Cube Garden Glass Stand

Look at that beauty.  It looks so amazing in person.  This is the ADA Cube Garden Stand.  I ordered it from Aqua Forest Aquarium over 2 months ago and I'm glad I pulled the tigger when I did because it was quite the process.  First, AFA didn't have the stand in stock so guess what that means...special order from ADA in Japan.  They get shipments like once a month from ADA so I ordered so I could get in on the next round.  This was a shipping experience unlike any other I've ever dealt with.  George and Steven Lo at AFA recommended that I have the stand shipped via freight so that it could be packed extra safe and be delivered on a pallet.  This cost a good bit extra to have done, like an extra $100 but I think it was worth it.  The last thing I wanted was for the stand to get here all the way from Japan and be broken.  Especially since it was already going to take 2 months.  The day finally came and it was being delivered.  An 18 wheeler pulled up in front of my house.  I was like huh, this is interesting.  The dude opens up the back and my pallet was literally one of like 3 things in the whole truck, very odd but whatever I figure.  As he pulls it towards me, I think I must have the wrong shipment, it is a whole pallet full of ADA boxes.  All I can think is maybe Aqua Forest accidentally sent me their entire shipment meant for the store.  I'm talking like 20 boxes with ADA on them.  I tell the truck driver I think I got more than I expected and then he tells me that likely those boxes are all just protection and padding.  DUH!  Of course it is, I ordered a glass stand from Japan, why didn't I think of that. 

I've been trying to think of a name for the tank for when I post about it on Reddit but I had been stumped until now.   Once I got the stand in place it feels like the tank is floating.  Even more so in person than in the pictures.  The glass is so crystal clear you wouldn't know it was there if it wasn't for the cross pieces.  Floating Something is where I'm headed with a name.

This is also week 4 of the dry start and boy has it been a productive week.  Everything continues to grow like crazy.  The Monte Carlo just keeps on spreading faster and faster.  The mosses are all going wild and stretching in all directions.  Very exciting to see.  I think I'll flood the tank in about 2 weeks.  That means I need to get serious about figuring out what midground and background plants will fill the rest of the tank.

This week I also ordered the final pieces of the puzzle.  Turns out there is a local company here in Gainesville that is one of the leaders in Aquarium CO2 regulators, Green Leaf Aquariums.  This was a huge shock to me to find out the brand so many people around the world seem to trust is right in my backyard.  I had a bunch of back and forth with GLA to make sure I knew the exact measurements of the regulator and 5 lb tank to be sure it would fit in my stand.  I ended up going with the GLA PRO-1 Complete System with and LED on the solenoid.  In the order, I also got my dry ferts for doing EI (Estimative Index) fertilizer dosing.  I bought some squeeze bottles because I plan to premix the stuff to make the daily dosing routine simple.  I also bought this amazing CO2 Checker from Cal Aqua Labs called the Pearl.  All that stuff arrives tomorrow so I'll make another post about all those goodies.

Dry Start 3 Weeks Down

Finally hit the half way mark and things are progressing really well.  My plan up front was to let the dry start go for 6 weeks.  From the growth I've seen with the Monte Carlo, I think that's going to turn out pretty accurate to have a full carpet.  Here are a few top down shots that gives you a sense of the MC coming together in many places.  You can see they gaps are starting to close.

Everything else in the tank is doing really well too.  In particular I've seen some of the Bucephalandra starting to all throw out new roots and several have even put out entire new leaves.  I wasn't expecting that so they must be pretty happy.  

Here is a close up shot of the Crystalwort Moss.  When I first started a week ago, you could easily see the fishing line I used to tie it down.  In a week, you can already see the moss growing outwards and hiding most of the line holding it down to the small Dragonstone.  I was complete surprised by this.

Even the Christmas Moss seems to be growing well.  I can see new growth stretching upwards.  I assume at this point it probably has started anchoring to the wood but I'm not gonna try to pull on it to find out.

The one thing I'm not sure of is the Phoenix Moss on the branches.  I've had a hard time keeping it moist even spraying it all down twice a day.  Now even though the pictures never show it, the top is covered with cellophane all day and night and it stay very humid in there.  The branches just seem to dry out way more than everything else.  The moss on the lowest branch looks the best and the closer to the light, the worse it looks.  I'm not too worried about it, I bet it'll turn out just fine once I flood the tank in a few weeks.

My stand comes tomorrow so I'm pretty excited.  I ordered it over 2 months ago.  It had to be special ordered from Japan.  Once it arrived in California it was loaded onto a pallet and is being delivered freight to my house.  My next post will have plenty of new stuff to show.  I'll likely get my stand and tank in place and also put the SuperJet ES-600 there so I can start to get a feel for what it's all gonna look like.

Dry Start Substrate Puddles

One thing I had read over and over when researching the Dry Start Method was to avoid ever having so much water that you'd notice pools on top of the substrate.  When I first added water to the plants, I brought the water level to maybe a 1/4 inch below the substrate.  This gave plenty of water for the roots to reach down for and also made sure the Monte Carlo wasn't sitting in a puddle where mold could possibly grow (I think is the idea).


