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Trying a true journal format. Let me know if it's too much writing. My natural tendency is to bullet point everything.​

The Mishap That Started It All​

This whole project began at 6:30 a.m., courtesy of my Oase Biomaster Thermo 250 deciding to serenade me with impeller noise while I was trying to work from home. Biofilm on the impeller — nothing dramatic — but the sound was maddening, especially with an 8 a.m. call with our London office looming. So I did what any aquarist does under pressure: a lightning‑fast pre‑filter and impeller clean.

That’s when the universe decided to intervene.

While disconnecting the hoses — the same routine I’ve done countless times — the lock failed. Suddenly a vacuum of water blasted across the floor of my upstairs alcove “office.” I yanked the intake and outflow from my 60U, stopping the torrent, but not before a solid gallon had soaked into the floorboards.

My wife woke up to the sound of chaos and the sight of me standing in a puddle. Understandably, she was not thrilled. The alcove has cathedral ceilings, so every noise echoes, and the massive 8‑foot cabinet we built with her dad years ago makes cleaning underneath nearly impossible. It’s not a space designed for aquariums, humidity, or early‑morning filter geysers.

As we cleaned, she admitted she hated having tanks and equipment out in the open upstairs. Fair enough. When we built the house, the plan was always for my “stuff” to live in the downstairs office while she had the rest of the house. But during COVID she needed privacy for patient calls, so I gave her the office and moved my stuff upstairs. Now her role has changed — two days in the hospital, one day from home — and the need for that arrangement is gone.

So I floated the idea: What if I moved everything back downstairs, consolidated the two smaller tanks into one larger, beautifully executed setup — something like the living room tank she actually likes? Less noise, less humidity upstairs, and I get a proper scaping space again.

To my mild shock, she was completely on board. From a mishap came opportunity.

Choosing the Tank​

Once the idea settled, I had to pick the right aquarium. I landed on the AquaEl Ultrascaper 90 — the dimensions are perfect, and I’d been eyeing it ever since researching the Skylight Hyperspot and AquaEl’s filter lineup. The tank was designed with the scapers at AquaShow in Poland, and their sample layouts are right up there with ADA, ADG, and Green Aqua imo.

Finding one in the U.S. was the next challenge. I reached out to the AquaEl rep, asked about the Hypermax for my living room tank, and inquired about Ultrascaper 90 availability. He pointed me to Fish Tanks Direct — and with a discount code in hand, I placed the order for the snow variant. My only quandy was to go for the cheaper one and get a Netlea AT5S to hang or try their newer attractive but inferior light option (RGB vs WBG). I chose to try their light as it looked interesting and the PAR on paper is more than enough.

Link for reference:https://fishtanksdirect.com/aquael-ultrascape-90-with-ultra-slim-snow-tank-light-cabinet/

Atlanta Weekend & Tank Comparisons​

Right after ordering, we had a weekend trip to Atlanta for one of my wife’s appointments. On Friday we visited the botanical garden, grabbed food, and while she was at her appointment Saturday, I made the rounds to three local fish stores. The Aquarium was an option but a Saturday solo but spending roughly $100 to be around 10 million families sounded less enjoyable than exploring ATL suburbs and seeing the stores and their tanks.

Premiere Aquatics had a beautiful setup UNS 90U and one for sale as well but at nearly $2,000 out the door it wasn't a great deal. Plus the tank is taller than I wanted, it wasn’t the right fit. I did pick up two gorgeous rose swords and a great piece of ghost wood.

I went to one store in Alpharetta but it was out of literally everything, not sure if they are doing poorly or just sell out fast and under order. I did buy a crinum there. Plus I liked driving from Premier to their.

