Green Machine, tank setup tutorial by James Findley

It's a long video. Relaxing. Even if you have no interest in this hobby it's still worth viewing to see what other people get up to by way of good clean fun. Plus you can speed it up. No alcohol. No team loyalty. No fights. No swearing. No national anthems. No patriotism required. No broken bones. No CTE injuries. No club owners. No league presidents. No ticket scalping. No tailgate parties. No jersey merchandise. No arguments.

So what fun is that?

It's peaceful and creative and beautiful fun. And that's all.

This is a British outfit using Takashi Amano's method. They're using Takashi Amano products. The gravel and the additives are all Takashi Amano as well as the style. The idea of how to do this is entirely Takashi Amano. And I'm a little bit jealous that Great Britain has such a great ADA distributor as this. They're loyal to his conceptualization. They speak his language of Latin names for plants. It's the weirdest thing, you can go pretty much anywhere in the world that carries these aquarium plants, Japan, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, England, France, Netherlands, United States, Australia, Canada of course, Mexico, and other Central American places, and all the hobbyists speak these same Latin plant names, these very strange names roll off their tongues as if they were all real words and not at all so highly specialized. This phenomenon occurred in my lifetime because of Takashi Amano. His affect on this endeavor cannot be overstated. All those sacks of pebbles that James is pouring in come from Takashi Amano as do the specific stones that he's using. The thing that he's doing is copying Takashi Amano. Their business relies entirely on Takashi Amano.

Don't you think England has its own perfectly fine stones? James wants this specific kind.

I'd use Rocky Mountain stones. I'd just go up there and get some.

One time Mum said, "Ew, look at how pretty that driftwood."

They're actually weather worn tree roots. I asked, "Mum, which ocean do you imagine that wood drifted in on?"

She goes, "Smartass.

Iwagumi means "rock formation." James is creating a hardscape. The softscape plants are secondary. And the fish are tertiary. They're afterthoughts.

After much thought I decided I don't like it.

All that glass, all that effort and expertise for mere serenity when it could be truly spectacular and dazzling. All the elements are right there. But James didn't do that.

I understand the choices. It's that I wouldn't have made them. I wouldn't waste the middle on nothing. I wouldn't miss the chance for wild bizarre spectacular driftwood or for gigantic stones. I'd choose different plants. And I'd choose different fish.

But what the heck, he's got a hundred tanks and he can do whatever he wants. This is just another example.

Notice the tiny fish don't actually swim. They dart one yard at a time in pulses. Other fish swim gracefully from one side to the other but the small tetras do not. To get from one side of the tank to the other they go, zoop, zoop, zoop, zoop, as if handicapped, constantly stopping, where other species tear across the whole thing or glide across or dart like rockets. These all swim like a local bus and not an express. James missed his chance for spectacular fish. He thinks small fish make the tank appear larger, they don't, they make the tank look like wasted space. The fish would feel better in a smaller tank or in a tank that's more cluttered. Fish like clutter. Hiding places.

I've been studying plants for quite a while and I'm baffled by James choices given all else that's available. These are James' choices.

Staurogyne repens. The densely planted foregrounds. There are a thousand foreground species. This is a rather odd broadleaf choice. He wants the tank to seem larger, other foreground plants would do that better.

Echinodorus Vesuvius. Hobbyists use this one for odd corkscrew accent plant. It's another strange choice for background bulk and filler. It's something weirdly stringy, scraggly that James is using for bulk. Not odd having the plant here and there, but the sole plant used to anchor the flora portion. He's really deemphasizing the plants by using this thin twisting specimen for main background bulk. It cannot fill out suitably to appear lush. Apparently James doesn't want an extravagant lushly planted tank. That would take away from the rocks.

Hydrocotyle jepartica japan, another scraggly weed-like plant. They'll take off and invade other areas. They'll move right in among other plants.  They'll fill in but with as much stems as with foliage. Looking a bit like clover. Its appearance is tangled and somewhat weak and delicate. F'or a midground plant it is diaphanous. 

Echinodorus tennelus, the grass species among a hundred that James chose. There are a lot of grass species. This is good as any other. Did you notice when James was inserting the grass tufts here and there among the protruding rocks to appear as if the top side gardener cannot quite get in close enough to trim them with a Weed Whacker, with the stones jutting upward and with smaller stones to each side that the tufts look like pubes on male sexual organs. As if James is being just so careful in pube placement. It's funny. This actually makes an excellent foreground or carpeted area as he did with the staurogyne repens to look like an unkempt lawn.

Riccardia chamedryfolia, lastly James added a moss. The narrator said "liverwort." I learned by experience with five different species of moss never to put them into a tank. They take over militantly. They're beautiful and they do what you want them to but they break off and invade every other area of the tank where you don't want them taking up at the bases of all other plants and robbing them of fertilizer and carbon dioxide and light. They get into all the equipment. The narrator said that James is placing it where he wants them on the rock and once established James can relocate the wire mesh but James won't have to do that. On the contrary, James' new job will be to control the utterly unmanageable moss. The plant will move everywhere by itself. And grow so densely that it fills the entire tank completely if allowed a few weeks. There is no way to knock it all back. You need a microscope and 29 hour days to do that. It's going to be an endless battle for domination from here on out. 

While James chose Hydrocotyle jepartica japan, there is another plant in the same group that's better. They didn't mention this one but I like this better and for the same reason that James chose his species. It's wispy and tanged and delicate random silly appearance. This one is Hydrocotyle verticillata

Actually, I'm ready to place my own order. James chose all green plants. I did that one time too. My younger brother came over and he and his Navy diver friend helped set up the lights. The lights were heavy. The men were really into it too. They had a blast. When finished I asked what they thought. Always so religiously honest they both said, "too green." 

I took a second look and realized it really was too green. It was boring unicolor green. No matter how dynamic, it was monochromatic. While there was variation in foliage size, and shape and texture there was no variation in green tones or green value just straight green as if a can of green paint was dumped into the tank and reflected back brilliantly. As if there is only one green crayon in the box. And I realized that if these two guys can notice that then anyone will have the same impression. They're not designer types. Whereas with red plants there are hardly any two shades alike among various plant species. That wide variety that includes gold depending on conditions, and near black, contrasted with green is spectacular. 

But this is not what James in the video wanted. He wanted serenity and he designed a hardscape, not an underwater softscape. He was looking for see-saw balance, he named the design Reciprocity, after all. And he wanted a naked unused barren area in the center, and he wanted scraggly wispy plant tuffs here and there, not lush luxuriant flora, and he wanted insignificant fish with their handicapped swimming to emphasize size and luxuriously sweeping slopes of gravel and with emphasis on unused wasted central space. The bulk of the tank is empty. As if you can climb in and lay down in it. 

All that thoughtful design and advanced aquascaping techniques, CO2 injections and splendid lighting and expensive fertilizer supplementation and layers of substrate gravel of various sizes. while relying on United Nations style cheap ass granite tiling for their aquarium base. Stuck on with glue. A tank that looks like a million £ with a base made of cheap Home Dee-pot scrap granite. It's an irreconcilable dichotomy that shows where their heads are at. In the tanks, and nowhere else.