Planted aquarium journey

[rstopel]

Just for sharing. Starting out with a planted aquarium. Weekly updates on status and cost/items added/changed.

27july

Tank from fresh&marine $150. Not the nicest as a lot of silicon used and braces on top. But size is nice. 80*35*40cm. Custom made wooden cabinet is coming this week I hope.

Bought a lot of items from AliExpress lately which will be added over the weeks. 6 packets of grass seeds for $3. Put them on moist substrate and wait to come out. Small/large cow/leaf grasses

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[rstopel]

3 August.

Seeds have come out and growing. Large cow grass is growing too fast as it's falling over. The small grass not well developed yet.
The nicrew 18w light is working well. About $50 from AliExpress

Expected to mature in a week and then will start filling up with water.
I bought layers from daiso for $2 each for sloping of landscape

Still waiting for the $15 DIY co2 set that I ordered from AliExpress. This will be a bit tricky to set-up as the mixture of sugar to yeast is a matter of trial and error. Also I am quite anal about bubbles in the tank. They should be slow and sparsely distributed.

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[ronaldgohandstop]

I saw those fake green grass is Daiso! So reasonable

 

[rstopel]

Sorry for long time no updates. My tank up and running. Some highlights.
After growing seeds I made the mistake that I put too much water and there was no circulation. So water got mould which affected.y plants. So half died.

Then set up the tank with the daiso plastic and rocks that I had bought from carrousel. It's important to create depth and sloping.

I also added in this Lego structure which is actually a bad idea and I regret I had a hard time to not let it float. In the end had to end those fishing sinkers to hold it down.





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[rstopel]

Then after the support structures it's time to add the substrate which I got from carrousel. $15 for 3liter. User about 9-12liter or so.

Then things went quick so did not take photo in between. Fill up tank slowly with water and add in the green I had grown plus 1 or 2 big plants I got from the shop.
I wanted to grow the plants also on the rocks which I thought was going to be s challenge. But it's quite smooth so far.
In photo above you can see the cowgrass but it has all died in a matter of a week. Don't know why. I had to buy some type of grass from the local fish shop to replace.




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[rstopel]

So added shrimp and fish and so far so good. In photo below you can see all cow grass gone but the small plants I had grown from seeds doing very well.

Some issues I face now is algae growth and also testing of water quality which I will look into. I try to give so e more detail info on the journey later when I got some time


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[CalEak]

What kind of fishes do you guys keep?