Kaya's Red Sea 250XL Planted Freshwater Build

This tank was originally a quarantine/hospital tank for salt water fish. I founf trying to keep two saltwater tanks to be too much work for me. I do not have large mixing tanks, and mixing 40+ gallons of salt water each week for water changes was overwhelming.

The tank is currently on its second rinse. I am about to go substrate shopping. I have been reading the forums for ideas and decided to make a build post to document the process.

I would like to make this a tank built around a large school of neon tetras. I would love advice on fish stock to go along with the neon school, how many neon I could have in here, what plants to get, and substrate ideas.

After watching this series:
I think I want to go with soil and gravel, so I am heading out now to go shopping.

Finding soil has been very difficult. Every bag I looked at said it contained peat moss. I finally settled on this top soil I found at a local fish store:



If you would like to see my saltwater build, here is a link:

Kaya's 425XL Reef


Here is a photo of the 15 gallon planted tank in my daughters room.


And here is the 425XL if you want to see it without going to the other forum:

That sounds really cool And a nice big tank for keeping a big school in too! Just to check I'd assume you are using RO water given the marine? If so keep it nice and soft for the Tetras.

Whats the actual capacity of the tank? Is it 250 litres or more?

With the Neon Tetras I'd have a look at how good a stock you can get as there are a lot of over breeding issues with them and some of the stock has an incurable wasting disease known as Neon Tetra Disease. The way to get around this for the same kind of fish is to go for Green Neon Tetras, which are smaller and the blue is more green over all or Cardinal Tetras which are a bit bigger and have more red on the body. In a tank like this I'd go for Cardinals but you would be able to get more in the tank with Green Neon Tetras.

A single species tank will look amazing but I do wonder if some other fish might add interest? Some fish would also serve a bit of utility in the tank such as a school of Cory Catfish zipping around the substrate would stir up detritus to get into the water column and sucked into the filters, some Whiptail Catfish would help keep surfaces clean and eat some algae (though probably not all) and a group of Dwarf Cichlids would add a bit of personality to the tank too. For me I'd go for one of the Neon Lazer species of Corys (Orange or Green), Red Lizard Whiptails and for the Dwarf Cichlids a group of Cupid Cichlids would look really nice against the big school of Tetras or a group of Apistogramma like Panduro or Nisjenni with the bright blue males and bumblebee females would look great!

Let me know how big the tank is in litres or US gallons and I can advise further on numbers

Wills

Wills said:

That sounds really cool And a nice big tank for keeping a big school in too! Just to check I'd assume you are using RO water given the marine? If so keep it nice and soft for the Tetras.

Whats the actual capacity of the tank? Is it 250 litres or more?

With the Neon Tetras I'd have a look at how good a stock you can get as there are a lot of over breeding issues with them and some of the stock has an incurable wasting disease known as Neon Tetra Disease. The way to get around this for the same kind of fish is to go for Green Neon Tetras, which are smaller and the blue is more green over all or Cardinal Tetras which are a bit bigger and have more red on the body. In a tank like this I'd go for Cardinals but you would be able to get more in the tank with Green Neon Tetras.

A single species tank will look amazing but I do wonder if some other fish might add interest? Some fish would also serve a bit of utility in the tank such as a school of Cory Catfish zipping around the substrate would stir up detritus to get into the water column and sucked into the filters, some Whiptail Catfish would help keep surfaces clean and eat some algae (though probably not all) and a group of Dwarf Cichlids would add a bit of personality to the tank too. For me I'd go for one of the Neon Lazer species of Corys (Orange or Green), Red Lizard Whiptails and for the Dwarf Cichlids a group of Cupid Cichlids would look really nice against the big school of Tetras or a group of Apistogramma like Panduro or Nisjenni with the bright blue males and bumblebee females would look great!

Let me know how big the tank is in litres or US gallons and I can advise further on numbers

Wills

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That was a good guess, it is almost exactly 250 liters. The display is 65 gallons. I think the sump will hold around 20 gallons. I have a skimmer also which may help me go a bit over on the bio load if desired.

I was definitely looking for advice on tank mates for the Neons. I wonder if this disease is why I lost half the stock I bought for my daughter's tank. We started with 10 and it quickly went to 5. Now we have the 5 neons, several shrimps, and 3 of what we call sucker fish (I am horrible with names).

I would not be against cardinal Tetras, I do find the full red bar to be a bit more attractive. Maybe I could do a batch of cardinals and a batch of the greens? I do not recall seeing grean Tetras locally, but maybe I could ask the LFS to order the in. We have quite a few privately owned LFS around that are usually happy to place a custom order.

It is very cold here this time of year, so I would be reluctant to place an online order, even a month from now when the tank is close to ready.

I got the rest of the gravel tonight. I also picked up some plants and some fish. I put these into the girls tank for now. It looks so good I may just end up leaving them in there.



I am in the process of sifting the soil right now. Sooo much work. I wish I had a better strainer, I have to sift a few times to get to a level of soil vs woodchips I am happy with.

Time to get to work tonight. I hope to have the dirt and gravel in tonight and a few inches of water at the least. I plan on putting both my DI tube and the RO waste water in to fill.

The rinse water looks very clean tonight:
I need to wash the right side of the tank at some point. Priorities.


