About 2 years ago I was an active member on NanoReef.com, but after my super-crazy-techno-wizard pico went south, I just tossed in the towel, and walked away from the hobby for a while. I've been maintaining my 39 gallon plated tank for over five years however, so It's not like I ever stoped loving aquariums. Anyway, as I was sorting through some old aquarium stuff the other day, I came across one of the 2.5 gallon cubes I used as a refugium in the pico-reef project, and suddenly I just had to put together a nano-planted tank. I've been getting it set up for a couple days now, and I decided I'd come over here and document my progress. So here it is, the progression of a little empty tank to a masterpiece.... I hope
To start, I went and picked up a bag of Onyx sand my LFS had on sale for $15, slapped a 27 watt DIY CF light I had built for its refugium role, and scrounged up some other stuff from my bins-o-tank stuff. I rinsed the onyx, and tossed it in there with a cool rock I had around. here's a the first picture of it full of water:
As you can see, at first I tried incorporating the bulkhead that was there from the tank's days as a reef by putting in a clossed loop on a maxijet 600... OK, so 160 gph in a 2.5 allon is a bit much , isn't it?
So yeah, I ditched the closed loop today, and just have a little Azoo palm filter on there right now. I actually have a ZooMed 501 canister on order, however, which will replace the palm when it gets here. I'll just fill the canister with floss an call it good.
Also, before I had come to the conclusion that circulating the entire tank 64 times an hour was too much, I remembered something from setting up my big tank -I had used a layer of peat and mulm from an established tank under the fluorite, so I decided I'd do that in this too. So I took out the Onyx (which needed a few more rinses anyway - god that stuff is dusty!), and added about a cup and a half of peat, and a good bit of mulm from a quick siphon of my established tank, then put the Onyx back in. I then planted a few of the Crypt parva and a small offshoot of dwarf red lili from my big tank. I also grabbed a few MTS from the big tank and tossed them in for good measure.
I also took out the ginormous 100wat AGA heater and replaced it with a little 10 watt Marineland preset thingy, and put in a thermometer to monitor the temp - we'll see if this dinky little heather is worth the $20 I paid at the LFS.
Anyway, heres a pic after the the substrate change, but before the closed loop had been taken out:
OK, so with that HUGE backstory out of the way (sorry... it just felt necessary), here's the plans for the future:
plants
-Crypt parva (in)
-Nuphar stellata (in)
-Blyxa jabonica
-Hydrocotyle verticillata
-Lobelia cardinalis
-Hemianthus Callitrichoides
Animals
-6 Rasbora merah
-6 Red Cherry Shrimp
-1 oto
-a bunch of MTS (in)
- dose with Flourish and Excel, add other ferts if necessary
- possibly add injected CO2, but I'll see how it goes with just Excel at first. If I need to ad CO2, at least it'll be easy with the canister
Well, that's it for now. I'll continue to document the progress of this tank here with more pics and hopefully less words.
Let me know what you think!
Thanks,
Jared
To start, I went and picked up a bag of Onyx sand my LFS had on sale for $15, slapped a 27 watt DIY CF light I had built for its refugium role, and scrounged up some other stuff from my bins-o-tank stuff. I rinsed the onyx, and tossed it in there with a cool rock I had around. here's a the first picture of it full of water:
As you can see, at first I tried incorporating the bulkhead that was there from the tank's days as a reef by putting in a clossed loop on a maxijet 600... OK, so 160 gph in a 2.5 allon is a bit much , isn't it?
So yeah, I ditched the closed loop today, and just have a little Azoo palm filter on there right now. I actually have a ZooMed 501 canister on order, however, which will replace the palm when it gets here. I'll just fill the canister with floss an call it good.Also, before I had come to the conclusion that circulating the entire tank 64 times an hour was too much, I remembered something from setting up my big tank -I had used a layer of peat and mulm from an established tank under the fluorite, so I decided I'd do that in this too. So I took out the Onyx (which needed a few more rinses anyway - god that stuff is dusty!), and added about a cup and a half of peat, and a good bit of mulm from a quick siphon of my established tank, then put the Onyx back in. I then planted a few of the Crypt parva and a small offshoot of dwarf red lili from my big tank. I also grabbed a few MTS from the big tank and tossed them in for good measure.
I also took out the ginormous 100wat AGA heater and replaced it with a little 10 watt Marineland preset thingy, and put in a thermometer to monitor the temp - we'll see if this dinky little heather is worth the $20 I paid at the LFS.
Anyway, heres a pic after the the substrate change, but before the closed loop had been taken out:
OK, so with that HUGE backstory out of the way (sorry... it just felt necessary), here's the plans for the future:
plants
-Crypt parva (in)
-Nuphar stellata (in)
-Blyxa jabonica
-Hydrocotyle verticillata
-Lobelia cardinalis
-Hemianthus Callitrichoides
Animals
-6 Rasbora merah
-6 Red Cherry Shrimp
-1 oto
-a bunch of MTS (in)
- dose with Flourish and Excel, add other ferts if necessary
- possibly add injected CO2, but I'll see how it goes with just Excel at first. If I need to ad CO2, at least it'll be easy with the canister
Well, that's it for now. I'll continue to document the progress of this tank here with more pics and hopefully less words.
Let me know what you think!
Thanks,
Jared
