[Fish for a 21cm cube?]

will be cool to see it set up.

I have a little an 18L that i have set up recently that has been changing aroudn lots lately but at the moment has:

elite stingray 5 filter

small elite heater

23W power saving bulb

CO2

propagating sand and aqautic mix

fish wise at the moment i have;

3 pygmy cory's

2 otto's

4 emerald eyes

3 ember tetras

it all seems to be running sweet at the mo so id imagine your set up will run pretty similarly.

[white leaves]

coool, yeah its only planted that deep cause some of the fish kept ripping it up since there weren't enough roots alone to hold it down. same with the red tiger lotus in there. Was plannign to replant them once theres enough growth to hold them down and get rid of some of the old tatty leaves.

bulb is 6500K as mentioned above.. Tank depth is 280mm from memory but would haev to check that to be sure.

[white leaves]

yeah i have the link in my favourites and figured this is the equivalent of yellow leaves so got iron deficiancy from the table, i have iron supplement balls in the gravel but should i use a liquid based additive?

[white leaves]

hey

got a bit of a problem with my new planted tank.

I have got some good growth going now and have cleared up most of the algae with my ottos and ramshorn snails but my new growth is coming through white one all my chain sword and real light green on the amazon swords.

I figure i must be missing something, i fertilise weekly and add the plant 24 trace elements daily, i have a fermentation co2 kit bubbling through an air stone and have a 6500K 23 watt power saving bulb on for 12 hours a day (on a timer).

I water change about 1.5 litres every couple of days since its a 15L tank

anyway any ideas

heres a photo of what its looking like, notice "kengo" my tropical globe eye soon to be rehomed hahaah and one of the little bits of glosso i have to get growing, have some floatign to get some roots going.

[mini planted tank, pearling under leaves?]

heres some pics, hope they work.

first is a shot of the little planted tank. looks a bit funny as i just got given a little bit of chain sword so just put that in there.

this is my tiny little red tiger lotus

and heres a few of the ar620

[mini planted tank, pearling under leaves?]

ok i had a bit of a change around today hahahah

the tank has only been setup like 2 weeks and its had three different looks hahahaha

i finally put the java fern and anubius onto a peice of driftwood. i got rid of a couple of swords and added a tiny little red tiger lotus in.

I know most of the plants in there at the moment will outgrow the tank quick as, but i will deal with that when it happens.

i also had a loss in the tank. i forgot the downfalls of an open top tank until i found my borneo sucker had swum to fast up the side last nigth and was dried out behind the tank so thats not cool.

i put some JBL 7 balls in today under the red plants to make sure they have enough iron and am going to leave the tank for a while to get running now.

i am however looking at putting a small ground cover plant in as i think they would grow well in there so if anyone has something that they think would be cool in there , i am thinking glosso at the moment. happy to pay a little for it and postage but i reckon i'll only need a tiny bit to get it going.

im going to set up a photobucket thing tonight and will get a progress thread going with photos. Will put some of the AR620 up as well so you can see where the baby plants come from and where they go to when they are all grown up hahaha

[Fish Wish List....]

be interesting to see how quickly that list shortens when the fish actually arrives

[mini planted tank, pearling under leaves?]

depends on what your set up is like i guess. are you using CO2? and what level lighting do you have?

whats your substrates like?

how bigs the tank?

PMDD seems to be pretty popular on here for a daily one from what i can remember.

If you can its best to dose what required for your tank based on water testing.

i however, am to lazy so just tend to balance it out on how things seem to be growing and what algae there is............

I just do a weekly general fertilizer and then a daily additive with trace nutrients.

My daily one is the red sea plant 24 which was kind of a replacement for dupla 24 from what i can recall.

Theres heaps of fertilizers out there at the shops and stuff though.

