Hi from Cambridge

[Bacms]

Hello everyone,

New aquarist here, I have inherited a Juwel Vision 180 cichlids tank and I am trying to sell the fish so I can convert it to a planted aquarium. Been reading all the tutorials in the things necessary to keep plants and think I am now in the stage where I am comfortably designing my tank. Planning something like this:

Juwel Vision 180
Filtering: Upgrading to a Eheim 2075
Lighting: keeping the original 2xT8 25W and added 2 grobeams 600
CO2: Purchased a CO2 kit from CO2 art that uses sodastream cans (hopefully this ones won't run out too quickly as without a car this are the most convenient way of getting refills)
Fertilizers: EI method using powders

Now that was the easiest part for me the difficult one is designing the layout and choosing the plants and after browsing pictures for hours think I have found the styles I like , so something like this examples:

I have more or less nailed the list of plants just need to figure out how many I will need to order of each species to cover the areas I want. Current list looks something like this:
1 - Rotala Bossi (as the back corner plant)
2 - Pogostmon erectus (as the front left side plant)
3 - Rotala rotundifolia (as the background plant)
4 - Some red ludwigia (to give a focal point to the left side and planted around the rocks)
5 - Hygrophila pinnatifida (as a midground plant to easy the transitions here and there )
6 - Hemianthus Callitrichoides 'Cuba' (as the carpeting plant)

Let me know if you have suggestions or if I am doing something completely wrong.

 

[Worshiper]

Hi Bacms,

Welcome to UKAPS!

You will learn a lot from this forum on how succeed and maintain a planted aquarium.

I have learnt that maintaining a successful planted aquarium takes a lot of practice, patience and discipline.

IMHO if you are new to aquarium plants you might want to go with easy/beginner plants. Get the right balance of light, CO2 and dosing..Follow the advice on this forum and you will be well on your way to achieve a stunning aquascape!

Oh yeah.. just one more thing.... on UKAPS we love pics.. Please upload some pics once you get cracking on that scape so we can be excited with you.

 

[Bacms]

Any suggestion on which plants to replace on my list then? For what I have read all the plants on my list should be easier, with the obvious exception of Hemianthus Callitrichoides, just won't get as much growth if conditions aren't ideal or am I completely wrong? I really like the rotalas so would like to keep them or replace them similar plants so suggestions are always welcome

 

[Bacms]

I also forgot to mention I will do the plant and leave the aquarium to mature for 3/4 weeks before introducing fish so I guess keeping high levels of CO2 isn't much of a problem the idea being I can play with the parameters for a longer period until I get stability without risking killing all the fish. This is how scared I am

 

[Worshiper]

It really depends on a lot of things Bacms.. some people actually find HC an easy plant. but most get really frustrated
I am not much of a plant guru but here's what works for me:
E. tennellus parvulus (Grows like a weed! you need to keep trimming it like a lawn)
E. Parvulus
Pogostemon Helferi (Downnoi)
Amazon Sword
Hydrocotyle Tripartita
hemianthus micranthemoides (grew like a weed for me!)
Marsilea spiecies (never used them though -- just based on opinion)
Moss balls


You can try this website (Tropica) to understand which ones are easy, medium and advanced: http://tropica.com/en/plants/?tabIndex=1&alias=Easy

You never know, you might just have a green hand and be successful with the advanced level plant straight away.. I just dont want you to spend a lot of money and get frustrated if they don't grow well like I did .

 

[Bacms]

Thank you very much I am sure I will get frustrated and annoyed but my main fear is to get the aquarium full of algae. This would be my dream set-up I guess specially the Hemianthus Callitrichoides but I am buying perfectly aware I may have to replace it with something like grass instead. I would also be happy if the 6 years experience in the plant sciences would help here, but given that I am a bioinformatician and so spend the entire day sting in front on a computer not touching any plants probably doesn't help that much

 

[Worshiper]

That's great! Plant sciences will defo help!
Ive lost many an algae battle! We could really use some of your knowledge here too. Have a look at the jounal section on this forum. You ll get some great ideas..
Happy scaping

 

[Iain Sutherland]

Welcome to ukaps, nice to see a new Cambridge aquarist.

If I was to give any advise to a first time scaper it would be to skip all hardscape, choose whatever plants you like and plant them like an allotment. Learn to grow plants first then in a few months when you know what works for you and you aren't so green set your aspiration a little higher with a scaped tank using the plants you already have.
Circulation of co2 is the biggest issue most people have, eliminating hardscape will make your learning days far easier


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Bacms]

If I was to give any advise to a first time scaper it would be to skip all hardscape, choose whatever plants you like and plant them like an allotment.

To be honest I am only adding a small of hardscape so could probably set up everything as an allotment and add the hardscape later once plants get established. I also don't plant to care that much about size of the plants to fit the aquascape I want until I am sure I know what I am doing. May start a journal so I can get ideas and help for all the steps I need to do