I was surprised by how much salt was still in the sand after two rinses. After draining the sand still smelled like the ocean. I was planning on mixing the sand with the soil, but after smelling the salt still in the sand, I decided it would be safer to take it all out and dry the tank bottom:

Now that the tank is clean and dry, it is time to add the soil. I will then use the buckets the soil is in to start rinsing the gravel. Hopefully I will have both soil and gravel in before 10pm.

What a mess! I made the mistake of filling the water a little bit higher then the soil when trying to level the soil with water. All the tiny wood bits in the soil floated to the top and made a mess. It took several attempts to siphon the water below the level of the soil. The syphon clogged several times.





After getting the soil leveled, I rinsed and added the gravel a little at a time. The gravel laid on top of the wet soil nicely. I am now filling a bit I want to fill it about half way then syphon it out, and repeat this twice. I estimate about 5 hours to fill the display tank. It is not happening tonight. It will take two week nights to fill half and drain. So maybe Thursday I will start the final fill. I will take a sample of my membrane discharge water to get tested and decide if I do the final fill with RO or membrane discharge.









Some fish I might be interested in:

looking good! Shame you’ve gone for gravel as that will limit your bottom dweller options quite a bit.

Your fish choices are mainly good for soft water but I’d give the denison barb and endlers as they are more neutral to hard water fish. Blue rams could be good but they have very specific needs which you can meet with your RO water but they also need high temperatures which could limit some of the other fish - I think your plans with the cardinals could work though.

Wills said:

looking good! Shame you’ve gone for gravel as that will limit your bottom dweller options quite a bit.

Your fish choices are mainly good for soft water but I’d give the denison barb and endlers as they are more neutral to hard water fish. Blue rams could be good but they have very specific needs which you can meet with your RO water but they also need high temperatures which could limit some of the other fish - I think your plans with the cardinals could work though.

Click to expand...

I had though about making half the tank bottom sand. I opted for the gravel after viewing the video I shared in the first post. I felt it would be easier to keep the soil separate from the top substrate. I was worried sand would mix too much with the soil. I did opt for very smooth gravel so I hope I can still keep some bottom dwellers.

There is a chance I have wasted all of this time and effort. I may have to rip out the substrate and buy some aquarium specific soil. This is the first rinse, but man does it look bad:

So Dirty:


I have drained it out, and I am doing a second fill. I will drain this again and then the final fill where I engage the sump/filters and see if it cleans out. Fingers crossed that this has not been a total waste of time, money, and sweat equity. I will also use my carbon reactor to try to clear up the water.



I also took time to research the fish you mentioned. I have never seen any of these fish before in my life, so I am guessing they would all have to be special ordered? There is no question you have picked some attractive and unique looking fish. My wife really likes the neon gold cory.

Above are some suggestions for carpet plants I found on another forum.


Below here is the pile of decorations I have. These were used before when the tank was a quarantine tank as it was easy to remove them when needed. There is one peice of rock that is normally used in a reef tank, the rest are plastic from Petco. I like the driftwood I see people using. I am in Colorado, it is really hard to find natural hardwood driftwood here, I would need to be able to buy some if I wanted it.





Here is a photo of this mornings fill. I think I will not turn on the circulation pump any more. The circ pump seemed to just suck the dark dirty water out of the substrate. Anyone familiar with Redsea tanks that could tell me if the return pump will provide the needed flow for this tank and fish stock? Do any of you purposely run some kind of circulation pump?




I have an Octo 4 in there that I was using to circulate the water for the two rinses:


Are reef LED lights good for a planted tank? I can control the spectrum on this light. If it is good enough I will get a second one.

None of your photos show, and when I click on the text ending in .png all I get is a log in page on a rival forum. Rather than use a screenshot from that other forum, can you post the original photos here, please.

Did some shopping today .

I am not sure if those test strips were a waste of money. Very convenient, but how accurate I am not sure. According to the test strip my GH is 40 and my KH is 40. The GH number just seems very low for using my RO membrane bypass water to fill. I guess I should test my tap water to see what I am starting with.

Maybe if someone here is curious enough, I will use my Hanna tester to check alkalinity and compare it to the test strip. For now I am too tired to go get it from the saltwater storage cabinet

I am a little disappointed in the fluval CO2 kit, mainly with the diffuser. I have the flow rate turned way up in this video to show the tiny bubbles I would hope to have next to the giant bubbles I do have. When turned down to he proper rate, all I get is one large bubble every second or two that goes straight to the top and pops. Can anyone tell me is the CO2 going into the water or into the air in my room? Any ideas to solve this?


I also picked up some greenery..

Tomorrow I will stop by my favorite reef store, Biggs Lagoon, to buy my 2nd light, and more salt for the salt water tank.

I would love to hear some ideas for more plants to add.

That works now

I deviated from my stocking plan when I saw my LFS had a ton of Khuli Loaches in stock.



My wife loves Pleco's so I surprised her with this beautiful Leapord Frog Pleco.



Testing shows Nitrates. I ended up accidentally expediting my cycle when I moved some plants from my daughters tank to mine.

I got the German Blue rams a few females each, and they all seem to have found homes for themselves. I also got more female endlers to keep the males busy.

There are lots of hiding places in the tank, it is 3 foot by 20" deep, and with all the plants and cave decorations, there are many hiding spots.
I have 3 pieces of driftwood soaking in water, waiting for it to sink instead of floating. That will add even more cave space in the right rear corner.

It has become very clear that this tank is very good at growing hornwort, frogbit, and duckweed. I can see why folks do not like duckweed, it seems to spring up from nothing.