New Scaper 60 Second Tank

[Fluxtor]

So only had first tank for a little under a year and I'm hooked. I've kept tropical before many years ago and currently keep koi in a 3k gallon informal pond! What can I say, I love fish!

This will be my second tank and is being setup in my shed/pond filter house (I'm not allowed a second tank in doors yet until I get a big feature tank! (One day he dreams). This tank is a superfish scaper 60 with the following specs:

Filter: Oase Biomaster Thermo 250
Pressurized CO2 with inline diffuser
Glass Lily Pipes
Colombo Nutribase capped with pool filter sand
Seiryu Stone and Redmoore Wood

I'm currently trying a dark start which I'm almost 2 weeks into. I have no scientific reason for trying this other than trying something different in an effort to start the tank with minimal algae problems if I can. I've seen videos of this so thought I'd give it a go. The main theory behind this tank is to take my time. I plan on 2-3 weeks of dark start then will plant relatively heavily and ad live stock 2-3 weeks after that. This is all practice for a much bigger tank in our main living area some time in the future.

Here's a little picture of it as of today (the light was on for less than a minute purely for the picture). Updates when I do the next stage.

 

[G mac]

Like you, I’m also a koi keeper and also enjoy aquascaping.

Your scape looks great👍

 

[Fluxtor]

So, here we are roughly 3 weeks later and we're planted. I have CO2 running from 14:00 - 20:00 and lighting on from 15:00 - 21:00. I'm currently doing approximately 30% water change daily which I plan to do for the first week then every other day week 2.

I'm relatively happy with the planting although I still feel it has a long way to go. I've made some newbie mistakes including not leaving myself enough room to plant the stems (ludwigia) in the back corner as I'd planned so I'm a little disappointed but heyho, live and learn. I also feel it could do with more plants particularly buce or anubias as the middle section of redmore as it looks a little sparce. Considering I spent the best part of £100 on plants I didn't want to spend too much more on my first real attempt.

I've left a pot of ludwigia loose in the tank while I try to figure out a way to get my large clumsy hands in and around the back to retry planting. Part of the problem is it's in racking and getting the right angle of attack is difficult!

Anyway, here's some pictures and a quick video.

Post planted video

 

[G mac]

Looks great and will look even better once all grown in 👍

 

[Fluxtor]

Looks great and will look even better once all grown in 👍

Thanks, appreciate that very much. One of my biggest problems is I lack confidence and always doubt myself and end up tinkering too much. Some time you just need to step away and give it time. I have the same problem with Koi, I always want to move them on before I've given them chance to bloom!

 

[FrozenShivers]

Good work! Give it time to grow in and it will look ace!

 

[G mac]

Thanks, appreciate that very much. One of my biggest problems is I lack confidence and always doubt myself and end up tinkering too much. Some time you just need to step away and give it time. I have the same problem with Koi, I always want to move them on before I've given them chance to bloom!

Know what you mean with the Koi. 🙂 Mind you, I'm useless at moving them on, I just feel responsible once I've selected them.