[mini planted tank, pearling under leaves?]

yeah i figured that out today when this morning there were no bubbles and then tongith there were even more.

i do daily drops for fertiliser and this weekly stuff i have is pretty potent. got it from a guy who grows aqautic plants professionally.

well get some pics when its looking good enough to be worth taking pics hahahaha

[mini planted tank, pearling under leaves?]

ok i setup a little 15 litre tank i have as follows:

tank 350mm x 230 x 230H

daltons propagating sand

dupla under gravel heating cable ( don't think its working but saves having to find somewhere to store it)

Nutrafin CO2 fermentation kit

Elite stingray 5 filter (has filter pads and a little bit of carbon)

lighting; beside lamp lined with tinfoil and has a 23W power saving light bulb, 6500K

fertilizer:

Daily = red sea plant 24

Weekly = some special mix i was given by a friend hahahahah

Plants:

Few bunches of java fern

few tiny anubius nana

one very tiny crypts

small bunch of floating indian fern

five small amazon swords that were baby ones out of another tank.

Fish:

3 very old mountain minnows

2 long finned danios

1 small red fan

1 borneo sucker

1 fresh water mussel

so i set it up a week or so ago with some bad lighting and just changed it to the current lighting yesterday when i did a bit of a clean, water change, fertilizer does and added the swords and crypts. it had a little brown algae so also did a does of some cheap algae remover stuff.

Today i came home from uni and noticed small bubbles under some of the leaves of the sword plants. would this be pearling or just bubbles released from the gravel that have been caught under the leaves?

The light is very bright and says on the pack is the equivalent of a normal 75W bulb ( it lights up my entire room better than my normal lights hahahaha) but didnt know if the swords would be pearlign so early after being planted as they wouldnt be fully established yet.

any thoughts i'd love to hear.

i may post photos but i may wait till its established a bit better and looks nice

[Inspiration needed]

time, money and commitment

[Male To Female Ratio]

1 billion to 1 i like those odds

[Weird Branching Thing]

yeah man just lots of baby plants to split up and grow to a decent then sell them back to jansens hahahaha oh what a devious plan (speaking from experience) Mwuhahahahaha

[halogen lights]

cool thanks guys. what would be a decent price for 150W Metal Halide bulbs then?

[New Paludarium Project]

cheers guys. I got some light units today so gunna get some bulbs for those and make up a box and get that ready so things are slowly progressing. I got 5 x 150W metal halide units. they have halogen bulbs at the mo but i have a couple of mates who are electricians so will try get them to get some bulbs and help me wire it up.

Havent had a chance to scan in any sketches and since i use sketchup all day at work its the last thing i wanna do when i get home but will try make some headway over the weekend since its my birthday so decided to take it off.

totally agree paekakboyz will definately have to have a waterfall

[New Paludarium Project]

hey all

ok well after my tragic loss of newts i decided that i can't go on without some form of tank in my room and since its been a while since i had a big tank i thought i would take the leap and set up something I have wanted to do for a while.

I have hopefully arranged a tank and stand off a friend that was originally destined to be a marine tank but turned out stuff happened and it would have been to heavy to be handled by the floor boards. luckily my room has a good old concrete floor and has had tanks up to 1500x900x600mm high before so all good for the size and im sure with a bit of re arranging and tidying i can make it fit in not a problem.

Hopefully ill get my A into G and get some pics sorted and get a bit of a progress thread going as the set up goes along and also hopefully this initial thread will get me a bit motivated (but that may be a bit of wishful thinkign when studying architecture full time and having two part time jobs hahahaha) but i digress.......

so anyway the tank is 1500x500x500mm, not as tall as i would have liked due to the plans i have but its a good deal and knowing my history of revamping tanks, its use could change many times by the end of my ownership. I had originally wanted a planted tak but now after my newt experience i am going to try and combine the two. The tank also has a overflow with a hole drilled in the bottom of the tank for running to a sump. I can't figure a way to run a sump with my plans so figure ill just use the hole and overflow to run the power cables from the heater and plumbing from the external canister filter and such out.