Then I got lucky at Optimum Aquarium — they had an AquaEl Ultrascaper 90 in stock that had arrived that week, priced at a very respectable $1,000 (without the light). If the cabinet had been white, I would’ve bought it on the spot. They also had a wide range of tanks, which let me compare my choice to the Fluval Opti White 90 (a very reasonable $700) and several Aquatlantis rimless tanks I didn’t even know were available in the U.S. Their shallow 80 is especially cool — tank, stand, and light for $830, I would get a different color but I like the concept. They also had a bunch of healthy Dwarf Sag for $3 dollars so I bought a 4 bunches to use as I couldn't find dwarf chain swords easily online and heleiatium tenellum is a little too small.

My takeaways:

• Fluval Opti White 90: Nice tank but a bit small and too tall, the stand feels cheap and lightweight. Attractive for the price, but not my pick.
• Aquatlantis: Surprisingly impressive. I’d choose them over Fluval at similar price points.
• UNS 90U: The stands are unquestionably superior. The tank mitering is spectacular.
• AquaEl Ultrascaper 90:
  
  • Stand: Best flat‑pack stand I’ve seen, though still a flat‑pack.
  • Glass: Equal quality to UNS but no mitering.
  • Dimensions: 90 × 60 × 45 — absolutely perfect.
    
    • Incredible depth
    • Lower height makes it ideal for seated viewing
    • Easier to work in
    • Better top‑down perspective

I left Atlanta feeling completely validated in my choice and excited for delivery day.

All the wife and I were talking and she likes the idea of a Paludarium to replace a house plant area.

I defaulted to the Foresta 60e but thinking about the DOOA it's closed cabinet design and water fall setup looks very interesting. If anyone has experience with either I welcome any and all feedback.

The theme for this month's contest is: Algae Patina


This one is going to be tough but I hope some of you take up the challenge. There is a fine line between algae on an object that makes it look natural and old (patina) and algae on an object that simply makes it look unkept and dirty.

Who can strike that balance best??

Please take a picture of algae patina in your aquarium. Be as artistic and creative as you like.

The rules:

• Submissions are allowed between September 11 and September 23.
• Voting will start on September 23 at 12:01 am Eastern time.
• Voting will end on September 30 at 11:30 pm Eastern time.

The prize:

A $25 store credit from BurrAqua thanks to @Burr740!

Good luck!

Lowdown on the Low Tech side:

Fancy goldfish - easy plants. No C02, no fertilization, no heater, natural sunlight.
Goldies have always been my first love, paving the way to both my pond and aquarium obsessions : ) Time to get back to my roots!

Delicate negotiations with spouse were successful, including where such a tank would be located in our small, shared house and how much money I can spend (he doesn’t care as long as he can buy some boat stuff, as well).

The chosen spot in the dining room, now officially labeled “The Fish Room”:
Before:



After:



That’s better! Room for a 6 footer, if you ask me …
I’ll leave a space behind the tank for a wide sill and fill the window with houseplants. Maybe some household pendant fixtures from the ceiling with low wattage grow bulbs over both the plants and the tank.
No background on the tank, seeing through to the greenery and the outdoors.

An AI virtual (close but I couldn’t get it to make the tank a little taller):



Highlights of the Hi Tech side:

A virtually no maintenance, self cleaning system consisting of drilled overflows to a 100g basement sump with an RDF* (rotary drum filter), a 50g barrel k1 moving bed biofilter, oversized UV, constant drip water change and robotic algae cleaners**.

* https://ninjasieve.com/products/rotary-drum-filter-10000-l-h
** MOAI | Advanced Aquarium Cleaning Robot

The plan thus far:
I need to have the tank custom built. 72”L x 18”W x 24”T = 130g.
I live on Vancouver Island (4hr. + over $200 ferry travel to get off and on again), so my choices are limited without adding a lot of extra expense. There is a tank fabrication company on the island and we are in talks right now. I’ve never had a sump, so I am thoroughly researching overflow configurations and how they will work with the RDF.

