .. screwing the support onto the ceiling lah.. what are you thinking of?



ADA Powersand Special.

[Nicky]

Deep Tank needs 'ape' hand. People says long-hand-people has long- err.. better don't mention it here... but let me say that they are right



Desired layout but no matter what I'm not able to replicate it anymore



The actors of the day; ChanCK and me. Should have Allen in the picture as well. When you have difficult project, you need friends like them.

[Rupert]

Great shots Nicky, I like your suspended lights. I can imagine that it took a lot of patience to align lights correctly and having a few friends around is required for such a tricky job!

[michael lai]

I like the drift wood layout.

[ranmasatome]

nicky...one word..

AWESOME!!!!

[StanChung]

ho leng ah...

btw...can i borrow your friends?

[fazlee]

Hi Nicky;

Any updates on your setup?
Where did you get your driftwood? Im looking for something similar to yours.

Thks

[kemp]

yeah agree also.
would like to see the updates

Hi Nicky;

Any updates on your setup?
Where did you get your driftwood? Im looking for something similar to yours.

Thks

[Nicky]

Where did you get your driftwood? Im looking for something similar to yours.

I learnt that one has to get quite a large collection of wood before one has a better chance of doing up a reasonably ok scape. Remember I put up quite a lot of wood for sale? Those are the left over. I think no matter how 'nice' you think the one piece of wood is in the LFS, there is always a big possibility that it does not fit in to your existing setup, for whatever reason that you can/cannot imagine.

Anyway here's the update. I screwed myself big time, by putting Goldmad's piece of wood into my setup in order to take a pic to show potential buyers; thinking that I can set back my scape for the ADA competition. Boy I was dead wrong.. the more I tried to get back the worst it become.
So now this becomes my ADA competition photo for 2006.. yah lah.. don't have to tell me... I know it is once again, an 'also-ran' entry

Want to kick myself.. why didn't I take a photo first right

I will try to take leave from work to get my scape back.

[ranmasatome]

i dont get the second part of your post.. what exactly happened? Also remove piping mah..

[michael lai]

Nicky, I think if you shift the bolbitis to the centre just below the java fern hill to form a cavern, it might turn out ok. Don't think it's achieving the effect you want by leaving it at the left corner. My 2 cents.

[|squee|]

Imho it looks really unique, and nice! Looking forward to see how it rates in the ADA 06.

If I were to improve this, I'd add a few strands of Vallis sp. to the back right.

Good peice of work there.

[fazlee]

Dang! My java philipines just turned rotten again for no reason. Most of it.
This is my third try. Other javas var. seems ok.