The Avatar Floating Island Tank with Sand Fall
This is exciting, first time join the forum as well as the tank of the months contest. Hope you all enjoy my set up, it is still in the process of completion.
This is a set up i have been working on since Nov 2021. I anticipate to compelte the project in another 4 month or so with all plants goes in.
Tank size; 150 gallon.
Rock and wood feature: both corners and center feature are made out of dragon stone and drift wood. the center sand fall is glued with Ryuoh stone or some times called Seiryu Stone ( i have say that is the hardest part of the built, to super glue all the rocks together) I used a piece of crystal acrylic pipe to hold the sand fall dispenser rock. All of the floating island are made out of actual vocanal floating rock, though looks big, they are actually very light. once water are filled, they will natrually float up, so it doesnt add weight burden to the vines. for the vine, i just used dried up grape vine i collected a while ago to create the linkage between all the islands. those root look vines are from a type of banyan tree from south asia. (RongShu 榕树)is the name. it natrualy grow its root underneath the water so it wont go rotten later on.
Plants: right now, this month, i plan to complete the full carpet with
monte carlo looking mini leafs, also i drilled a lot of holes on those floating island rock, filled in soil and added in some
pink leafy plants. will glue tons of
anubias nana petite,
anubias bonzai, and
blue buce plant onto those rocks next months when its ready to fill water, also the
java moss will be used to cover more area of the drift wood, so far about 1/3 has gone into the tank. i also fille those crack of the rock with
heart shaped grass, and
horse shoe grass which are those bean sprout looking plants on the edge of the corner rock in the photo, depend on the spacing once all other plants are in next month, i may also add some
S Repens into the unfilled area.
Filtration system: Forza 13 with UV light bulit in. Hopefully that will take care of the algae easily, ive had luck with using UV sterilizer in the other tanks i have. works amazing.
Lighting: Took me first month to build the stand and the lighting features, the lighting, i had to do some soldering work myself to add full spetrum led to the track lighting system, ive done that in the past, works pretty well price wise. i mean it is not cheap, but i like the look of it better than the same price range lighting from the store.
CO2 system: consider this will be a full planted tank, so i did set up a CO2 system for it.
WIFI CONTROL: like all my other tanks, i have everything from lighting, to airpump , CO2, filtration system and heater all connected to WIFI based controlling system and linked with Alexa and google home. so these aquarium will be
Voice and App controllable. The only thing i have not figured out is the automatic water change function. i know in salt water tank they use the system, but im trying to figure out an cheaper way to achieve the same function, but so far, i guess it still requires me mannually do it on a weekly basis LOL
Fish Stock: I plan to place about 10 Discus fish of different kind, and as many neon tetra as possible. thinking maybe 80-100. One pleco or algae eater to help cleaning the tank. thats it, i want to keep it very simple on the fish. Im afraid too many fish will not be good for the plants in the tank.
This is it, i am still working on it, and attached photo are how it currently look. Please let me know if you have good sugguestions or questions. i am new into this aquascaping since covid started 2 years ago, and i have to say this hobby is a bit addicting, i have developed from 1 tank to 5 tanks now, and still have new ideas from time to time. So i am always interested to learn new tricks from people
. Again, i hope you all enjoy this hobby.
Thanks
Best Regard
Jason L