64 Litre "Forest Edge" Tank!
Reply With QuoteInitial Setup
I decided on a sloped triangle layout with a path under the twisty wood, my plan was to use a variation of plants to create the path (rather than using sand), along with an assortment of grey colored rocks to provide some accents in the scape.
Once the hardscape was arranged, i proceeded to spray the soil substrate with water to make initial planting easier. I choose Eleocharis sp. 'Mini' as the main carpet plant. Echinodorus Tenellus and Cryptocoryne Parva were used as the mid-ground transition plants.
After initial planting, i filled the tank slowly using a bucket of water propped up on a ladder, hooked up to an air line tubing with flow control valve. The water was slowly trickled into the tank to minimize disturbance of the ADA soil substrate.
As the tank was filling up, i planted Rotala sp. 'Nanjenshan' and Rotala sp. 'Wallichii' as the fast growing background plants for soaking up excess nutrients during the start up stage.
Halfway filling the tank, the twisty wood started to float up... even though i had actually used the same piece of wood submerged in other tanks before, i made the mistake of removing it to put in storage and i forgot that once dried, the wood needs to be pre-soaked again in order to sink!
So i had to resort to the time honored method of keeping wood submerged... weigh it down with a big chunk of rock.
Note that the above photo was taken less than an hour after the tank was filled up... no clouding and no mess, a slow and steady filling of the tank can indeed achieve full water clarity from day one.
I didn't tie any moss on the twisty wood as i wanted to preserve the original detail of the wood texture instead. I was also hoping that nice green fuzz algae will eventually grow on it (yes, i actually want that algae!) to help create a natural aged look on the wood.
I cranked up the Co2 injection higher to give the plants a boost (notice my drop checker showing a bright yellow color)... no fauna in the tank yet, so no problems with elevated Co2 levels.
In this setup, i only used one set of the Up Aqua Z-Series Pro LED lightset, even though it is just 20+ watts and works out to only around 1.2 watts per gallon (wpg), which many would consider as "low" lighting, this is actually more than sufficient for a tank during start up as the plant mass is still relatively low.
I have actually tried using 2 sets of these lights in other previous setups before but it eventually resulted in lots of unwanted algae growth... whereas when i switched to just using 1 set, the plants still grew well, but the algae receded and ceased to become an issue. So i've learnt my lesson and i'm now very careful to only use the appropriate amount of light to match the amount of plant growth and mass.
A portion of Seachem Matrix bio-media with established beneficial bacteria from my other existing cycled tanks was transferred to this tank's canister filter, so it helped to really speed up the cycling process. I left the tank to completely cycle over the next 2 weeks.
Originally Posted by benlee
Bookmarks