Nano tank upgrade

[Zoe]

Going from a teeny 10l tank to a bigger but still small 25l tank. Started on the hardscape today, I boiled the wood for a couple of hours and now it's soaking in tank, so far no floating! I've added a thin layer of gravel that I'll be topping up once I get planting.

I got a superfish home 30, removed the inner filter box as I won't be using it, I'll be using my Oase filtosmart 60 and doing the heater-in-the-filter mod - one less bit of equipment in the tank! The filter is well established as it's been running on the 10l for 9ish months. I've ordered the plants, once those arrive I'll get it planted and add my shrimp & snail in! Hardscape wise I'm using some seiryu stone I already had, and some nice bits of wood.


Plants wise I've gone with
Hydrocotyle tripartita
Ranunculus inundatus
Pogostemon deccanensis
Rotatla wallichii
Bucephalandra kedagang

 

[Zoe]

Drained the tank down this evening and fiddled with the wood positioning, I ended up cutting off two ‘spurs’ that were just getting in the way, banked up the back left to give the wood a little more height.

The plants came yesterday so I planted it up this evening, looking forward to seeing it grow in! Hopefully the layout works and it looks good.

I moved my shrimp and snail over, and I’ve ordered some more shrimp to boost numbers! Orange rilis again, I just love them!

 

[Zoe]

This was after filling, it looks so empty at the moment!! Heater is in there temporarily until the kit comes to add it to the filter

 

[Fishfur]

View attachment 228358
This was after filling, it looks so empty at the moment!! Heater is in there temporarily until the kit comes to add it to the filter

They always do look a bit sad right at the beginning. I know you didn’t ask so please ignore this if you want to but I would consider moving the big wood piece.

There are some basic rules about positioning focal points so they are pleasing to the eye.

There is the Fibonacci sequence, which is a series of numbers which represent a pattern that is extremely pleasing to the eye. It is perhaps not surprising that there are numerous examples of the Fibonacci sequence in nature, in plants specially but also much broader patterns, like wind blown sand dunes. However, it’s maybe not the easiest example.

In art & design, of planted tanks among ann enormous number of other things, the ‘rule of thirds’ is widely used to produce eye pleasing arrangements.

The following images are from Wikipedia, Commons Licenced.

These images illustrate how the composition of the photo follows the rule of thirds, which makes it pleasing to look at. It’s a compositional tool that’s very useful.

Consider moving the largest piece of wood to the left so the middle of it is more or less aligned with the imaginary vertical line to the left, as in the black k & white image.

I would probably put one of the bigger rocks to the left side of it and a smaller one to the right.

First & foremost the arrangement should please you, of course, but the rule of thirds is widely used simply because it works so well to produce arrangements that humans find pleasant to look at.

 

[Zoe]

Hi fishfur! I did try to follow the rule of thirds, but eyeballed it so didn’t measure anything, this was my eyeballed thirds



Which piece of wood do you mean, the piece on the left or right?

 

[Fishfur]

Is the wood in the middle of the tank one piece or two? Looks like one to me.

The trick to the rule of thirds is to place focal points on the dividing lines rather than in between them, if that makes sense?

 

[Zoe]

It’s two pieces, I’ll see if I can shuffle the piece that’s falling in the centre over to the left!

 

[Zoe]

Hard to get a pic of but the rotala is perking up well! All the plants are which is good to see

And my big momma shrimp is happy

 

[Zoe]

No luck with the wood shuffle, couldn't move it far enough in either direction to make it work with the thirds so it can stay as is for now, I'm sure at some point I'll get an itch to rescape 😀

Excuse the bits of plant debris floating on the surface, haven't gotten around to removing them yet! Light is on a very conservative 4 hours a day at the moment, so far no algae so lets hope that continues. I've added the heater to the filter using the thermofit 100 and superfish nano heater hack, I'm liking the lack of equipment! The tank tells you to keep a min of 15mm from the edge of the glass but I think I may try filling it more, the condensation along the top is so ugly.


Rotala still seems happy!



The shrimps are enjoying the wood, I've ordered some more orange rillis to boost numbers!