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A discussion yesterday HERE, made me think to create this post about small canister filters for nano tanks. In this case, I would say nano includes any tank under 10 gallons. Some of us just don't care for HOBs for various reasons and honestly, I'd rather not use any other internal filter, although, I have a couple Oase internal filters on the shelf.

What are the smallest canister filters you've tried and what were your thoughts?

While researching the UNS Bliss filters and the one @gnatster found, sold by Aquascape Guide, I came across other ADA Super Jet knockoffs made in China, like THIS ONE. My concern would be, like other knockoff items on Aliexpress, the stainless steel used is subpar quality and will rust, or the pump will fail prematurely or get really loud compared to the real ADA filters. The one linked is an ES150 copy but I also saw some even smaller versions for as small as 2 gallon tanks.

Welcome to ScapeCrunch, @derekward!
We would love to get to know you. Please tell us about yourself. What tank do you have?

Hi to all!
I clean only my front glass weekly. I just let algae (GSA and a bit of GDA) and biofilm grow on the other sides. I am a bit lazy and moreover I wanted to leave some free food for snails and now for my Otos. They were so skinny when I bought them, now they are pretty fat, they look like tadpoles! But the thing is I am getting BBA too on the rear and side glass recently.
About plants, GSA and BBA are only growing on old leaves, mainly of the slow growers. I keep removing those leaves, I remove organics from substrate etc and I am working on my CO2/ferts/lights things. But, excluding aesthetic reason, letting algae grow on the glass makes them "stronger"? I am afraid that it might make me harder to grow plants with little or no algae on their leaves if I have a colony on the glass.

Well I’m done talking about it, it’s time to get this journal started.

I have been really out of it the last year or so in terms of maintaining my own tank, mainly out of frustration with time constraints and inconsistency with dosing etc. However, I have now acquired a dream tank, rimless and with low iron glass like I’ve always wanted. While I loved having a sump and prided myself on putting it together, I’m past that desire. The AIO allows the same benefits with hiding equipment, and overall easier maintenance without climbing in and out of cabinets. Now onto the details of this build.

Tank: Planet Aquariums Tideline 62 Gallon AIO Lagoon

Filtration: (2) 250gph pumps on either side of the tank with center overflow into socks (I’m going to punch holes in the socks for now and stuff with polyfill, reviews state the socks clog way too quickly and there is no replacement sock as the insert is not the common round style). The baffles will be stuffed with the poret foam I have already from my sump for extra mechanical/biological.

Substrate: The bottom layer will comprise of bagged pond soil/peat/earthworm castings/ STS. This will be a thin layer and will mainly act as filler to raise up the cap of APT Feast. This is similar to a substrate setup I did when I first started back up in 2020, And that tank did very well. While capping with sand and relying on the dirt to feed the stems worked well, it did require a little more effort on my end with dosing. I don’t trust myself to be as diligent as some members on here are with their inert subs, so I’m taking the mulligan and using aquasoil as a cap, hence, “dirty soil.” This will be another island style layout, and the surrounding substrate will be comprised of Caribsea Carolina Creek Sand.

Hardscape: River rock (local hardscape center sourced) and malaysian driftwood. I have recently acquired another large piece of wood and I’m sourcing new stone this week, as what I have just isn’t meshing with my current vision for the tank.

Plants: …. I have not solidified my vision of what this scape will look like just yet as I haven’t been able to setup the hardscape to outline the island. The plan is to use a good amount of colorful stems, epiphytes, and potentially moss.

Lighting: I will be ordering the Week Aqua Z400 this week and am excited to test it out.

That’s all for now, more pictures and details to come. I should hopefully have the hardscape setup by the end of this coming week after acquiring more stone and wood.

CO2: Almost forgot, for Co2 injection I have made a DIY Yugang with a locking food storage container. It will be stored in the cabinet and the hook will feed into the return pump chamber on the right. I initially was bummed that I had to sacrifice storage to fit a 5lb CO2 tank under the stand, which also meant getting rid of of the 20lb tank I’ve only been having to fill twice a year. @GreggZ Will appreciate this, my awesome father in law suggested that I hide the co2 tank in the pantry closet which is directly behind that wall and just drill a hole for the co2 line. Since my father in laws word is pure gold in my wife’s eyes, that suggestion was approved! He’s just as much my dad too so I appreciated him supporting the project

I have been sitting with hardscaping this UNS 90u tank (35.43”L x 22.”W x 22”H) for about 5 weeks. It's tall and deep and I have a perfect view of it from my office desk at the perfect height! The plan is for a high tech, heavily planted tank. I have a big load of different varieties of bucephalandra and anubias arriving in a few weeks that should go great on this hardscape and I am building my plan for the other plants. Here are my final 3 drafts on the hardscape. I am afraid the upper middle quadrant of the tank may have too much empty space being held with leggy stem plants growing towards the light. #1 and #3 seem to be the best choices, with #3 seeming the best. I need to finalize and get this tank filled with water! Any critiques from this experienced bunch?

Substrate: Gravel with root tabs
CO2: Yes
Light: Chirios WRGB2 Pro 90
Hardscapre: Dragon Stone and Driftwood
Filter: Oase Biomaster 2 600 (already fishless cycling on 20 gallon tub from home depot)


I appreciate the feedback.

I have always liked Rotala florida as plant due to its strongly colored leaves, but realized that I haven't actually aquascaped much with it - meaning to integrate it as part of a layout and not just growing a bunch of it in farm/collector style tank. Using plants in a layout in tighter bunches, and in competition with surrounding plants/hardscape is much harder than growing it farm style in a single patch - it also means be able to shape/trim the bushes to match the overall curves of the layout.

