2 replies to this topic

[Bailey]

Hey everyone, finally got round to starting my tank after procrastinating for a couple of weeks so here's my journal, hope you enjoy :)

For my Aquascape I'm going to go with an Amazon biotope, this is my first attempt at a biotope so I thought I'd go with something easy

AQUASCAPING INSPIRATION:
For the hard scape I took inspiration from the following aquariums
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I like the wood branching out from one side of the tank and the way it sort of intertwines. My plan is to have the wood branching out from the right

For the plants I couldn't really find anything photos that I liked for what I wanted to do so I'm going to try to explain it as best as I can, so, for the plants I want to have some tall plants at the back on the left side with some medium sized plants in front of those and going out in front of the drift wood and then possibly some short carpeting plants to fill in some space at the front of the tank. I would also possibly like some moss on the driftwood and a few other plants growing in amongst it.

STOCKING PLAN:
For the "fish scape" I want to have a school of "large" fish that swim in the middle of the tank for the main feature, I also want 1 or 2 fish of another species that are a bit more territorial and have more personality to be the second feature, I also want a bottom dwelling school of fish, and of course an oddball fish

And with that here are the fish I plan on getting:
Angel fish x ?< 8?
Ram cichlid x 1-2
Corydora (Bronze?) x 12+
Bristle nose x 5+
Black Ghost Knifefish x 1

PLANTS:
Honestly no idea at this point other than Amazon frog bit, what I'm looking for is cheap, easy and from the Amazon
I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to plants so I'll have to do a bit more research so that I know which plants are from the Amazon (any help would be appreciated)

SETTING UP THE TANK:
So I spent most of this afternoon setting up the tank (and doing water changes on my other tanks) and here is what I did today:

1.) the tank
For the aquarium I am using a 3 foot (150litre) tank that I have had empty for a few years and I'm setting it up in the carport with my other aquariums
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I cleaned it out and put it on its stand ready to be set up

2.) the substrate
For the substrate I'm using a sand I made up myself a while ago using the white play sand and mixing that with some sand that I found out in a dried up creek, I cleaned it by running a hose through it until the water was coming out clean and then put it in the tank
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3.) the driftwood
For the driftwood I used some that I have had presoaked for a while and gave it a quick clean
then played around with it for a while in the tank until I came up with this:
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4.) other stuff
So, after putting in the sand and arranging the driftwood I filled up the tank and put in the filter (Astro 2000f, which has been precycling in another tank for a few months), I put the hood and the light on the tank ( the light is just a 3foot fluro), and I also put a couple of pieces of paper with rips in them under the light so it looks like the light is coming from through tree leaves
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5.) plants and fish
So after I had set up the tank I decided to put some Amazon Frogbit in because I had some in my other tanks. Because the filter was already cycled I also decided to put my 5 bristle nose plecos from my other tanks in there (2 albino (m,f) 3 common (m,f,f))
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And that's what I've done so far.... To be continued

[Bailey]

So yesterday at the PCS Auction I got myself 5 peppermint bristlenoses ($45 and about 3cm each) for the tank as well as a few echinodorus Amazon sword plants ($20)
I also decided to add my 4 bronze corydoras to the tank and decided to put a heater in the tank set to 25°C because of the cold wether, I also checked the ph and its around 6.8 so I've still got to get it down a bit more
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I also put my pcs sticker on the tank stand :)
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[Bailey]

So, since my last update not much has changed in the tank other than a bit of plant growth and my corydoras are constantly spawning. Today, however, I welcomed two new additions to the tank My dad has given me two of his angelfish to add to the tank and they have bred before so hopefully I can get them to breed in this tank
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- pictured first is the male
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-and here is the female

The ph in the tank unfortunately is still at about 7.2. My tap water annoyingly is around 7.6 which is good for my African cichlids but frustratingly annoying when I want is at 6.5 for this tank. At the moment I'm just using ph down to lower ph when I do water changes before I put the water in the tank.

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- the seperator thing is just to stop the corydora eggs being eaten

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