If anything, this tank is an utilitarian aquarium. This is not an aquascape, in the sense that I want to artistically impress on you a feeling. Its main utility is for me to grow plants and relax in front of it. Hope you also find reading this journal useful for you.
The idea behind this tank is to just keep it simple and get the chance to look at some plant species and techniques closer. Thus, just a few plant species at a time and when it starts to get boring just change the plants. There is the added advantage of trying to grow many plant species under the same or similar conditions. The substrate, just sand, helps with easy uprooting, cleaning and resetting while giving me the flexibility to change the water parameters fast. As it's supposed to be simple and dynamic I don't feel like bothering with any hardscape and I have more room for plants.
I will try to keep it budget friendly and find a balance that works for me. We can use high end and/or high intensity light, substrates and equipment. Nothing wrong with that, it may produce better results easier. There is also no need to make it hard mode in every aspect of growing plants. What does that actually mean? I will inject CO2 just like I will dose fertilizer to the tank. If dosing regularly is stresful, I will get an autodoser. But I will try and use some of my old equipment and relatively basic equipment to achieve my goals. In other words, plant growing should be accessible. If I can do it, you can do it! Just let it grow!
Tank:
A standard Marina tank with 4mm float glass
54L - 60x30x30 cm
Light
Nicrew SlimLed Plants 58-75cm, 16W (x2)
Sustrate
JBL Sansibar River
Filter
Eheim 2213 - 3L volume - 440L/h rated flow
spraybar output
CO2
Chihiros CO2 External Diffuser
older equipment for the regulator and tank
Day 0: Added the sand and water and did an equipment check. Although a bit more expensive, the sand is very clean out of the pack so I just poured water with no clouding. CO2 injection off to give some time for the diffuser to soak. RODI water adjusted to 28 mg/L Ca, 10 mg/L Mg, 10 mg/L K with the respective sulfates.
Day 5: 20L water change, added some snails and planted Nymphoides flaccida, Rotala macrandra "Mini Type 4", Hemianthus callitrichoides "Cuba"
Day 9: added Myriophyllum pinnatum and took photo. Besides Nymphoides flaccida, all plants are from tissue culture.
The idea behind this tank is to just keep it simple and get the chance to look at some plant species and techniques closer. Thus, just a few plant species at a time and when it starts to get boring just change the plants. There is the added advantage of trying to grow many plant species under the same or similar conditions. The substrate, just sand, helps with easy uprooting, cleaning and resetting while giving me the flexibility to change the water parameters fast. As it's supposed to be simple and dynamic I don't feel like bothering with any hardscape and I have more room for plants.
I will try to keep it budget friendly and find a balance that works for me. We can use high end and/or high intensity light, substrates and equipment. Nothing wrong with that, it may produce better results easier. There is also no need to make it hard mode in every aspect of growing plants. What does that actually mean? I will inject CO2 just like I will dose fertilizer to the tank. If dosing regularly is stresful, I will get an autodoser. But I will try and use some of my old equipment and relatively basic equipment to achieve my goals. In other words, plant growing should be accessible. If I can do it, you can do it! Just let it grow!
Tank:
A standard Marina tank with 4mm float glass
54L - 60x30x30 cm
Light
Nicrew SlimLed Plants 58-75cm, 16W (x2)
Sustrate
JBL Sansibar River
Filter
Eheim 2213 - 3L volume - 440L/h rated flow
spraybar output
CO2
Chihiros CO2 External Diffuser
older equipment for the regulator and tank
Day 0: Added the sand and water and did an equipment check. Although a bit more expensive, the sand is very clean out of the pack so I just poured water with no clouding. CO2 injection off to give some time for the diffuser to soak. RODI water adjusted to 28 mg/L Ca, 10 mg/L Mg, 10 mg/L K with the respective sulfates.
Day 5: 20L water change, added some snails and planted Nymphoides flaccida, Rotala macrandra "Mini Type 4", Hemianthus callitrichoides "Cuba"
Day 9: added Myriophyllum pinnatum and took photo. Besides Nymphoides flaccida, all plants are from tissue culture.
Tissue culture gives a great number of individual plants, but you don't get a great deal of plant mass. On the other hand, compared with emersed plants you get less algae introduced to begin with. Some algae will come at some point. With this setup I will likely skip the diatom stage and go straight to green algae. That is not to say that my approach is very focused on not growing algae. For example I could lower the light levels and lower the light duration , have some floating plants and so on. I will react to algae when they come, see what fun simple organisms can bring to this aquarium. Till then my strategy is snails, cleaning, water changes.
There is a multitude of baby ramshorn and bladder snails, so hope they keep it under control. Time to also add some amano shrimps, maybe. As the snails are still small, over the last week I did not clean the glass to let them harden a little . Looking at my notes, I did a water change every 4-5 days this month.
