Emil.
Member
Hello Fellow Aquatic Plant Friends,
After several months experiencing all the joys that the planted tank brings, time has come to upgrade the size. I've decided to go from 60 to a whopping 90 liters! I know it's not much by any means but I needed to be reasonable. I'm renting my place and an inevitable future moving would be much more difficult with a bigger tank. I also perform all my water changes manually with a bucket and although I'm young, beautiful and strong, having to hold the bucket high and be careful not to spill anything can sometimes be a pain in the… shoulder.
Despite not having any prior woodworking experience, or tools for that matter, I built my own stand. I learned many things during the process. I learned that I can't cut very straight. I learned that tools are expensive and I learned that my girlfriend loves me tons. Believe it or not, I was allowed to work on it in our living room because the weather outside was unreasonable. I always cleaned after myself but there were many tools and timber hanging around for a couple of weeks. Totally worth it, here's the result:
It's not perfect but it's mine, very stable and yellow! I used 44 x 69 mm whitewood, Base dimensions are 60 x 40 cm. The design is very simple and can be easily found on YouTube.
Leveling was not as easy as one would expect. I had to raise three corners by 4, 12, and 14 mm. That’s more than half an inch on one side. Color me pedantic but that’s one hell of a crooked floor. After initial attempts of making wedges out of wood, I resorted to simply using layers of cardboard taped to the floor with masking tape. I don’t think this solution will last forever but it’s good enough for now.
After all this hard work, it was time for some serious hardscape fun! I took my time and tried several layouts. My initial idea was to create an island on the left side of the tank and have the right side heavily planted. I tried to build this in the tank but I had to abandon this idea. Due to the size of the pebbles used, the created space for soil was inadequate in my humble opinion. See for yourself, what do you think?
Many days and unsatisfying variations later, I created the following monstrosity. I liked it a lot but mainly for the comical value. It had a funny looking cave and overall cartoony feel. I left it on for three days to see if I could live with it long term. I could not.
Then, I got an idea. Instead of abandoning the island plan, I could just revert it - create an absence of an island and have plenty of space for the soil around. That’s how my final layout came to be.
As you can see, it’s not gonna win any aquascaping contests, it’s not gonna get anywhere close but it will be a nice little home for dum-dums (collective name for my 5 ember tetras) and other fish in the future. They’ll have plenty of spaces to hide from the flow and plenty of plants to admire, smell, claim as their territory or whatever they fancy to do.
Here’s how it currently looks. It's been a few days since I planted it. I’m getting a lot of algae but I like the look of it and it’s part of the plan. I want to keep a group of otocinclus catfish later on so I’m “cooking” a welcome feast for them. Please don’t mind the CO2 being too close to the radiator, it’s not heating.
Nerdy stuff
Water: not too hot soft acidic tap water
After several months experiencing all the joys that the planted tank brings, time has come to upgrade the size. I've decided to go from 60 to a whopping 90 liters! I know it's not much by any means but I needed to be reasonable. I'm renting my place and an inevitable future moving would be much more difficult with a bigger tank. I also perform all my water changes manually with a bucket and although I'm young, beautiful and strong, having to hold the bucket high and be careful not to spill anything can sometimes be a pain in the… shoulder.
Despite not having any prior woodworking experience, or tools for that matter, I built my own stand. I learned many things during the process. I learned that I can't cut very straight. I learned that tools are expensive and I learned that my girlfriend loves me tons. Believe it or not, I was allowed to work on it in our living room because the weather outside was unreasonable. I always cleaned after myself but there were many tools and timber hanging around for a couple of weeks. Totally worth it, here's the result:
It's not perfect but it's mine, very stable and yellow! I used 44 x 69 mm whitewood, Base dimensions are 60 x 40 cm. The design is very simple and can be easily found on YouTube.
Leveling was not as easy as one would expect. I had to raise three corners by 4, 12, and 14 mm. That’s more than half an inch on one side. Color me pedantic but that’s one hell of a crooked floor. After initial attempts of making wedges out of wood, I resorted to simply using layers of cardboard taped to the floor with masking tape. I don’t think this solution will last forever but it’s good enough for now.
After all this hard work, it was time for some serious hardscape fun! I took my time and tried several layouts. My initial idea was to create an island on the left side of the tank and have the right side heavily planted. I tried to build this in the tank but I had to abandon this idea. Due to the size of the pebbles used, the created space for soil was inadequate in my humble opinion. See for yourself, what do you think?
Many days and unsatisfying variations later, I created the following monstrosity. I liked it a lot but mainly for the comical value. It had a funny looking cave and overall cartoony feel. I left it on for three days to see if I could live with it long term. I could not.
Then, I got an idea. Instead of abandoning the island plan, I could just revert it - create an absence of an island and have plenty of space for the soil around. That’s how my final layout came to be.
As you can see, it’s not gonna win any aquascaping contests, it’s not gonna get anywhere close but it will be a nice little home for dum-dums (collective name for my 5 ember tetras) and other fish in the future. They’ll have plenty of spaces to hide from the flow and plenty of plants to admire, smell, claim as their territory or whatever they fancy to do.
Here’s how it currently looks. It's been a few days since I planted it. I’m getting a lot of algae but I like the look of it and it’s part of the plan. I want to keep a group of otocinclus catfish later on so I’m “cooking” a welcome feast for them. Please don’t mind the CO2 being too close to the radiator, it’s not heating.
Nerdy stuff
Water: not too hot soft acidic tap water
- 50 ppm from tap
- PH less than 6.4. Not sure how low it really is, sadly. None of my tests can detect the low range.
- 24°C
- Love it
- Substrat pro and sponges only
- the newer version
- photo period: 10 hrs incl. 2 hrs ramp on each side, full power is set to 21 watts
- + tons of daylight in the morning for good measure
- It's interesting to see how the same plant grows much faster when closer to the light