Planted 360° 6-Gallon Round and Tall

[octanejunkie]

My daughter got a fishtank from her grandpa for graduation it's a 6-gal 360° Glo-Fish cylinder tank from Amazon.com.

We set up the tank in early-to-mid June with Glo-gravel, Anacharis, a plastic plant and faux coral from Petco and two Neon Tetras from a local aquarium-specialty store locally; the fish at Petco did not look good.

After about a month we added another Neon Tetra as the two were fin-nipping (which I suppose is normal in a small school/small tank) and my addiction for a planted tank began. The term "scape" has become very relevant to us

Over time we've upgraded both the lighting and filtration and have super-stocked the tank with plants. It's growing in nicely, and a bit overgrown too, but it's fun!

Lighting
Lighting was the first thing we upgraded, that was in late July, about a month ago.

We're using using these 3W Dolphin LED clamp-on 6500° white lights from Amazon for $26 each. They fit up to 1/2" thick wall.

Filter
Even though the internal power filter that came with our tank was doing a good job, it was loud and splattered water at every water level we tried.

Now we're using an Azoo Palm filter from amazon.com and set it up with AquaClear 20 bio max bags and two grades of foam, the Azoo black foam and AquaClear 30 Foam cut to size. I seeded these in our grow bucket with an excess plants and old filter media from our 6-gallon tank's original filter. This has been running since August 8th, cleaned once; yesterday.

As of today, we have 5 neon tetras and 2 otocinclus hoppei

Future plans for re-scaping this tank: swapping heaters, swapping substrate, and a complete, planned planting with a bunch of stems, crypts and driftwood. I'm really liking this piece of wood for this tank, positioned sloping downward in the center and flanked with plants, leaving the entire perimeter.

Here's a brief photo antholgy of the evolution of our first tank

June 14, 2013

July 6, 2013

July 25, 2013

July 27, 2013

August 3, 2013

August 19, 2013

 

[brennae]

Very nice!

 

[octanejunkie]

Very nice!

Thanks 8)

 

[FanOfAllSeven]

The tank looks good, can't wait to see how you incorporate the wood.

 

[octanejunkie]

Re-Scape UPDATE

Here is a preview pic of the end result... a more detailed post to follow, later this weekend

I did my best to photo-document my process but it was my first rescape of this nature and some things went faster than I thought while others took longer than expected

 

[octanejunkie]

Labor Day Weekend project

I have been planning on re-scaping our 6-gallon GloView tank for some time now... I really hated the glow gravel and faux corral and wanted a more natural looking tank.

My daughter and I have been accumulating rocks and driftwood and looking at tons of pictures for weeks looking for inspiration, and this past weekend we were finally ready to break down our tank and re-scape it.

It begins
We prepped a 3.5 gallon OSH paint bucket as a temporary holding pen for our fish and plants and siphoned off around 3 gallons from the tank into the bucket.

We moved the light and filter over and started pulling plants out one by one, placing them in the bucket. Eventually we were down to just fish and gravel. We carefully netted the fish and transferred them to the bucket. We then scooped out the gravel.

I cleaned the bottom of the tank but not the walls, I wanted to leave the exiting biofilm in place. We staged the gravel in another bucket for cleaning at a later time and went on with our project. I saved a fair portion of the water we drained and sifted the gravel with it, keeping the green water sludge and used it to soak the driftwood while we prepped everything else.

The ingredients
We sorted out the plants and rocks we were considering, here they are

The driftwood, soaked

The plants

Left to right, top row:
Flame moss, Anubias Barteri v. Nana, Rock tied with Java Moss, Ludwigia Repens x Arcuata, Sunset Hygrophilia (Hygrophila Polysperma 'Rosanervig')
Bottom row, left to right:
4 bunches of Bacopa monnieri and 2 teeny Java fern plantlets on the far right
Floaters, not pictured:
Pistia stratiotes, Egeria densa, C. demersum, Salvinia minima
Also not pictured: one bunch of Water Wisteria (Hygrophila difformis)

And of course, the substrate

Building
EC wants a 3" depth, according to the instructions, so we drained out the "amazon juice" that EC comes in and layed about 2.5" to 3" of substrate.

We wanted to see the ground well so we pitched it, leaving 2" depth in the front and up t0 4" in the rear.

After mocking up the position of the driftwood, we made a slight depression in the front to allow us to bury a portion of the driftwood.

Here an Ikea bowl shows the depth of the depression.

Prepping the driftwood
We then moved on to the plans and wood. We removed the Anubias from it's pot and cleaned up the roots. We took the driftwood from it's soak tray and positioned the Anubias on the wood towards the rear and tied it on with brown thread.

We then split the Flame moss into two sections and tied each half to the left and right of the Anubias, carpeting the "tines of the fork" in the wood (sorry no pic)

We then placed the wood in the substrate and started back filling to create a natural looking (IMO) scene of a submerged, partially buried log in the bed of a river.

Moving quickly, we planted the Bacopa, Ludwiga, H. difformis, H. Polysperma around the wood and started to fill the tank, slowly as not to disturb anything

With the roots and rhizome of the Anubias visible, we decided to add a bunch of java moss in front of it so we just quickly tucked some in

Burn in
We let the tank sit over night to allow the cloudiness of the water to settle down a bit and in the morning we drained 1/2 the tank to allow us to relocate it back to my daughter's bedroom more easily.

We added fresh water back (60% conditioned tap, 40% RO) along with the filter and light and returned the Anacharis, Hornwort and various other floaters to the tank before we re-introduced our fish.

Needless to say, the fish were confused but seemed to adapt rather quickly.

After 24 hours we tested the water and added Flourish Excel, 2.5ml. Our plan is to dose every other day

Well, that is it for now... I will update this thread if anything changes but in summation:
14 species of plants/moss
5 neon tetras
2 otocinclus hourami
1 assassin snail

Before

After

 

[octanejunkie]

New addition: CPO

Picked up a Dwarf Mexican Crawfish yesterday. Cambarellus patzcuarensis is the most likely the species we got... hard to tell.

We drip acclimated him overnight and this morning launched him into our 6G tank. We let him onto the foliage at the top of the tank and watched him make his way down to the floor of the tank.

Here's a quick pic of him before he disappeared into the moss and plants

Eventually he found the "cave" in the hollow DW log at the bottom. I suspect he will make this his home as it is the most likely place for him.

 

[azmodan]

Looks great! I have a fondness for tall tanks like this. So you'd say you're pretty satisfied with that light?

 

[octanejunkie]

Looks great! I have a fondness for tall tanks like this. So you'd say you're pretty satisfied with that light?

The light is good. The plants in our tank simply took off once we installed this light.

We've got a lot of stuff between the surface and bottom, so I'm not sure a stronger light wouldn't be better for a tall tank like ours, but on our cubes this little lamp is perfect.

We've only had this lamp installed for a little over a month so I really can't comment on long term, but so far it's good.

 

[octanejunkie]

When the lights came on this morning this little guy was up walking around.

We dropped in a mini algae wafer and he was on it quickly after our neon tetras showed interest in the tablet, he even demonstrated to a few of them what his pinchers feel like which had the tetras forget about the wafer and move on for the time being.

Here he is fumbling with his prize

 

[horsedogfish]

Great job--both the rebuild and the photo essay. Thanks!