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My First Real Attempt of a Planted Tank

13r0wn7

Member
Joined
31 Dec 2013
Messages
151
Location
Richmond North yorkshire
04/08/2014

This is my first real attempt of a planted tank so this should be fun...

The first attempt was only really a tester to see how it got on as I was completely new to this and my results where quite good and then got hit with a mass of BBA and took over my tank.
I believe the reason it happened now was that I had far to much light in my tank.
I had a beamsworks 54x1w led that cannot be adjusted so it's the full intensity or nothing.

So here is what I will be using for my new scape.


I had made a custom LED which I decided what LEDs I wanted.
They are all 3w Crees. There is an illustration below of what the layout is.
There are 4 channels and can all be changed from 1-99 intensity.
I do Believe the lighting layout may not be what people would of chose so please go easy :)
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I am starting off at 20% light for 7 hours a day (12-7) and then 3 moonlight LEDs at 2% for 3 hours (7-10)

My tank is 145L

1 x JBL E1501
1 x dosing pump @ 15ml per day EI Dose
1 x Industry CO2 Bottle (3.2kg)
1 x Co2Art dual stage reg inc solenoid
1 x inline atomizer (intake end)
1 x custom spraybar 1m
1 x hydor powerhead nano 1600
20L TMC Nutrasoil
The plants I will be using are :

6 x Echinodorus Tenellus
2 x Pogostemon Erectus
2 x Rotala Rotundifolia
1 x Alternanthera Rosaefolia
2 x Staurogyne rubescens
1 x Bacopa Caroliniana
1 x Hygrophila Compacta
1 x bag of java moss

All my plants are from AquariumGardens which all come in very good condition and very well packaged!
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The first thing I did was bake my Nutrasoil for 2 hours at 180c.
The reason I did this was to speed up the chemical reaction to avoid the ammonia spike.
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Once it had cooled down I went in my garden and got some soil fresh from the plant roots. This was to add some love bacteria to the Nutrasoil which may of been killed during baking.

Then I started to scape :)

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I superglued java moss onto my drift wood and then planted away!

Then I slowly added water and then my scape was complete!
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My daily routines are:

9am - co2 goes on at 3bps
11am - Ei dose @ 15ml
12am - lights go on at 15% intensity
1pm - lights go to 20%
6pm - co2 goes off and light intensity to 15%
7pm lights off and 3 LEDs on (moonlight @ 2%)
10pm all lights off

My ph is 7.4
Kh is 6
I do get a drop to 6.8 which gives me a good ppm of co2.
My DC is green.

Fish
20 x Neon Tetra
5 x Penguin Tetra
4 x Diamond Tetra
5 x Glow light Tetra
10 x Galaxy Rasboras
1 x SAE
4 x bristle nose plecs
4 x platys

Thanks


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:
Hi brown i also had algae issue when i setup new tank which got away after 2 months, after setting new tank in 2nd week i had lot of brown hair algae so i reduced my lighting only for 4 hours and co2 will switch on 2 hours before lighting and will go off 30 min before light switch off, i also reduced the EI dosing level in that period, which i followed the same for next 5 weeks and after that increased the light to 7 hours a day and EI dosing to normal schedule and now I'm not having any algae issue and plants also doing great.
 
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