An Idea Was Born

Back in college at UF, I had a 38 gallon bowfront that I went in on 50/50 with a roommate.  We had some cichlids and other random fish with some lives plants but nothing too crazy.  At the time I didn't know aquascaping was a thing.  This was 1999-2000 so I guess it really wasn't a huge thing.  I had a few other friends with tanks in college who also had some plants growing.  Pretty simple stuff really but we liked it.  Plants seemed to grow pretty well without doing much.  We dosed something in that tank, but I have no clue what it was.   I would change the water once every few months or so if that.  Eventually I moved out of that apartment and left my half of the tank to the roommates.

Here we are in 2018 and I found out my brother in law had been doing planted tanks for a few years.  I saw show pictures of his and that got me looking around on the internet.  This is when I found Takashi Amano.  I started watching video after video.  I knew this was it, this was the stuff I wanted.  I wanted a tank just like his.  Come to find out, ADA makes the most expensive stuff there is but it was too late, I had decided that was what I wanted.  If I was going to get back into this and try aquascaping for real, I wanted to get the best money could buy right off the bat since I knew I was going to enjoy the hobby.

Time to start saving my money and figure out how to make this a reality.  While I'm posting this in September of 2018, this idea started around March of 2018.

Here was one layout from Tropica that inspired me.