# Lego's 10g Rescape - Beginnings



## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

Just like the Chicago song 

Nice anubias collection 
This is gonna be a sick tank with that DW


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## Bonefish (Mar 14, 2009)

Stunning plant collection. Looking forward to seeing what you'll do with it!

As for fauna, that's a toughie. I think dwarf puffers are absolutely adorable, but I'm afraid they're so small and so camouflaged that they'd vanish against the anubias-dominated background. Microrasbora could be pretty stunning. What about neons? The bright blue + red could look stellar against that backdrop.


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

clwatkins10 said:


> Just like the Chicago song
> 
> Nice anubias collection
> This is gonna be a sick tank with that DW


Thanks Chris! Yeah, about 90% of the Anubias you sent me are going in this thing. It's been a vision in my head for quite a while, I've just never gotten around to doing it 



TsuRyuu said:


> Stunning plant collection. Looking forward to seeing what you'll do with it!
> 
> As for fauna, that's a toughie. I think dwarf puffers are absolutely adorable, but I'm afraid they're so small and so camouflaged that they'd vanish against the anubias-dominated background. Microrasbora could be pretty stunning. What about neons? The bright blue + red could look stellar against that backdrop.


Thanks! As of right now, I'm kinda leaning towards maybe a trio of the gouramis and a bunch of shrimp of some kind. The SG's only get 1.5" long, so they'd be fairly shrimp-safe.

My goal with the fauna in this tank is to not have them be the first thing you notice. DP's and the gouramis are both pretty secretive, and I think they'd love hanging out in the mass of driftwood. I'm leaning more towards the gouramis because they're not one you see very often, where it seems like a number of people have DP's or Microrasboras.


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## FrostyNYC (Nov 5, 2007)

I'd go with the sparkling gouramis for sure. They could even use the anubias leaves for their bubble nests, since they often nest under leaves (rather than at the surface like most gouramis). 

I would throw in a more substantial cleanup crew though, since you have 36 watts of light and all of your plants are very slow growing. I also see some algae on the anubias you already have and diatom on your glass. Maybe otos and snails?


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

Thanks Frosty! Gouramis are a fish I've never had much interest in before, but I've been doing a lot of research on the smaller species and they really piqued my interest. Honestly, I hate the bigger ones like the Opaline and Kissing gouramis, but the little guys are really cool.

I'll definitely have some sort of a cleanup crew for this thing. Otos, shrimp and snails most likely. The algae I have now is mostly because I've neglected this tank a lot lately (i.e not dosing ferts or Excel, hardly any water changes).


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

I hate the bigger gouramis as well. Beautiful colors, but they just look ugly IMO. If it weren't for the colors, no one would have any IMO, but I love the sparkling gouramis. One of my favorite fw fish. They have great personalities. :thumbsup:


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

Ever seen a Samurai Gourami before? Those guys are sick! Expensive too. I wonder if invertzfactory can get them?

They're nice, but a little too big for this tank I think


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

legomaniac89 said:


> Ever seen a Samurai Gourami before? Those guys are sick! Expensive too. I wonder if invertzfactory can get them?
> 
> They're nice, but a little too big for this tank I think


Wow! That _is _sick!


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## speedie408 (Jan 15, 2009)

Good luck with the tank lego. I know you'll do good with it. That gourami you posted up there has got to be the best looking gourami I've seen... and I don't even like gourami's. Hope you get some


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

Well, the rescape may be delayed a bit longer than I expected. I just dropped over $500 on books for this semester (which starts tomorrow morning), meaning I'll also be getting about half the hours at work that I have been getting. But to top it all off, I'm pretty sure that the hard drive in my laptop crashed last night and I haven't been able to access anything since then. I'm taking it to a compute tech friend tonight, but he said that it didn't sound good, so there's a good possibility that I may be forced to buy a new laptop for this school year. There goes another few hundred dollars.

Here's the icing on the cake. My cell phone has been acting all stupid for the past two weeks. The battery only holds a charge for a couple of hours now, and it's been turning off at random times, even when the battery's fully charged up. So that may end up being replaced too. Rrrrrrrrrr...I really hate technology

Sorry for the vent, but man, has this been a bad week.


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## Postal Penguin (Mar 30, 2009)

If the hard drive is dead, just buy another one. No need to replace the whole laptop.


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

Well the hard drive was still working somewhat. I could restart the computer and the Windows login screen would load, but nothing after that, just black screens. I dropped it off at my friend's house earlier and he's gonna work on it tomorrow, so hopefully it'll be okay.


