My new japanese rock garden

[tang daddy]

thanks for the comments guys, imprezza ask away! the substrate is eco complete with black gravel and white sand but not beach sand, I think it's synthetic and the reason for not using beach sand or aragonite is the ph would buffer higher than I want.

Since I'm trying to breed crs shrimp I need the ph at 6-6.5 and achieve that with co2 ladder system, substrate is not glued so it does mix in but not a big deal I have more sand also I'm going with finer ada soil later on which will stop the sand from further mixing.

Plants I have are taiwan moss, fissedin moss, glossostigma, HC, ultragrammafolia, mini pellia and a marimo moss ball. With my last set up looking like a rainforest I decided to sell everything and start over, new year new setup I want this design to be open with some accents here and there the idea in mind is a rock garden with nice manicured hedges and 1 tree I don't want a forest.

Plants I will be adding in the future is suberstwang and flame moss again keeping in mind that it's open and minimal, for now I am growing things out and then will trim it down maybe sell off what I don't use.

One thing that is equally rewarding with a planted freshwater set up is the versatility to achieve what ever you imagine and for me the rewards are endless. The crs shrimp were a big reason why I went with the set up, I had about 20 high grade crs at 20 bucks a piece that's 400 bucks in shrimp.... I wanted to see my investment and in a set up like this their easily viewed I also added 19 more but they were abit cheaper my goal in a year is to have atleast 100 crs in the tank and by next year 300 shrimp.

The colours of these shrimp remind me of their close salt water relatives the coral banded shrimp and are very pleasing to look at.