I planned to do this next week but had the day off, so I thought I'd start the tank today
. It's a rimless 90L (600mm x 400mm x 400mm) aquarium. The plan for this is to home my expanding group of Sawbwa resplendens. I decided on the dirted-style aquarium mainly for its cost-effectiveness and hopefully fast-growing impact it will have on the plants. The hardscape choice was some cobbles and a terracotta pot. I do have some driftwood spare but I always have issues will algae taking over whenever I've previously used driftwood. The plants are all from my other aquariums (I will make a list later on in this journal). I didn't fill this aquarium to the top as I wanted room for the floating plants and a lid as I've had this species of fish jump out of my tank before. I'm hoping nothing will go wrong with this tank but time will tell
.
Process and Plan
I started with a plan of a 1-inch layer of soil and a 2-ish-inch cap layer of sand and gravel as I only had a small amount of sand and gravel
. Thanks again to @WhistlingBadger for the advice on a previous thread.
Above the 1-inch layer of soil, I had a layer of black aquarium sand around the edges and horticultural grit in the center (1st image) I then added the terracotta pot above that. I didn't plug the pot as the plant going in there is a heavy root feeder when established, so I thought it could benefit from the soil. I then added the coarse sand above that to act as the other cap layer and finish off the substrate. I then added a few cobbles as hardscape (2nd image). I then began planting foreground plants and some stem plants. Sadly all my crypts have had a huge melt so I'm hoping they recover well in the new tank (3rd image). I also added some old aqua soil into the pot along with a root tab and capped that off with pea pebbles. The two cobbles in each back corner are where the heater and filter will be. I put them there to ensure no plants would grow beneath them and make it easier to do maintenance on them without the chance of me ripping a plant up with the equipment (I've done this before
)
After that, it was a case of filling up the tank, finishing off the planting, and installing the filter and heater. I also changed around some of the plants and put them in different locations as I scavenged for plants from my other tanks.
After filling up, the tank was remarkably quite clear. But I decided to get one of the sponges of an old sponge filter and squeeze it into the tank just to help seed the aquarium. This sponge also ended up being compacted into the filter as well. Also, some bladder snails hitchhiked across on plants which I don't mind as I now consider them test subjects for the water quality over the next month.
And here is the sort of finished product![Beaming face with smiling eyes :grin: 😁](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f601.png)
Some more plants may be added in the future as well as hardscape but I'm happy at the moment with what I have. I will probably do an update in a week or two on water parameters and the plant list.
![Beaming face with smiling eyes :grin: 😁](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f601.png)
![Crossed fingers :fingers_crossed: 🤞](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f91e.png)
Process and Plan
I started with a plan of a 1-inch layer of soil and a 2-ish-inch cap layer of sand and gravel as I only had a small amount of sand and gravel
![/ :/ :/](/images/smilies/ipb/confused.gif)
Above the 1-inch layer of soil, I had a layer of black aquarium sand around the edges and horticultural grit in the center (1st image) I then added the terracotta pot above that. I didn't plug the pot as the plant going in there is a heavy root feeder when established, so I thought it could benefit from the soil. I then added the coarse sand above that to act as the other cap layer and finish off the substrate. I then added a few cobbles as hardscape (2nd image). I then began planting foreground plants and some stem plants. Sadly all my crypts have had a huge melt so I'm hoping they recover well in the new tank (3rd image). I also added some old aqua soil into the pot along with a root tab and capped that off with pea pebbles. The two cobbles in each back corner are where the heater and filter will be. I put them there to ensure no plants would grow beneath them and make it easier to do maintenance on them without the chance of me ripping a plant up with the equipment (I've done this before
![Man facepalming :man_facepalming: 🤦♂️](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f926-2642.png)
After that, it was a case of filling up the tank, finishing off the planting, and installing the filter and heater. I also changed around some of the plants and put them in different locations as I scavenged for plants from my other tanks.
After filling up, the tank was remarkably quite clear. But I decided to get one of the sponges of an old sponge filter and squeeze it into the tank just to help seed the aquarium. This sponge also ended up being compacted into the filter as well. Also, some bladder snails hitchhiked across on plants which I don't mind as I now consider them test subjects for the water quality over the next month.
And here is the sort of finished product
![Beaming face with smiling eyes :grin: 😁](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f601.png)
Some more plants may be added in the future as well as hardscape but I'm happy at the moment with what I have. I will probably do an update in a week or two on water parameters and the plant list.
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