Advice For A Planted Nano

[Tote]

Hi,

a few questions for those running planted nano cubes - hope you can help based on your experiences :

those of you in the UK, where did you get your cubes from? I'm looking for a cheaper alternative to the Tropica Aquacube but can't find anything suitable at the LFS or trawling the web. Found a 20 cm square vase so far, but the base must be 4 cm thick. (suppose I could make my own?)

Do you have success with an ordinary 20 W halogen desk lamp - 20W, 35W? (e.g. Ikea special)

Any recs for suitable substrate? Do you think I could get away with 2 cm of soil topped with 1-2 cm of fine gravel in such a small space? Or I could try one of the ADA (or similar) substrates (their 'Africa' looks like it would work great with some reddish brown bogwood).

shrimps - any room for 2/3 in a 20x20x20 cm? (what is the minimum size tank for shrimps anyway? )

anything else to consider that's majorly diff from running larger planted tanks?


Hope these questions aren't too dumb. Cheers

 

[Graeme Edwards]

High Tote

I have a tropica aqua cube here is my journal..SHAKKEI cube.

Things that are very important are very frequent water changes, at least 50% every 3 days, i use dechlorinated tap water and its fine.

Fertilizers: Well any stem will work but instead of adding cap fulls add drops and add them either daily or every other day, to give you an idea i have an 8lt cube and i add 10 drops of Nutrafin PlantGrow every other day thats not much more than a drop per later ( i cant see why even adding a drop per liter wouldn't be a bad place to start).
Co2 is your next worrie, if you want to stock it with animals then you are going to have to use pressurized or Sachem flourish instead of Co2. You will need a small diffuser i use a Fishvet glass diffuser there are cheaper alternatives like these.

Your next problem is circulation, its important to have good circulation to keep clean water flowing round the base of plants and reducing the chance of dead spots, it will also help distribute your fertilizers and Co2.
I use one of an aquavital hang on filter cost around £8.

Lighting: I changed the bulb for an highly reflected 20W halogen bulb the like that Orsan(???) make for spot lights, so theres no reason that something similer wont work, where they lack in light spectrum they make up in power. NB, not all plants will tolerate the lack of spectrum out put!!!

Substrates: Any should work fine, ADA will be my next substrate in the cube.

Ive been Little bit rushed typing this so if you have any more questions ask away.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Hi,

My LFS stock some 20cm glass cubes made by AquaOne. Not a patch on the Tropica one that Moody used, but there again it did cost less than £9. So I thought it was a good option as a 'starter' cube.
This cube got broken down to make a temporary hatching tank for my Amano shrimp, I'll be planting it up again in a couple of weeks .......

20cm Nano Cube

20cm Planted Nano Cube

I also used the Aqua Vital HOB filter that Moody used -> Aqua Vital At less than £8 it won't break the bank ! I would strongly recommend having some water circulation.

Apart from preventing 'dead spots' it helps avoid other problems. Before adding the filter my tank was in a room that often had a window open, with standing water, it wasn't long before I saw some fly larvae in there.

Moody: Do you know where to get replacement filter cartridges for this filter ? (sorry to hijack the thread)

For lighting I used a 20W halogen desk lamp, this seemed to do fine, but I'll be looking for a better option next time.

For a substrate, I used some Eco-complete I had spare and had no problems.

I did large water changes weekly, at least 60%+ every few days. I had no livestock in there, so large water changes weren't such a problem.

I used DIY CO2 fed into a small glass diffuser - similar to this one = Diffuser
I didn't worry about the CO2 levels getting high as there were no fish/shrimp in there.

Al

 

[Graeme Edwards]

I changed the filter materials supplied.
The granual carbon was cut out and replaced with filter pad carbon for the likes of the newer Fluvel internal filters.I put some fine sponge from a Juwel filter sponge cut to size with some filter wool inbetween the carbon and the sponge, in the last section infront of the water slide i droped some SERA syporax high porous glass media for biological filtration, Ehime's bio balls would work really well.

Im actually after a slightly bigger cube next aquascape, around 30cm ish but the LFS are rubbish around here so i dont hold out much hope!

 

[RadaR]

Moody, where did you get the tropica cube from?

 

[Tote]

Moody & Mr G - hey thanks guys for the detailed posts .

I'm jst finishing off a late day at work but I'll have a look through your journals tomorrow

thanks again