My First Planted Tank for 7 Years, 540 litre Temperate River Scape

[BubbleWizard]

Hello Everyone, nice to meet you all, my name Chris, and although i am a very experienced fish keeper/aquarist i am still pretty new to the aquascaping/planted tank scene.
This is my first aquarium for a long time, and first ever attempt at a proper aquascape.
I set the hard scape up today (03/06/23), the same day the tank was delivered, as well as most of the equipment, but the tank is not ready to be filled for another 2 weeks, so i am likely to make changes/tweaks.
the tank is a 5'x2'x2' aquariums4life tank, with opti front and sides, and a black back, set on a charred cedar cabinet and with matching pelmet.
the equipment is as follows.
Oase Biomaster thermo 850 (i have altered it to have more, larger holes in the stem inside the pre-filter, and replaced 2 trays of sponges with JBL micromec), i also upgraded to USCAPE stainless intake and outtake pipes (which i sprayed black, to try to make them vanish against the background)
Oase 11w UV
Oase surface skimmer
Twinstar Yotta plus Algae inhibitor which i sprayed black (being careful to mask off the mesh portion of course)
AI nero 5 powerhead
2x Ecotech Radion XR30w gen 5 lights (from an old reef tank belonging to a friend, hence the unconventional choice)
The CO2 set up hasnt arrived yet, but will be a 5kg aluminium fire extinguisher with a CO2 art pro elite regulator.

the hardscape and substrate is as follows

base layer of black egg-crate to distribute weight of large rocks
10 litres of JBL aquabasis plus
30kg of river sand from maidenhead aquatics
6 large caledonian river rocks from my local landscaping place
a total of 8 pieces of various sizes of talawa wood from riverwood aquatics
a bag of smaller beach pebbles of various sizes and colours
some loose gravel and sand mix collected from my local riverbank and washed
black expanding foam and zip ties to lock things together

my intention in terms of plants is to be aiming for easy to keep, leafy, robust plants and i am particularly fond of crypts so i plan to have many, as well as anubias, microsorium, echinodorus, and possibly vallis.

my current future fish list includes barilius ardens, and spotted hillstream loaches, and then the maybe list is notropsis chrosomus, apistogramma borellii, giant danio, Laukbuka dadjiburjori, danio choprae. however i know what i am like, and these plans could be completely derailed if i see something that takes my fancy!

i am including some pictures from day 1, and i appreciate any and all input and suggestions. thanks for reading

 

[Tim Harrison]

Very nice. Those large rounded cobbles or boulders look great.

 

[Hufsa]

Yeah those are some really nice rocks and layout 😃

 

[BubbleWizard]

Hey everyone. got a little update. also wanted to say thanks for being such a warm, helpful community-everyone here is amazing

got the tank filled yesterday, using RO, and using JBL aquadur to raise TDS to 190ppm. took forever because my RO unit lies about being 100gpd lol.
also between the last post and yesterday i got my CO2 system set up. Shout out to Sid scapes for the regulator, and some much needed advice.

i have had 1 or 2 little teething problems, but nothing serious. the Oase Biomaster was suffering from the common issue of drawing in air and making gurgling noises every 30 seconds or so. this was rectified with the well known vaseline every O-ring method that people recommend online. The other issue was that the solenoid on my regulator was bleeding through about a bubble every 3 or 4 seconds even when the power was off. I took the solenoid apart, cleaned it all, reassembled it, and it still leaked. then did something similar with the regulator, which also (obviously) didnt fix it, so i reassembled the solenoid a 2nd time, seemingly didnt do anything different to the first, but for some reason this did the trick, and its running perfectly now.

70% of the plants are in. mostly crypts, echinodorus, microsoriums, and anubias. i do plan to pick up some more tomorrow to fill it out, but so far so good the plants mostly came from "world of mosses" on facebook, who have been superb, with some from aquarium gardens and some from maidenhead at lechlade. I have begun to dose with the seachem aquavitro range of ferts, as per a schedule recommended to me by a super kind user of this forum, Konrad.

i'll attach photos of where i'm at right now. appologies for the cloudy water, its been running less than 24 hours and i think it will clear when i do a couple of water changes.

thanks for reading, and as always i am open to any and all advice

 

[hypnogogia]

Looks a little sparse on the pants front. I’d throw in some fast growing stems and floating plants for the start. You can always remove them later if you don’t want them.

 

[Wookii]

Looks a little sparse on the pants front.

 

[MichaelJ]

Looks a little sparse on the pants front. I’d throw in some fast growing stems and floating plants for the start. You can always remove them later if you don’t want them.

Yes, not enough plants - that would be my only critique as well... The tank will mature a lot faster / easier when you plant densely from the get go. I do like the rocky river bed look though.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[BubbleWizard]

Thanks everyone. I have added another 9 pots of plants today (which was planned) and its worth noting that there's heaps of plants behind the rocks that you can't see in the photos. I think all together it's at around 45-50 pots so far, and I do have a few more I'd like to add.

Sent from my SM-G780G using Tapatalk

 

[BubbleWizard]

hi everyone. got an update for those who are interested! firstly the tank is no longer temperate lol, i changed my plans and ended up using the heater so its now a tropical tank. the plants are doing well! the crypts have stopped melting, and started showing a little more colour. the echinodorus are starting to grow and colour up, and all various epiphytes are just kind of stable and not yet growing but certainly looking healthy (at least in my opinion) i also picked up a couple of pots of legeandra meeboldii red which are on the right side next to all the ferns. i'm hopeful these will be beautiful when they grow in. and I've got some rare crypts coming in the post next week to add (spiralis tiger, spiralis red and nurii rosen maden).

Ive added some livestock too! (if youre wandering how ive stocked it quite heavy so early its because i used loads of mature filter media, and am doing VERY frequent VERY large water changes, and testing daily). so far we have 2 types of shoaling fish- Peru bleeding blue tetras (hyphessobrycon margitae) and lambchop rasboras (trigonostigma espei) as well as a few Vietnamese hovering zebra loaches (yunnanilus cruciatus), a few Ottos (otocinclus affinis, a pair of taeniatus kribensis "moliwe" i think, and then some Amano shrimp and a few different types of nerite snails.

in terms of maintenance I've been doing 3 water changes a week of 210 litres (the size of the barrel I collect RO in) which i mineralise up to 120 tds using JBL aquadur. I've also cleaned the glass a few times. so far I've had biofilm but no actual algae. I also had to remove a little mulm from a couple of branches of the wood, but that appears to have run its course thankfully. I've cleaned the Oase surface skimmer sponge a few times, and the biomaster prefilter chamber once, and that's about it. incidentally I am really impressed with the Oase skimmer. Good little bit of kit!

in terms of water parameters this is what i have been getting so far when testing, and they seem to be pretty consistent/stable.
Temp 25.6 degrees, PH 6.5, KH 2-3, GH 7, TDS 150 after a water change, creeping up to 175-180 on the day before the change. ammonia 0-0.25ppm, nitrite 0-0.25ppm, nitrate 5-10ppm. I have a CO2 drop checker which shows roughly 15-20ppm of CO2 based on the colour/KH chart I have, so I hope that's correct. and that's during the majority of the photoperiod. I've not quite got it dialled in so its fully saturated when the lights kick in yet.

anyways thats the update. so far so good i think and i'm excited to watch the plants develop. thanks for reading

 

[Tim1343]

Looks really good, looking forward to seeing this develop.