75 gallon angel tank plan-suggestions?

Yoemen

In Boogeyman's closet
Nov 2, 2005
765
0
16
Galveston
Well I have decided to make the 75 gallon into a planted Angel tank.

I am gonna use injected CO2 with 200 watts of light. I am gonna use the semi automatic CO2 system from FosterandSmith.

I am planning a sand substrate with eco complete or something underneath to provide nutrients.

Fish wise:
2 black lace angels
2 smokey leopard veil angels
1 black angel
1 gold veil angel

Plants:
I like whatever the plant that they put on the driftwood in the ADA tanks is. I am guessing Java Moss, but am not sure. Might try christmas moss as well.

Debating between microswords or dwarf hairgrass for the foreground, maybe a mixture.

watersprite, ludwiga, and rotala for midground

Temple, Wisteria, and Myrio for background plants.

I am thinking of putting a tiger lotus in as well, though am afraid I may be overplanted as is.

Filters will be two Emp 400s and a eheim classic canister rated for 50 gallons.

any suggestions or criticism would be greatly appreciated
 
Lose the Emps with injected co2- all they will do is outgas it almost as fast as you can add it. Go with a bugger Eheim- consider the Pro II 2026 (rated for for 53-92 gals) or the 2028 (rated for 93-150 gals). You want to minimize surface aggitation.

I would not use java moss- it is invasive, esp in a high light tank. Eventually you will want some rooted plants. And you do want to be heavily planted.
 
The ADA tanks use many different mosses. I use xmass in my tanks I like the way it grows in high light. I just got some fissidens and some flame. Will see how it does. I would suggest some swords and large crypts. Angels will appreciate them and it is their preferred egg laying site. You could also tie some java ferns on the wood. The needle leaf variety does better in higher light.
 
Gravel always comes to the top and sand goes to the bottom - so the idea of having sand over gravel won't come into being. Plus I'm starting to come to the strong opinion that the so called specialty planted substrates are a bunch of bull. Plain sand and/or gravel is perfectly fine - add some root tabs if you truly want to give the swords, crypts, etc what they want.

I have Flourite/Schultz Aquatic soil in one of my tanks and the crypts were always melting and not growing back as much as I would have liked. Finally after a year of this nonsense I added a few root tabs; now they are positively thriving. Similar for my swords - I used to have Onyx Sand in that tank and the swords always did well but not extraordinary. When I got sick of how ugly the Onyx sand was I changed over a to a blend of Tahitian Moon Sand, play sand, medium sand and Soilmaster Select. I added some tabs as well. Now my swords are growing so fast and so lush that I have already divided them several times in the last couple of months.

And FYI I run no CO2, and have an Emp 400 along with a Rena XP3. My plants are happy as it is. I can only imagine how happy they would be with CO2 and a little less surface agitation.

Further - plants begin to uptake oxygen after the lights are out. In a heavily planted tank some attest that it is a very good practice to have surface agitation at night. I remember reading an article by Takashi Amano where he asserts that many of his tanks have air pumps timed to come on a few hours after dark and turn off when the lights come on the next day. This is so that the fishies don't have to get stressed by lowered oxygen levels the plants cause with their own uptake.
 
semi auto system for co2

if it uses a solenoid you can have the timer set to turn the co2 off 1 hr before lights out and back on 1 hr before.
 
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