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38L planted tank - CO2 injected

Janci

Member
Joined
4 Sep 2019
Messages
92
Location
Dubai
I come from the salt water aquarium world and after shutting down the reef tank, I am planning on a 300L peninsula tank. as it will take some time before that tank is set up, I bought a small cheap tank which will be my first planted tank since ages.

The aim is to take care for it, see what is needed to keep plants in good condition, learn to trim, replant.... basics in other words.

It is not going to be a scape contest winner as I will be using some rocks that I found at my working place. Good enough to create some depth and play around.

List of equipment:
- Rimless tank 45 x 28 x 30cm
- Oase Filtosmart 100 with biomedia
- CO2 Art regulator with in tank diffuser
- KELO LED light (used in the reef tank before)
- ADA Amazonia soil with some ADA substrate
- random rocks

Plant list:
- Helanthium tenellum 'Green'
- rotala macandra
- cryptocoryne undulatus red
- rotala wallichii
- myriophyllum guyana
- alternanthera reineckii mini
- rotala H'ra
- bucephalandra red
- rotala rotundifolia
- bacopa australis
- didiplis diandra

Fauna list:
- not sure yet. Probably some shrimp and a few fish still to be selected.
 
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This is the first scape attempt.
Created some depth and added the stones
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I then added the filter and other hose attachements for CO2.

My CO2 cylinder is kind of oversized but this was a remainder of the calcium reactor of my reef tank and will be used on the bigger planted tank later.

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And later planting started with this result.
I used most 1-2-grow plants from Tropica.

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This was set up a week ago and I have been doing daily water changes to reduce the ammonia that is leaching from the ADA soil.
I test nitrite only and will start doing waterchanges every 2-3 days from now on to see the evolution of the nitrite.
Since starting I added some Seachem Stability and Prodibio BioDigest to kick the cycle a little.

After some days the tank looked like this

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This Kelo light is a knock off for the Kessil, with lower wattage.
There are 2 knobs to adjust blue and white light. I use the white light at 100% and the blue at the minimum, which must be around 10%. That is why the pictures look so blue.
That gives me a PAR value at the bottom of about 100.
CO2 is injected at a little less of 1 bubble per second.

Yesterday I turned off the blue light before taking the picture and the tank stands like this.
I realized that I made a mistake when planting the alternanthera reineckii mini in the background. Next weekend I will try to move it in the middle between the 2 stones and shift the rotala H'ra to the back.

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The tank is cycled and I added some oto's and shrimp.
Here some pictures...


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The tank is humming along.
There are some algae (not sure what type) but that is sinse I added an hour of light. For 1 week I ran with 8 hours of light. Now reduced to 7. This I did to see what would happen and if algae would appear, the Oto's would have something to eat.
Unfortunately, these algae they do not touch.

Here some pictures

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And then some random pics before and after a 75% water change (first in a week)

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Hi all, Can you get/keep any live food? Grindal worms are usually much enjoyed by "picky" fish.

cheers Darrel

Hi Darrell
I am looking for those now. Live food is not easy to get, so I am searching to at least get some brine to hatch or any other frozen option.
 
Hi, nice looking tank and healthy growth.

You could remove that E.tenellus on the front before it overtakes all your nice tank and replace it by something smaller like eleocharis mini or another carpeting plant.
 
Hi, nice looking tank and healthy growth.

You could remove that E.tenellus on the front before it overtakes all your nice tank and replace it by something smaller like eleocharis mini or another carpeting plant.

Bonjour, CooKieS. Thank you very much for commenting.
You are right. Unfortunately there was nothing available at the moment of planting the tank and I kind of like the Helanthium Tenellus.
After almost 4 weeks I see many runners going up and down in the front. The leaves are changing to their reddish colour from the deep green they were before.
Under the substrate I added rocks (left, right and middle) to work as a barrier to reduce the runners going to the back.

Next week I will be in Budapest and have the time to go to Green Aqua before heading back to Dubai. I will look for some carpeting plants there.

Here an updates FTS.
After last water change, the growth has taken off again.

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I left for a 2 week holiday while a friend was taking care of the tank.
2 days before leaving, I trimmed the stem plants, cleaned the filter, no changes made to CO2 or the light cycle.
When I came back, the tank was completely covered in algae, the lights were on constantly and the water level had dropped several cm.
I guess I will need to look for a new "tanksitter" for the next holidays.

As I was anyways working on a small upgrade, I took this tank down and started the new one by using as much plants as possible from the previous set up.
I will start another thread for the new tank.
 
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I left for a 2 week holiday while a friend was taking care of the tank.
2 days before leaving, I trimmed the stem plants, cleaned the filter, no changes made to CO2 or the light cycle.
When I came back, the tank was completely covered in algae, the lights were on constantly and the water level had dropped several cm.
I guess I will need to look for a new "tanksitter" for the next holidays.

As I was anyways working on a small upgrade, I took this tank down and started the new one by using as muc plants as possible from the previous set up.
I will start another thread for the new tank.

Well, that's why when I'm in vacation for 2 weeks, I usually just lower the light period to 5h and the CO2. Better leave it alone than with somebody who feed the fishes or the plants too much. :)

Sorry for your tank, will follow the New setup with interest.
 
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