3 Feet Dragon Rock Scape Planted. Pic heavy

**daniel19831123** · 19th Feb 2012, 17:02

Well just a quick update after a little over 2 weeks since the tank has been setup. The plants so far is doing ok. Some thriving and some melting.... But I suppose this is expected due to all the things that had happened over the last 2 weeks! Let me see where I start...

In the first week, the plants were melting really fast despite me cranking up the CO2 rate. Used 2 different drop checker and OMG one was bright yellow and one was blue. The moment I realised this, I went out and bought enough tubing to split the system. Now my chiller is powered by the 1700LPH pump where as my tetratec 1200 is running as usual. Needless to say the whole tank is now like a whirlpool. Still waiting for my second Lily pipe to come today to make the flow more gentle but I'll update the picture once the pipe arrive tonight.

Then within the same week, the MH light keep tripping the fuse box for unknown reason. However, once the lights are turn on it will be fine. It's the bit when it was trying to power up that seemed to tripped the fuse. Anyway, I just manually turn the lights on everyday. This was probably my biggest mistake ever... Went back to malaysia for 2 days and left the light to be turn on via timer. Came back on day to find that the light wasn't switched on and my neighbour said they smelt something burning from my living room the day I left! Looking at the bulb, I don't think it is damaged. I've got a strong suspicion that it's the ballast. Anyway, the seller is coming to pick it up tonight to have a look at it. Well you can imagine 3 days without light in a high tech tank... Most of my staurogyne melted or stunted. With the only exception being the limnophila hippuroides. It's grown through ups and down and I've now more than 20 stems in less than 2 weeks! The blyxa is bouncing back really strong too. My P. Helferi and UG took a hard hit and I'm barely left with nothing at the moment.
Limnophila hippuroides top view

Side view

Front view

Staurogyne being eaten by what looks like a water caterpillar!

Crypt undulata red regrowing new leaves

Poor pogostemon helferi trying to sprout new shoots

HC getting hit hard

blyxa growing out new leaves with red hue

Current tank view

**daniel19831123** · 19th Feb 2012, 17:07

I've also bought some fauna to go in the tank and currently still undergoing acclimatising before releasing them into the tank. The list is as follows

1. 10 x taiwan fire red shrimp
2. 100 x golden harlequin rasbora
3. 5 x pgymy puffer
4. 26 x otocinclus
5. 4 x small SAE

Will post more picture once the fish are released into the tank!

**ralliart12** · 19th Feb 2012, 17:09

Hi Daniel, may I know how did you evaluate your HC to be "hit hard"? As they still look mostly green to me.

**daniel19831123** · 19th Feb 2012, 18:44

The original HC was about 3 times as much. lol. this is the left over after all the melting and decaying. As you can see there isn't much of pogostemon helferi left except for a few bare stalks....
Just made a horrible mistake too... Bought too much fish! The whole tank is packed with fish! might have to give up a lot of my golden harlequin rasbora as they are taking over the spotlight!

**friend688** · 23rd Mar 2012, 01:15

hi Daniel,

Nice set up!

Can help provide me a bit of help? I wish to get similar tank, cabinet and plants.
My cell phone- 96818811, drop me a sms

Thanks new friend.

Regards,
friend688

**daniel19831123** · 28th Mar 2012, 19:58

Ok Time for an update for this tank.

In between the pictures, I've added a total of

1. 20 x taiwan fire red shrimp
2. 100 x golden harlequin rasbora
3. 5 x pgymy puffer
4. 26 x otocinclus
5. 4 x small SAE

Filter seemed to be coping well with these level of stocking. The fish death so far seemed to be due to bullying or jumping out of tank! So far I've lost about 20 tetras and 1 SAE. The otos and shrimp were dying one after another till I find out that it was the dwarf puffer viscious attack that was killing them! Since I've separated the puffer fish, I haven't had any casualty of otos and shrimp since. the 5 puffer anihilated my 7 otos, 18 fire red and 10 amano.... Viscious little bugger they are. Sorry for the lack of posting recently. Been traveling and working a lot and have someone lost my camera and still waiting for my pay check this month to buy a new camera. The tank is quite different at the moment but I will update as soon as possible. I'm trying to grow a HC carpet as foreground as I found that it is quite hard to maintain the separation between the soil and the sand and it's turning ugly. The staurogyne was still struggling with the HC failing to grab foot on the stones.... Well I've up the CO2 to 2bps for one week and things appeared to be improving. I will post some picture once I get some decent foreground coverage. lol.

This is the tank now at day 59

Still loads of room to grow. Sorry for the floating cups and the poor quality of the picture It's taken from my iphone.

**jamesneo** · 28th Mar 2012, 21:45

Nice. When the foreground is filled up, please consider to submit for competition.

**VSGenesis** · 29th Mar 2012, 03:39

Originally Posted by jamesneo

Nice. When the foreground is filled up, please consider to submit for competition.

Bro I concur with jamesneo.

**daniel19831123** · 29th Mar 2012, 07:28

Thanks for the kind comments! Still loads of growing to go before I consider this scape completed. and not to mention getting my photography skill up to scratch. I'm guessing another 2-3 months time I should be able to make it more presentable. There might be some alteration to the plants over the next few months. I might remove the hydrocotyle in the right as it's not a foreground plant that I have anticipated. Might just substitute it either blyxa or marsilea sp. The foreground was initially meant for Downoi but seeing how slow they grow and how difficult they can be, I'm going to substitute with staurogyne and HC but still having a small centre portion for downoi as a focus point. The left hand corner will be filled with UG. I was trying to get a more natural feel to the tank but I'm worried that it will look too messy. This dutch approach with a bit of hardscape will hopefully provide some softening touch to the rigid structure.

**bluebubbles** · 30th Mar 2012, 19:59

Originally Posted by daniel19831123

There might be some alteration to the plants over the next few months. I might remove the hydrocotyle in the right as it's not a foreground plant that I have anticipated. Might just substitute it either blyxa or marsilea sp. The foreground was initially meant for Downoi but seeing how slow they grow and how difficult they can be, I'm going to substitute with staurogyne and HC but still having a small centre portion for downoi as a focus point. The left hand corner will be filled with UG. I was trying to get a more natural feel to the tank but I'm worried that it will look too messy. This dutch approach with a bit of hardscape will hopefully provide some softening touch to the rigid structure.

I thought this tank was sold.

Anyway, nice rockscape there.