EnderUK
Member
- Joined
- 26 Jan 2014
- Messages
- 1,028
To skip to second scape
Introduction:
Okay so last christmas I got 28L gold fish death trap for my girl friend, the gold fish last 8 months before dying. I never knew fish where this interesting and got hooked upgrading to a roma 125. My girlfriend was upset that she still couldn't get all the fish she wanted in it.
I decided I wanted to do this right and get some plants in the tank this time. First thing I did when I got the tank was ripped the hood apart and put in a new t5 ballast so I could run 2x28w t5s. Along the way of researching plants I ran across dustin youtube page and I got hooked on the idea of dirt. So I got the pond soil and threw a silver sand cap on it and planted. Not having done my complete research I threw in some broken terracotta plant pots and some clay filter media thinking this would get the iron into the soil. For calcium I put in some cuttle bone.
I got 25 random stem plants from ebay the Vallisneria was about the only thing that lasted from that lot but I didn't give up and I slowly build the plants up doing more research and get the plants suitable for low light this is what the tank was like.
A bit of a mess but there was good growth. I want to take it to a little higher level so I tried diy co2 and the plants grew quicker but the the diy was to unreliable so I've ordered regulator, and FE, Some of the EI salts are still to come.
I wasn't happy with the tank I had made a few two many mistakes so while the girlfriend is away this week I stripped the tank down and started over. The girlfriend would never of let me do this she hates it when I even move stuff in the tank as it is.
Fish motel room with the canister filter hooked up. Took an hour to round up all the fish and shrimp. I though the dwarf rainbow would be the hardest to catch but they were incredibly dumb and flew into the net in there panic. Five banded barbs were the worst hiding in the corner with the same colour of the murky bottom I had to drain the tank to a inch of depth to catch the last couple of barbs.
Here's the plan of the new tank hopeful with some open swimming space and some sand for the pair of Rams and barbs to dig around in.
One dirty tank, another reason why I didn't want to do this while the girlfriend was here.
Opps there does the carpet. I sieved out the gravel from the dirt using mesh from the local garden centre.
I later went through this to save some trumpet snails. The original 5 I had are now 9 I'm sure there was some small ones I missed though.
Mud and sand soup. This was a lot like the silt on a river bank
Got this clay postage and packaging for this 1kg sample was ridiculous but trying to find natural (non fibred) clay was very difficult.
Time to get the hands dirty, left is the silt with the clay mixed in on the right is about the balls I put in. The depth of this bottom mix was about 10mm
I throw in some more dirt in one corner, This goes from about 1" to 1.5" towards the back.
I got the alpine grit from the garden centre at £3.99 for a 20L bag. The Unipac sand is the medium grit which I got for something like £15 for 12.5kg. As and engineering I sometimes forget when speaking to people that no one really works in millimetres. I went to the LFS and asked from a sand around 0.5-1mm with the guy saying that I wouldn't get anything that big about the closet he had was pea gravel, which confused me. I then asked about the black granite sand he had on the counter which looked to be about 0.5mm he said that it was sand an no he didn't have it in any colour other than black but that it was sand and not gravel he did have some silver sand but I told him that was to fine for a cap. This went backwards and forwards for a couple of minutes until I explain exactly what I wanted and him working out I wanted 0.5mm sand not 0.5cm sand/gravel. Anyway I was happy with this stuff.
In goes the gravel and the girt. The idea is that the rams won't dig into the gravel to kick up the dirt but they can dig in the sand and hopefully the silt won't be kicked up, this might not work out but we'll see. Most people like a boarding substrate on the glass, I like the look of dirt on it.
That's it for now I'll post some more later need to make lunch.
Introduction:
Okay so last christmas I got 28L gold fish death trap for my girl friend, the gold fish last 8 months before dying. I never knew fish where this interesting and got hooked upgrading to a roma 125. My girlfriend was upset that she still couldn't get all the fish she wanted in it.
I decided I wanted to do this right and get some plants in the tank this time. First thing I did when I got the tank was ripped the hood apart and put in a new t5 ballast so I could run 2x28w t5s. Along the way of researching plants I ran across dustin youtube page and I got hooked on the idea of dirt. So I got the pond soil and threw a silver sand cap on it and planted. Not having done my complete research I threw in some broken terracotta plant pots and some clay filter media thinking this would get the iron into the soil. For calcium I put in some cuttle bone.
I got 25 random stem plants from ebay the Vallisneria was about the only thing that lasted from that lot but I didn't give up and I slowly build the plants up doing more research and get the plants suitable for low light this is what the tank was like.
A bit of a mess but there was good growth. I want to take it to a little higher level so I tried diy co2 and the plants grew quicker but the the diy was to unreliable so I've ordered regulator, and FE, Some of the EI salts are still to come.
I wasn't happy with the tank I had made a few two many mistakes so while the girlfriend is away this week I stripped the tank down and started over. The girlfriend would never of let me do this she hates it when I even move stuff in the tank as it is.
Fish motel room with the canister filter hooked up. Took an hour to round up all the fish and shrimp. I though the dwarf rainbow would be the hardest to catch but they were incredibly dumb and flew into the net in there panic. Five banded barbs were the worst hiding in the corner with the same colour of the murky bottom I had to drain the tank to a inch of depth to catch the last couple of barbs.
Here's the plan of the new tank hopeful with some open swimming space and some sand for the pair of Rams and barbs to dig around in.
One dirty tank, another reason why I didn't want to do this while the girlfriend was here.
Opps there does the carpet. I sieved out the gravel from the dirt using mesh from the local garden centre.
I later went through this to save some trumpet snails. The original 5 I had are now 9 I'm sure there was some small ones I missed though.
Mud and sand soup. This was a lot like the silt on a river bank
Got this clay postage and packaging for this 1kg sample was ridiculous but trying to find natural (non fibred) clay was very difficult.
Time to get the hands dirty, left is the silt with the clay mixed in on the right is about the balls I put in. The depth of this bottom mix was about 10mm
I throw in some more dirt in one corner, This goes from about 1" to 1.5" towards the back.
I got the alpine grit from the garden centre at £3.99 for a 20L bag. The Unipac sand is the medium grit which I got for something like £15 for 12.5kg. As and engineering I sometimes forget when speaking to people that no one really works in millimetres. I went to the LFS and asked from a sand around 0.5-1mm with the guy saying that I wouldn't get anything that big about the closet he had was pea gravel, which confused me. I then asked about the black granite sand he had on the counter which looked to be about 0.5mm he said that it was sand an no he didn't have it in any colour other than black but that it was sand and not gravel he did have some silver sand but I told him that was to fine for a cap. This went backwards and forwards for a couple of minutes until I explain exactly what I wanted and him working out I wanted 0.5mm sand not 0.5cm sand/gravel. Anyway I was happy with this stuff.
In goes the gravel and the girt. The idea is that the rams won't dig into the gravel to kick up the dirt but they can dig in the sand and hopefully the silt won't be kicked up, this might not work out but we'll see. Most people like a boarding substrate on the glass, I like the look of dirt on it.
That's it for now I'll post some more later need to make lunch.
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