Matt's First Planted Tank - 125G
Video of my very first planted tank:
I wanted to share the story of my very first planted tank in hopes of inspiring others this Christmas just as members of this forum have inspired me this year.
This is my very first planted tank. Prior to creating this tank I bought 4 bunches of "easy" Anacharis plants which all died (melted away) within 5 days while floating in my 10 gallon tank. This motivated me to learn more about planted tanks. I have over 20 years experience keeping hundreds of fish per day, but I didn't know a thing about plants. I spent the subsequent 4 weeks reading the aquarium plant forums at Aquarium Advice dot com and a few other popular sites. I started planning out my aquascape in May 2014. This post chronicles the outcome of my project as of November 15, 2014, more than two months after I first started assembling the aquascape (September 1, 2014). It is a 125-gallon aquarium with a 20-pound pressurized CO2 tank. The CO2 is being injected into the intake of a Fluval FX6 canister filter via a custom made CO2 reactor that I built myself. There are 4 large pieces of driftwood (dark brown malaysian and tricolor mopani). I boiled these driftwood in a gigantic cooking pot more than 30 times each over the course of 2 months in order to eliminate all tannins. There are two naturally hollow stones made of light weight lace rock. Lace rock is perfect for aquascaping because it can look very large while being completely hollow, thus making it extremely light and displacing a minimal volume of water. Lace rock is also relatively inert and has negligible impact on the pH. I got my lace rock and all my driftwood from Petco. The plants in my aquascape include:
Foreground carpets: Dwarf hair grass eleocharis belem mini, Micranthemum monte carlo, Marsilea minuta
Midground plants: Alternanthera reineckii mini, Staurogyne repens, Lobelia cardinalis dwarf, Lysimachia nummularia aurea (golden jenny)
Background plants: Hydrocotyle leucocephala (Brazillian pennywort), Bacopa caroliniana (Lemon bacopa), Rotala nanjenshan green, Ludwigia red, Ludwigia atlantis, Rotala rotundifolia, Hygrophila difformis (Water wisteria).
Substrate: CaribSea Eco-Complete, 240 pounds
Fertilizers: Estimative Index dosing plus 0.5 ml/gallon of Metricide 14
Lights: 100-120 PARs worth of LED from Build My LED dot com, turned on for a total of 6 hours a day, with a 12 hour siesta period after 3 hours of light.
Diatom duty: 7x Otocinclus catfish, 9x Amano shrimp
Many thanks to the wonderful folks at the planted tank forums of Aquarium Advice dot com. Special thanks go to Tom Barr and Takashi Amano who are living legends and a beacon of inspiration to so many people worldwide.
Video of my very first planted tank:
I wanted to share the story of my very first planted tank in hopes of inspiring others this Christmas just as members of this forum have inspired me this year.
This is my very first planted tank. Prior to creating this tank I bought 4 bunches of "easy" Anacharis plants which all died (melted away) within 5 days while floating in my 10 gallon tank. This motivated me to learn more about planted tanks. I have over 20 years experience keeping hundreds of fish per day, but I didn't know a thing about plants. I spent the subsequent 4 weeks reading the aquarium plant forums at Aquarium Advice dot com and a few other popular sites. I started planning out my aquascape in May 2014. This post chronicles the outcome of my project as of November 15, 2014, more than two months after I first started assembling the aquascape (September 1, 2014). It is a 125-gallon aquarium with a 20-pound pressurized CO2 tank. The CO2 is being injected into the intake of a Fluval FX6 canister filter via a custom made CO2 reactor that I built myself. There are 4 large pieces of driftwood (dark brown malaysian and tricolor mopani). I boiled these driftwood in a gigantic cooking pot more than 30 times each over the course of 2 months in order to eliminate all tannins. There are two naturally hollow stones made of light weight lace rock. Lace rock is perfect for aquascaping because it can look very large while being completely hollow, thus making it extremely light and displacing a minimal volume of water. Lace rock is also relatively inert and has negligible impact on the pH. I got my lace rock and all my driftwood from Petco. The plants in my aquascape include:
Foreground carpets: Dwarf hair grass eleocharis belem mini, Micranthemum monte carlo, Marsilea minuta
Midground plants: Alternanthera reineckii mini, Staurogyne repens, Lobelia cardinalis dwarf, Lysimachia nummularia aurea (golden jenny)
Background plants: Hydrocotyle leucocephala (Brazillian pennywort), Bacopa caroliniana (Lemon bacopa), Rotala nanjenshan green, Ludwigia red, Ludwigia atlantis, Rotala rotundifolia, Hygrophila difformis (Water wisteria).
Substrate: CaribSea Eco-Complete, 240 pounds
Fertilizers: Estimative Index dosing plus 0.5 ml/gallon of Metricide 14
Lights: 100-120 PARs worth of LED from Build My LED dot com, turned on for a total of 6 hours a day, with a 12 hour siesta period after 3 hours of light.
Diatom duty: 7x Otocinclus catfish, 9x Amano shrimp
Many thanks to the wonderful folks at the planted tank forums of Aquarium Advice dot com. Special thanks go to Tom Barr and Takashi Amano who are living legends and a beacon of inspiration to so many people worldwide.