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Bedroom tank on the rocks..

Luciën

Member
Joined
20 Jul 2018
Messages
668
Location
Netherlands
Hello everyone... this is my first 'journal' on this forum. I had an Aquatlantis 80x35x40 tank in my kitchen but did really left it sort of abandoned while I was busy with my big tank. But it got hit by BBA really really hard so it lookt like a mess.. I wanted to move it to the bedroom and I got approval from my wife.. :) So I placed the fish in a container cleaned out everything brought it upstairs..
Now I wanted some nice rocks but didn't want to spend a lot of cash.. So we went to my local gardening store and picked out some lava rocks.. costs.. €3,20 so that was cheap.. Had 1,5 bag ebi gold left from my other scape.. And made this in an hour, more or less...
IMG-20181027-WA0007.jpg

Had to work with the internal filter I didn't want to spend money on an external and it is fine hopefully hidden when it's grown in. Now I filled it with water let it stay one day and emptied it the next day.. (the fish where still in the container just with the filter media and an pump.. ) cleaned of the buce's i already had in the old setup and gave what was left with a bleach dip and rinsed it really good afterward.. Had to trow away really a lot of buce :eek:but all good.. Bought all the crypts species and some carpeting I could find at the local fish store and started planting.. Afterwards it looked like this,
IMG-20181029-WA0016.jpg

Added water and the fish and shrimp after a while.. I normally don't place the fish that soon but used the old filter media and do alot of water changes.. They still are all alive after 2 weeks..
Left some room for more plant but can't decide on witch ones, something with a more reddish hue..
 
So things stay steady as it is.. It almost still looks the same.. MC grows smaller leafs but stays low. Have a photo period of 6h at 60% that's 9.6 watt LED atm .. So low light..
Should I introduce CO2 thats the question .. Got a spare regulator and a inline diffusor already build in in the internal filter so i only need to buy me an CO2 tank..
 
I can imagine this looking great with the carpeting plant & everything else grown in.
 
I like it. Perhaps some moss on the lava rocks?

CO2 will make things grow faster but will then need more attention in terms of fertilization etc




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Thanks all!
Ferts are not a problem as I make it myself using salts.. If I keep the lights low then I hope the plants just grow fuller specially the MC with co2.
Thought about moss but since there is no gravel only carpeting plants I'm afraid when its fully grown in there is nothing to contrast all that green. Will see how it goes can always add moss afterwards..
 
So an update.. I see some signs of minor growth but not much.. Added AR mini and some fish, 10 Corydoras pygmaeus and a couple of Nannacara anomala that seem very happy with all the caves left behind and between the rocks..
Added co2 yesterday and increased the light from 60% to 70% and a hour longer light.. The co2 injection rate is not really high don't know the ppm and got no drop checker installed, tent to relay more at plant growth. I got around 1bps but it doesn't say anything :)

Want to add some ferts to water column also an a weekly base, NO3 6ppm, P 1ppm, K 10ppm, CSM+B .1ppm Fe, DTPA .1ppm Fe. I think that would be reasonable enough..
 
Can’t comment on the ferts, I’m lazy and use TNC complete.

I know my drop checker is line green when the plants down to the lower third of the tank are pearling. This is after a fair bit of trial and algae errors! Depends on how rapid you want growth. T


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Okay this scape failed.. Unstable Co2 reg, bad maintenance and a lot of bba.. And its two years old, so I now have the idea for a new scape..

Co2 art reg is on its way, going to take out the internal filter and switch it for a external one.. Have very bold pieces of wood that I have to cut to size to even fit in the tank :cool:.
But it also gives me the troubles to work with shadows under the wood.. So I want to use sand over aquasoil to plant in the sand is this okay to do doens't this make the soil more useless or is it going to mix?
 
I have a lot of trouble successfully regulating CO2 as well... with me because the aquarium is small (45 L) the problem is getting the CO2 flow to be really low and yet stable. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I have piles of different in-line devices to try to damp down the flow in a controllable way but actually what I think is most effective is the needle valve on a "HEEPDD Aquarium CO2 Check Valve" I picked up on Amazon. I'd like to make this more robust because if the valve were to fail in the wrong direction it could kill all the animals.
 
Today in the mail ive had a new co2art regulator.. These are very stable had one on my other tank dowstairs.. The old reg was an up aqua one it sucked big time.. I had it replace with an other by the store but it started te be unstable again swaped the needle valve for an expensive camozi one but it did not help much.. So my advice is to get a decent dual stage reg if you want co2, or just keep on tuning a bad one with all the troubles it comes with..
I know now it saves me a lot of headache..

Greetz, Luciën.
 
Now I wanted some nice rocks but didn't want to spend a lot of cash.. So we went to my local gardening store and picked out some lava rocks.. costs.. €3,20 so that was cheap..
Wow, wish I could find a gardening centre in the UK selling that much lava rock for that much!
 
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