well show em I love the look of aquascaped FW planted tanks.
I ran sumps in both my high tech planted and my low tech piranha tank. Not a whole lot to show though.....I basically used it to store the heater, probes, and filter media. It removed a lot of Co2 which I was using a lot of, but it was worth it to be able to hide as much equipment as possible and have a place for the biological media.
My wife and I set up a 90g planted cube about 9 years ago. We set it up for livebearers and Cardinal tetras. Ha ving seen some of the stunning planted tanks I went all in and invested in all the "kit" for the 90g cube.
6 Months in of C02, fertilizers and vitamins and the planted tank was more maintenance then a 400g reef. I had lots of stem plants and they could grow 10" in 10 days. Even with a 28" tall tank it was constantly and overgrown jungle and not the tank I envisioned.
So I stopped all the additives and CO2. I have an RO/DI dedicated for the tank and it turns on for 20mins every morning acting as a topoff and at the same time a water change. I have a pipe in the overflow that drains to the sewer.
With the automated feeder on this tank I only touch this tank every month to refill the feeder and do equipment maintenance once a year.
When we redid our floors this past winter in moving the 90g out of the house a seam opened up on the tank. Interestingly with the tank drained to move it the tank leaked. We filled it back up with water to save the plants and stuff while we figured out what to do with a leaking tank (it was outside on a back patio) and when the tank was filled back up the seam closed itself up and the tank was water tight. Not even a seep.
But it was too much of a risk to bring it back into the house so we had a new 113g cube built out of starfire.
Dave B
I had a similar issue with growth, I backed the CO2 down significantly and was able to dial the growth to a manageable amount. I got a Milwaukee PH controller and can manage the growth by not driving the PH down to low via the CO2. The controller portion of that device has too much drift to be really accurate, but I now can figure out the bubble count needed to keep it in a certain range. I love how maintenance free this tank is. My reef tank isn’t anywhere this easy, lol. Unless you count that time I accidentally gassed my fish and had to bring them back to life… whooooopssssie.My wife and I set up a 90g planted cube about 9 years ago. We set it up for livebearers and Cardinal tetras. Ha ving seen some of the stunning planted tanks I went all in and invested in all the "kit" for the 90g cube.
6 Months in of C02, fertilizers and vitamins and the planted tank was more maintenance then a 400g reef. I had lots of stem plants and they could grow 10" in 10 days. Even with a 28" tall tank it was constantly and overgrown jungle and not the tank I envisioned.
So I stopped all the additives and CO2. I have an RO/DI dedicated for the tank and it turns on for 20mins every morning acting as a topoff and at the same time a water change. I have a pipe in the overflow that drains to the sewer.
With the automated feeder on this tank I only touch this tank every month to refill the feeder and do equipment maintenance once a year.
When we redid our floors this past winter in moving the 90g out of the house a seam opened up on the tank. Interestingly with the tank drained to move it the tank leaked. We filled it back up with water to save the plants and stuff while we figured out what to do with a leaking tank (it was outside on a back patio) and when the tank was filled back up the seam closed itself up and the tank was water tight. Not even a seep.
But it was too much of a risk to bring it back into the house so we had a new 113g cube built out of starfire.
Dave B
The 125 with butterflies and the 125 with Lake Malawi cichlids are the exact opposite when it comes to care. A lot of times, new butterflies are very picky when it comes to food and they cannot compete with the long time established fish. Mine get fed three times a day. Then, there is the sudden death, where they come in fat and happy for a few weeks then you find the new fish dead for no reason. With the Lake Malawi fish, once or twice a day, a hand full of food is thrown in, then you watch them go crazy. They do best overcrowded, about fifty fish. The big ones constantly breed, finding babies in the rocks every few days. As for decorations, there are rocks, big driftwood and Anubias plants.
nice! I love the plant boxes I was thinking of having plants come out of the top of the tank too. classic looks good and helps with filtration. where did you get them or did you make 'Here's the bigger of the two FW tanks we have going
post what you got we all want to see.
yeah those guys are cool.
