Hi from Cambridge

[Bacms]

Hello everyone,

New aquarist here, I have inherited a Juwel Vision 180 cichlids tank and I am trying to sell the fish so I can convert it to a planted aquarium. Been reading all the tutorials in the things necessary to keep plants and think I am now in the stage where I am comfortably designing my tank. Planning something like this:

Juwel Vision 180
Filtering: Upgrading to a Eheim 2075
Lighting: keeping the original 2xT8 25W and added 2 grobeams 600
CO2: Purchased a CO2 kit from CO2 art that uses sodastream cans (hopefully this ones won't run out too quickly as without a car this are the most convenient way of getting refills)
Fertilizers: EI method using powders

Now that was the easiest part for me the difficult one is designing the layout and choosing the plants and after browsing pictures for hours think I have found the styles I like , so something like this examples:




I have more or less nailed the list of plants just need to figure out how many I will need to order of each species to cover the areas I want. Current list looks something like this:
1 - Rotala Bossi (as the back corner plant)
2 - Pogostmon erectus (as the front left side plant)
3 - Rotala rotundifolia (as the background plant)
4 - Some red ludwigia (to give a focal point to the left side and planted around the rocks)
5 - Hygrophila pinnatifida (as a midground plant to easy the transitions here and there )
6 - Hemianthus Callitrichoides 'Cuba' (as the carpeting plant)

Let me know if you have suggestions or if I am doing something completely wrong.

 

[Worshiper]

Hi Bacms,

Welcome to UKAPS!

You will learn a lot from this forum on how succeed and maintain a planted aquarium.

I have learnt that maintaining a successful planted aquarium takes a lot of practice, patience and discipline. 🙂

IMHO if you are new to aquarium plants you might want to go with easy/beginner plants. Get the right balance of light, CO2 and dosing..Follow the advice on this forum and you will be well on your way to achieve a stunning aquascape!

Oh yeah.. just one more thing.... on UKAPS we love pics😉.. Please upload some pics once you get cracking on that scape so we can be excited with you. 🙂

 

[Bacms]

Any suggestion on which plants to replace on my list then? For what I have read all the plants on my list should be easier, with the obvious exception of Hemianthus Callitrichoides, just won't get as much growth if conditions aren't ideal or am I completely wrong? I really like the rotalas so would like to keep them or replace them similar plants so suggestions are always welcome

 

[Bacms]

I also forgot to mention I will do the plant and leave the aquarium to mature for 3/4 weeks before introducing fish so I guess keeping high levels of CO2 isn't much of a problem the idea being I can play with the parameters for a longer period until I get stability without risking killing all the fish. This is how scared I am 😀

 

[Worshiper]

It really depends on a lot of things Bacms.. some people actually find HC an easy plant. but most get really frustrated
I am not much of a plant guru but here's what works for me:
E. tennellus parvulus (Grows like a weed! you need to keep trimming it like a lawn)
E. Parvulus
Pogostemon Helferi (Downnoi)
Amazon Sword
Hydrocotyle Tripartita
hemianthus micranthemoides (grew like a weed for me!)
Marsilea spiecies (never used them though -- just based on opinion)
Moss balls


You can try this website (Tropica) to understand which ones are easy, medium and advanced: http://tropica.com/en/plants/?tabIndex=1&alias=Easy

You never know, you might just have a green hand and be successful with the advanced level plant straight away.. I just dont want you to spend a lot of money and get frustrated if they don't grow well like I did .

 

[Bacms]

Thank you very much I am sure I will get frustrated and annoyed but my main fear is to get the aquarium full of algae. This would be my dream set-up I guess specially the Hemianthus Callitrichoides but I am buying perfectly aware I may have to replace it with something like grass instead. I would also be happy if the 6 years experience in the plant sciences would help here, but given that I am a bioinformatician and so spend the entire day sting in front on a computer not touching any plants probably doesn't help that much 🙂

 

[Worshiper]

That's great! Plant sciences will defo help!
Ive lost many an algae battle! We could really use some of your knowledge here too. Have a look at the jounal section on this forum. You ll get some great ideas..
Happy scaping 🙂

 

[Iain Sutherland]

Welcome to ukaps, nice to see a new Cambridge aquarist.

If I was to give any advise to a first time scaper it would be to skip all hardscape, choose whatever plants you like and plant them like an allotment. Learn to grow plants first then in a few months when you know what works for you and you aren't so green set your aspiration a little higher with a scaped tank using the plants you already have.
Circulation of co2 is the biggest issue most people have, eliminating hardscape will make your learning days far easier 🙂


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Bacms]

If I was to give any advise to a first time scaper it would be to skip all hardscape, choose whatever plants you like and plant them like an allotment.

To be honest I am only adding a small of hardscape so could probably set up everything as an allotment and add the hardscape later once plants get established. I also don't plant to care that much about size of the plants to fit the aquascape I want until I am sure I know what I am doing. May start a journal so I can get ideas and help for all the steps I need to do