New Fluval Flex 57L Planted Aquarium Setup

[shiraz]

Hey everyone, I’m new here.. well not exactly.. I joined this forum in 2003 when I had a 2ft planted aquarium in my bedroom while I was in secondary school. I set up that tank after my reef tank crashed when a sea cucumber decided to venture into the power head. Wanted to restart the reef tank but due to the Finding Nemo movie, everything became extremely expensive and it became increasingly difficult to get funding from my father so I just gave it up and sold the tank and concentrated on the very basic planted setup that I had for a few years until my CO2 regulator broke and a new one was too expensive to buy with my part time salary in Pizza Hut .

Now that I’ve moved into my own place and my 2 year old son is sort of captivated by the 3ft Cichlid tank in my parents’ house whenever we visit, I decided to get myself a tiny Fluval Flex 57L to start another planted tank. Chose this as I don’t have the luxury of space and an IOS appealed to me.

After watching scaping videos on YouTube, went out to get some Dennerle gravel and planting mix. Hopefully my medium is not too thick.

Next would be to get some wood, stones and plants. Will be using a CO2 tablet or something similar to start off while I look for a nice CO2 setup. (I read that tablets can work with small tanks like this, hopefully that’s true). There are so many nice CO2 setups now compared to 15 years ago where either there weren’t many or they were so hard to find that I didn’t see them at any LFSs.


DeponitMix at the base


Cleared the edges... because YouTube said so


Topped off with Scapers’ Soil


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[aero]

Hey everyone, I’m new here.. well not exactly.. I joined this forum in 2003 when I had a 2ft planted aquarium in my bedroom while I was in secondary school. I set up that tank after my reef tank crashed when a sea cucumber decided to venture into the power head. Wanted to restart the reef tank but due to the Finding Nemo movie, everything became extremely expensive and it became increasingly difficult to get funding from my father so I just gave it up and sold the tank and concentrated on the very basic planted setup that I had for a few years until my CO2 regulator broke and a new one was too expensive to buy with my part time salary in Pizza Hut .

Now that I’ve moved into my own place and my 2 year old son is sort of captivated by the 3ft Cichlid tank in my parents’ house whenever we visit, I decided to get myself a tiny Fluval Flex 57L to start another planted tank. Chose this as I don’t have the luxury of space and an IOS appealed to me.

After watching scaping videos on YouTube, went out to get some Dennerle gravel and planting mix. Hopefully my medium is not too thick.

Next would be to get some wood, stones and plants. Will be using a CO2 tablet or something similar to start off while I look for a nice CO2 setup. (I read that tablets can work with small tanks like this, hopefully that’s true). There are so many nice CO2 setups now compared to 15 years ago where either there weren’t many or they were so hard to find that I didn’t see them at any LFSs.


DeponitMix at the base


Cleared the edges... because YouTube said so


Topped off with Scapers’ Soil


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

CO2 tablets are honestly expensive and prob only last for a few hours only before it escapes into the air.Just go CO2 straight away buy secondhand if u dont mind.

[shiraz]

Oh, only a few hours? Reading what is written on the packaging seems to suggest otherwise. Thanks for the heads-up!


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[shiraz]

Fixed up CO2 injection (thanks for the advice!) with an Intense Bazooka Atomizer connected to an Ista Bubble Counter and got some plants to start off the initial cycle.




A front tank shot looks ok but the curve on the Fluval Flex makes it hard to shoot close up shots

The IOS compartments of this tank seem a little wasted but found a company that makes dividers to fit into the compartments to house all the mechanical and bio media. Basically you can make the same thing from egg-crates but let’s see how the quality of this stuff is when it arrives next week in the mail.. hopefully before CNY.


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[shiraz]

After a few weeks of trying different layouts and scapes, finally found that the rocks fell into place properly one night and epoxied them together.

Added more of the black gravel, ended up being too much but didn’t bother removing it and added white sand on top of it.

Got some plants the following day and glued them around the rocks.

Placed the dwarf baby tears with the stainless mesh where I hope it would carpet. Would it be better if I plant them in clumps individually or just leave it on the mesh?




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