This is one of the best successful large & deep tanks, by Zeus.
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/olympus-is-calling.43046/
He spent a lot of time (and money) "doing & getting it right", which shows with wonderous tank he has ended up with. High tech tanks are not cheap in money and time to build, as well as not cheap in money and time to keep up.
You need to try and build/buy as many time & effort saving things as you can for tank maintenance with such a big tank, or else maintenance will become a too much of a time consuming chore and be skipped/not done with resulting tank failure.
Things like:
- Plumbing to allow easy adding of tap water.
- Plumbing to allow easy emptying of tank.
- Suitable filters with quick connect fittings to allow easy filter cleaning.
- Suitable electrics to allow easy changing of settings (Zeus used a PLC, not cheap but for a complicated tank, almost necessary).
- Multiple lights to allow control of light intensity, whilst setting up or if it all starts going wrong.
- Easily removable hood/lights/piping so can easily get in tank for fiddling.
- Very long arms to reach bottom of tank. (or step ladder).
Below is the now standard graph of how high tech your tank is likely to be depending on the light levels you provide.
Your tank is 55cm -> 22" which for two T5 tubes gives, 100PAR well and truly in high light region.
If you are aiming for low maintenance, you really need to be in the low light region. You do this buy running only one T5 tube, possible with foil rings wrapped around the tube to block light, using darkened plastic to reduce light, raise the lights up, lots of ways to do it. Also you filter is only 1300l/hour which is fine for low tech (flow rate x4 tank volume). As for plant fertilisers (can carbon sources), dose whenever you want (or as manufacturer states), as light levels are low, plants usage of fertilisers will be low and waste produced by plants will be low as well. As waste is low, it may naturally be processed by your filter/tank, meaning water changes, to remove waste, can be infrequent. All easy maintenance, by just keeping light levels low. When things go wrong, plants melting algae outbreaks, it takes days (weeks ?) all nice and slow and plenty of time to fix any issues.
If you go high tech using both T5 tubes (and reflectors !!), then you will need daily fertiliser dosing, spot on CO2 injection and distribution as well as weekly 50% water changes and a much increased filtration rate (you are looking at least 3300 litre/hour). All very high maintenance. When things go wrong, it can be as little as a day and issues have to be fixed promptly before is gets worse.
