My ~15 gallon fish tank project

[Mr. Harrys]

1st of all hi y'all

2nd my experience in the aquarium sector is none (at least if you don't count helping my grandpa with his 2 fish tanks over 20 years ago)

I have some space on the side of my home office and I've decided to put a fish tank there.

It's a 60x30x30 cm | 23.6x11.8x11.8 inch. 54 liters | ~15 gallons

The fish tank is a Marina LED 54L Kit. It comes with an interior filter (Marina Jet 80) that has a sponge and a bag of active carbon. It also has a 10W LED lamp and a 50W heater.

Up until now I did 2 hardscapes and the 3rd and final is almost done. First only gravel and rocks. I've scrapped it after a couple of days. Second rocks and roots. Scrapped it also. My final version is roots, with gravel and some small rocks). It's almost done, i still wait for the gravel to arrive on Friday.

The filter is not great so I've decided to replace it with an Aquanova NF 450 HOB, which I'm going to upgrade (replace the floss that it cames with, with carbon rings and a sponge ). I also made some modifications to the tank cover to accomodate the filter.

I used some black foil on the back and sides of the tank.

For the substrate I'll use (yes I also scrapped the entire substrate with every iteration of the project):

Dennerle Deponit Mix Black 10in1 4.8Kg
Dennerle Scaper's Soil 4L
Dennerle Gravel Plantahunter Rio Xingu 5Kg
Dennerle Sand 0.1-1.4mm 500g (for a small underwater beach area)



This is the 2nd iteration of the hardscape . Photos with the 3rd and final one on Friday when the gravel arrives. The only things kept from this one are the roots.

 

[Mr. Harrys]

Root, soil, fertilizer, gravel and sand are here. Unfortunately the filter will be here on monday due to some sort of a delay at the warehouse.

 

[Guest]

Welcome, good to see you’re diving straight in with a journal 🙂

 

[Mr. Harrys]

Thank you for having me. I am so excited to see how this project goes 😀

 

[_Maq_]

Welcome to the community.
One well-intended advice: Not all that appeared since your grandfather's time is a true bonus, let alone necessary. Did your grandfather fertilize, use root tabs, or nutrient-enriched substrates?

 

[bazz]

Looks very good for first attempt, I would do plenty of water changes (daily) for the first couple of weeks with all those added nutrients.
Cheers!

 

[Mr. Harrys]

Did the water tests and everything is fine. I used the Dennerle AquaTest GH*KH*pH that comes with an active substance. And yes the tank is not planted yet, BUT saturday i was at this new huge big box pet store to buy some maintenance stuff for the fish tank and I saw this lovely male betta, a double tail, in a small 1 liter bowl. He was completely ignoring the other bettas, but to be honest none of them were very active, maybe due to the temperature ~24C. He showed some interest when i tapped on the glass, and did follow my finger, but without flaring. So i got him for ~$15 (14 euros). Kept him in an acrilic 10 liter tank, and today I've moved him in the main tank. So far he spends his time between exploring every nook and cranny and building a bubble nest behind the heater. I named him Captain America cause in the darker areas he has intense red fins, with pearlescent white body and dark blue head, while in the well lit areas he shows gorgeous blue-green shades with traces of purple.

 

[Mr. Harrys]

The filter that came with the tank wasn't that good. An internal one with a flow powerful enough to push the fish but not powerful enough to actually do proper filtering or surface agitation, so there was this horrible biofilm covering the entire water surface. This HOB filter Aquanova NF 450 works great and also has a skimmer. It was very noisy at first but i did some changes to it- adjusted the position on the tank, removed the carbon from the cartridges. It has two cartridges each one contains a fine sponge and carbon. So I've eliminated the carbon, replace the fine sponge in the 1st one with a more rougher sponge, kept the sponge in the 2nd one and in the compartment between it and the cascade i've added ceramic rings, that i covered with the first fine sponge. The filter is set to max flow. the manufacturer says that this model is for 90L tanks, but the max flow of 250L/h makes it perfect for my 54L tank (with hardscape and substrate i measured 47L).
Oh and a great thing about this filter. It has a valve that prevents water to go out through the intake if the power is off, so the pump and the filter canister always have water.

 

[Mr. Harrys]

So i guess this project is done. time to start the next one.

 

[Mr. Harrys]