Paul's 2x1x1 Ft First Proper Attempt At A Planted Tank

[Neo8223]

Hi all, I've been waiting ages for this moment and it looks like its about to arrive. I am finally gonna get a proper fish tank set up with the aim of sustaining an environment that is both really healthy for fish and plants alike. Below is the equipment and settings i am going to use:

My Old 2x1x1 ft Clearseal tank
29 watts, 1.9wpg (14 +15W) Going on at at (8am - 6pm)
2L co2 DIY kit with ceramic diffuser
Eheim ecco 2232 External filter (BEAST)
Rena air 200 air pump (7pm - 7am)
100W heater
Blue cold cathode kit - BROKE 1 TUBE (6am - 8am, 6pm - 11 pm)
EI as of next month. (I'm skint) so this month its cheap liquid feed.
CO2 drop checker
Tetra plant complete substrate
Black gravel/sand (whatever i can get my hands on)
2 Really nice pieces of bog wood
2 BN breeding caves
Ill be making the stand for my tank, probably with oak wood. I am considering a french polish or a shellac finish.(sustainable forest wood and veneered)
Oh and most importantly, Ammonia for that all important fish-less cycling.

I cant believe how much it costs to buy all these stuff. So far its set me back £100 with new equipment, but i already had loads of other stuff which did help.

I haven't really decided much on the plants, however, i got Ricca, hornwort and 2 other plants that i don't know the names which i want to use.

My fish are only going to be endlers and BN plecs.

Here are my water parameters from the board...

Hardness Clarkes ... Clarke 22
TOTAL HARDNESS 313 mg/l
Degrees English (or Clarke) 22
Aluminium ... µg Al/l <12
Calcium ... mg Ca/l 125
Residual chlorine - total ... mg/l 0.42
Residual chlorine - free ... mg/l 0.38
Coliform bacteria ... number/100ml 0
Colour ... mg/l Pt/Co scale <1.0
Conductivity ... uS/cm at 20oC 611
Copper ... mg Cu/l 6
E.coli ... number/100ml 0
Iron ... µg Fe/l <22
Lead ... µg Pb/l <2
Magnesium ... mg Mg/l 47
Manganese ... µg Mn/l <3
Nitrate ... mg NO3/l 27
Sodium ... mg Na/l 21

Anything i should be worried about? I have VERY hard water.

Right, that's it for now, any tips or advice would greatly be appreciated. Pics will be posted when i have updates.
Thanks for reading. Paul.

 

[ryguy]

a lot of plants do well ok in hardwater so you can always look on the plant forum here
http/www.fishforums.net/Common-Aquarium-...nks-t22604.html
thia will tell you about the need of the more common IFS stores. good luck. i to am starting to put some plants in but not like a tone only a few for my cichlid tank to add more life. its harder but rewarding to see a very natural look.

 

[Neo8223]

Thanks for the link, it gave me a good idea as to what to get.

Plants to get:

Background
HYGROPHILLA POLYSPERMA
BACOPA CAROLINA
Ludwiga
Water Wysteria
Straight Vallis
Anubias Angustifolia


Midground
Malayan Sword
Cryptocoryne willisii
Hemianthus micranthemoides Fine at 25 C - Thanks Corin Castle
Java fern on bogwood


Foreground
Eleocharis acicularis
Some sort of slow growing moss for the breeding caves (so i dont have to touch them)
Dwarf Riccia
Echinodorus tenellus (preffers soft water)

I'll cross out a few of these later down the line with the help of a few reccomendatons too. I do like very small leaveed plants and ones that can form dense clumps of bushyness (A little bit like Buxus Sempravirens all the way to Spiria Japonica Gold Flame for instance, if you were to compare with terrestrial plants) But at the front i think large leafed plants (Like bergenia's as the terrestrial comparrason) and Grasses will look good. I love the water wysteria and it will have its own designates spot with no plants near it.

In terms of landscaping, I dont really want the whole tank covered with plants, and the theme will have a very formal inverted V shape of open space. Behind the line of bogwood, excluding the wysteria, it is going to be totally unformal with loads of hiding places for fry and shy fish.

 

[Castellop123]

...

 

[Neo8223]

Update. After a very busy month, i am finally making the fish tank stand. Its made out of oak finish vaneered MDF. I'm half way there, and just need to glue the frame together, make the doors and draws and then i'm done. After this, its a home straight!

 

[Neo8223]

Frame all glued, doors added, ready for water tightening. I'm adding 2 layers of chelax and 2 layers of satin varnish followed by 1 of matt varnish as i do not have enough matt varnish to paint it over 3 times so this is a bit of a trick to get the same effect but the same water-proof effects. This will take 2 days to complete.

I'm leaving the drawers till another date as they will take too long to do and my fish are starting to outgrow their tank so i REALLY NEED TO DO THIS QUICKLY!

This is in the actual making process. I did not take as many photos as i wanted to as my camera was not working (was in for repair)

And another one...

This is an image after the tank stand has had 2 coats of chelax and 1 coat of satin varnish.

And another one...

Heres what the tank looks like atm. I have added tetra complete substrate and black gravel. I've also siliconed in all the tubing and made my own spray bar (recommended by miss wiggle) which i will post how i done it if it works.

And another one...

My tank still has a bit of algae from the last time i put it away so i need to scrape it off when i put back water in the tank as nothing short of blowing it up will get that stuff off unless it is wet again.

I'm a bit poor this month so i need to do more work but until i get more cash, i can not fill up the tank with that many plants which is a bummer for algae.

 

[Biulu]

Looks good your stand! I like it!
What are the two metal (aluminium?) boxes you have in there?

