Alright! This will likely be a long post. It's your fair warning! Essentially I redid the tank and kept only the heater, filter, driftwood, and the existing plants. I'm going to try and go everything I did, step by step. The first thing I did was go to the "beach" and collect rocks. I just about filled a 5 gallon bucket. Then starting at around 7pm I boiled water and poured it on the rocks to kill off anything.
Then I hand washed them to get rid of all dirt. In hindsight, I should have done that first.
Next I started to drain the tank and started to catch the rest of the fish.
I removed all the plants.
And gravel.
Here you can see all the fish in temporarily in the 20 high. They may not be thrilled but they will love the renovation!
I cleaned the tank thoroughly, inside and out. I also resized the background because I never really trimmed it. I also shimmed the stand and made sure the tank was level, something I should have done in the first place.
After that I started to create my hardscape. I took out two smaller pieces of driftwood, and started to create my stone walls for my terraces.
Here's a top view so you can kind of see what it looks like.
I placed all my plants in. At least the ones the I have now. I really enjoy my elatine trindae carpet in the middle. I'm think maybe a dwarf baby tear carpet on the right right terrace, and a hair grass carpet on the left side. Opinions? I also want to point out the slope I created. The back of the tank is level with the terraces, while the front is significantly lower, maybe 2 or 3 inches.
Here it is after I filled it with water.
Mind you that's only with 2 bulbs in to kind of help limit algae, and it is cloudy because the It didn't have any time to settle yet. Here's a picture of it now, a little clearer than before.
I obviously added the heater and filter back in st some point. At this point it was like 3:30 this morning and I was done! 6 and a half hours of tank renovation!
I'm going to test the parameters, but do you think I have to do any cycling before I re-add the fish? After all I didn't change the filter media and it is Eco Complete. 100 lbs specifically! These next two picture are sketches I drew up a week or so ago to plan for what I ultimately want it to look at. Ask any questions about it. The big plant on the left is an amazon sword I'm planning on, but other than that I need recommendations! Thanks for reading and check back soon for updates!
And a top view.