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Advice/ opinions wanted on plans for planted tank

Spider Pig

Member
Joined
18 Mar 2008
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138
Planning to convert my community set up to a planted one and would be grateful for any comments/ advice before shelling out pennies. Current set up is standard juwel vision 180L with 50w t8 lighting, 600lph juwel internal filter, plain fine gravel substrate, stocking: 3 zebra danios, 4 Sterbas corydoras, 4 Siamese flying foxes, 10 platys, 2 Pearl Gouramis, 2 dwarf gouramis, 2 Clown loach, 12 cardinal tetra, 3 guppys, 4 dwarf neon rainbow fish, 3 Boseman's rainbow fish.

Plan:
1. Upgrade lighting- additional hagen glo t5 2x39w with reflectors front and back, lights: osram 865 (front) and sylvania grolux (back)
2. Hopefully upgrade filtration- additional tetratec ex1200- budget permitting
3. Convert to pressurised co2
4. Planting plan as in attached diagram. This is where I could do with a bit of advice. The idea is to have a slope upwards from left to right, and from front to back. The foreground to the left will be mainly hairgrass, and so more open. Behind the open gravel, I want to bank the gravel using flat pieces of slate. Hopefully once the hairgrass roots in between, this will make the bank more secure.
I've tried to keep it simple with low to medium light easy plants. I'm hoping that the amazon swords will make a nice bushy background with the crypts forming the midground blending into the hairgrass. On the right hand side the foreground will be covered by low bogwood covered with java fern. The bunches of fast growers will hopefully add some colour and texture and keep algae under control.
The large piece of volcanic rock has holes through it and I'm planning on covering this with moss and anubias nana. I also want a couple of moss balls rolling around the gravel.
The filter will hopefully be covered with bark with moss etc. and I also want to grow a willow moss wall to cover the exposed part of the back.
5. Planning to get rid of the platies and maybe the guppies because of the lower pH. Maybe get some ottos to help with clean up. Shrimps are a no-go because of the clowns.
6. Planned fertilisation dry KNO3, KPO4, seachem flourish (haven't worked out dosing yet)

Any help and advice much appreciated

plantedplan.jpg
 
Look like you're planning pretty well for your tank. The only thing I'd say about the set up details is that you don't mention what sort of substrate you're going to use.

As to your layout; it's hard to visualise exactly what it'll look like, but the one thing that struck me was it seemed a little chaotic with too many things going on. However this might just be the diagram! Maybe just have two or three large clumps of stem plants with the swords as accents. That large areas of crypts and hairgrass should look good IMO.

I'm also not so sure about the Elodea. It grows insanely, or often seemingly melts for no reason! Giove it a go if you like it, but be prepared to switch it if needed!

Well done for planning so well and you're bang on for almost everything as far as I can see.
 
Thanks for the feedback Ed.

Substrate wise I'm sticking to plain gravel due to budget. I thought that I would be better off getting good filtration first, but even that isn't definate. Hoping that I can compensate with water column fertilisation, although I appreciate that I'll have to stay on top of it to avoid problems.

Tweaked the plan slightly to have the elodea at the end, the reasoning being that this will be easier to shape into a diagonal than the swords. The reason I used the swords was to provide a uniform background and then have the stems in front so that I can shape them more easily. I confess this may be wishful thinking on my part as growth rates are pretty slow in my low light tank and so can't fully imagine what it will be like in a higher light set up. I do like the idea of the clumps of stems with swords in between as this will probably look more natural- have to think more how I'd look.
plantedplan2.jpg


I guess it does look a bit chaotic from the plan. The idea is to have a slope from left to right, like a pyramid with the apex at the back on the right. The focus will be the volcanic rock in the open grassy plain, however there will be odd bits of wood in the pyramid. Clearer? probably not... :?
 
It is, a bit... The important thing is that you have a vision of what you're trying to achieve and then go for it! Plain gravel will be ok for the plants, just keep on top of the dosing so they never run out of nutrients as that is a quick route to algae problems.
 
Spider Pig said:
The reason I used the swords was to provide a uniform background and then have the stems in front so that I can shape them more easily. I confess this may be wishful thinking on my part as growth rates are pretty slow in my low light tank and so can't fully imagine what it will be like in a higher light set up.

I find it depends on the stems, I have one type of ludwigia that grows about 6" in a week (That's 1/3 the height of my tank! :eek: ) needless to say this has been removed from its previous job as mid ground and is now a background plant!
 
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