Vivarium 2011

[ghostsword]

And so it begins.

Up at 0430, plants were packed the night before, and close to 15kg of hardscape such as wood and rocks.

Now on Gatwick Express train, the 0600.

I am hopping that the plants do not get confiscated on the airport. I would have to then buy them there but would not be he same.

When I check in will see how it goes.


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[ghostsword]

Had to get a second bag, so that I could check in the plants, for sure they would not pass scanning as hand luggage.

Total weight for the trip was 27kg, most of it is rocks, wood and plants.

Also taking some dupla substrate, only 3L, just in case dupla fails on delivering the kit and substrate.


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[ghostsword]

The plants passed fine through customs, and I am now at the hotel. As they are still moist will leave them on the sealed boxes until tomorrow morning, then they will go into the tank.

[Bri]

Good news on the safe arrival :) Once again, good luck!

Bri.

[ghostsword]

Went for a walk arround and to get some lunch. A couple of things are very diferent here, at least from London.

There is a lot of bikes, really a lot, and they got right of way. No helmets, everyone has one bike it seems, old looking things, really odd, and cool. :)

There is a lack of pavements, so on side roads the pedestrians have right of way, so this is the pavement:


Also, most of the houses arround the area do not have blinds, just windows, so you can see right through. And oddly enough they seem to keep the doors open, and many people are sitting outside.

I went to have lunch at Jacks, a pub near the hotel, about 15 minutes walk. I walked in, sat at table, and asked for the menu, as it was in dutch, I pointed to a burger and said that I wanted that, and at 14 euros is seemed cheap for a meal at a pub.

Well, when it came I thought that it was the wrong order.

See for yourself, the biggest burger I have ever seen, and I have been to the US, Canada and South Africa, the biggest meat eaters in the world.

That is a normal size fork:


See the coke glass next to the burger:


And it came with chips..

Only one bad thing, people here does not control their dogs, and the dogs do not like me.

I saw 5 dogs, and 4 had a go at me. I know when a dog has a go at me, or it is ready to try it, I was a dog trainer in the air force for 5 years.

Even a little punny french buldog tried its luck, and fat golden retriever chase me down the road, just as well I managed to outrun him, he was fatter than me. The owner just looked on. That was very odd, did not expect the dogs to be so nasty.

[frosties]

now thats a lot of burger!!! maybe they wanted to share it with you...

[ghostsword]

I was shocked at how big it was, there is no way that one can eat these in one go. I had a 1kg steaks in south africa, and polished it, but this is diferent, it is a 1200gr burger, plus the bread, salad and chips.  :)

[discusturkguy]

and that was just the kids sized happy meal  . all sounding good so far ghostsword so good luck with the competition cant wait to read more 

[darthpaul]

Mmmmm burger.....

[frosties]

Luis is in the scaping hall... Dupla have left 2 nice boxes for him...

[ghostsword]

Got the place and true to their word there were two large boxes waiting for me, next to the tank. :) The crew had to come and see what the hell was on the boxes, that weight more than the tank itself.

Well, it had 20L of substrate, a 500gram CO2 bottle, a temperature controller computer, a cable heater, a Dupla Pro regulator and finaly a Magnaventi.

It was christmas. LOL

Got my plants out and laid them all on the floor, and started to drop the substrate on the tank, as it was dupla substrate no need to wash, just drop it in. Time saved.

Got my rocks, the ones that came from the Azores, they look like Manten Stones, and made a island with it. I used a lot of substrate, as I wanted the tank a little bit shorter, it was too tall for what I had in mind.

The riccia pads were drawing a lot of comments, people were amazed of how they looked, the trick of using the plastic pad and let them grow emersed really paid off.

So all was put in the tank and it was nice to see the scape taking shape. Unfortunately there was an issue with my Altheranthera sp. it started to melt, dropping leaves. I was without a tall stem. :(

The Ludwigia Arcuata was as red as it could be, but the two days on a container had taken its toll, it was curled up. But not to worry, it should uncurl when light and CO2 hit's it, or so I hope. :)

Now, the UKAPS people arrived with their tanks, saw some new faces and old ones. :)

The scape took 3 hours to complete, from 1pm to 4pm, and close to 30 minutes to clean, riccia was everywhere.

I was still looking for a stem, and Marco, the organiser, told me that UKAPS had a box full of plants, I could ask them for a pot of stems. I though, well, good idea, any stem would be good.

I walked to their booth and asked if they had any spare stems, anything that was tall. Well, the answer was no, they had nothing spare, although I could see a large box with brand new plants on. What can be said, no comment.

Had to improvise, so changed some riccia for glosso from a dutch from roterdam, he is also competing on the Qube contest and took some from his tank to give me. Moved some of my plants arround, and the scape was completed. It worked well.

The pictures are being uploaded now, but you can go see them on high res on my flickr page.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ghostsword/

The CO2 was started, and the plants were pearling in less than 30 minutes, so I am sure that tomorrow there will be a good display of bubbles.

Thanks to Tony and Dupla, without you this would could not be possible, your help is mostly appreciated.

[ghostsword]

The tank:


The rocks layout, seen from both sides:



The only issue with the dupla substrate is that some bits float.

Lots of substrate, got no stems.. :(


From the front, prior to glosso:


All these dupla substrate bits had to be manually picked up:



Now with glosso on, making a wave on the substrate, also some stems were moved from the back into the middle:


Pearling glosso and riccia:




I have choosen the first tank on the left, so that it can be seen from two sides closely:


The tank on location:

[darthpaul]

Great stuff Luis! Tank looks good, cant believe UKAPS wouldnt give you a stem plant. Hope the tank settles well for you

[nelson]

cant believe UKAPS wouldnt give you a stem plant.

so they couldn't spare a few stems for you.disgusting  .

maybe you would have been better off doing a steep slope with the substrate.

[ghostsword]

Cannot comment, it was just sad that it happened. Told Paulo and he said that it was just like that, nothing he could have done.

Sadly, this was after I offered one of my riccia pads to Matt (a1matt) to use. He did not used it after that, on the ukaps box there was some glosso that he used on his mini nano.

Moving on ... :)

The tank came out alright, and in less than an hour is was pearling nice, the Dupla kit worked out ok. :)

I will tomorrow take photos of the other tanks, as the water is still murky, and post them here. I believe that there is WIFI at the Vivarium, so I will take my laptop and post as often as I can.

Will also try to post from the iphone, and maybe take some videos with it.