Well guys, i picked up my new tank on Tuesday a whole 3 months after getting into fishkeeping! I said i wouldn't change for a year or so but i'm sure you all know the feeling, the only thing stopping me now is i've pretty much maxed out the space i have available so this tank is definitely staying put for a while!
I went from a Fluval Roma 125 to this 4ft Rena, which is meant to be about 350ltr as its quite wide and tall... So my stocking possibilities have opened up a lot. I also wanted to have my first go at a natural looking aquascape so gave that a go.
I got up at 8.30am on Tuesday and finished at 12:00am... a whole day this took me! One of the most stressful days i've had this year so i'm definitely not doing this again anytime soon!!
My old tank looked like this...
I picked up some root like wood, and some rocks and ordered lots of java fern, vallis and some crypts for the tank scene as i'm going to keep it quite low-tech. I did put a good base of Eco-complete down with black sand over the top and painted the background black. The tank arrived painted blue so it took me ages with a razor to remove the blue before the black went on!! Nightmare!
I have a tetra EX1200 i'm running on this and it came with a Rena XP3 filter too so i've stuck them both on...
My new one...
What do you think? Any ideas are appreciated - its my first go at something like this!
Now to the things i need help with so far...
First off - I created what i thought was a great looking aquascape... placed my rocks around the roots etc... Started filling up and boom.... the wood started floating and it totally messed it up! I was absolutely gutted! So the layout you see above isn't exactly as i wanted it - as i didn't want those rocks on top of the roots - they're there to keep it down!! Does anyone have any ideas on how i overcome this? I'm going to buy some more rocks tomorrow, but will i be stuck with wood that permanently wants to float? The stuff on the right is definitely ready to shoot up more than the piece on the left...
Secondly - as this was a used tank, it does unfortunately have lots of little scratches which when the light reflects on them are visible! None of them are deep, but there are plenty... can anything be done here?
Third - i attached some Java fern to the wood etc with superglue... but a few bits have come loose... how do i fix it to stuff once the wood is already in water?
And lastly (for now!)... The tank came with 2 light units, each with 2 x 30w bulbs in them. This means absolutely nothing to me, is this good for plants? Will it suffice? I haven't got a clue! And more to the point - I need to replace one of the bulbs... how do i know what type to replace it with? Do they have to be specifically Rena ones or what? All thats written on the light unit is "Type - REC590724. IP 44." and a few other little numbers.
I went from a Fluval Roma 125 to this 4ft Rena, which is meant to be about 350ltr as its quite wide and tall... So my stocking possibilities have opened up a lot. I also wanted to have my first go at a natural looking aquascape so gave that a go.
I got up at 8.30am on Tuesday and finished at 12:00am... a whole day this took me! One of the most stressful days i've had this year so i'm definitely not doing this again anytime soon!!
My old tank looked like this...
I picked up some root like wood, and some rocks and ordered lots of java fern, vallis and some crypts for the tank scene as i'm going to keep it quite low-tech. I did put a good base of Eco-complete down with black sand over the top and painted the background black. The tank arrived painted blue so it took me ages with a razor to remove the blue before the black went on!! Nightmare!
I have a tetra EX1200 i'm running on this and it came with a Rena XP3 filter too so i've stuck them both on...
My new one...
What do you think? Any ideas are appreciated - its my first go at something like this!
Now to the things i need help with so far...
First off - I created what i thought was a great looking aquascape... placed my rocks around the roots etc... Started filling up and boom.... the wood started floating and it totally messed it up! I was absolutely gutted! So the layout you see above isn't exactly as i wanted it - as i didn't want those rocks on top of the roots - they're there to keep it down!! Does anyone have any ideas on how i overcome this? I'm going to buy some more rocks tomorrow, but will i be stuck with wood that permanently wants to float? The stuff on the right is definitely ready to shoot up more than the piece on the left...
Secondly - as this was a used tank, it does unfortunately have lots of little scratches which when the light reflects on them are visible! None of them are deep, but there are plenty... can anything be done here?
Third - i attached some Java fern to the wood etc with superglue... but a few bits have come loose... how do i fix it to stuff once the wood is already in water?
And lastly (for now!)... The tank came with 2 light units, each with 2 x 30w bulbs in them. This means absolutely nothing to me, is this good for plants? Will it suffice? I haven't got a clue! And more to the point - I need to replace one of the bulbs... how do i know what type to replace it with? Do they have to be specifically Rena ones or what? All thats written on the light unit is "Type - REC590724. IP 44." and a few other little numbers.
can't really help you on that. But...
