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Cheapish İwugami high tec nano cube

Ash_bash

Member
Joined
7 Jun 2020
Messages
67
Location
Stoke-on-Trent
Hi guys, first post for me, after watching countless George farmer videos on YouTube I decided to try my hand at aquascaping.

I had an unopened 23l fluval edge that my girlfriend brought me years ago, I first tried to turn this into a high tec iwugami over Christmas and this failed do to algae. Its a very hard tank to maintain!

I had a small group of 6 pygmy Cory's and 4 CRS, the 6 pygmys bred and now I have 9 and countless CRS. I wanted to upgrade without going too big.

I decided to give aquascaping another shot.

I wanted to use my fluval edge stand as it suited the kitchen and I decided on a 35cm optiwhite cube I brought from ebay, I fitted a 6mm mild steel plate on the stand as the new aquarium slightly overhung the cabinet.

I wanted a kind of iwagumi/nature aquarium as the pygmys somtimes got a little spooked with such a bare iwugami setup. My plan was a triangle type setup with the back corner being quite overgrown for abit of cover.

Specs ares as follows:
Tank: 35cm optiwhite cube 4mm optiwhite glass from NDaquatics on ebay, very happy with the quility/value of this tank.

Filter: eden 100w thermo. With a pre filter installed, I swapped all the sponges for seachem bio matrix 1.25L and a bagof purigen.
This filter was a little big for the tank at around 600lph but it was the smallest I could find with a built in heater.
I also installed a glass lilkypipe/skimmer.

Lighting: chihiros ada style from eBay, 18w and 1.8k lumens, I was very surprised with the quality of this light.

C02: cheap Chinese solinoid reg from ebay and a half decent looking aluminium 1L cylinder, It took me awhile find a decent looking one that was small enough to fit in the cabinet, the cabinet is open and the compartments are quite small so I needed to cut afew bits out.
C02 diffuser was another cheap ebay Jobby.

I also fitted a chihiros anti algae device, had literally no algae and I'm about 3 weeks in.

Stone was mini landscaping stone.

Soil is tropica powder

Plants: all tropica 1-2 grow,
HC cuba for the lawn, moving into mini hair grass around the stone and the background is ludwigia arcuata followed by rotala wallichii

I wanted the bright green HC to fade into the dark green on the hair grass then into the green/orange/red of the stem plants,

All the plants are growing well and can't wait to see the color of the stems as they mature.

I've got the lights on 6 hours a day and I'm doing 1ml of tropica specialised per day and a 50% RO water change per week.

I brought 12 chili rasbora for abit of color and movement but almost all of them jumped on the first day when the lights turned on, :( I've brought a automatic dimmer that will slowly ramp up the lights and some floating plants, when the stem plants grow again I'm going to try with a fresh batch of chillis.

Other than that I have 9 pygmys and maybe 20/30 crs.

-thanks for reading guys, wish I did a step by step, hopefully I can keep this updated as it matures.
 

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This was the aquascape I was hoping to copy, and also my first attempt on my fluval edge before it failed.

I had a custom made led, it was bright enough but because of the tank shape I couldn't get the spread, I tried to add more light but it was just overkill. And algae over ran everything, and because of the small opening matinance was an absolute pain.
 

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Last edited:
If you still have the Edge, there are several decent videos on removing the top - much easier maintenance etc
 
Ah cheers alto, i might just do that, I have 2 knocking about, I was going to try and get 3 and do a kind of iwagumi triptic with the 3 tanks :)
 
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