Freshwater Setup help

Cabomba Green(cabomba carolina)-for background/side of tank
Mother Amazon Sword- for middle of background
caladiifolia(anubias barteri v caladiifolia)- for midground
larger peice or two of malaysian driftwood for midground
dwarf baby tears (hemianthus callitrichoides)- foreground

after looking over others tanks and whats available online. This is what i came up with. any conflicts seen here? if this does work i will be basing my fish and lighting options on this.
 
im also hearing alot of good things about the fluval fx5 both here and from other fish keepers i know. so i think my canister filter with be this. now should i supplement this with a couple of bio-wheels as well, i get mixed reviews on this opinion
 
from all i have heard and read the fx5 is a monster filter, but if it ever breaks your dead in the water... someone else mentioned getting a rena xp4 i'd do it just for back up and run a few of the biowheels also... you cant have too much filtration ... as long as your water level stays up you wont have too much agitation and lose your co2 in the tank
 
so the fluval and some biowheels would start me off right....

as for the flourite, is this what i should use for substrate, its what has been suggested to me and seems right. How much should i use? is there a general rule of thumb like a pound per gallon or something like that?
 
If you have root feeding plants you might need like 3 inches all around? Correct me, good plant people. I use about 2lb per gallon as a guideline. But of course it will depend on the footprint of your tank. Bigger footprint, more flourite.

Also I've never seen HOBs on large planted tanks because of CO2 concerns. But the plant people in this thread seem to approve so I dunno! I'd start researching a CO2 system too

Have you started thinking about the stocklist? that's the most exciting part of a new tank!
 
hey guys update..... ive done some more research and figured alot of it out now, its come down to the purchasing part, my birthday is tuesday and im hoping that the gf has some fish tank accesories high on the list, i have been hinting strongly. so hopefully we can get this project moving soon !!
 
ordered 2 bio wheel 350"s a 300w visitherm and hope to have a fluval fx5 by the end of the week
 
I think it is time to move over to the actual MFK site, Arowana time!
 
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