3 Feet Rescape

**Puffer** · 25th Jul 2010, 01:57

Just managed to rescape my tank over the past week. Feel free to comment. Some information about the tank as follows:

Fauna: sparkling gouramis, pygmy cories (intended), fire-red or sakura shrimps, L309 bristlenose (Tank is currently still empty though)
Flora: mainly anubias, common crypts and ferns
Substrate: GEX (Plant & Shrimp)
Water Parameters: yet to be tested

Filter has been washed (with old tank water) and kept going in a pail of aged water throughout before going into the new tank, so bacteria house should be alive and kicking - but to play safe, I intend to put in the fauna in another 3 days' time, or so.

**Puffer** · 30th Jul 2010, 10:34

Closer view of the layout. A couple of Malayan shrimps were thrown in and they are doing fine, so this morning I added in 4 Trichopsis Pumila and my baby L309 male will be in by end of the day.

**Wingless** · 30th Jul 2010, 15:06

nice tank. interested to know that if you use Co2 for your 3ft tank and how many Watts for your lighting?

**Puffer** · 31st Jul 2010, 14:18

I am using co2 cylinder for now - 1 bps and lighting will be 36W x 2 and another 24W x 2 (8 hours). Right now, I'm only using one tube of 36W x 2 (8 hours) as my plants are slow-growing types and quite bare. I'm still searching for narrow-leaf ferns and/or mini ferns, and more java moss. I'm happy to report that there is no casualty spotted.

**beetroot** · 31st Jul 2010, 15:24

Hi Rob
What do you intend to do with the foreground? Is it going to be left bare? Yeah, i guess more narrow leaves and ferns would be nice. Good luck and keep us updated.

**Puffer** · 31st Jul 2010, 23:56

Hello Ann, Yeah I intend to leave the foreground rather bare, perhaps with bits of small crypts here and there. I enjoy seeing my fish picking food at the bottom. Now there are a few sparkling gouramis (your favourites) and a male bristlenose (L309??) in the tank. I'm thinking of a shoal of C pygmaeus. Any other small fish to suggest for my tank?

**beetroot** · 1st Aug 2010, 10:58

Well, i suppose if you're going to keep some pygmy cories, you'd need some bare space for feeding. Hmm... in comparison with my tank, we are sort of trying or have tried about the same stuff. My current tank: I used to have 2 sparkling gouramis, now down with one as the other died of disease. The remaining one is always hiding though. Kept a whiptail for a very short while, then it said byebye to me

Then i had a shoal of pygmy cories, but now only left with a few and they are always hiding behind the ferns, so i'm not sure if they are eating well. Have some malayan shrimps too. So i added boraras brigittae for small fish. Someone told me cardinal tetras should be safe too, but i didn't try. Should be nice when they school

**Puffer** · 20th Aug 2010, 22:26

It's been almost a month since the rescape. I have added some narrow leaf ferns and mini ferns tied to a piece of wood (on the left).

Tweaked with the co2/outflow. First, I used ceramic diffusor and allow the outflow pipe to blow the co2 to the right side of tank. Spot algae, BBA, and little hair algae appeared. Then, I used the empty reactor with co2 running through it (NA-style). The tank seem peaceful and with almost no current. Thus, bba grew on the plant leaves mainly on both ends of the tank. So, I just installed a powerhead (1200l/h) but found the current abit strong.

Fert regime: Lushgro Aqua + micro once a week after water change 30%.

Fauna remains the same - except a few otos and sakura/tiger shrimps. The shrimps are heavily casualties after the dosages of Excel

Many shrimplets also gobbled up by the ever-hungry sparkling gouramis. I'll just stick to malayan shrimps now.