Juwel Trigon 190

After a couple of months thinking, purchasing and planning I can finally start the journal of my new tank. The beginning of October I managed to get a second-hand Juwel Trigon 190, they're not everybodies cup of tea as its a 190 litre corner tank that's 2ft tall. This tend to cause a bit of headache when it comes to flow and maintenance as they're a peculiar shape and quite deep. However it looks more pleasing in the living room than a regular shaped tank would in the same location, and a lot of serious research (on here especially) means I think that I can get the flow half decent.

The actual tank was in quite a state when I got it, so it's had the nasty Juwel backing removed and the internal filter, resulting in a much lighter and bigger tank. It's been cleaned with a hose, allowed to dry and is on it's second "fill" of clean tap water. The lid components have also been run through the dishwasher and had a good scrubbing to try and clear the limescale and green stain.

Me and my other half have spent quite a bit of time searching for bog wood as it's the intention to stock the tank with smaller varieties of fish - the biggest likely is 8cm, so we wanted bog wood that was going to create interesting arches and loops for them to swim through. There are going to be five pieces in, however some of those will be used to support the two largest pieces (and fixed together using stainless steel screws for extra stability).

The tank originally came with a (very dirty) T8 light unit with one natural and one terrapin bulb - so that's now been replaced with a new T5 unit with a natural and daylight bulb with reflector on each so that it gets to the bottom of the tank. I'm hoping this will be enough light (0.28 w/l) to reach the bottom and provide a bit of lighting for what I aim to be a moderately planted tank. Filtration is being provided in the form of a Hydor Prime 30 external canister filter with 300w Hydor inline heater. CO2 will be from a 2kg FE which I intend to use one of the new style UPAqua inline diffuser, although this may in time get changed to a reactor. Ultimately the only bits of equipment I want in the tank will be the filter tubes, thermometer and drop checker.

Substrate wise I've not completely decided Originally I was going to put in a layer of cat litter and then a layer of gravel, however now that I've seen the cat litter I may just go fully for that and sell the gravel on - time will tell.

Here's the tank so far...


This weekend is my last full weekend at home before Christmas so I need to get everything installed (FE reg on etc) and as much substrate washed as possible.

PeteA
Have a look at a the atttached viewtopic.php?f=35&t=10903&start=0 may be useful to you.

Regards
Paul.

Will be watching this mate. Any ideas for plant choices etc? I'd just stick with cat litter mate does the trick. I use it in mine with nothing over the top.

Trigons are a bit if a challenge when it comes to flow and planting. You may well need an additional powerhead with just the hydor, as with the addition of heater and diffuser inline that will reduce flow some more.

Here's the best Trigon I've seen with a multitude of photos of all the different layouts he did. Very inspirational if your looking for planting ideas and tips on flow etc
http://ukaps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3898

Hey Pete,

Great to see another trigon, I set mine up about two months ago after two years of purchasing and planning.

I took the internal filter out too and use a fluval 305, with inlet and outlet in the corner. I cut a hole in the lid flap and have a spray bar the depth of the tank spraying down one straight edge, and the flow is fine.

While planning I came accross this vid its beautiful, just shows what you can do! though it looks nothing like mine Not sure if I should hijack your thread so I won't post a picture.

Good luck, I will be watching, I love the look of corner tanks but they don't seem so popular.

PS I use tetra Complete substrate with a layer of aqua clay on top, works great.

Dolly Sprint 16v said:

PeteA
Have a look at a the atttached viewtopic.php?f=35&t=10903&start=0 may be useful to you.

Regards
Paul.

Click to expand...

Cheers. Love seeing what other people have done in what is actually quite a peculiar shaped tank!

Alastair said:

Will be watching this mate. Any ideas for plant choices etc? I'd just stick with cat litter mate does the trick. I use it in mine with nothing over the top.

Trigons are a bit if a challenge when it comes to flow and planting. You may well need an additional powerhead with just the hydor, as with the addition of heater and diffuser inline that will reduce flow some more.

Here's the best Trigon I've seen with a multitude of photos of all the different layouts he did. Very inspirational if your looking for planting ideas and tips on flow etc
http://ukaps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3898

Click to expand...

