New Planted Tank Advice

[John44]

Hi

I Have kept tropical fish in the past but needed a break due to moving etc, so I now have a space for my tank and am looking for advice pulling together my equipment list

I have a corner so possibly a Juwel Trigon 350 Bow Front Corner Aquarium or something very similar
So capacity with no substrate etc is about 350L
The end game is a planted tank, will add a nice piece of BogWood from say bottom left to top right
a little bit of stone \ Slate and of course plants

So thoughts on
External Filter (ideally with heater)
Substrate
Lighting (were the tank will be it will get very little light)
Co2 System (last time i kept fish I used a Co2 cylinder)

Ideally link the lighting and Co2 Feed so Co2 starts for an hour then the lights come on etc


Thoughts appreciated (finance is not an Issue as I want to get the correct kit for the job)

Regards

John

 

[sgdiscus]

Hi John,

congrats on getting back into the hobby. You look good to start and I can see that you have put in some thoughts already.

I have just started a 495 litre tank myself. Personally, I found it useful to plan what kind of fish and the plants to go with it. That helped me to get some clarity on the water changing schedule, lighting duration and fertilising regime. Keeping maintenance routine to what I am prepared to commit is important for sustainability.

Hope this helps! Have fun!

 

[Sweded]

Before you think about the technical, take some time to reflect on how your tank should look like in an optimal situation. Get inspired by all types of planted aquariums and aquascapes and figure out the layout you find most attractive.
This will in turn guide your technical apparatuses.
Just now that a high tech setup with fast growing stem plants is a fair bit if work maintain. It's really cool for a beginner to try out all these fancy stem plants and blast them with high light and CO2 and see the tank explode in color and shapes. In the end it can be a bit much to hand and some even quit the hobby.

 

[DavidW]

I'm setting up a Trigon 350 at the moment. For inspiration on what look you want to achieve google 'aquascape trigon 350' there some nice imagery of what people have done. For a 350 litre tank to get enough flow you'd be looking a two external filters, I'm a big fan of the JBL e1501 and have this on my trigon 190. I've never used a filter with a built in heater I'm sure Eheim make one. If you just don't want to see the heater in the tank you could look into inline heater on the tank return.

Lighting will depend on what plants you want to grow and if you want to keep the lid on the tank, there are a couple of companies that do Juwel compatible LED units or ever 4 tube replacements for the current 2 tube t5 lighting unit. If you loose the lid there are loads of different pendant lights T5 and LED.
CO2 I'd recommend going with a kit which works with a FE bottle.

Once you know what you want to achieve visually and what plants and fish you want to keep you can see what there requirements are so you'll get more of an idea of what you need equipment wise.