After about a week of twice daily misting of the Bucephalandra, mosses and Monte Carlo, I realized I was adding significant water to the tank to the point where I was starting to see pools in a few areas.  I needed to figure out some way to get some water out since I was going to continue to need to mist at the same rate for another month or so.



My first idea was a turkey baster to pull the liquid from the substrate.  I'm sure that would have worked fine but I realized I didn't own one.  Long ago I stopped baking turkeys and only fry them now.  I remembered I do have these bulb devices that are used to suck snot from your sick kids noses.  My wife agreed that we no longer needed multiple of these so I was set.

It's a decent amount of effort to get a cup full of water from the substrate as some of the ADA Aquasoil wanted to get sucked up and blocks the passage.  What I've found works best is to dig way down to where the ADA Powersand is to suck the water out.  This sand are much larger pieces and don't tend to get sucked into the nozzle.

At this point, I have to do this like once every 3 days.  That seems to be about how long it takes to replace the cup you see full of water.  I would love to take a bit more to do this less often, but that's where I'm at today.

Yogurt Blender Method with Fissidens Fontanus

I have to say I kinda feel bad.  I ordered a small amount of Fissidens Fontanus (Phoenix Moss) from BucePlant for like $12.  It looked terrible in the package, super brown with just barely any green.  When I looked at the website, it's not at all what I expected.  I'm not crazy, look at that.

So I emailed them and told them I thought it was dead on arrival.  They were nice enough to send me a coupon for $15 free next time I shop there.  So today I finally get around to actually opening it up to see what it looked like.

Even looking at it once I opened the package, I still wasn't very confident.  But I figured why not give it a shot.  I'll try the yogurt method and if it works great, if not oh well.  

So first I added some distilled water and the Phoenix Moss to my wife's blender.  Suffice to say, she was not thrilled to see my putting this moss in her Vitamix.  I argued this was no different that making a smoothie with spinach but she was convinced the moss particles were going to get up in the blade crevices.  Either way, I told her I was going for it.  After I blended it lightly, I strained it in a coffee filter which I had seem someone do online.  I then added it to a small dish and added about a teaspoon of whole fat plain Greek yogurt.  I guess the idea behind the yogurt is it actually helps the moss adhere to the surfaces of rocks and wood but more importantly it contains beneficial bacteria for the moss during this period.

Here is a shot before I mixed the yogurt with some more distilled water and you can see after I mixed, I could actually see the moss was in much better shape than I thought.  It was much easier to see the green.  You'll also see further down where once it was applied to the hardscape it was clearly in pretty good shape.

Here are some final shots after I was completed.  You can see I used a paintbrush to help me apply the moss.  The beauty of this method is that it allows you to attache the moss where you want it without the need to tie it down or use glue.  Fortunately I was already doing a dry start for the tank so this was a no-brainer. Using this method also tends to allow the moss to grow in more naturally.  Rather than having a dense even distribution across a branch, I can scatter the thickness and even leave sections blank to allow the growth to appear more natural.  I focused the Phoenix Moss primarily on the branches which is where it would appear more natural than the Christmas Moss.  I did put a little on a few small places of Dragonstone mostly because I was curious which it would prefer to grow on using this method.

 I hope the yogurt doesn't make the tank stink too bad.

Crystalwort & Christmas Moss

I ordered some mosses at the same time I ordered the Bucephalandra I posted about last.  I chose 3 different types so I could try and have some variety in the tank.  I mostly researched popular mosses and chose the ones I thought looked cool.  As a result I ended up ordering Riccia Fluitans (Crystalwort), Vesicularia Sp (Christmas Moss) and Fissidens Fontanus (Phoenix Moss).  

The Fissidens that came didn't look very good, it was pretty brown compared to the pictures BucePlant.  I was planning on using the yogurt method for it where you chop/grind it up and add a little bit of yogurt and water and paint the moss on with a paintbrush where you want the moss.  I held off on this today to see if BucePlant would replace what I was sent.  So today, I planted the Crystalwort and Christmas Moss.

The first thing I started with was the Crystalwort.  I hadn't done much research and assumed this stuff would attach itself to wood or stone like other mosses.  I was incorrect in this assumption.  Apparently this moss will just float in big balls at the top of the tank if not tied to something.  I had plenty of small additional pieces of Dragonstone from when I broke up my larger pieces.  I used braided fluorocarbon fishing line that I already had (lucky it was green too) and wrapped it heavily around the stone.  I saw this method online and once the Crystalwort grows out, you don't see any of this.  Here is an example of one of the pieces and some shots of where they ended up in the tank.

Next was time for Christmas Moss.  BucePlant upgraded me for free to a larger size than I ordered and this was way more than I needed.  I understand that this moss does pretty well attaching itself to things so my plan was to attach it to some portions of the main trunks of my Spiderwood.  I was saving the Spiderwood branches for the Fissidens.

