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Tom's 30cm Cube

lowee

Member
Joined
31 Aug 2008
Messages
60
I have been the owner of a 45 gallon tank for som time now, but recently have really struggled to keep it under control just because of a major lack of time. So I decided to go for something a little smaller, a 30cm float glas cube. I made a trip down to the Green Machine( amazing place, amazing people!) where I bought some more bits and got plenty of good advice! So I ended up with this set-up

30x30x30cm cube
Eden 501 filter
Small heater
Das CO2 diffuser (already got cylinder and other bits)
Eco-complete

And after spending a good few hours planting, glosso is hard to plant in eco-complete, I was happy with it and here is the result, minutes after finish. Comments and critique welcome!

Picture.jpg
 
First of all welcome aboard :)
You have a really nice setup there, shame the rocks will dissapear after a while too small, but everything else looks great, the wood and the plants. will look great when it fills in ;)
Keep us posted :)
 
You might find that the eden isn't really powerful enough for a cube, I'm running one on a 11" cube and I really don't think it's powerful enough and being unable to have an inline heater is a real pain.
 
This is a really nice start, as LD said the rocks are maybe a little small but the wood is great. Good Plant positioning too.

(Are you sure it's 45 gallons? That's one big 30cm cube! :D)
 
Thomas McMillan said:
(Are you sure it's 45 gallons? That's one big 30cm cube! :D)
Owns also a 45 gallon ;) so he got this instead to make life easier than the 45 gallon ;)
 
Thanks for all the comments guys! Yeh i'm really chuffed with the wood, got it from the Green Machine, a couple of pieces Mark had apparantly been 'saving' only cost about a tenner for the two pieces aswell! 2 weeks in and the tank is developing nicely, the Ludwigia arcuata (right corner) and the Proserpinaca palustris (left corner) are developing nicely and starting to show some nice colour. I'm not to sure what is going on with the Pogostemon helferi, but it looks as though it is shedding its old leaves ( was grown emersed at the shop) and new shoots are coming through, as you can see on the pic. Any other opinions on that would be great!?

I've also now fully stocked it, with 6 Galaxy Rasboras, 5 Bumble bee shrimp, 5 Cherry shrimp and 3 Otto's. Couldn't get any pictures unfortunately as they are all (especially the rasboras) rather shy fish! But I will try to get some asap.

Pogostemon helferi
DSC01088.jpg

The tank in situ
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Hi,
That's a nice layout. I really like the wood. Are you planning on transferring the moss on to it later? That will look cool. :D

Whenever plants exhibit tissue loss I immediately suspect poor CO2/flow. You may need stronger filtration or you may need to increase the injection rate (or both). I'd also probably move the spraybar up as close as possible to the surface so that the effluent causes rippling of the water surface. That helps to break up any surface film and pushes the flow downward a little bit more. I'd also cut those stems in half to encourage bushy growth and tho keep their mass from restricting flow headed towards the front glass.

Cheers,
 
lowee said:
I've also now fully stocked it, with 6 Galaxy Rasboras, 5 Bumble bee shrimp, 5 Cherry shrimp and 3 Otto's. Couldn't get any pictures unfortunately as they are all (especially the rasboras) rather shy fish! But I will try to get some asap.

Wow, I almost have the exact same list with the exact same numbers for my 20l (35x24x24 cm) nano tank :)
6 Dwarf Rasboras (Boraras Brigittae), 5 Cherry shrimp, 3 Otto's. :)

The Brigittae are actually the bravest fish I've ever seen, contrary to your GR-s. They actually tried to swim up the outlet of the filter and when that didn't work they squeezed themselves into the Cal Aqua intake somehow only to be trapped inside the 1cm space in the filter for a whole day. And survived. :)
 
Ceg4048: Yeh I tried to positiuon the moss so that it transfers onto the wood, so hopefully it will give it a nice covering! I cranked the CO2 up today, so we will see if that has any effect on the tissue loss. The reason i suspected that it might just be shedding old leaves is because there are new healthy shoots forming, you can just about see it on the picture. I don't think the flow rate has anything to do with it, as it seems quite strong, with all the plants constantly swaying in the flow, but i'll have a go tomorow at moving the spray bar. Thanks for the advice about the surface layer, that was my next question!

Keymaker: Hopefully my rasboras will man-up soon! It gets a bit annoying never seeing the fish that I spent quite a bit of money on! Although wouldn't really want them as brave as yours! :p

Cheers
Tom
 
Okay, revelation time I was playing with my diffuser and eden on my cube last night and if you place the spraybar vertically and the diffuser right in front of it, low and behold the best flow pattern I've known in the whole tank.
Give it a go I think it would be well worth trying.
 
Thanks for that Garuf, i'll have to give it a try!

Just started E.I. dosing this week, the glosso is still doing well and the Pogostemon helferi is starting to grow, I think it was just shedding the old leaves as it is looking much healtheir now and all the dead leaves had dropped off. The moss is growing nicely, starting to attach itself onto the wood aswell. So all in all, still going along steadily!

DSC01103.jpg


Tom
 
Cheers guys! Im going to give the tank a couple of weeks to let it grow through, then decide on a background.

Tom
 
It's all very nice, one thing though, you don't have Glossostigma. You have Hemianthius callitrichodes. (spelt wrong I think).
It's well worth trying the spray bar trick, I had to throttle back my co2 because everything started gasping. It looked like a lemonade bottle though!
 
Thanks for all the kind comments, the tank is still going strong, everything is growing nicely! I tried to have a fiddle with the spraybar/diffuser but I really couldnt find any other way to have it, but thanks for the help Garuf. Yeh I realised my mistake after I had written it, knew someone would point it out! :p The HC is starting to fill in and the Pogostemon Helferi is starting to grow aswell. I had just changed the solution in the dropchecker, hence the dodgey colour.

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Re: Tom's 30cm Cube - Update 22/9/08

Thanks Howardish :)

Ive had my first algae attack this week, not too sure what im doing wrong, CO2 is high so is my dosing. Stats are all normal aswell :S. So within a few days the uppers of all the plants got taken over by algae, so today I took the scissors to them and gave them a major trim back, I also trimmed the moss. It doesnt look its best atm after the cut, but il show you a picture anyway! Any advice on the algae would be great!


DSC01326.jpg



Here is a pic of the algae:

DSC01320.jpg
 
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