Back in 2016 or so when I first received Rotala florida samples from north america, I could only grow it in sparser bunches. It looked nice in macro photographs but I could not envision using it an bush that would show off well as part of a layout unless I can grow it much denser. In the recent years, there were two main discoveries that I found in my experimentation, the first is that it grows better in moderate GH (5 dGH+) compared to super soft water (say <3dGH), and that it grew better in certain soil mixes (I experimented with different garden soil mixes when engineering the composition of APT Feast). Eventually I integrated some of the soil data into APT Feast's composition, and paired with the higher power lights readily available today, I find that I could finally grow the plant the way I envisioned as part of overall layout. I could prune it dense, as the base stems were healthy enough to sprout dense side shoots after trimming - and the secondary/tertiary shoot tips were as fully colored and sized similar to a primary shoot tip that hasn't been subjected to topping yet.

As a midground stem, it works very well due to its slower growth rate vs other colored stem plants.

Against the deep purple of Rotala florida, I found that Golden white clouds worked quite well. So now they are the main inhabitants of the tank.

Tank this week (25/6/2025)



Tank started out like this:

A week or 2 after initial planting (5/5/2025). I reused old aquasoil from the previous scape, so I planted all plants up front rather than waiting more time for the tank to stabilize, with the idea that I could out-grow any algae issues. Initially wanted to add H. Chai but it really didn't fit the overall color scheme, and the bushes by the side were too invasive to be compatible with having a chai patch I think.

Since it was going to contain Rotala florida, I thought I might as well throw in other high demand troublesome species such as the Red Eriocaulon quinguangulare, blood vomit. I settled on Rotala tulunadensis for the background as I wanted something dense and shapeable.

Tank specs:
60x36x36cm
Filter: Oase biomaster 250, all sponge media
CO2 injected through inline atomizer
Substrate: APT Feast
Water column: APT Sky to raise GH to 5dGH, 2ml of APTe per day.


Light distance. Interestingly, not crazy high PAR - just around 200-250 umols PAR at the substrate level.



Trimming and shaping: Most bushes were shaped by cutting individual outlier shoots one by one. Only Rotala blood red and the Rotala tulunadensis was straight trimmed across the entire top once.


This is how the Rotala tulunadensis looked like after a straight trim on 29/5/2025. About 3 weeks from when the top picture at top of this page was taken. It took the plant a whole week + to show new shoots. It seems straight trimming slows down the plant quite a bit, but allows for a very dense & neat canopy afterwards.



There are some interesting plants stuffed here and there. Some Eriocaulon caulescens? bolivia? that local hobbyists passed on to me. Carved out a patch for Syngonanthus vichada - slow grower, but the couple of babies that came have doubled in size so I think they should be alright. I think I will move them to a larger tank with more space.









Only discovered the color combination with the Golden white clouds when the tank matured, but its one of my favourite fish-plant combinations now. I think that while some of the species are a bit picky about growth conditions, one thing I really like about this tank is that most things have moderate/slow growth rates, which makes maintenance with regards to removing excess growth less tedious.
Elatine triandra is used as a low growing green filler plant - it does this role well. As it does not root very deeply, I can easily cut and pull off excess growth easily. Its the fasting growing plant in the layout that requires frequent removal of excess growth.

Some more close-ups.








I'm trying to replicate concepts of this layout (slowing growing bushes) into my 4ft tank.

Apparently we are supposed to discuss nutrients? NUTRIENT TUNNEL VISION....
I think the audience gets to ask questions, though you can do the same here any day ha.

Welcome to ScapeCrunch, @gfjgbkfvmm!
We would love to get to know you. Please tell us about yourself. What tank do you have?

I have rarely kept journals for my tanks, mostly because I tend to not think about it until it’s too late. I have missed the jump on this one too, but as it has only been running for 2-3 months now I think it’s newish enough to start a journal.
Tank:
80cm x 45cm x 40cm (32” x 18” x 16”)
About 130L of water, or 34 US gallons.

I upgraded from a 60L tank that had been running for about 7 years, fairly steadily. I have always enjoyed smaller tanks and so kept this upgrade fairly modest.

Here is a picture of the tank as it is today:





As you can see, I suffer from collectoritis, and have definitely prioritised lots of plant species over ‘scaping’. One of the joys for me in this hobby is growing lots of different plants, so I tend to end up with jungles with many different stems.

The tank is just beginning to stabilise now, with the fresh soil finally not messing around with the water parameters so violently.
I use remineralised RO water cut slightly with tap water at the moment, as I find that ‘matures’ the soil faster in the beginning of a tank.
Below is the running sheet for this tank, which gives a good idea of the water parameters.

It is really weird when a Dutch tank has this particular problem. My friend faced this problem for some weird reason.

Here is tank info

• 40*35*35
• 1.4 W/L ( using mostly red/blue light) 8 hours lighting continously,
• CO2 "green" ( it is not possible to measure CO2 level but the indicator is lime green, m
• pH is 6.5, kH is 3.4
• Temp in avg is 27
• Nitrate level unknow (Probably low). Ammonia 0

Doses EI at 1/3 rec doses daily ( the bottle recommend weekly dose of 2,)
- Water changes in Sunday, 30% with RO

Except Elatine Triandra, ALL of his plant is developing really well meanwhile ET develops serious sign of nitrate deficiency despite everything else, so i am very confused.