Chapter 2 - A Fresh Start
After the cuts and bruises of building the cabinet had healed (I have the level of competence with tools that you'd expect from a chimpanzee - I can select and use tools, but do neither with great accuracy or grace) it was time to begin the tank set up. I had a head full of dreams from the aquascapes I had seen others create. By this point in my aquatic induction I had discovered PFK, and was completely blown over by the perfect scapes within it's pages. Of course I could achieve something similar, how hard could it be? A little creativity and perseverance would be all that's needed
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Typically I wanted to find hardscape materials first, these were the interesting bits that I could be playing with while I think about technicalities. I used Aqua Essentials and got some Caribsea Eco Complete substrate, burmese pebbles, beach cobbles and Sumatra driftwood. I still needed to throw together a hood for the tank but I just couldn't wait to get started. The driftwood arrived first -
The furry one is Flynn, an almost 3 year old border collie with a penchant for throwable objects. He sat and stared at the driftwood for a substantial amount of time before concluding that it would not leap out of the tank and initiate a game of fetch.
I'd seen a planted aquarium somewhere which used wood to create an effect of roots growing into a jungle stream and absolutely loved it. This is the look I had decided to go for. I'd also been a fan of my Java Ferns and Anubias in the previous tank so had hoped to colonize this driftwood with various epiphytes to create that ancient, overgrown look of a jungle. I faffed with it for ages before deciding that this tank would be nothing without lights and a hood so I decided to focus on hood design instead.
Sorry, we've time travelled again. The hood wasn't too difficult, it was another rectangular frame with a moulding at the front and back to secure it onto the top of the tank. The lid was MDF with a moulding design around the edge to take the blandness out of it. I left cutouts at the back to accommodate filter hoses etc on.
By this point I hadn't given much thought to lights. My last light set up was purchased on a whim without any research, so this time I decided to educate myself first. I used the internet. I read the first thing that came up with the search 'what lights do I need to grow aquactic plants?' in Google. In the short, the answer was, as far as I could tell, 'As much as possible'.
After what was probably less than 5 minutes research, and it's probably worth mentioning for later that I hadn't read the bit at the bottom of the page about Co2, I bought an Arcadia T5 double light controller from Warehouse Aquatics. As for the tubes, I had decided to use a little creativity in my lighting and wanted to replicate something I'd seen in marine tanks. I wanted to create a spotlight effect to highlight a specific feature of the tank, so I bought 2 x 22" Plant pro tubes with the intention of siting them both at one end of the tank. You can almost tell from the above picture, the black background is heavily illuminated on the left hand side of the tank but slightly darker to the right.
So, this is the tank with lights, driftwood, substrate and pebbles. The smaller ones are the Burmese pebbles from AE with the larger ones being natural beach cobbles. Looking back, this is where my grasp of realistic aquascapes slipped. My main design ideas surrounded a deep, slow moving jungle river. But I randomly threw rounded cobbles in there. I'd paid for them. I was bloody well using them. The substrate is two bags of Caribsea Eco Complete from AE, which I quite like, apart from the annoying white chunks in it. Is this consistent with others experiences with this substrate? And how do other brands compare, like black flourite - is this completely black or slightly mixed? Oh, and excuse my reflection in the glass. I'm no photographer.
Now for some plants, to get the green blood flowing.
Firstly, no, that is not my intended filter in the bottom right. I snapped my Eheim impellar while cleaning it so while waiting for a replacement I was using this teeney weeney internal filter as a back up. The same goes for my heater - I have a Hydor external heater which obviously couldn't be used while the Eheim was awaiting new bits. You'll also notice the addition of bright gravel on the substrate - an attempt to ease the transition between substrate and pebbles. I didn't like it, but I didn't fancy picking it out bit by bit.
The plants were from Plants Alive upon recommendation from another forum (Sorry
🙁) which seemed ok, but later I would blame them for the introduction of masses of algae and snails. As you can see there's Vallis, Indian Fern (not sure of the latin) and my trusty Java Ferns and Anubias tied to the driftwood.
I had finally got the tank running to an extent, and even had some plants in there. Now, if I told you that I still didn't know about Co2 infusion or proper fert dosing, would anyone like to hazard a guess at what happened over the following weeks?
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