Have just washed out a load of cat litter and actually really like the colouring so thinking of cancelling the order for the gravel and sticking with kitty litter for the whole lot

My short list was:
Ludwigia arcuata
Utricularia graminifolia
Vesicularia ferriei 'Weeping'
Hemianthus micranthemoides
Hygrophila pinnatifida
Riccia fluitans
Fissidens fontanus

But I'm rethinking the UG as it's meant to be a sod to grow!

I'm thinking a powerhead might be in order too - will have to flog a few more bits on eBay to raise the funds.

Must admit, I've got that tank scape bookmarked. As you say, very useful for 'borrowing' ideas

jalexst said:

Hey Pete,

Great to see another trigon, I set mine up about two months ago after two years of purchasing and planning.

I took the internal filter out too and use a fluval 305, with inlet and outlet in the corner. I cut a hole in the lid flap and have a spray bar the depth of the tank spraying down one straight edge, and the flow is fine.

While planning I came accross this vid its beautiful, just shows what you can do! though it looks nothing like mine Not sure if I should hijack your thread so I won't post a picture.

Good luck, I will be watching, I love the look of corner tanks but they don't seem so popular.

PS I use tetra Complete substrate with a layer of aqua clay on top, works great.

Click to expand...

It certainly pays to do a lot of planning (and buying it in one go is damned pricey!)

The internal filter is just huge and fugly. I'm going to see what the flow is like using the regular outlet pipe and can upgrade to a spray if I want - the spraybar in my small tank is brilliant for flow. Same as you the inlet and outlet's are going into the corner with a slight modification of the lid flap.

WOW that video scape is fantastic - what on earth has been used to create the "cliff" faces?

I think I contacted the guy when I first saw it and it was fossilised wood. I have seen it in a few tanks (more recently competition tanks at aquatics live) and it allways looks great. Never seen it in the shops though.

The tiered substrate in that clip is amazing - what a great idea!! Something to bear in mind for the future!!

BTW thats some great pieces of wood you have. I particularly like the one at the back. You planning on growing anything on it? Or is that a stupid question

Viv

Fossilised wood makes sense. The tiered idea is great, won't do it this time, but will keep an eye out for bits to do it if I'm allowed another tank or ever rescape this one.

Viv said:

BTW thats some great pieces of wood you have. I particularly like the one at the back. You planning on growing anything on it? Or is that a stupid question

Click to expand...

Thanks, the credit has to go to my other half who has spent hours looking on the internet and travelling around the local shops for those bits that work (found another bit yesterday too...). It's not a stupid question, and the answer is yes, I do intend to have some plants on at least part of them. The rear piece of wood is propped up with another two pieces so I plan to cover this base layer with phoenix moss to disguise the transition. I'd like to run something up side of it too. The front piece is going to form an arch and has a lot of texture that I'd like to do something with

I got the cabinet fundamentally sorted yesterday (though found the blasted CO2 check valve doesn't work) and the significant other rinsed off another 5 kilo's of cat litter. Tomorrow evening's job is to drain the tank, screw all of the bog wood together put in the substrate and refill with decholorinated water (will be using RO water eventually). Will probably switch the filter on and transfer across some of the Indian Fern from the other tank too.

I haven't heard of phoenix moss before but will be looking it up. I've already seen a dozen plants on here that I haven't seen before!! Its got me eyeing up my other tanks with a view to making them fully planted too!! LOL

Viv

Viv,

Phoenix Moss is the common name for Fissidens A lovely moss in my opinion!

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Right, last night saw a load of work done on the tank and although it's far from complete it's a huge step in the right direction. For anybody who's interested I have only used a single 10 litre bag of cat litter for the whole of the base of the tank at 1" deep at the shallowest and 3" in the deepest. It's not as heavy as gravel for sure and you have to be a little bit more gently when pouring in the water (use a plate/lid to pour onto) but the end effect is lovely. The filter is now running and despite still gurgling with trapped air, I seem to have a flow in most areas of the tank (not strong but some).