You'll see my placement of the Christmas moss was such that I didn't hide the Spiderwood completely.  I wanted to still be able to see big portions of the wood.  I also tried to scatter the sections to try and appear as natural as possible.

I was able to save the extra Christmas Moss and plan to give a bunch back to my new scaping buddy who gave me all the Monte Carlo.  What goes around comes around.

The Buce Is Loose

The next phase of my Dry Start us underway.  Before I get started, last I spoke of the white mold growing on my driftwood.  I was planning on just ignoring it, but I figured I'd knock it back before I planted new stuff.  I took some advice I got on Reddit and used hydrogen peroxide and wiped it all down with cotton balls.  It seemed to clean it up and supposedly it does a good job of keeping it away.

For this phase, I ordered Bucephalandra and various mosses from BucePlant.com.  Being the noob that I am, I just went with their starter package with comes with a random assortment for like $25.  Pretty sweet deal from what I can tell and I'm super happy with the quality of plants and the size for my tank.  They try to mix up the varieties so you get some with different colors.  I haven't done anything with the mosses yet so I'll go into those in another post at some point.  Today was all about the Buce, bout that Buce, no treble.  Dad jokes.

So as typical, here is the final shot of the 5 different Buce species integrated into the tank of Monte Carlo and Dwarf Hair Grass.  This is exactly 1 week into the Dry Start.  One shot from the front and another from the top.  It's kinda hard to see them all as they blend in pretty well but I'll have nice closeups later down the line.

Here they all are together just before I planted them.  Because I'm doing a dry start, I'm not concerned with tying them down or gluing them to the rocks or wood.  I'm hoping that if I keep this going for another 5 weeks or so, they will have had plenty of time to attach themselves naturally.  I guess we'll see how that goes.

This first plant is Bucephalandra Black Pearl.  Don't ask how they come up with these names, I think people just name them whatever pops into their head.  I'm also quite certain if I got this plant at another website it would be called something like Bucephalandra Candy Land.  This plant was the biggest of the bunch and one solid piece so I put it in the back left corner on the highlight rock.  It nearly covered the whole thing but I think it looks decent and shouldn't have to compete with too much over there.

Next up is Bucephalandra Black Angel.  Another single plant and I found a good place for her on one of the middle stones.

This next plant was the smallest of the group but had a good bunch of roots that I could shove nicely into some crevices in the center cropping of Dragonstone.  It's name is Bucephalandra Brownie Blue. I think it will look cool next to the Dwarf Hair Grass and Monte Carlo.

The second to last was Bucephalandra Little Red Star.  I struggled finding a home for these the most.  I tried everywhere and finally stepped back and found the perfect place.  I had planned on covering all the branches with various mosses but there were a few small branches that were shaped just perfectly for these two plants.  I was able to get them to lay on their branches nicely without any tying or gluing.

Last but not least (well the picture is the worst) is Bucephalandra Belindae.  I had 3 plants of this, 2 that came in the starter pack and 1 that i forgot was in my cart when I checked out.  Oh well it was only like $5 and now I'm glad there is something I have a larger bunch of.  These were actually the first I placed since i had the most of them.  I wanted to keep them grouped so they could really shine.  You can see they are on the front right stone with two high and one low.  All wedged into holes in the Dragonstone.

Overall, I'm super stoked with how things are going.  All the Monte Carlo seems happy.  I've only pulled out a few small dead pieces that didn't like being transplanted.  I see tons of new little leaves growing so I have high hopes.  I think I'll need to stay diligent on the misting so the Bucephalandra stays healthy since it doesn't have access to the extra moisture in the substrate.

Dry Start - Day 4 - White Mold

Day 4 of my Dry Start and I have very visible white mold on the spider wood.  I actually saw it starting on day 2.  I was warned this would happen and I've read quite a bit about it.  People said, "you better sanitize your wood before you do the dry start or else you'll get mold".  Well, I boiled the wood for 5 hours in a turkey fryer and that didn't seem to make a difference.

My intentions for boiling had nothing to do with mold prevention.  I had been soaking it in a giant Tupperware of water for close to 2 weeks to try and get it to sink.  I was antsy as I wanted to start the dry start hence the boiling to speed the process up.  That actually worked well and the wood sank.  I do wonder how much water will be retained throughout the dry start but I guess we'll see.  Worst case I'll throw and extra piece of stone on top of it.   Some side benefits of the boil was getting a more significant amount of tannins to leech from the water.   I had read that boiling the wood opens the pores to allow more tannins to release and water to penetrate.  Both were true.

Now I have been reading about the mold and I think I'm just gonna let it chill.  Most people seem to agree it's harmless.  It is only on the wood at this point and staying away from the Monte Carlo.  Some people suggest you can hit it with hydrogen peroxide or brush it off with a toothbrush but both seem unnecessary at this point.  

I'm just gonna let it ride and keep and eye on it.

On the positive side, all of my MC bunches seem to be healthy and already spouting super tiny little leaves.