Aquastart 320: Nano Planted Journal

[njstockley]

Hi Everyone,

I've been a member of this forum now for a good 6 months, and that's about the time I started keeping fish. In that time I had a 90 litre community, with Kribs, a Bristlenose, and Black Neons and had been running an 80 gallon SA cichlid tank, that was home to a Sev, JD, and a beautiful female Nic. Then my land lord found out and I've had to sell the lot, but as a compromise, he's allowed me a nano tank.

I found this AquaStart 320 (28 litres) on Gumtree and like the cube shape. For filtration I've got a Fluval Mini and an AquaOne LV 300. The light is as standard - PL11W Red/White Lamp fitting, and have a small heater in there too. I'm going to hold off planting until my cycle has finished. And on Day 1 that seems like a long way off (As an aside, if any London members fancy donating a small piece of mature filter foam, then I would be very grateful!).

Tank size might limit potential inhabitants, but I think it could be really fun to scape:




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Filled with black gravel, generously donated by a member on a local fish club forum and a piece of Mopani root that I had kept over from my first tank - I love the look of it as it's so twisted, and the light colour is a great contrast to the black gravel.




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Then I suffered a bit of a set back...the tank didn't just get cloudy it was like trying to look through thick fog..!




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But I've spent some time on it this morning, drained the tank, re-rinsed the gravel about twenty times, and hopefully this won't happen again!

So on to scaping. My end goal is to have a nice green carpet on the base of the tank, something tall and bushy in the back right corner, with a number of Anubias style plants in the foregroundas well as attached to the mopani root.

I've found the Tropica website great for inspiration, and have used the section on beginner plants to try and work out the plant types that I should be looking at. I don't think upgrading the light is possible, and not really looking to splash out on CO2 - like I said I'm new to the whole planted side, so know I will be doing loads of research prior to actually settling on plants, and regime!

 

[Ps3Steveo]

Nice little tank you got there I used to have one of those planted, had loads of different types in it and never had problems with anything growing, it ended up like a jungle and I never used CO2 or ferts, just standard lighting, like the wood too, looks awesome, makes me wanna get my little 320 back lol.

 

[ian]

great bit of wood, this has a lot of potential...even if you didn't want to splash out on C02, you could always go down the DIY route on a 28ltr.

 

[njstockley]

thanks guys...
ps3stevo - youre right - they are a nice neat little tank, and good to know that the light is going to be strong enough to get some strong growth. what plants did you have in yours?
and ianho - as im pretty new to the whole thing i wouldnt know how to go about diy co2 - can you point me in the right direction for some info on it?

nick

 

[Ps3Steveo]

I had swords, hygrophila, riccia, mosses and staurogyne without CO2 or ferts just fine but then I had very mature substrate so I would suggest a little fert at least.

 

[pablothebetta]

BUMP!

Just found this thread, have this tank myself which I am in the process of planting. I love what you've done with the wood. What is the tank like now? Still running?

Hope you don't mind me restarting the thread