13 replies to this topic

[beno]

well i picked up a new fish tank today with the above dimensions and thought i would show everyone the progress. its a 540L tank.

i will use a black gravel substrate, with hopefully some black slate or bassalt rock to make the EY's stand out along with the rest of the fish. its got 3 fluro tubes in the hood, along with a filter in the hood which has ceramic rings and sponges for filteration. i will post some pics very soon of the progress

[beno]

the cabinet is a 4 door, black melamine cabinet.




the tank pretty dirty though




the 3 globes in the hood




and the black gravel, pretty hard to see but soon it will be in so i will post more pics soon

[(Anthony)]

look forward to future shots mate,
that midnight gravel??

[beno]

im not to sure mate, they didint really say they just said it was the closest thing they had to black sand lol

ill post some pics up tonight, looks good i think

[Bowdy]

Where are the pics mate.

[beno]

well the plan changed, i had a power outage a couple of weeks ago and lost pretty much all of my fish, so i decided to do something i havnt tried before and go a planted community tank. the castle in the middle is coming out and im looking for a piece of driftwood for the centrepiece in its place. i plan on placing some java moss on it so it grows all the way up the wood.

heres a pic of the whole tank today

 P1140079.jpg   258.21KB   99 downloads


and again

 P1140081.jpg   159.21KB   77 downloads



left side


 P1140082.jpg   222.2KB   43 downloads



right side

 P1140083.jpg   217.22KB   32 downloads


im not to sure if this is going to work or not, but i bought some plastic fencing/meshing from bunnings and attached some java and xmas moss to it, hoping that it will grow all the way along the back wall so that i have a living back wall. any thoughts or help on this idea would be great cus i would like to know if im wasting my time or not


 P1140084.JPG   149.21KB   19 downloads


just one of the gold gouramis

 P1140085.JPG   156.48KB   22 downloads


hope you like it

thanks ben

[Juls]

It's a shame the tank is so tall you will struggle growing anything in that tank with that lighting.

You need to sandwich the moss in mesh spread across the whole wall, it will not grow down as the upper moss will block the light as such you should start at the bottom.

With those lights I wouldn't expect coverage in less than 8-12 months.

Juls

[the pulpican man]

you could put some decent sized fish in a tank that big.. jus' sayin'

[Sarah Jayne]

Black backing would be nice

Watch the fishies don't get caught behind your moss wall netting. Why don't you stick with one type of moss for the wall? Oh and you might want to separate the moss out a bit more.

I (officially) like tall tanks I'm sure you will get ideas on how to make things work.

Keep us updated.

[sandgroper]

You might want to take the power board and cables out of the tank as it's a safety issue, water and electricity don't mix. cheers steve

[beno]

It's a shame the tank is so tall you will struggle growing anything in that tank with that lighting.

You need to sandwich the moss in mesh spread across the whole wall, it will not grow down as the upper moss will block the light as such you should start at the bottom.

With those lights I wouldn't expect coverage in less than 8-12 months.

Juls

its got 3x 54W t8 tubes in the hood. thats 162W. from what ive read this should suffice?correct me if im wrong.

and i will move the moss to the bottom if thats what you suggest.

and ive taken the xmas moss of the back wall and tied it up to the piece of driftwood i got last night.

[Juls]

It's not the watts it's the pure height, by the time the light reaches the bottom there is very little left, your plants will still grow but very slowly, if the tank was 20" high and 32" wide it would be perfect,

Metal halides or led are more capable of penetrating deep water than t5ho.

I ran 8x54w over my 5x2x2.5 and struggled to grow anything other than moss below 2ft.

You should be ok as long as you don't expect massive growth and don't try any difficult plants, particularily surface plants like glosso or hc.

You will find stem plants will grow much taller than they normally would in this setup, which will give a false sense of rapid growth.

Juls

[beno]

so ur saying that if i add some led's, that plant growth would increase at a more rapid rate than it currently would?

also what colours makes the plants grow?is it reds and blues?

[beno]

WELL its been almost two months and the tank as come a long way i beleive. i was planning on running hoem amde co2 in it but i tried and it didnt work. im not sure if anyone has used this before as i followed the micture that was in the diy section,and i didnt seem to work for me, im not sure how long it was supposed to take for the mixture to start reacting but i left it for a day and not much seemed to happen so gave up but i left the mixture in the bottles outside for a week now and there is bulk foam around and on top of the lids so im not sure what happened but if anyone has any help about diy co2 and my bottleds it would be much appreciated.

back to the tank. ive added 6 angels and some more serpae tetras. the bn bred about 4 times and something ate the eggs every time:(. the guppies had babies the other day so thats the little breeder net at the top in the picture. i went to aquotix last week and bought 200 bucks worth of plants that seem to be doing great. i wasnt going to buy any more plants than i originally had but they were growing really fast and ive pruned and re-planted some ambulia, and hygro costata 4 times now. the water fern i think it is has all of a sudden shot up and is taking up a heap of room. i alsopurchased a large piece of driftwood that i really like. i took the backround with moss down becuase it wasnt really working, the moss was growing rapidly but was growing away from the mesh so now the moss is just hiding behind the peice of wood just filtering alot of dirt out of the water and onto itself.

the plants from aquotix i purchased include :willowleaf hygro, ambulia, red ludwigia, 2 xl anubias, red milfoil, aponogeton crispus, hornwort and some other one im not to sure what it was.





the plants are growing really well, especially considering that there is not co2 i am just regularly feeing them fertiliser and seems to be doing wonders.

let me know that you think

thanks ben