Someoldguy
New Member
Next year , probably around June or so , I intend to set up a 16 gallon bookshelf display tank in the living room . I don’t want to mess around with growing in plants in this tank ; rather my goal is to use plants that are ‘pre grown in’ in a couple of farm tanks in my basement , and transplant them over when the time comes . Unfortunately ; I’m out of rack space , and have some small pots of plants that need somewhere to go . I could stuff them into an existing tank ; but I may have some interesting new fish coming in a few weeks that will probably need some space to mature , plus I can experiment with a few things that I want to do on the ‘good tank’ re: substrate , lighting duration and ferts. Better to have things fail on something that’s temporary and less important .
So I’m resurrecting a 30 cm. cube as a farm tank for the purpose . This will not be a nice display tank , just something to monitor plant growth!!! It’s been sitting empty on my porch for a few years and needs something to justify its’ existence . Not too big so it won’t litter up my kitchen counter , but big enough (I think) for the proposed uses . Nothing special about equipment … a Sicce ‘Micro Nano’ internal filter with a piece of 20ppi Poret foam in it that’s currently been‘charged up’ in an established tank for a week or so, and a Finnex ‘Planted Plus’ that was on the tank a few years back when it was last set up. No CO2 , auto dosers , drop checkers , diffusers , or other impedimenta that so frequently is found littering up folk‘s tanks . Just a bare bones , minimum , ‘old school’ low tech setup . No tinkering with water parameters , just the stuff from the kitchen sink , Ph 7.4 , dH + kH both around 8 to 10. It’s getting filled with ½ tap water and ½ used water from one of my existing tanks.
I’ll be using CaribSea ‘Super Naturals ‘Peace River’’ which is a small grained inert gravel . I think I’ve got enough for 1 – 1 1/2 inches depth . I’m also going to try a thin (1/8” or so) layer of leonardite laid down over ½” or so of the gravel and then overtopped with the remains of the gravel . Just to get some organics into the substrate . Barr mentions this stuff as an additive in his 2005 (?) article on non Co2 low tech tanks . Plus I’ve got some sitting in the garage that I got a while back for some experiments in growing tomato plants in containers and need to use it for something . I’ve used finely milled sphagnum as an organic layer and while I’m not so sure if there were benefits , it certainly did no harm save for imparting a slightly brown tint to the water , so we’ll see how leonardite does in comparison . I’m also breaking open 2 Osmocote tabs and distributing the contents into the leonardite layer to get some substrate nutrients installed . Between the leonardite and Osmocote I should have a reasonably enriched substrate to plant into . I don’t plan on water column dosing for 2 weeks minimum after setup . Going to play it by ear with this.
Right now, the tank is planted with 4 or 5 Crypt. ‘Florida Sunset ‘ ; and 10 or so Crypt. ‘Tropica’ . all of which have been separated from rooted masses in small pots I got online . After separating the plants , individual plants were placed submersed in trays for a few days until I could get the tank filled . At this point some of the ‘Tropica’ decided to melt . I planted the roots anyway , usually they come back , just takes a while . Pix when the water clears up .
So I’m resurrecting a 30 cm. cube as a farm tank for the purpose . This will not be a nice display tank , just something to monitor plant growth!!! It’s been sitting empty on my porch for a few years and needs something to justify its’ existence . Not too big so it won’t litter up my kitchen counter , but big enough (I think) for the proposed uses . Nothing special about equipment … a Sicce ‘Micro Nano’ internal filter with a piece of 20ppi Poret foam in it that’s currently been‘charged up’ in an established tank for a week or so, and a Finnex ‘Planted Plus’ that was on the tank a few years back when it was last set up. No CO2 , auto dosers , drop checkers , diffusers , or other impedimenta that so frequently is found littering up folk‘s tanks . Just a bare bones , minimum , ‘old school’ low tech setup . No tinkering with water parameters , just the stuff from the kitchen sink , Ph 7.4 , dH + kH both around 8 to 10. It’s getting filled with ½ tap water and ½ used water from one of my existing tanks.
I’ll be using CaribSea ‘Super Naturals ‘Peace River’’ which is a small grained inert gravel . I think I’ve got enough for 1 – 1 1/2 inches depth . I’m also going to try a thin (1/8” or so) layer of leonardite laid down over ½” or so of the gravel and then overtopped with the remains of the gravel . Just to get some organics into the substrate . Barr mentions this stuff as an additive in his 2005 (?) article on non Co2 low tech tanks . Plus I’ve got some sitting in the garage that I got a while back for some experiments in growing tomato plants in containers and need to use it for something . I’ve used finely milled sphagnum as an organic layer and while I’m not so sure if there were benefits , it certainly did no harm save for imparting a slightly brown tint to the water , so we’ll see how leonardite does in comparison . I’m also breaking open 2 Osmocote tabs and distributing the contents into the leonardite layer to get some substrate nutrients installed . Between the leonardite and Osmocote I should have a reasonably enriched substrate to plant into . I don’t plan on water column dosing for 2 weeks minimum after setup . Going to play it by ear with this.
Right now, the tank is planted with 4 or 5 Crypt. ‘Florida Sunset ‘ ; and 10 or so Crypt. ‘Tropica’ . all of which have been separated from rooted masses in small pots I got online . After separating the plants , individual plants were placed submersed in trays for a few days until I could get the tank filled . At this point some of the ‘Tropica’ decided to melt . I planted the roots anyway , usually they come back , just takes a while . Pix when the water clears up .
