My Juwell Rio125 Adventure

Bang on 13:30 and he's standing on the door, box of plants in hand, much to my delight. they were quickly unboxed in the kitchen and removed from rooting media ect and cleaned ready for planting. Now i must admit that due to my excitement i didnt get any pics of this stage or of the individual plants
 
Plants ready and armed with towels buckets and tools i took to the lounge were the tank is and started the planting. This is the first time i have ever planted in sand and must say what a joy it was, quick and easy. Infact that quick that after about an hour and a half i finally had a layout that i was hapy with 
 



 
 
 

Time for a well earned cuppa and of coarse the bomb site clear up before before the trouble and strife came home. All in all a gd day today
 

Well done! But, were are the plants? I like the hardscape and the arrangement but think you did not put enough plants.

hi. all the plants are young plants, hopefully they will grow over time and fill the tank out more. if not ill add accordingly

so today after six weeks nearly, a few ups and downs, and plenty of questions i am fully cycled
 
will most likely have to wait untill sunday to add stock so will be doin a maintenance feed thurs eve before a water change on sunday then fish shopping

Congrats 

so now the tanks cycled i turned my thought, or at least some, to stocking the tank. my list so far consists of
 
1 x bn plec
5 x bronze corys
8-10 harlequins or neon tetras
3 x honey gourami (mff)
 
think the stock level is about right, only thing i cant decide is harlequins or tetras, what do you all think?

Looks good to me. I would up the corys to 7 and go for harlequins. Reason being in contrast to the neons they might breed in your tank.

liitle update
 
all the plants appear to be healthy and growing all be it at different rates as expected with the exception of the utricularia which died of after 10 days. However a had anticipated that this would be the hardest to get to take due to its growing difficulty and the fact it was a very inmature plant when split and planted. Started ei dosing beginning of the week however think a slight alteration in the mix might be required with a lower amount of potasium nitrate however will monitor the water tests for a further week before deciding on that one 
 
On the plus side i done a large water change today, then after a trip to the cafe for a spot of breakfast, purchased some livestock
i ended up with 7 bronze corys. this was supposed to be six however i didnt like the look of one in the bag so he added another and let me keep the one i wasnt keen on. sure it will be fine it just has a slightly weird body shape. 1 bristle nose plec, extremely young, approx 15-20mm long who has already started to set about the small amounts of fungus on the redwood  and 10 x harlequins all looking healthy except one which decided he wanted to to swim vertically for the first hour!.
 
I will add some photos when i work out how to get some good ones on the camera.

not the best pics in the world






 

added some more plants today to the back right in the form of vallisneria nana and tranfered the microsorium to the redmoor. also planted some hair grass and more Marsilea hirsuta on the right at the front. Also added three Pistia stratiotes however not sure how these will go.
 
on the down side ive lost five of the harlequins

This is going to be a great tank! What happened to the harlequins? Those harlequins don't look very healthy on your pics of the 19th. So you most likely bought some week fish already. Anyway did you test your water for ammonia and nitrites?

hi hobby, yeh tested water and is fine, tbh the pics are poor quality and the fish were healthy, ive started a thread else were but i believe now that flow from filter was to strong for them maybe. turned it down now so we'll see what happens.

Very nice tank! Diggin' the natural clean elements. The arc of wood is awesome. Following to see where it all goes.
 
Good job.

thanks trev. still a very young tank, will be interestingto see were it is at in a few months time.

How's it going