Alm0stAwesome
Fish Aficionado
I figure I'll start a thread to chart the progress of this recently set up tank. This won't just be about plants but about my fish as well and I like to post lots of pictures
This first post will be fairly long as I'd like to go a little into the set up of the tank as well as how it is now and some detail on the tank inhabitants.
Let's start with the basics!
Tank: Calico Aquatics 340L 4ft x 2ft x 18in deep
Filtration: 2 x TetraTec Ex1200, roughly 7x turnover
Heating: 2 x Hydor ETH 300w external heaters
Lighting: Arcadia Ultra Seal Controller
Bulbs: 1 x T5 Sylvania 54w Growlux, 1 x T5 Osram 54w Skywhite 880
Substrate: Unipac Limpopo Sand
Hardscape: Scottish Heather
Flora:
Hydrocotyle leucocephala
Tiger Lotus "Red" Nymphaea Zenkeri
Anubias nana
1-2 Grow Weeping moss
Cryptocoryne bullosa
Echinodorus ozelot red
Cryptocoryne balansae
Limnophilia aromatica
Lobelia cardinalis dwarf
Cryptocoryne wendtii tropica
Ferts/Carbon: TNC Carbon 6.5ml daily, TNC Complete 6.5ml daily
Fauna:
6 x Angelfish
2 x Bolivian Ram
2 x Bristlenose Plec
9 x Sterbai Cory
12 x Espei Rasbora
So! This tank was an upgrade from my Juwel Rio 180 and has been running for 7 weeks. The tank had been drilled and had a weir installed. It was easy to remove the weir with a razor blade.
You can see the pipes here:
So we sawed the pipes down to about two inches and capped them off with pvc caps and solvent weld glue.
Unfortunately I had a leak but luckily figured out that it wasn't my caps that were leaking but where the original pipe fitted into the bulkhead. This was fixed by slathering silicone over everything lol.
My hardscape is Scottish heather which had been burnt so was dry as a bone but the bark was a PITA to get off!
These pictures are mostly 7 weeks old from when the tank was first set up. I did do another "photoshoot" a couple of weeks ago but managed to delete all of the FTS
I'm planning to take some pictures this weekend so I'll have another update soon. Although it doesn't look much different haha. Most of the plants melted back and the ones that didn't I ended up trimming to get rid of the emmersed growth once the good stuff started growing in
Unfortunately, my angels have discovered a taste for weeping moss and lobelia cardinalis dwarf so it looks like I have aquatic caterpillars
I do have a a tiny amount of diatoms setting in but it seems restrained to the edges of some leaves. Maybe because my filters are very mature. I hope it comes and goes no worse than this!
Ok that's it for now, I'll do a FTS update and a fishy post to show you all of my wet pets later on
Thanks for looking and feel free to ask any questions!
This first post will be fairly long as I'd like to go a little into the set up of the tank as well as how it is now and some detail on the tank inhabitants.
Let's start with the basics!
Tank: Calico Aquatics 340L 4ft x 2ft x 18in deep
Filtration: 2 x TetraTec Ex1200, roughly 7x turnover
Heating: 2 x Hydor ETH 300w external heaters
Lighting: Arcadia Ultra Seal Controller
Bulbs: 1 x T5 Sylvania 54w Growlux, 1 x T5 Osram 54w Skywhite 880
Substrate: Unipac Limpopo Sand
Hardscape: Scottish Heather
Flora:
Hydrocotyle leucocephala
Tiger Lotus "Red" Nymphaea Zenkeri
Anubias nana
1-2 Grow Weeping moss
Cryptocoryne bullosa
Echinodorus ozelot red
Cryptocoryne balansae
Limnophilia aromatica
Lobelia cardinalis dwarf
Cryptocoryne wendtii tropica
Ferts/Carbon: TNC Carbon 6.5ml daily, TNC Complete 6.5ml daily
Fauna:
6 x Angelfish
2 x Bolivian Ram
2 x Bristlenose Plec
9 x Sterbai Cory
12 x Espei Rasbora
So! This tank was an upgrade from my Juwel Rio 180 and has been running for 7 weeks. The tank had been drilled and had a weir installed. It was easy to remove the weir with a razor blade.
You can see the pipes here:
So we sawed the pipes down to about two inches and capped them off with pvc caps and solvent weld glue.
Unfortunately I had a leak but luckily figured out that it wasn't my caps that were leaking but where the original pipe fitted into the bulkhead. This was fixed by slathering silicone over everything lol.
My hardscape is Scottish heather which had been burnt so was dry as a bone but the bark was a PITA to get off!
These pictures are mostly 7 weeks old from when the tank was first set up. I did do another "photoshoot" a couple of weeks ago but managed to delete all of the FTS
Unfortunately, my angels have discovered a taste for weeping moss and lobelia cardinalis dwarf so it looks like I have aquatic caterpillars
I do have a a tiny amount of diatoms setting in but it seems restrained to the edges of some leaves. Maybe because my filters are very mature. I hope it comes and goes no worse than this!
Ok that's it for now, I'll do a FTS update and a fishy post to show you all of my wet pets later on