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

legomaniac89 said:


> Well the hard drive was still working somewhat. I could restart the computer and the Windows login screen would load, but nothing after that, just black screens. I dropped it off at my friend's house earlier and he's gonna work on it tomorrow, so hopefully it'll be okay.


fingers crossed


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## SvenBoogie (Jul 3, 2009)

I'm considering a trio of scarlet badis for my 10g, two females and one male. Extremely tiny fish, but very attractive and interesting, IMO. The difficulty I'm having is finding a way to get my hands on sexed fish, almost everyone sells only males.


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## Vladdy (May 6, 2008)

Nice tank! Looks bigger than a 10 gallon.


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

Thanks Chris. No news yet, but I've got fingers, toes and arms crossed that it'll be an easy fix . Is it just me, or does that hand have a couple extra digits there?

Brian, Scarlet Badis are really awesome, but they seem to be a pretty popular little fish on this forum. If I do fish, I want something that no one else has. I've been thinking about a couple of gobies from invertzfactory, maybe.

Thanks Vladdy, but this scape is the one that's getting torn down


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## demonbreedr16 (Jan 10, 2008)

Nice tank!! Can't wait to see the rescape!! :thumbsup:

I've decided that MY 10gal is going to become a nano-reef after my 29gal fish are in my 75 and my nano-fish [and endlers] are in my 29gal and the few others in the 5galHEX[which my mom hates! lol].

Tooooo...many....tanks!! LOL

Good Luck!!

kENNY


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## demosthenes (Aug 23, 2008)

hey man, any updates with this tank?

I was wondering what you'll use for a substrate(like, are you going to keep whats in there now(flourite?)?)? i think all of those questions marks were grammatically correct there... lol

I've noticed that it looks kind of weird to see a 'natural' looking gravel with a black background or really unnaturally healthy plants like we grow :hihi:. I think its mostly because its online, because a lot of natural gravel tanks look awesome in person, but anyway, was wondering what your opinion on that is... haha wow what a long-winded question


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

Well, the only progress I've made so far is emptying the tank. Cash is a bit tight right now after my computer crashed and then my car had to go into the shop. But on the plus side, all I need to get to start this thing up again in the manzanita from Jake and a CO2 system.

For a substrate, I'm going to use the potting soil mix I use in all my tanks. It puts aquasoil to shame, that's for sure . And it's way cheaper. I might just top it with some kind of black gravel. The goal with this tank is to simulate a deep jungle, and with lots of manzy, black substrate, and a black background I think it'll come out pretty well.

I agree that a multi-colored gravel looks kinda weird. At the time I set this tank up, regular Flourite was the only thing I had access to so that's what I used. I never really liked the color, but hey, it worked


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## crimsonbull57 (Jan 7, 2009)

lego, next time you come down to Indy, bring me some of that MPS to buy. I never got around to making my own.


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

crimsonbull57 said:


> lego, next time you come down to Indy, bring me some of that MPS to buy. I never got around to making my own.


MPS...mineralized potting soil, I guess? It's actually not mineralized. It's straight from the bag, mixed with a bit of clay gravel and greensand (for slow-release K and Fe). Costs about $15 total and takes 3 minutes to mix up. 

I've never actually used mineralized soil of any kind. I know it's good stuff though.


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## crimsonbull57 (Jan 7, 2009)

Well I believe you called it holy über-awesome dirt, so lets just go with that:icon_mrgr


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

crimsonbull57 said:


> Well I believe you called it holy über-awesome dirt, so lets just go with that:icon_mrgr


Well that's the scientific name for it, so why not! :biggrin:


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## demosthenes (Aug 23, 2008)

legomaniac89 said:


> Well that's the scientific name for it, so why not! :biggrin:


lol nice :icon_mrgr

what exactly are "greensand" and "clay gravel"?


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

Greensand and Clay Gravel. The clay gravel is technically known as "montmorillonite" (see why I stick with "clay gravel"? ).

I've used greensand in past tanks and with houseplants and I love it. Halcyon is the first time I've used clay gravel though but it seems to work pretty well. The only problem is that it's really light and tends to settle on top of everything else.


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

Well, I suppose I should update this one. Due to my limited tank space and budget, and the fact that Halcyon had to be moved from my work to my house, the 10g is put on hold for a while, maybe permanently. 

I'm still hoping to make this scape happen someday, but for now it's not gonna work.


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