The NinjaSieve RDF is already purchased. Rotary drum filters have been state-of-the-art in koi ponds for the last decade, but only recently have been available in smaller, less expensive sizes. I have only been able to find 3 instances on the entire internet (!) where one is in operation in an aquarium sump. They filter to 74 microns, and self clean using jetted water when the drum starts to clog, flushing the waste out of the system.
Clean water then goes to the moving bed barrel, which will have a valved drain on the bottom, in case any debris settles over time, then to a second 50g barrel housing the return pump and UV lamp. Total water in system = 230g (unless I decide to add a third barrel!)

There are a lot of steps to this project, which I will be accomplishing all by myself, and could very well take me all winter. Now that I’ve cleared the space and settled on a tank size, I need to buy metal jack stands and wood to shore up the floor in the crawlspace. Then I will work on collecting the pieces need for the filtration set up, while I’m waiting for the tank to be built and delivered.

Thanks for following along, comments and suggestions are always welcome. I will get to the plant and aquascaping portion of the build, eventually … I promise!

Hi guys!

I'm new here, but not entirely new to planted tanks though I've been out of the hobby for the better part of the last decade between kids and moving a couple of times - but finally in a spot where I can do something again. I'm mostly going to be making things up as I go along, but plan on a lot of automation (I want to integrate everything into home assistant) and a lot of DIY as I love the challenge of building things out myself.

The starting point:

I picked up a 90P rimless, low-iron tank on a great deal.



I have a rough idea in my head for a stand to be built from plywood - just have a couple other house projects to finish off before starting that built.

Wife says I can only have one aquarium, so for this tank, I want to go all out with a sump to allow for auto top off, and auto water changes, auto fertilizer dosing etc. etc. I have half a plan in my mind.

I've also started on the light fixture which I've modeled up in CAD, and plan on making out of an 8020 extrusion, and some 3D printed bits.

I'm using bridgelux gen 3 thrive CW (3000k) and WW (5000k) LED strips which have super high CRI at 98+ along with some specific XPE2 wavelengths that I'll solder onto some starboards. Far Red (730nm), Red (654nm), Cyan (495nm), Blue (455nm), Visible UV (415nm). Each segment of the white channels will be on its own driver so I can adjust left to right brightness in thirds, and each colour channel on its own driver so I can vary each channel on a time-based approach.

These will be run from a custom PCB board with Meanwell N-LDD drivers, and will run ESPHome on an ESP32 so it can link up with my Home Assistant installation.


That's it for now, this will probably be a very slow build so be warned if you follow along!

Bladderwort is notoriously difficult to eradicate because even a tiny fragment can regenerate. It has the same requirements as plants, which makes it harder to selectively attack than algae.

A planted tank can be taken down, cleaned and restarted, but success seems not guaranteed due to the near impossibility of completely removing even the smallest bladderwort fragments.

Is this the final word, or are there any remedies with a reasonable success rate? Anyone could share experience?

Hey all, been online just have not posted in a while, but have a question.


A bit of a longer topic today, but after a lot of thinking, I have decided to down grade my fish room. (When I say fish room, its the room where I have 3 tanks lol). I just do not have the time to do water changes weekly anymore. I am wayyyy to busy to even get all three done on the same day. I was not able to do water changes for 2 weeks (until today). I really like my 10g and 5g tanks, but I think it would be best to take those down and transfer the good thriving plants and fish to the 20g long and to make the 20 long my only tank where I put all of my fishkeeping time into it to make it look near perfect (not really possible but you know) with all the variety of plants I have. I really want my 20g to be a really good looking aquascape, and I know I can get there, with some help. To set contezt here is what I have.



20 Gallon Long aquarium: (The tank I intend to keep)



The fish:

8x Harlequin Rasboras

15x blue neo shrimp

8x ghost shrimp

4 peppered corydoras

1 nerite snail

Ramshorn snails



The plants:

limnofiimno wilsonii (LOTS of it)

Amazon sword

Lilly bulb plant

Anubias nana

Tiger lotus bulb

limno aramitica mini

Helanthium Bolivian quadrocostatus (This one shoots out runners but the main group of them are not doing as well as I wish, ok and alive but not thriving)

Obelia cardinals mini

Limno ragusa



And probably a few more, that I cannot remember lol.



