Vision 180 Journal

[deucebrennan]

So this is my first attempt at a tropical tank. I have only kept gold fish in a 70l tank before and they ripped up all my real plants so i decided to go and try doing a big planted community tank.

I dont have any pictures of my tank from scratch when i was adding the structured background or the substrate but here we go.

This is what it looked like after about 1 week. I had a mature filter media from my old tank inside the internal filter colonizing my new media so cos there was no room for the other i just threw it in for a few weeks until it was well colonized. I did have a couple of goldfish in there to help cycle it (i know!). i dont think i have a pic with them in it. i was trying to make a co2 reactor at the time as well.hence the bit of garden hose and empty bottle on the bottom.

This was after about 3 weeks. The CO2 had really helped the plants grow and thanks to the 2 T5s that came with the tank there seemed to be a good amount of light. I also added a few more plants to try and hide the filter box a bit & also decided that i didnt really like the statue guy in there so i thought i would cover him in Riccia (thanks Jimbo, great thread!)

I ordered some Riccia from Greenline and stuck some in a hair net and shoved him in. I then tied it down tightly so it didnt all bunch up at the top of get any fish caught up in it. I also tried to make a lawn with it in the front using a textile thing. I have no idea what its called?

I dont have any pics of it but when i came back from two weeks in Thailand the wole tank was full with BGA!
It looked awful I had to pull tons of the stuff out do massive water changes and a 4 day blackout! After that it was ok and back to normal!
After the tank had cycled i added some fish. 5 Rose Dannios & 3 Red Platties & 2 Sunset Moon Platties. I also put in 2 small Plecs but they were very shy.

Very hard to get good pics because they keep zooming about!

The tank stayed like this for about 3 months and then i went to get 10 cardinal tetras from Wildwoods!

By this time the plants were growing really well. You can see the Riccia in the bottom of this pic. That was the statue guy. Hes completely covered in the stuff now.

I have added some slate and remade the reactor using the end of a gravel vac. still not great but it will do until i can get one i like off ebay!
I have also added some Amazon swords at the back and some dwarf swords and crypts in front of the filter box. You can still see the green algae on the structured background. I cant seem to get rid of it! I have added 6 Amano shrimp to try and clean it up a bit


Ok now i want some Angels. Ideally a pair. As it is hard to sex them i have decided to get 6 juveniles and keep them till the pair up and the re-home 3 or 4 of em. I have a good home for one of them already. When im ready to send them on their way i will put up a post on here somewhere
Back up to Wildwoods today and here they are

Next on the list is the new reactor and possibly a fire extinguisher and valve

Will add more pics as i add bits and pieces.

 

[big-george91]

really nice tank good choice of fish

keep up the good work

 

[orange shark]

That looks really good!

Nice one

 

[deucebrennan]

Thanks guys! It has taken alot of work and im not 100% happy with the aquascaping but i think it will be forever a work in progress.

Any ideas for more fish welcome

 

[Straydum]

great progress there! you're probably into breeding since you're waiting for an angel pair. in that case, tankmates will be at risk if there's actually breeding.

 

[orange shark]

is it me or does there look like there is a bottle on the floor to the right?

edit: oh ive only just read the post properly

 

[oceanchic12]

VERY AWESOME!! i so wish i could go all natural but im sure i wouldn't be able to take care of the plants right.

 

[Ace Of Spades]

VERY AWESOME!! i so wish i could go all natural but im sure i wouldn't be able to take care of the plants right.

Nice tank mate, Has come on leaps and bounds should be proud...Im starting to to planted in the next few weeks wish me luck

 

[deucebrennan]

Thanks! I have just received my new reactor from aqua essentials and i will be putting it in tonight. i also have some flourish excel which i hope will help to get rid of the algae. Will start dosing tonight. Will add some more pics later as well!

 

[deucebrennan]

Sweet Jesus! What have i done?!

Last night i put in my new reactor and decided that i would gravel vac & do a 50% water change before dosing with Excel to help reduce Algae spores. This morning i have done some tests and the Nitrate is off the charts! 5ppm is as high as the test will show! Ammonia is a little higher than normal. .5ppm

I did a bit of poo and tried to figure what had happened? Did the Flourish Excel do this? I guessed that perhaps the filter media i had was not as mature as i thought and that the substrate must have been harboring lots of good bacteria. Would explain why i sucked up so much dirt up from the substrate. Realistically i should have done a 50%+ water change but i only had 15mins before i had to leave for work. I decided that i needed to re-colonize the bacteria in the tank. I got 2 mature filter media bits from my other tank and squeezed as much cloudy water out of them into the Nitrite saturated water.