 

[Neo8223]

Looks good your stand! I like it!
What are the two metal (aluminium?) boxes you have in there?

They are actually slate breeding caves purchased off smithrc. They are going to be used to breed my brisslenoses. This tank is designed to house and breed endlers and brisslenoses. It will eventually move onto zebra plecs once i have matured as an aquarist and am up for the job.

While i'm at it... my updates are:

Added bioballs to my fathers tank to kick start the ammonia and nitrite bacteria. They will be submerged until tomorrow morning in which then i will start off the tank and add it to my eheim filter.

I'm onto my last coat of varnish, just got home from work and sanded down using some 250 (VERY FINE) sand paper. This will have 14 hours to fully dry, then i will add the electrics, set up the CO2 and then gradually fill up the water. I'm expecting the water to go a bit cloudy at first as i forgot to wash a bag of gravel :$ but i'll add some more filterwool to compensate.

I then need to make up some more riccia beds and move over all the hornwart and other plants from my old tank (After anhialating the snails with snail killer in a seperate bag). Finally, upon completion, i will then add 2 baby endlers and 4 brisslenoses to my tank with some of the filter media. The remaining endlers willl be treated with fin-rot medicine and put in the big tank after they heal and that tank will be shut down.

I'm also going to buy some more plants, namingly the ones from the list.

 

[Neo8223]

Ignore this post, it got submitted twice.

 

[Neo8223]

Right tank is completely set up, CO2 is prepped, have not added ferts yet. I will add them tomorrow. Because i am adding pre-cycled filter media to my fish tank, i will be able to put some of my fish into the tank tonight. The tank looks better than i thought, however the black substrate i used is in fact mixed black, clay brown and honey translucnt pebbles. Not what i wanted, but it doesnt look too bad! Thesubstrate is so dense that the air bubbles are not coming out from under the gravel there the air stones are, rather in differnet parts of the tank, this looks pretty good though!

Heres the pics:

I've also got another secret to show you later

Oh and the DIY spraybar worked fine, but i might add a few more holes to it.

 

[Biulu]

Looks good, Paul! Once the plants start filling out, this will be a nice tank!

 

[Neo8223]

Right, not that many people have been reading this journal, i thought i would show my little secret! This is moon light cold cathode!!!!

Being a little bit heavy handed, i accidently broke one of the tubes, so origonally, i had wired up a 7 volt mains adapter powering 2 tubes. I now have a 9v mains adapter wired up powering 1 tube, so i get a lot more power out of the bulb to compensate for the other one.

Enough of that! I am a semi professional photographer and decided to get out my expensive gear for this shot (unlike the camera phone jobby on all the other shots) I took these photos on a 35 second shutter speed so getting photos of the fish not moving was very difficult.

ENJOY!

 

[Neo8223]

Right, today i done a few strategic tweaks to the set-up. This included:
Setting nitrites and ammonia to 0
Increasing flow rate of filter
Fixing cloudy water
Sorted out lack of oxygen.

To get the nitrites and ammonia to 0, i added into the tank (just by the filter) some pre cycled bio balls. Within half an hour the nitrites and ammonia went from 0.3 to 0.

I increased the flow rate of the filter by adding additional holes into the bar. This allowed water to travel easier through the tube as there were more exits for escape.

The cloudy water is on the mend at the moment. Its just dust particles from the gravel that i had. There is nothing bacterial in there. I added a slightly under-dosed volume of filter aid to the aquarium.

I noticed that the fish were all close to the surface of the tank. This might be due to the heavier dust particles changing the density of the water, but i did not want to take any chances. I turned on the air pump which is currently only on at night to counter the effect of the CO2 diffuser in the evening. It is now going to remain on until i get more plants on wednesday and the plants start picking up. I also added oxygenating tablets to boost oxygen levels in the tank.

Tonight, i will add the riccia after treating it with snail away. It should look really neat. Tomorrow i will also add a 1/3 dose of liquid ferts to the tank to aid the plants. I'm going to move to EI once i get paid and can afford it.

EDIT.... Tied up riccia. Forgot to remove snails so i'm leaving in the treatment in my old tank throughout the night.

 

[Neo8223]

Not much to update, still waiting for that riccia mat to be snail free before i put it in the tank, even though i am going to use flubanol 15 next week in my aquarium to kill any remaining threats after adding the rest of my plants. This should also fix some of the fishes slight problems such as fin rot and one endlers skinny disease or something!

The water is still a tad cloudy and the plants have not shown any signs of growth. I also added 1/3 dose of plant feed. I'm going to add the next dose on monday morning as i heard its better to dose over a period of time rather than at once.

Any imput on peoples ideas/thoughts positive and negative are welcomed. Afterall, this is my first attempt.

 

[rsands]

dont you just ahte snails in plants i found another one today! but i cant see anymore, but i always keep an eye out. Tank is looking good...once the plants start to fill out it will all come together. it is just my peronsal taste but i think it will look alot better with a plain black background. i had a background on mine and then i changed it to black and it makes the tank stand out so much better with the plants, etc.

you shouldn't need any oxygen tablets, this will slow growth in the plants and lead to possible algae problems. your filter should be [rpviding enough surface agitation for the oxygen.

I have pressurised CO2 on 12 hours a day and it is stable green in the drop checker with a tint of yellow just before i turn it off at night and the fish are never at the surface...the spray bar does the oxygen bit.

Moonlight looks good

keep us posted on the progress....i might just get the drill to my spray bar as it wasn't made for my filter...i adapted it! works well though but i dont think a few extra holes hurts