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My first cube garden

justjason88

Member
Joined
4 Dec 2011
Messages
108
Location
South London
I can definitely say that i am now addicted to fish keeping and aqua scaping! Managed to persuade my g/f to get a nano tank for the spare room so i can try my hand at a high tech iwagumi. Please let me know of what you think of the rock formation i made.

I played around with different ideas for well over an hour. I originally wanted to make the large stone bottom right look like a broken cliff and have the substrate backed up behind it and then cascading down to its left and have either sand or a light gravel in front of it to create a falling rock face look with a kind of beach in front of it. Unfortunately it didn't look that great due to space restrictions so i put the rocks in the most eye pleasing way i could come up with it. I'm pretty happy with it.

Tank
ADA Cube Garden Mini M: 36cm x 22cm x 26cm

Substrate
ADA Aqua Soil Powder Amazonia 3 Litres

Hardscape
ADA Seiryu stone 3KG (only used roughly 2KG of it)

Lighting
ADA Solar Mini M 27W Twin Fluorescent lamp – eBay for £175, RRP £300

Filtration
Eheim ecco pro 130 (2032)
Cal Aqua labs nano influx X1 and efflux F1 13mm lily pipes

Heating
Not going to use a heater, I figure it’s small enough that it should (I hope) stay at room temperature most of the time which ranges from 20 – 22 celsius

CO2
D-D Complete disposable system w/ 500g bottle
Glass bubble counter, check valve and diffuser from Tankscape

Fertilisation
TPN+ daily, with a weekly water change

Plants
Hydrocotyle tripartite
Vallisneria nana
Hemianthus callitrichoides 'Cuba'
Rotala rotundifolia
Echinodorus tenellus


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Also came up with a planting plan (although it looks very very messy and something a 5 year old did!). Will order the plants in a few days when im off work.

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Thanks for looking

Jason
 
Hi Jason, very smart setup that. One thought - when you come to planting your foreground, you might benefit from a tad more substrate down the front. It can be hard to keep plants rooted that shallow. Also, make sure you leave plenty of room around the back and side of that large rock for cleaning and planting. Made that mistake a few times only to dislodge a rock :/

Good luck,
Tom
 
great start. That large rock might need shifting away from the glass a bit. Would make planting etc easier.
 
23rd March

Plants arrived, i filled the tank so the substrate was submerged and started to plant. I was so focused on trimming the roots and getting them in the tank that i put the echinodorus and tripartite in each others places by accident. Once they were all in i slowly filled the tank. I had a few issues with some plants coming free of the substrate so i just put them back in and it wasn't a major issue. Some HC clumps kept coming free and wouldn't hold even with some of the mineral wool still attached.

Straight after planting and filling the tank
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At the moment i'm doing a WC every day, i guesstimate about 60-70% as i'm bringing the water level right down to the HC. I've had a few issues so far. Firstly i don't think i'm getting as much growth as i should be. Some HC and tripartite is growing and spreading a little bit but the echinodorus and valis are both not doing much and i've noticed some leaves have started to turn brown which im not happy with. The rotala is doing OK i think but the old leaves are starting to go brown, i have noticed the tips of the stems have new growth though.

CO2 was set at 1 bubble per 4 seconds and the drop checker showed a light green but after requesting some help on a few issues i've cranked it up to about 2bps following some advice. CO2 comes on at 5pm with lights on at 6pm, CO2 then goes off at 11pm and lights go off at 12pm. I'm also dosing TPN+ 1ml and Aqua Carbon 1ml per day after the WC.

This was the reason i cranked up the CO2, apparently the plants were doing something scientific which i don't understand and creating an oily layer on the surface. To combat this i cranked the CO2 up a lot, did larger WCs per day, raised the outflow pipe to make the surface water move more and skimmed the surface with paper towels to remove the layer. It has improved a little but i'll wait a while to see what the effects are.

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1st April

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Thanks for looking

Jason
 
10th April

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20th April

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Can see a large difference between the two sets of photos, the rotala, tenellus and tripartite are all growing very well. Unfortunately the valis nana hasn't really grown so i may have to purchase another batch. The HC isn't spreading at all which is disapointing. I can only see a few side shoots sprouting and would have thought it properly carpeted by now. I'm having to constantly cut the tenellus and tripartite back so it doesn't fill the space i want the HC to grow into. I've had two pond snails in there for roughly a week to combat the algae. They are doing a good job but the whole tank is suffering from brown algae which i believe is diatoms. It's on the substrate, plants and glass. I'm planning on adding some ottos and shrimp soon as the tank is nearly ready i think.

Thanks for looking

Jason
 
2nd May
Bought some shrimp from LFS 5 x crystal red. They have settled in well and so far so good, they are always cleaning the substrate and plants. I think i will pick up a few amano shrimp soon and then look toward getting a small shoal of fish, maybe some celestial pearl danios.

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9th May
Did a big trim on the rotala which was the first since planting, trimmed everything else too (valis still isnt growing). Also ordered another pot of HC and cut it up into 6 small pieces to fill in the gaps. This has now established and it's looking far better, hopefully it will fully carpet soon.

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On a side note i woke up this morning (19th) to find a number of very small worm like things on the front of the glass. They are all about 1 - 3 mm long, very thin, white in colour and there are about 10 - 15 aprox just under the outflow pipe. They move quite quickly for their size and i have no idea what they are. I haven't altered the tank at all for a while apart from adding the shrimp about 2 - 3 weeks ago and putting a couple of snails from the main tank in it a month ago. Any ideas what they can be?

I've added a video below but it doesn't show much, the iphone doesn't focus at all but you can barely make out a couple and see them moving. There's a tiny snail next to 1 on the left and to its right is 2 worm things, u will see 1 wriggle and move (sorry about the music i had it playing and forgot to turn it off :D).

Click the vid to play

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Thanks a lot

Jason
 
Hi, looking good, the shrimps in the pictures are red cherry shrimp, not crystal red shrimp.
 
So many plants for such a small iwagumi, I normally think 2 or 3 at a push for iwagumi is a good idea.

Just keep it nice n trim n it should look ok.
Good deal on the light.
 
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