Back Into The World Of Freshies With Plants Of Course!

[littleimp]

This will be an on-going thread but a quick one as I have documented this build already in photo's as it was orginally going to be another marine tank, but this ever growing expensive world has brought me down to earth and I'm going back to my roots(pun). And going back into planted tanks which are a lot cheaper to run & easier to maintain.

First off here's the tank if you bought it from a shop.

Dimensions: length 151cm, x depth 51cm x height 146cm. Useable volume: 450 litres.

A nice tank but at around £900 pretty expensive.

I bought this one on ebay for £200. I was looking for a rena because the tank build quality is amazing. Take a look next time your in a shop and you'll see why thay are so expensive. Black silicon with mitred glass edges, very nice.

But we don't want it like that...................

 

[littleimp]

As mentioned it was originally planned as a marine tank so a custom build stand was needed.

Here's some pics.

I wanted a nice clean look was needed so I painted it gloss white. I also sealed the bottom edges just in case of the odd spillage/flood.

 

[AdAndrews]

Looks great, however, a sump is not the best thing in a planted tank, it will drive off co2 gas, which the plants will need.

 

[littleimp]

Here's the sump.
I had a tank laying around which was suitable. 48x15x12
I had a glass merchant cut some baffles and these were siliconed in.
Here's the sump on test.

I then had an afterthought. As an inlet I thought I'd make a small trickle tower. So back to the glass merchants.

Here it is installed with some pics of the sump installed.

The box on the left is the lighting control timer, the one on the right is a heating controller. This will run 2 x 300w heaters and a fan. There's also an auxillary 300w heater just in case of failure. This will have the temp set a couple of degress lower so will be inactive most of the time but just will come on just in case the temp drops too low.

Flow back into the tank is by 2 x 3000l/h pumps.

 

[littleimp]

Here's a drawing of the sump use I have planned.

Water enter the top of the tower, trickles through the bio-bsll tower down the to deeper bio-balls, through to the 2nd section of bio-balls.
The largest section is going to contain a moving bed of smaller media, probably kaldnes K1. This will be the main filtration and way more than required for the size of the tank, probably enough filtration for a small pond to be honest!! The next heater section will also contain a bag of carbon changed weekly and then through to the pumps back to the tank.

 

[littleimp]

Onto the lighting, this consists of 4 x 54w T5 aqua-medic planta tubes + 2 x 6400K power compacts. These are very bright as you can see and make the 54w tubes pale in comparison!!
Here's a pic of the frame build as well as the custom reflectors.

If you using a sump you need a way of getting water from the tank & back again.

 

[littleimp]

That's it for now. I plan on doing a custom background on the tank. Substrate will be fullers earth & sand and fertilisation will be Ei dosed dry into the sump to make sure it's mixed nicely. There's gonna be a big gas exchange in this tank so co2 dosing will probably be higher than normal and I'll also go for plants that are more suitable for this. I've never had a sumped freshie tank so we'll see how it goes. There's also going to be a continual top-up system rather than water changes every week it will be several litres a day changed automatically.

 

[AdAndrews]

Some thought has gone into this its amazing, well done. Any plans for plants/decor?

 

[Bebobb]

I like the way that you have your lights arranged in the canopy. This looks like a journal to me!

 

[littleimp]

I'm going to go for an amazonian style theme. I'm quite tempted by one of those big backgrounds but this tank has 3 brace bars so getting one in would be a problem so I'm going to use spray decor and sprinkled sand and then let nature take it's course with algae growth on it. Along with some nice chunks of bogwood.

The lighting also has some moonlights to add to it. The different items also have seperate timers so I can have a gradual sunset sunrise period.

Forgot to add the power block photo attached to the side of the cabinet.

Here's a pic of the whole thing. It's got some marine stuff in ti at the moment but this is going during the week plus I still have some cabinet finishing to do.

 

[aaronnorth]

excellent setup

 

[littleimp]

Can a mod move this too the members tank section please? Probably were it should be.

 

[littleimp]

Have now added the bio-balls into the tower, 1st & 2nd sections. Hundreds of them, that area is almost 18" x 18". There's gonna be a theorectical 6000l/h flowing through these so they should be a bubbling mass when running. Have also bought the materials for the background build today along with my substrate & some nive pieces of wood.

 

[Bebobb]

What are those things that you put on the end of the fluorescent tubes called, and how much did you pay for them?

 

[littleimp]

What are those things that you put on the end of the fluorescent tubes called, and how much did you pay for them?

Do you mean the end caps? These are the newer waterproof arcadia's. There's a crew cap that goes on them too that's not yet fitted too. They come on as part of the starter unit but I bought these cables seperately as I made my own starters. They also come with the plastic mounts as you see pictured.