Zoom's 4ft system

Hey Zoom,

Looking good after the crash. If you want some more plants before you leave, I have tonnes of hygro and limno that are going to be trimmed or thrown out soon. Stems are quite long at around 55cm long. PM me if you interested

 

Zoom tank it looking great :top::top:

 

that tank looks awesome

 

what gravel are you using zoom? it has a nice effect

 

The whilte gravel is extremely fine silica sand. (finer than beach sand!) And I capped that with normal black gravel... but also VERY fine. Found it at my local LPS. I paid R55.00 per 5kg... a bit expensive. Colour is called Midnight blue (or black) if I remember correctly.

(Dolphin sells exactly the same a lot cheaper too! HUMPH!)

 

Update

I was going through some of my pictures and threads, and realised that this tank has COMPLETELY changed to what it looked like in the beginning of the year. So I decided an update was most definately in order!!

The tank specs, are as follows:
Jebo 4ft 285litre tank
1100litre per hour canister filter (Upgraded to this 2 weeks ago when I found one on special at an LPS store)
Put in a small UV light to run when the tank algae got out of hand 3 weeks ago. It's switched off now, as I don't need it.
The fine silca sand that was capped with the black substrate has now been mixed up. I had noticed that a lot of algae and dead plant matter was going unnoticed on the ground, as I couldn't see it. So I mixed it up. Still looks good
Lights are 3 x 10 000k 30W T8's. Would love to upgrade to T5's, but the cost and work involved in upgrading that hood is a little out my budget.
Air curtain at back just for visual effect.
LOTS of plants. (Plant's are from original tank when I started up a year ago, plus a HUGE amount from Solex, and a few from LPS stores in the area).
Plants have a fertilizer tablet inserted into the gravel once a month, and Bio-elite fertilizer is added every day. Plant's need trimming every second week. No CO2! Algae is not a problem.

Fish include:

15 x Pristella Tetra's. (These make an amazing schooling fish)
3 x black anscistrus with white spots.
2 x Brown anscistrus with cream spots
7 x Bronze Cory's (Also make a lovely school)
1 x Male Guppy
1 x Female Guppy.
3 x Black Widow tetra's
1 x Male Angel. (The other breeding pair I took out and put in their own tank)
1 x Male Betta (Wife has named THUMPER)
5 x Female Betta
4 x Apisto. Caca. Female
1 x Apisto. Caca. Male

My Ammonia and Nitrites are at Zero continuously. My Nitrates are at 2ppm, peaking at 5ppm on Water Change day. Water change occurs once every 2 weeks (at 40%). Temperature has been fluctuating at 28-29degrees (due to environmental temp). I have finally managed to stabalize it at 27degrees with the temperature of the environment getting less.

My lights are on from 7am until about 9pm. (A bit high than normal, but as I've mentioned, algae is not a mojor problem at the moment.) At about 6pm my DIY moonlight turns on, and switches off around 11pm.

Fish are fed a variety of 2 types of Tetra flakes, 2 types of Sera tablets, and frozen bloodworm. I skip the morning feed on Tuesday morning, and on Friday mornings.

I am considering going with 2 x 2litre DIY CO2 bottles and see if this makes any effect. But as you can see from the pictures, the plants are all growing very well... There are small plants that I don't remember planting (I think they probably came from Solex). And I think the need to trim every 2 weeks proves that I don't necessary need the CO2.

Here are pictures of the tank:





(See the effect of the Pristella Tetra's?)


Here is my male and female Betta's. (There is NO sign of them thinking of breeding.)







One of my bronze Cory's. (I've had cory's for over a year now, and they never seem to spawn... hmmm...)




My Apisto. Caca's.






My 2 types of Anscistrus





And finally, the Male Angel

 

Lovely fish dude!

 

Wow your tanks really come along looking good.

 

Your tank really looks awesome Zoom and I love the fish

 

Very nice setup there Ash! It's very impressive. I love black substrate. Some of those fish look very familiar!! Old Stumpy is looking good too!

I'd be quite wary of those ancistrus with Amazon Swords... They like to snack upon them!

