My new japanese rock garden

[Starry]

Looks great! Love the java Bonsi tree.

Starry

[tang daddy]

thanks guys!!

Ol nobody the tree looking thing is my own creation, a piece of wood root straight from japan my buddy hooked me up with a few pieces of it boiled it down for 12hrs and attached a base rock to the bottom, then I used taiwan moss with black thread to attach it to the wood. My original intensions was a bonsai tree! I was trying to grow out the TM and prune but the more I look at it it's leaning to a weeping willow oh well.

Delphinus the time frame of the set up was about 1 week and has been running for about 3 now I added the crs shrimp after a week although my water is aged and cycled from my old tank I used new filter media as I didn't want any snails in this setup big mistake!!
The CRS-crystal red shrimp were expensive about 20 bucks a piece I got them from imisky, he breeds higher grade shrimp and I took 20 shrimp from him but as the substrate and filter media is new it's going threw a mini cycle and I lost about 10 shrimp no biggie for some, but 200 big ones for me dang anyhow lesson learned like a speeding ticket I'll be more careful next time.

[dsaundry]

Very nicely done...looks awesome..

[christyf5]

Wow that looks awesome! I love what you've done with the two types of substrate and the java moss. Very impressive

[Chowder]

Nice always liked the less is more look of fresh water tanks.

[sharuq1]

Heh I need to copy that!

[impreza]

I soooo want to due that!

Is the black substrate glued or anything? what is preventing it from being mixed?

[impreza]

I'm a noob to freshwater plants, so besides the taiwan moss, what else is in there? do you run CO2 or anything?

[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.

[Keri]

Tang daddy that's a beautiful thank!! I've always liked those, what kind of lights do you have on it?