Zabman

Hi Aaron - if you ask me that question in 12 months ill let you know! To early to tell if the way I did it was successful!!!!

Thanks Cheese, The plants that you can see on a couple of the first photos weren't "planted" as such, just popped in the tank to keep em alive for when I do plant. Which, subsequently, was last night! Will take some pics tonight and post - was from cuttings so still a lot of empty space!

That looks soooooo different to what the rotala rotund... I have. Its amazing how different the plants can look depending on growing conditions!

Lighting is high and substrate is as well - I honestly think my limiting factor will be CO2. If you could help me with this, ie how and where you got your stuff from - what everything does, it would be appreciated.

Thanks for your post TheConch! Thats a lot of money to spend!!! I'm not sure if you have seen my post in the freshwater section but am looking for a heavily planted tank feedback has suggested that a CO2 system would be the cheapest in the long run! The thing on trademe comes with a bottle which you can swap at the supermarket so would be ideal - its all the fittings and counters and what not that concern me!

Hi All, I want to have CO2 in my tank but don't know where to start - HFF sells a kit with everything in it except a bottle but it costs 660 bucks!! If I was to buy this: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Business-farmi ... 358268.htm Would it be suitable and what else would I need?

Any CO2 experts around that can help me on Mirc?

Don't take the risK!!!! Do you have a smaller tank he can chill in until you know what you're going to do?

Beatiful sword!!! I love the pink in the middle and the green of the older leaves!!! Do you know of a similar sword with squatter, rounder leaves?

Beauty tank mate - been bustin all day to get home and check it out (Can't get the pics at work )

Any idea what sort of $$$ the above would cost?

TBH I haven't giev a whole pile of thought to the fish just yet. The Angel will be going in there and my 5 whiptails but other than that..... I have a medium sized plec that needs relocating but I don't think he/she will co-operate with the plants!

Vetoed! I kinda like it how it is

Thanks Whetu, I will look at finding something appropriate to tie behind the wood this evening. I know what you mean about placing the wood before the substrate! Wish I had done it this way as you can see how messy the tank got trying to reseat it into the sand & clay!

I have some brass attachments that I got from Rockerpeller, but as I said, I know nothing about CO2 and I would not be confident injecting it unless it was regulated and I had some way of measuring how much is going in.

Substrate - What the plants are growing in ie sand, gravel etc.

The lighting is 4 x 36W 6500K. I will be dosing Exel - I would love to go pressurised CO2 but don't know the first thing about it!

Hi All, I have decided to put together a blog sort of thing regarding setting up my new 4ft Aquarium, any feedback/advice/criticism is welcomed as it will benefit both myself and anyone else reading this. I was lucky enough to purchase a 4ft drilled tank with stand and 2 light fittings from another member (Thanks Rockerpeller!) As my 2 ft is super overstocked with plants and my largest Angel has outgrown his home, Lisa and I decided to have a go at a properly planted and aquascaped aquarium! Over the last month I have been slowly pulling together the parts I need to set this up (slow going as all our money seems to go onto the mortgage!). The first thing we did was suspend the light fixtures from the ceiling - easier said than done as it had to be a DIY jobby! Some Plasterboard anchors, different sized cup hooks, numerous broken drill bits and expletives & a length of chain all combined with 2 hours labour and the lights were nicely suspended above the tank. For filtration we went slightly (very) overboard with a fluval FX5, the price was a steal so really couldn't say no as I would rather have to much than not enough, and if we ever get a larger tank, filtration is sorted! Attaching this to the plumbing of the tank was harder than expected due to the fluval pipe only coming with 2 rubber seals, managed to get it nice and tight with the plumbing with some silicone sealant and hose clamps. Don't have enough media to fill all 3 baskets so am using AquaOne Bionoodles and a fine filter pad in the last basket - plan to fill the other 2 with eheim substrat pro when I can afford it! Next part of the setup was adding the substrate. Because we are looking at a heavily planted tank we decided on Daltons Aquatic mix covered with some daltons propagating sand - about 1.5cm depth for each. After the Aquarium centre brace was repaired and a Jager 150W heater added, we filled the tank for the first time. We did this by siphoning 1 slow bucket at a time - what a waste of an evening - will be trying to work out a faster way of doing this for water changes!!!! Found a nice piece of driftwood on the beach and soaked in the bath for a week and srubbed thoroughly, had to trim it with a saw to fit it into the tank though and then it just floated Somebody suggested fishing sinkers to weight it down so bought some today and tied them on - definate improvement but still not fully submerged, so a couple of pieces of 2 x 4 sitting on top to keep it down! Started planting today as well - will take some time to fill out as the vast majority of plants are cuttings from my other tanks! We drew up a rough plan of how we would like the "end product" to look but it is hard to imagine without seeing the full potential of the plants being used. Some Anubias Nana was planted up the trunk of the wood, but doesnt look nearly as good as A.Prophecies nano! Hopefully will grow out nicely! Also tied some Frilled Java fern (correct me if I'm wrong!) onto one of the pieces of wood sticking out from the trunck! Reseated the wood in the tank, and now can't see a thing! Planted a few more plants completely blind but will have to wait a day or so to see if I got the positioning right! We will be dosing with the recommended dose of Flourish Exel initially - will also start adding PMDD in the next couple of weeks when I work out how to measure them out properly! More to come soon.

Mine was doing that when he had internal parasites - not sayin thats what your has, but it was one of the symptons my guy experienced

HFF has some Brasiliensis atm and is getting some zealandia in shortly

the aquatic mix looks like clay as well, so its prob the same thing

its down the back, like if you walk out the self opening doors and straight ahead to the other side its there!

Thats bizzare Aaron - I was in Mitre 10 today and they had the exact same pallet of Daltons they had there when I bought mine about 2 months ago! I have used Sand because I have heard such good things about it - apparently easier for smaller grassing plats to take root and alto more "nutritious" for the plants

Nice Aaron - my next project after my 4ft planted is a nano with a single fighter in there so will be following this thread with interest! Daltons Aquatic mix is very cheap and available from mitre 10 Mega on Lincoln road - thats where I got mine, the picked up some Daltons propagating sand to go on top of it from Palmers on Grt North road - cant tell ya how the plants like it yet as its early days!

Did anybody see the Avenged Sevenfold special on alt TV this evening?