Jakes' Simple Nano

[Jakes]

Hey guys,

I am on a long course which requires me to be away from the home from Sunday night to Friday night... it sucks but it came with a promotion at work so yin-yang...

I have a nice aquarium at home which is happily chugging away... I should probably update it as I haven't done so in a while but not much changes with it... take a look if you havent seen it before.

https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/jakess-new-aquascape-in-the-making.38985/

Back on topic, so I am missing the aquarium almost as much as I miss my family... its close... so I decided to take my son's nano that has been sitting in the garrage for a while and re-purpose it.

Its a Super Fish jobby... it was good enough to be used as a quarantine tank and hold some guppies to keep my son amused.

The light hood on it was ok but the light was terrible... so terible that when I wanted to chnge it it actually fell appart when I took it out... bin meet crappy hood...

So I ended up getting a LED light unit from AllPond Solutions... guess we will see what a £16 2.5W light is capable of. I also desided to run a Hamburg Matt filter in the tank, but to drive it I am using a AllPond Solutions 200Lph internal filter... its quiet and I didn't want a air pump bubbling away, and I have always wanted to see how it works. I also have a SupaFish 50W heater.

The tank has been set-up now for a week and appart from some surface scum it is quitely cycling away. I used some mulm from my external filter from the main aquarium at home to seed the tank with bacteria and kickstart the system. Also using Fluval Cycle... been slightly dubious about these sorts of products but hey... only have two snails in the tank.

I got some Tropica substrate and topped it with a layer of plain old aquarium gravel. I have two Echinodorus 'Bleherae' in the tank and not sure if I will get anything else... maybe some kind of carpeting plant, but to be honest I want this to be as maintenance free as possible.

What I will keep in the tank is still up in the air, I was thingking a Beta Splendes and some Pygmy Cory's just to clean up a little after him but I am open to sugegstions.

anyway engough rambling here are some pictures:

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[Jakes]

A little update

The tank now houses two snails, a Plakat Siamese Fighter and 6 Corys. The plants are doing great and I added a piece if wood to give it a little edge.

The tanks is setup as a little peninsula system and I reall like it its a great distraction from 'school work' as well

The cheap LED light I got from AllPond Solutions actually seems pretty good at running the system, to be fair the plants are Echinodorus Blehrae so not the most difficult plants yet they are still looking good... although I have the Tropica substrate I also dose a weekly Tropica water column fertiliser.

I do have a surface scum but i scoop that up during weekly water-changes so I keep it in check that way.
The Hamburg Matten filter is also working a treat! No Ammonia and Nitrites and limited Nitrates.

'Head-on view'

Location view

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[woodster]

Hi, looks really nice, the mat seems a good idea, I keep being tempted to buy a nano tank.

 

[Jakes]

Hi, looks really nice, the mat seems a good idea, I keep being tempted to buy a nano tank.

Thanks, yea when I started this tank I really didn't know what filtration system to use then I came across the Hamburg Matten method and so far I am pretty impressed. Usually from what I found online people run it as a air powered system but I didn't want the noise from an air pump as the tank is in a small room. I therefore 'modified' it to use a small internal pump. I guess I could have run the internal filter on its own but this way the system has a huge area for biological growth.

I can take more detailed pictures of how I did it if you would like more details.




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[woodster]

yes that would be great, thanks.

 

[Jakes]

The tank has been running for three months now. The filter itself consists of two sheets of 'corrugated' foam, a coarse and fine one. I placed them so the corrugations interviewed essentially making one thick foam filter. This was due to the fact that at the time I couldn't get any foam sheets thicker than 2cm but the HM method calls for a 5cm thick foam insert. With the two interweaved they are just about 4cm thick.
I cut them to since so that they form a sort of bow event going from rear corner to rear corner of the tank. Normally you would have a air-powered riser tube going over the top of the foam with an air stone pulling water from being the Matt and depositing it back into the tank. Effectively slowly drawing water through the whole Matt slowly causing it to become biologically active and acting as a mechanical medium as well.

As mentioned in my previous post I did not want to have a air-powered system due to the noise so I purchased a All-Pond-Solutions, 200L/H internal filter. It is tiny and runs pretty quiet. I added a piece of tubing to the outlet and cut a hole through the foam pieces as can be seen from the images bellow. I added the century tube as well purely to add some oxygen to the tank especially during the night. The two Amazon Sword plants are thriving so not sure how much oxygen they use, not a problem for the beta but I have a school of carries in there as well and as I understand it they like well oxygenated water.

The only problem I have currently is the buildup of some kind of protein film... I'm assuming its proteins... need to figure out some kind of surface skimmer.

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[ian_m]

Running an airstone after lights are off will quickly dispose of the surface film.

 

[woodster]

Looks good thanks for the pics

 

[Jakes]

A little update,

As you can see I have removed the Hamburg-Matten filter. The reason for this is because the little pump that I used to run the filter with was just clogging far to frequently. The system is designed to use a air-lift tube which also draws the water through the foam pad allow slower. I may give it a go again in the future but for now I have opted for a HoB filter.

The sponges worked their magic pretty well...

The reason for the distribution of the detritus is as follow, the ‘clean’ area at the bottom was coverd with substrate. The dark patch was where the little all pond solution pump was sucking in most of the water and then there was a nice eaven stead over the rest of the surface area. The opposite side which faced the black foam...

The black foam is allot more porous than the white and because its black you cant really see much but holding it up against the white tiles in the bathroom...

Ive opted for a Hagen(Fluval) Aquaclear 20... well the one I have is actually a replacement filter for a Fluval Edge but its exactly the same thing. It was allot cheaper as a ‘replacement’ part than getting the Aquaclear 20. I paid £25 but if I were to get it imported, from Germany as you dont get it in the UK it would have worked out around £40 give or take a pound or two including postage.

Ive ditched the activated carbon that comes with it and replaced it with some cintered glass media from my big tank at home, then added the provided bio media ontop... hing there is enough biological surface are there
Ive also dialled the flow down to about 50% of normal else the poor beta just get blown everywhere.

Thats it for now, the tank is a little cloudy at the moment so we will see how long the new filter takes to clear things up, though from where I am sitting it looks pretty clear to me... infact grabbing a up-to-date photo...

Jakes




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[Jakes]

Just a little update,

Since the replacement filter has been installed this tank is doing extremely well. Just look at how clear the water is in the pictures. I have actually turned the flow DOWN... the pools Beta was blown all voer the place, the filter now runs at about 50%.

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