The Jape Planted Rekord 70 Journal....

[Jape]

Having posted random pictures of my tank on a few threads now , I thought it was time to take the plunge and post a journal of my tank experience to date. I am hoping that you will all have some useful comments to help me out!

I came back to fishkeeping last November - after a break of a few years. My daughter was bought two fish (Blackmoor & Orander) and a tiny tank by a well meaning friend...it's on the left of this picture!

Note the lovely 'clown puke' gravel

I quickly realised that it was far to small for the fish, and bought a Rekord 70 from my LFS, with the intention of putting a few plants in it....but reading TFF and other forums led me down the road of going high tech!

This is how the tank began life. It had the original 18W tube and filter..

I then added a few plants and a couple of rocks in a random order, along with my small internal filter from the old tank..

Then....I decided the lighting needed upgrading, and installed a 36W T5 power compact tube...

Quickly followed by a second one ....

and some more fast growing plants. Oh....and an external filter as well! I also painted the background black.

The Eheim internal filter will be going in 3 weeks - just keeping it there until new external filter beds in.


So, having spent all my money on 'those bl**dy fish' (wife words ) I need your help!

The plants I have at the moment are not what I intend the final set-up to be, but I'd like to keep most of them for a while! I've got some riccia coming later this week for attaching to a piece of slate in the foreground.

What do you all think of the setup? Having seen craynerds set up (in the planted tank section) I feel mine is pretty pathetic really, although I do like having a sand foreground for some reason.

Any comments are really appreciated Don't be afraid to be cruel

 

[BigC]

Jape please post a lighting upgrade for the Rekord 70 in the DIY section if you haven't already done so. Specifically interested how you got the old ballast out without breaking any of the plastic.
Nice tank by the way.
Regards
BigC

 

[Jape]

Jape please post a lighting upgrade for the Rekord 70 in the DIY section if you haven't already done so. Specifically interested how you got the old ballast out without breaking any of the plastic.
Nice tank by the way.
Regards
BigC

I'll make a post on the full upgrade process in the DIY forum later tonight But in the meantime, there is a bit of info on how I did it in this thread

 

[willtang3000]

it looks great and theres not much else you can do except add plants were the internal filter used to be and maybe turn the outlet from the external towards the glass and put some plants in front off it to cover it up and it also slows the movement down which should also help the goldies swim a bit better