Equipment:



2 Medium size Sponge filters (Aquarium Co-op)

1 Airstone with Tetra Air pump

Hygger light

top fin (cracked, will get new one soon) glass lid





Decor:

Dragon Stone

Spider wood

PFS (pool filter sand)







10 gallon tank (The tank that is thriving, but will take it down too)



Fish:

5 white cloud mountain minnows

1 nerite snail

ramshorn snails



Plants:

Amazon sword

lilly bulb

Water sprite (THRIVING, very lush green and massive)

Helanthium Bolivian quadrocostatus

Limno ragusa

limnofiimno wilsonii

Duckweed (very maintained and under control)



decor:

Large rock found in a nearby creek, very well cleaned

small piece of dragon stone and spiderwood



Equipment:

Topfin 10g Starter Kit filter

Topfin 10g lid



5 gallon tank



No fish



GH is high, cannot get it down



3 remaining ramshorn snails



2 anubias plants

dwarf sag



and all rock from a creek. Tank is not doing to good want to take it down anyways....









The ferts I use for ALL tanks is GLA ferts, Micro and Macro mixes.









So! That is the tanks. My goal is this: To break down both the 10g and 5g, get the thriving plants and fish out and transfer to the 20g long. Also forgot to mention anacharis plants that I got when buying the blue shrimp.





My question, how could I combine to the make the ULTIMATE 20g long? And can I keep the WCMM with the stocking above in my 20g long?



I will add more info later. Pics below. Thanks all!















The 20g long (ABOVE) is the tank I will keep.













Ignore the TOTM banner. That is the 10g above.





Do not have a current pic of my 5g. It looks bad anyways.









Btw, I did a water change today ONLY on my 20g. By next week I want those other 2 tanks gone and empty. Also, final question I just remembered, how to safely transport the healthy plants from tank to tank?

Finally a journal.

I’ll soon be setting up two new tanks, a UNS 90p and a 50c. (Not so!) Patiently awaiting tanks and stands delivery.

They will both be middle energy tanks. I have lengthy periods of busy time and travel that mean the tanks need to survive without human intervention here and there. So plenty of automation is needed, and slow and steady wins over high energy. Or in BBQ smoking terms: low and slow.

Plans:

• Injected CO2, but less than 30ppm
• Inert gravel
• Tidal HOB filter and partial UGF plate.
• Less than EI ferts, but more than PPS pro.
• Tap water (my tap is 50 TDS and only 10ppm Ca) remineralized to 30ppm Ca and 3-4 dKH.
• Lower light levels: Week aqua L on 90p and Chihiros wrgb 2 slim on 50c.
• Easy slow growing plants, and a few fish. Thinking the 50c will be a shrimp tank.
• Some hardscape but nothing crazy

My last tank has had a rough year. Hurricane Helene meant two weeks with no electricity, and much longer without decent water changes.

Then last summer the tank developed a slow leak while I was out of town (ugh!). Had to fly home for a week to triage. Fish and plants have been in temporary tanks. Plants are struggling. Photo is when they had already been in temporary bin for over 6 weeks, I was surprised it didn’t look like an algae infested swamp.





Sooo ready for my new tanks! These are my first really nice tanks, I’ve only owned petco specials before.

For the new tanks I'm planning on over ordering plants since my surviving plants are clearly pretty weak at this point.

Ive reorganized the order of my tanks so I can better keep track of them ie. Tank 2 moss tank is now tank 3. This helps in any confusion I had when tracking tanks they are in a sort of order now. Rather than taking time editing my old journal id rather create a new thread. Pics will be current (for the most part) as they are posted. I am not aquascaping. I am just farming.