Dan Walter
Member
After spending the last year or so researching, learning, maintaining, enjoying and generally playing about with my 60x30x30cm tank, I decided to purchase an optiwhite aquarium.
This tank and cabinet came from ukaps member, John Starkey who kindly let me take the luminaire when I bought the tank with an agreement to pay for this at a later date. Top boy!
60x40x45cm (108L) optiwhite, ADA style cabinet, Arcadia OT2 luminaire 4x24w.
Cheers for your generosity, John.
Although most aquascapes, including many on here impress me, my main inspiration came from an aquascape by Luis Moniz. His attention to detail is fantastic and his blog is well worth a read. There is even a step by step guide documenting this particular aquascape which I might have read a few times….
http://akuatic.blogspot.com/search/labe ... yle%20130L
This picture really caught my eye so im loosely basing my current aquascape on this..
Back to my tank..
With the tank, cabinet and lights sorted it was time to update a few other peripherals…
I picked up an Eheim 2028 from my LFS as an ex-display. I figured that the flow rate of 1050Lph should be adequate enough for my 108L tank. If I need any assistance with flow then I do have a Koralia Nano that I can add.
What with the substrate and hardscape I think I may be near 10 x turnover.
Next up came new CO2 glassware, clear filter tubing, new inlet/outlet, media, tools, Hydor external heater, Columbo Flora Grow substrate, Unipac Zambezi sand, easycarbo etc.
Anyway…
I took a day off from work to start the hardscaping and here’s how I got on..
I started by making a substrate/gravel separator
Then I added Zambezi sand for my foreground, which looks like this close up
In it goes, just under 2 small bags did the trick
In went the Columbo. I used 10L to get a steady rise to the back.
At this point I started to panic as it was time to remove the divider… I imagined the whole lot mixing together and it being GAME OVER……Break time, day off, no hurry.
All good though…
From the side, showing the steady rise
Substrate base - DONE. Next up it’s hardscape. I played with rock formation for hours the night before and kind of settled on something like this. For the record, my wife now thinks I talk to rocks.
I then had to remove the wood from my current set up and basically tear down my current tank and transport fish to there holiday home while the new tank gets the treatment.
]
Now I’ve got wood to play with! This is a piece of Sumatran driftwood that I’ve used for over a year in my old tank and I just haven’t seen any bits of wood locally that interest me really so im using it in this set up. After some fettling I settled on something similar to this.
Next up, get it in the tank. Once the rocks were in place I added another 5L of Columbo to even things up. This was the first go but I just wasn’t happy with the wood placement.
I thought the wood was positioned to far to the right so had a play and came up with this.
It stayed like this for a week but then the rocks spoke to me and needed some arrangement. So tonight I have settled on this… I think I’ll go with this one as im starting to get a picture of how it will look planted up.
I've probably some fettling left to do but something similar to this is set in stone. For plants im planning on small amounts of Glosso for between rocks, some E-Parvula for the front of the substrate, rotala's for the back, some cyperus helferi in the centre behind the wood and something in the mid ground to hide the bottom of the rotalas but im unsure what and it's holding up my plant order! Some E-tenellus perhaps?? Oh, also some needle/narrow leaf java in and around the rocks/wood base.
Anyone care to make any suggestions?
Cheers
Dan
This tank and cabinet came from ukaps member, John Starkey who kindly let me take the luminaire when I bought the tank with an agreement to pay for this at a later date. Top boy!
60x40x45cm (108L) optiwhite, ADA style cabinet, Arcadia OT2 luminaire 4x24w.
Cheers for your generosity, John.
Although most aquascapes, including many on here impress me, my main inspiration came from an aquascape by Luis Moniz. His attention to detail is fantastic and his blog is well worth a read. There is even a step by step guide documenting this particular aquascape which I might have read a few times….
http://akuatic.blogspot.com/search/labe ... yle%20130L
This picture really caught my eye so im loosely basing my current aquascape on this..
Back to my tank..
With the tank, cabinet and lights sorted it was time to update a few other peripherals…
I picked up an Eheim 2028 from my LFS as an ex-display. I figured that the flow rate of 1050Lph should be adequate enough for my 108L tank. If I need any assistance with flow then I do have a Koralia Nano that I can add.
What with the substrate and hardscape I think I may be near 10 x turnover.
Next up came new CO2 glassware, clear filter tubing, new inlet/outlet, media, tools, Hydor external heater, Columbo Flora Grow substrate, Unipac Zambezi sand, easycarbo etc.
Anyway…
I took a day off from work to start the hardscaping and here’s how I got on..
I started by making a substrate/gravel separator
Then I added Zambezi sand for my foreground, which looks like this close up
In it goes, just under 2 small bags did the trick
In went the Columbo. I used 10L to get a steady rise to the back.
At this point I started to panic as it was time to remove the divider… I imagined the whole lot mixing together and it being GAME OVER……Break time, day off, no hurry.
All good though…
From the side, showing the steady rise
Substrate base - DONE. Next up it’s hardscape. I played with rock formation for hours the night before and kind of settled on something like this. For the record, my wife now thinks I talk to rocks.
I then had to remove the wood from my current set up and basically tear down my current tank and transport fish to there holiday home while the new tank gets the treatment.
Now I’ve got wood to play with! This is a piece of Sumatran driftwood that I’ve used for over a year in my old tank and I just haven’t seen any bits of wood locally that interest me really so im using it in this set up. After some fettling I settled on something similar to this.
Next up, get it in the tank. Once the rocks were in place I added another 5L of Columbo to even things up. This was the first go but I just wasn’t happy with the wood placement.
I thought the wood was positioned to far to the right so had a play and came up with this.
It stayed like this for a week but then the rocks spoke to me and needed some arrangement. So tonight I have settled on this… I think I’ll go with this one as im starting to get a picture of how it will look planted up.
I've probably some fettling left to do but something similar to this is set in stone. For plants im planning on small amounts of Glosso for between rocks, some E-Parvula for the front of the substrate, rotala's for the back, some cyperus helferi in the centre behind the wood and something in the mid ground to hide the bottom of the rotalas but im unsure what and it's holding up my plant order! Some E-tenellus perhaps?? Oh, also some needle/narrow leaf java in and around the rocks/wood base.
Anyone care to make any suggestions?
Cheers
Dan