The bog wood is now screwed together and is nice and secure and some of the Indian Fern has been transplanted from my smaller tank.



You can see from the above pic the base of the rear bogwood that I plan to grow moss along

One of the pieces of fern has escaped and I notice that my CO2 diffuser appears to have a slight leak around the top seal, so tonight after the Christmas tree goes up it looks like I'll be dismantling that and putting some ptfe tape round it. I've ordered a new bubble counter as although the one I've got is nice, I'd rather have one that screws onto the CO2 pipe than gets rammed onto glass ends, it should also be more visible as it's positioned towards the back of the cupboard.

The cupboard currently looks like this:


A bit messier than I'd like but not too bad. I need to get a 4-way extension that I will fix along the left-hand side and if the new bubble counter arrives today will start playing with the CO2 injection. I'll likely wait until I get more plants in before I have the CO2 on every day. I'm hoping that by the time I get home the filter will have quietened down a bit as it was been flipping noisy last night!

The tank has been up and running for two and a half weeks now and is starting to come together so I'd best post an update. I've got some of the plants that were originally on my shopping list which are now in and I'm letting them get established. I'm hoping that over the Christmas break I'll be able to transfer across my 6 Neon Tetra's and if they're happy put in some Diamond Blue Neon Tetra's too (the local Maidenhead has some in). Going to start running the RO water tonight/tomorrow and aim for the actual full water change tomorrow or Friday.



The Indian Fern has gone mental and I've trimmed it back twice already - clearly lots of ferts and CO2 makes it a happy plant! The small bit of java moss on the left-hand side of the front piece of wood is starting to grow (snipped from a piece in my other tank) and I think I may have more that can be transplanted across.

If you look carefully you'll spot two "lines" of Vallis corkscrew in the substrate that were also removed from my other tank and went in on Sunday, these should do really well and provide walls of green fairly quickly. Originally I had more Hygrophila pinnatifida than you can currently see, however it would appear that during my long weekend away some of it uprooted and ended up having to be removed because it had gone brown

At the bottom of the rear piece of bog wood is a small carpet of Fissidens which has been strapped into place with fishing line. I'm hoping that it's going to bed into the wood and I can get rid of the fishing line in time and it is in clumps rather than a nice lush carpet.

The Riccia on the front piece of wood seems to be beginning to establish and fresh green growth is starting to push the odd pale brown patch out. Out of curiosity, how do people trim the likes of Riccia & moss without it going everywhere? I'm still yanking odd little bits of Riccia out where some of it wasn't tied down firmly enough and detached.

I'll try and get a bit better pic as this was snapped on my phone last night and doesn't show the bottom level very well.

Blimey, where did the last 3 and a bit weeks go!

Everything is progressing quite nicely in the new tank, I've transferred the 6 Neon Tetra, added 2 Starlight Pleco's, my existing 5 Endler Livebearers (all male, 2 are pure, 2 are hybrids and 1 well, he could be either), and 7 red cherry shrimp (not all at once though!). Two of the endlers have struggled when they've got into the flow from the external filter and spent a good few hours quite dazed, but other than that everything seems to be OK.

This pic was taken on the 8th (before the endlers went across), I've now found my digital camera so will try and take a better quality pic this weekend as all the one's I've done so far have been on my phone, the plants are a lot more settled now.

Hi all,
Not sure about the plant on the right, behind the Hygrophila pinnatifida, it looks like Hemigraphis "alternata", and definitely not an aquatic. I could find you a bit of one of the larger Anubias for the wood if you would like it?

cheers Darrel

dw1305 said:

Hi all,
Not sure about the plant on the right, behind the Hygrophila pinnatifida, it looks like Hemigraphis "alternata", and definitely not an aquatic. I could find you a bit of one of the larger Anubias for the wood if you would like it?

cheers Darrel

Click to expand...

That would explain why I couldn't recall seeing the plant in any scapes online, when we picked it up from an aquatics centre locally. Thanks, at least when it goes manky, I know why now! I'll let you know on the Anubias if that's OK?

Added another 4 red cherries to the tank yesterday as there were some really nice ones in a store. Reckon I'll have a flipping army of them in time!