 

wow, lovely tank zoom, love the black substrate, i might think about using black on my tank...anyway, you said its a 300l but a 4ft, just out of curiosity, what are the dimensions of the tank?

mine is a 5ft but around 220l. 1.5Lx300Wx500H, not quite sure how to work it out

i used this link to ascertain the litres of my tank :
http://www.theaquatools.com/building-your-aquarium

 

The ancistrus don't even touch the amazons... they stick to the wood and the pellets I feed them. I don't think they even know what an amazon is...! They sometimes sit sucking the algae off the leaves, but completely ignore the plant itself.

Yes, Stumpy is doing very well. Sadly the main male didn't make it. He survived about 3 weeks, and then passed on. I'm secretly hoping that Stumpy will grow some (you know what) and learn how to do the jig with one of the females. Would love to have a spawn or 2.

Thanks Gaawie

shot dude

Thank you

122cm x 50cm x 50cm


The black substrate does definately look better in my opinion. Problem with it is that you don't always see the much on the floor. (Especially when you get lazy about vacuuming.) You need to be extra cautios and attentive to cleaning with black gravel. It's also pretty pricey.

 

Damn... Sorry to hear about the big male... I have a few small Cacatuoides fry, when I find a male in there, you are more than welcome to come and grab him.

I wouldn't let stumpy breed with any of the females. If his deformities are genetic, he might pass that gene on to his offspring...

 

You make a good point there...

I would love a male if you find one. You would just have to grow him out first... my grow out tank has become a breeding tank for the angels!

I still need to come through and get that food from you. I keep forgetting.

 

Hi must say it looks quite funky

 

Plant growth

I just had to do this...

This picture, (same as posted earlier) is from the 6th March... i.e 12 days ago:






And this is the exact same tank... photo taken an hour ago.




You also will not believe me that I actually did some trimming on Monday.

According to the "plant guru's"... my lighting is inadequate. I don't use under gravel fertilizers. I don't use the best of the best water fertilizers. And I don't use pressurized CO2. My substrate is too fine for root growth.

Well to all of you.

Granted I do not have delicate plants... and I think 90% of the plants are easy growers.

This is what I do to get my plant growth like this:

Substrate
NO undergravel substrate. I use VERY fine silica sand. (Finer than play pen sand) It was originally capped with fine black gravel, but the gravel and silica sand have mixed.
I did however put in some fertilizer tablets into the substrate about 2 months ago... although I do believe these are exhausted LONG time ago

Light
90W (10 000k) That's 0.3w/l... I've been told to get decent plant growth I need 1w/l, and different globes. Lights on for 12 hours a day

Fertilization
I use bio-elite's plant fertilizer. 14 drops per day for the first 3 weeks, and then 5 drops per day thereafter, unless I do a water change.

CO2
2 x 2litre bottles of DIY CO2. I change one bottle per week, so each bottle lasts for 2 weeks. The bottles are connected to the venturi system of a small pump in the tank to disperse it.

Problems I am experiencing
Besides the very fast growth... I do struggle a bit with algae at the moment. I believe this is due to an imbalance of the CO2 to fertilizer to light balance. So currently I am running a UV light to keep the algae away... also green spot algae on the glass, and the green hairlike algae on the plants is still present. The hair like algae doen't bug me too much... it's only on 1 leaf out of 50 or so. I've seen the fish eating it, and to me a little bit of algea makes the entire tank just feel less clinical, and more realistic. The Green Spot Algae on teh glass get's scrubbed off every 3rd day, as this irritates me.

 

2nd layout is way better.. really nice to see a lot of schooling fish!!

whats your filtration?

 

Thanks Theo.
I had a 3ft Jebo that cracked on me, so I got this new one as the replacement... but it took 4 weeks for insurance to pay out. So a lot of the plants I originally had I lost... so the first layout I had to make do with the rocks.

As time has gone on since then I have managed to re-collect a lot of the plants, as well as some really interesting plants from members of the forum. (Don't ask me what plants they are... all I can tell you is they are green, and growing). ABout 3 months ago I medicated the tank and killed 75% of the plants again... so I've been very lucky. Some of the plants that I actually thought were completely gone have suddenly re-appeared.

I run a 1200-1400litre per hour external canister filter. Media is (1) filter floss, (2) sponge (3) A/Charcoal (4) Bio balls (5) Ceramic rings (6) purigen.

 

Nice plant growth Zoom! The tanks looking gorgeous!!!

 

tank looks great dude