I also have a large amount of polystyrene that i was given for architecture model makign but i don't really use it so want to put it to god use. The plan is a large carved landscape covering the back wall which should also hide the overflow and will be carved out to have the plumbing and heaters and things hidden behind it. I also want to cut out a series of waterfalls running from the external cannister outlet with a series of little pools running along the back wall the length of the tank then turning and going in a lil stream back to the main water area. If the external cannister outlet doesnt work i may just use a small pond pump to run the water fall and have the external cannister just as filtration.

so im going to carve out teh poly to make the landscape and some cavities for planting a range of plants above water. This is where teh first issue comes up. I have read a few articles about putting drainage in the bottom of planted areas of set ups like this to avoid water build up in the bottom and flood the roots causing them to rot. I was thinking of just running a small hole from the bottom of teh planter cavity down into the water but was wondering if this may cause odd water parameters with the water flowing through the soil first. also not to sure if i want to just cut holes out and fill them with soil or make them the shape of small pots that can be removed for re potting plants and stuff.

I plan on joining a few peices of poly to make the full landscape with liquid nails or somethign similar then coating this all in black pait. now right now your all probably screaming "TOXIC TOXIC!!!" but i want to then do a few layers of resin to seal it and then on the last layer of resin cover the above water area with soil so that hopefully in the damp conditions this will get covered in moss if i start it off with a few peices. Hopefully this should make a pretty solid unit of landscape so the next issue i have is how to mount it in the tank. As i mentioned earlier i may want to use the tank later for a planted tank or marine or who knows so would prefer to keep the walls clean as possible and avoid siliconing the landscape to them but i was thinking maybe siliconing it to the base since this can be covered with gravel and sand and stuff when i do take it out.

I will probably have a section of teh landscape at teh top removable so i can get dow behind it and access any hardware i hide behind it and for cleaning and stuff.

now for the hardware. Sorry its dragging on a bit but i figure i should get it all down before i start forgetting things. SO i have a fluval 404 filter lined up and was thinking along the lines of a jager 200W heater.

For lighting because i want the plant growth i am hopign for three 150W Metal Halides at 7-10,000k but if budget doesnt allow it i will try for HO T5's. It will be an open top tank at teh mo and im goign to make a frame around the top to tidy it up and incorperate the lighting into that. I will also make a mesh to that i can put on if i decide i want frogs or something that may escape hahahaha. I also have some CO2 fermentation kits which i will use at the start and if i save up later on will look at pressurized CO2. I know the waterfall won't really help this but i just really want a waterfall.

Ok nearly there. The underwater section will attempt to be low maintenance (he says optimistically) I have a Dupla undergravel heater that i will use under the main area of planting and am goign to put aqautic potting mix down then daltons propagating sand on top of that. I use that in my planted tank at the moment and works well i think. I was also considering using peat under these? thoughts? I am mainly planing on sword plants and crypts as i already have a few of these that need a bigger home. Ill also have a carpeting plant of some sort and anubius and java fern on driftwood coming out of the water so hopefully these will spread above the water a bit to. I will see how it goes but may have a play with havign a tiger lotus to just for the animals to go on.

Havent looked into the above water plants much yet. I have a few in mind and mum being a bit of a plant fanatic, i will just take her to lunch at kings plant barn and she will thinking im being a good son but secretly its for my own good hahaha.

I have a few fish for it at the moment in my current tank but i won't be stockign it to heavily. Hopefully the filtration shoudl be enough and the waterfall shoudl cause plenty of oxygenation to keep everythig living happily. Hopefully will get a nice group of kuhli loaches and some schools of small fish and lots of algae eaters of different types.

Well thats all i can think of at the moment and any suggestion and questions would be greatly welcome, especially in the above water plant region.

I am aiming to have something come out like the paludariums at www.aquariumdesigngroup.com

After inspiration from a marine setup progress thread i have made a start on a sketchup model of the tank and also have some drawings i did while i was meant to be focusing on lectures on contract documentation hahaha so will try get those up soon.

Thanks for taking the time to read this epic novel and i look forward to your comments.

james

[halogen lights]

hey im looking at setting up a large paludarium for tropical fish and newts and am wanting to get some decent power lighting for plants above and below the water.

