120L Journal!

[tomtomtom1230]

Hey guys, I'll be added this to my sig soon enough, I just wanted to share with you my tank building from the ground up. On Friday just gone, my tank came and this morning, my new Fluval 206 came

I'm so pleased with both products so far (a little disapointed with the FishPod's lighting system but I didn't want a hi-tech planted tank anyway! This is primarily a low-tech planted 120 litre tank.

Any advice is welcome but there's probably not much to say just yet. Waiting for a Black cabinet from IKEA (which arrives on Wednesday I believe) and then once that's up, My tank will really start coming together! OK, here goes...

As I said, not much to look at yet but I'll document EVERYTHING. This will be my first planted tank and somewhat of an adventure for me

You're welcome to click the images to enlarge. Doing so will open a new window.

 

[Judgejudy]

Cool i will be reading all of these

 

[tomtomtom1230]

My chosen substrate...



i think I'll be using 2 of these for my tank.

 

[kylealastairlove]

looking forward to following this i have the fish pod but i got the 64 litre version ajd yes the lighting system does seem to be a bit awkward/unique

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Cool i will be reading all of these

Good to hear! I hope this puts some newbies to planted tanks minds at rest, too. If I can manage it, I'm sure that they can I'm probably the least organized of people xD

 

[tomtomtom1230]

looking forward to following this i have the fish pod but i got the 64 litre version ajd yes the lighting system does seem to be a bit awkward/unique

Yeah, I emailed Interpet to see if they sold alternative hoods or bulbs at a higher wattage or even if they could advise me off the record, as to inserting higher wattage bulbs. But as you can imagine, I got the same old advertising garbage and nothing of a definitive answer!

 

[kylealastairlove]

i had a look around to see if i could find any other decent lighting, but the only thing i could find that would fit into the lighting fixture is the actual interpret bulbs, doesnt bother me as much now anyway as im a low tech set up anyways

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Likewise - it's a shame but not the end of the world

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Right, the chest of drawers comes tomorrow! Hope it can hold the tank's weight! I'll take plenty of pictures as I'm putting everything together tomorrow I'm so excited

 

[tomtomtom1230]

The drawers arrived flat-packed in true IKEA fashion...



Half way built! I just want to get to the bit where I get to mess around with the tank



Time to drain the old tank, and put the fish in buckets with 30 litres of old tank water (2 buckets worth)...

 

[tomtomtom1230]

And here's the 50% complete display... The longest bit was defo draining the tank and catching the cories! Once the fish were in there bucket, I completed the rest of the drawers in about 25 mins (getting the runners right was a bit fiddely and I was missed a hole for a screw which took me about 10 minutes to figure out that's not such a big issue, mind you...



After topping the water off, with about 80-90 litres of water, there are oxygen bubbles EVERYWHERE! No big deal though, the cories swim up and down the glass, knocking them off and racing the bubbles up the tank. They don't actually go for air, just swim up and down the glass knocking bubbles off at the minute. My cories seem to spend less and less time hiding and sitting on the bottom and more time in the upper area of the tank lol breaking social boundries!

Naturally, I emptied 2 thirds of the water from their bucket and acclimated my fish to a similar temperature over the course of an hour using a slow syphon.




The tank is much much clearer now than it was then. Everything has settled and my new Fluval 206 is in operation. I'll update as the plants grow, as I add fish and as I change/add/remove plants or decor/backgrounds Just got to let the tank settle for a while to make sure everything is working as it should be. Colour is returning to all my fish now the stress of moving is wearing off and they can resume a normal feeding pattern tomorrow if everything is all good and well!

I added a pretty small, undersized power head (about 450L per hour) just to introduce some gentle flow over to the opposite side of the tank to which the outlet pipe is facing. I dont want some plants to get all the goodies and some not Do I start adding ferts as soon as I get some from the LFS, I wonder? It'll just be the trace elements (since I'm a low techie) so hopefully these elements will bypass the carbon stages in my filter



I've now replaced the undersized powerhead with a Koralia 900, it's much quieter and less intrusive

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Soaking some mopani wood in boiled, hot water! Took me about 3 hours for it to become water logged and sank and then another hour on that for most of the tannins to come out. I'm running carbon in my filter anyway so they shouldn't be too much of a problem. I quite like the look of slightly stained water, anyway!

The mopani wood in action...

 

[mattyeatsmatts]

What's that gravel like tomtom? Im considering getting it

 

[tomtomtom1230]

It's odd. It's not soil, yet it has all the positive effects; it's not sand and it's certainly not gravel. It's fantastic The plants seem to be doing OK so far, browning of the leaves hasn't worsened, the Cory's are sifting through the top layers fine (the little sods keep digging up my plants) so it's clearly not harming their barbels. Not debris can fall through the layers like in normal gravel, too so the cleanliness benefit that using sand introduces is kept, even though the substrate is larger.

Definitely recommend it! As you probably already know, I'm new to plant keeping so everything may or may not go balls up but as I said: Plants are happy and the fish are happy. What more can I ask for?

All I can say is, it has lowered my pH by 0.4 and a little bit so if you keep pH sensitive fish, be wary and compensate for that change.

 

[richpowell1989]

It's odd. It's not soil, yet it has all the positive effects; it's not sand and it's certainly not gravel. It's fantastic The plants seem to be doing OK so far, browning of the leaves hasn't worsened, the Cory's are sifting through the top layers fine (the little sods keep digging up my plants) so it's clearly not harming their barbels. Not debris can fall through the layers like in normal gravel, too so the cleanliness benefit that using sand introduces is kept, even though the substrate is larger.

Definitely recommend it! As you probably already know, I'm new to plant keeping so everything may or may not go balls up but as I said: Plants are happy and the fish are happy. What more can I ask for?

All I can say is, it has lowered my pH by 0.4 and a little bit so if you keep pH sensitive fish, be wary and compensate for that change.

i use eco complete in 46 gallon very heavily planted tank and its great !!!! i have amazing growth of it its my favourite substrate n i have 7 tanks