I dont know if this will work and i will do a large water change tonight. Any ideas what to do now i have over-cleanned the substrate?

 

[deucebrennan]

Good news & bad news. Good news is i haven't over-cleaned the substrate. Bad news is that i found a dead fishy

Reactor looks good and seems to be working well.

 

[paul_219]

Thats a nice tank looking gr8.

 

[deucebrennan]

As promised some pics of the new reactor. It runs thru the Juwel internal filter via the juwel attachment and some gravel vac hose

Last night i pulled out most of the Elodia as it was starting to dominate the right side of the tank. I have been dosing with Flourish Excel to help get rid of the algae. I know this is only a temp solution and that the cause in my tank is down to unstable CO2. I think its because 180litres is a bit too much for a diy yeast based system. Time to upgrade...

This was the old one that was under the tank in the cabnet.

Yesterday i got a new dual valve regulator with integrated solenoid from eBay for only £25.00! I nicked some CO2 fire extinguishers from an old building i was working in that was being pulled down. So i put it all together and now...

Works great! A little too great. I turned the flow valve right down and was still getting a reasonable flow. I decided to leave it like this increase little by little if needs be. I think i need to connect it to a timer switch because this morning all of my fish were gasping at the surface

I guess at night with the plants not photosynthesizing the CO2 must have built up! I aimed one of the pumps at the surface and chucked in an air pump to agitate the surface and oxygenate the water before i went to work. This needs some tweaking to get right but i recon with a timer turning off the co2 at night this can be avoided. Might need to put bubbles on at night thou? We will see.

Anyhow. Here is how the tank looks at the mo. I have pulled out alot of the Elodia as i said and a few of the other plants have started to wilt a bit. going to get some more ferts at the weekend. Dont really want to go down the EI route but i dont want a tank full of brown plants either

The next project is to put in some blue cold cathode moon lights

 

[deucebrennan]

Its been a few weeks since my last update so here is a FTS.

As you can see the Riccia is growing massive now!! The Dwarf swords are also growing well and have sent out several shooters which have in turn sent out their own shooters. They keep popping up out of the riccia hedge at the front. The statue guy, which had also developed a good thatch of Riccia has gone a bit bald. Lots had broken off and floated away leaving brown dead riccia under the hair net. I think that it must have got so thick that the light couln't get to the lower parts and it must have died allowing the top layer to break away. Need to try and keep the big hedge at the front trimmed so it doesn't happen again.

I finally got my cold cathode moon lights as well. Bought them off ebay along with a 12v transformer to power them. Here is the link for installing them. Thanks to SmithRC for this one! great work

click here

Here is a pic of them on. I have a transformer on which you can change the voltage so you can set the light level. I think more subtle looks best and doesn't bother the fish, however you can see them better on the higher setting.

Sorry its blurry

I have also added some Ottos(5 in total) & a pair of clown loaches to keep my snail population down.

I didn't research the clown loaches properly before getting them. I Now have 1 less Amano shrimp. The chowed down the little one but the rest are too big to be eaten yet but are obviously aware of the clown loaches and are much better at hiding now.

The Ottos have cleaned up the residual algae a treat! They are great fish and very active. The clown loaches were very shy at first spending the first week under the juwel filter. They have gained some confidence now and are venturing out during the day to feed. They are very playful and i have noticed that when they get excited they 'click' to eachother!!

I have also found that one of my plattys has had some fry. I dont know how many but 2 have survived the jaws of the Angels. I keep seeing them poke out from the dwarf swords. they must be eating the scraps of flake food that sinks down because they dont yet venture out into the open areas of the tank. They are very cute and are just over 1cm in length.

I have decided to add some more colourful plants to the tank cos its looking very green I have planted some new Red Hygro i got from greenline aquatics and some other pink things too.

A new full tank shot

and a close up of the riccia mountain

I have noticed that the Riccia mass is also dying underneath. It grows so fast! i want to get rid of it & replace it with the dwarf variety. I have some on order so we will see what happens.

Here are some pics of my angels. All but one have noticeably grown but you cant really tell from the pic. I never see him eat, only peck at plants. Some of the other are getting a bit nippy with each other. No damage done yet. I think they are trying to establishing who is the dominant one of the group. I think they are still a bit youg to be pairing yet. Maybe Tolak Knows what this means???

More pics soon

 

[invader]

It's amazing how nice a planted tank can get so quickly! It looks awesome, keep up the good work.