I have found some light fittings that are standard 150W metal halide units like used it shop fit outs but are apparently running 200W qaurtz halogen bulbs. I couldnt get a K rating off the seller.

but yeah wondering if these bulbs would be ok or is there a problem with halogens? I would plan on eventually changing to proper K level metal halide bulbs but yeah these seem like a pretty good deal so keen to pick them up to get the system going and can always change the bulbs when i have a bit more cash.

also how many do you think i should run on a 1500x500x500mm tank with about 200mm deep water and how high from the top of the tank should they be mounted? itll most likely be sword plants and crypts in the water with some sort of decent ground cover plants. havent decided on above water plants yet but would like to have a lot of moss covering the landscaping

cheers guys

[Escaped?....or eaten!!!!]

well i got home from work tonight and go to feed me nice fat jap fire bellied newts and what do i find but teh mesh covering part of teh tank fallen in.

Now this isnt the first time it has happened but it usually doesnt fall that far and the newts were usually to fat to be able to get out. so i quicly rip out all the stones and stuff to try and find them but with no luck.

so i proceeded to rip my room apart lookign in every hole or crevice i coudl find but still nothing. I am then informed that our cat has been spotted hanging around the tanks while i have been at work, but no one thought anything of it.

So now i feel it is RIP to little Toyo and Ito my japanese fire bellied newts and i guess this goes down as one of those unsolved mysteries. I think ill invest in a nice new tall tank so no animals can get in or out.

anyone got any jap newts for sale?

[What to keep with a oscar]

i had some oscars for a while and they had a range of different tank mates at different stages including:

severums

silver dollars

fire eel

african cichlids

pleco

pictus catfish

gouramis

parrot fish

texas cichlid

jag cichlid

convicts

large clown loach

and even once a giant goldfish that happened to be living in the tropical tank

[Whats some good/not so good fish related BOOKS??]

well i have always loved any of takashi amano's books. not only do they have absoluetly amazing examples of tanks but they also show his inspirations and give details of the set-ups.

they may not be as educational or directional as you were looking for but i reckon they are the type of book that can be either used for your tank or just chucked on the coffee table for everyone to admire.

just my thoughts anyway

[Borneo Suckers]

I know jansens at botany has them and id assume most of the other jansens would as well.

a lot of the larger fish stores would have them id say cause they are such awesoem little algae eaters liek you say and are something a bit special

[a shark tank?]

yeah i saw a shark egg for sale in australia just last week. you just buy the egg ready to hatch and have a baby shark swimmign around in the tank. they were only tiny sharks but still. they had a similar set up at underwater world on the sunshine coast while i was there.

they had a little under water light set up behind the egg so you could see teh baby shark wrigglign behind it. it was a decent size egg like the size of a tennis ball if not slightly bigger.

they also had moray eels for sale a lot over there. this is probably a bit of a marine noob question and sorry for thread hijack but can you get those in NZ. they had all sorts of snow flake and zebra stripe ones.

[Looking for awesome fish shops in Brisbane and Gold Coast]

yeah these were named and priced up as teh gold white cloud mountain minnows and flag fish so they just must have missed them. they were half way through their syphoning when we were there. i think it was a new girl learning as the floor got quite wet a few times hahahaha

[Looking for awesome fish shops in Brisbane and Gold Coast]

hey thought i'd chuck you an update of where i have been so far.

went into the pet city one that was mentioned and got a bit of gravel and and some new fish from there. i do like the amount of plants you get in a bunch here. i purchased one bunch of thin val which i then managed to split into at least 8 seperate plants. had a similar amount from the cabomba i got.

i went into wet petz today as i noticed it while we zipped past in the car. the shop was smaller than expected but i did like their selection of fish especially cichlids. had a couple of nice displays but was a bit dissapointed when i saw a couple of fish with white spot and about 10 dead fish in the feeder fish tank. but these things happen. they had some fantastic anubius though and some nice crypts.

hopefully ill be able to make it to annerley next week and while im on the gold coast over teh weekend ill visit a few more down there. i go to sunshine coast tomorrow for a couple of nights so will swing by underwater world again cause it always nice there.

will update again when im back in NZ most likely

[Looking for awesome fish shops in Brisbane and Gold Coast]

cheers guys definately sounds like i have a few good ones to visit.

Im personally into freshwater and planted aquariums , i just mentioned the marine one as i saw a link for it but i like looking at everything.

I'll have to see how much time i have as to how many i can get to go see but i definately hope to get around at least a couple of stores and check out whats different.