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My first tank 47G Planted

5K views 30 replies 14 participants last post by  bones14 
#1 · (Edited)
After many months of forum reading I've finally got my tank together.

Stage one, mega-cloudy water and hardscape



Stage 2, Plants!



Stage 3, clearer water.



Still looks a bit scruffy at the moment. I'm not sure how well the corkscrew Vallis is going to do cos its dying off quite a bit and the lighting is fairly low (2 x 30w). The plants were chosen because they're what was available in my LFS, so I'll be looking to change and add some more in future depedning on what does well.

Here's the stats:


Began cycling about a 4 days ago with a couple of shrimp
pH 7
Ammonia 2ppm
Nitrite 0.25 ppm

47G Juwel Rio 180 tank
2 x 30 W Day Lite and Warm Lite tubes
Pool filter sand
Eheim 2215 (though it's not currently in action as i'm awaiting a spare part that i broke when setting it up - oops)

Fauna:
Hygrophilla difformis
Amazon sword
A Crypt of some sort
Corkscrew and giant vallisneria
 
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#2 ·
Your tank is looking good. I love the thrill of setting up a new tank. Which species of fish do you plan on keeping?

BTW the word fauna refers to animal life where as flora refers to plant life. Don't worry I have made that mistake many times :)

Looking forward to seeing more pictures, I would love to see all of those plants at full size with little fish swimming all over. >:D

Just one more thing... I don't recommend cycling tanks with either fish or invertebrates. The cycling process is very stressful on the fauna and can make the more susceptible to disease therefore they often die. Fish-less cycling is the way to go and plants are a great way to reduce the time it takes. With enough plants you could almost entirely eliminate the need for a cycle. Just a thought. Anyways good luck and I hope your shrimp are okay.
 
#4 · (Edited)
haha, i should have known the difference between flora and fauna as i spent 9 years in the past studying biology! a little slip up i'm sure you'll excuse!

by cycling the tank with shrimp i meant a couple of dead cocktail ones in a stocking to provide a source of ammonia. i plan on waiting for the tank to cycle before adding fish and inverts

fish wise, i'm think a shoal of maybe 12 cardinal tetras, maybe some panda corys (once the plants are better rooted down), amano and cherry shrimp and perhaps another shoal of smallish fish yet to be decided - any suggestions welcome...
 
#5 ·
I'm sure your tank will be awesome when it's done :)

LOL, when I heard shrimp I was thinking live shrimp but it was just food shrimp, my bad :S

Good luck with the rest of your build :)
 
#7 ·
bit of an update. massive plant growth since th first pics plus some new plants. its nice to look back on my old pics and see how much change there's been!

not very good pic but here's an impression of how it looks



Plus, most excitingly, some new arrivals... 6 Glowlights





(please excuse the poor qulaity pics from my phone)
 
#11 ·
Wow that's a nice development right there, looking real good!!!!
 
#14 ·
i haven't noticed compaction being a problem with my pool filter sand so far. PFS only contains grains of a certain size, 0.2 - 0.4mm i think, so there's none of the very small grains, which i guess would create a more dense substrate as they could pack in closer together. my plants took about 2-3 weeks before they showed much growth but they're all doing well now. i added i use api root tabs too

I also got some malasian trumpet snails v cheap from ebay recently to keep the substrate turned over a bit more. they're great fun to watch too
 
#16 ·
Wanted to add also, pool sand grains are rounded and polished to allow water movement.

Plus pool filter sand is what, $1 more? I'm talking about $1 difference between 2 40Ib bags.
(at least here it is)

Tank is awesome. :) Might want to do something about the DW, can't hardly see it.

Is that the crypt in the front-right? It looks a bit small to be a vallisneria.
Maybe dwarf sag?

Looks nice regardless. How big is that tank?
 
#18 ·
180litre, 47 gal - its a juwel rio 180 tank but with my own heater, filter etc

yeah its a shame the way the drift wood is obscured. i plan to do a bit of a change around in future to show it off a bit more.

front right is some pygmy chain sword. there's vallis spirlis behind it.

what i thight was a crypt turned out to be java fern, which is now on some driftwood instead of stuck in the sand - oops
 
#19 ·
Looks great! I have low light also and my spiral Val grows really fast but the good thing is you can trim it when it gets to long on top of the water. I like my Java ferns. I stuck mine in holes in rocks also attached them with java moss onto driftwood. My Dwarf Sagittaria all melted away and is not growing in any of my tanks well. I use the root tabs also. I like the pool filter sand as it is a courser grain sand. I just rub it between my hands if the sand gets algae growing on it and it looks good as new. I'm trying to get rid of my MTS as they have taken over the bottom of my tank and i'm overrun just from some hitch hikers on plants. I now have yo yo loaches to help trim the population. My Assassin snails helped some but not that great. I moved my Assassin snails to a new tank so the yoy yo's don't eat them. I sure hope your tank does not get over run by them as mine. One local fish store in my area gives them away for free as they are a big problem in their tanks.
 
#27 ·
I love your tank and I love your bolivian rams. I have 2 of them myself and really like them. I am hopeing I have a male and female but they are still young so I can't tell yet.
 
#30 ·
One more pic for y'all. I've added a little rock formation on the left. This pic also shows the crazy growth of my plants - who needs ferts and CO2? I've just taken out handfulls of Wisteria from the left too. The right hand side is getting pretty full of Vallis now, the Pygmy Chain sword it throwing out runners all over the place and even my java moss has started to grow after 2-3 months of looking horrible and making a mess in the tank. I think I'll be having to remove or rearrange my plants soon as i'm loosing too much swimming space and I put the Corkscrew Vallis too near the front in when I originally planted it up. Also I can hardly see my pretty Anubias at the back.

 
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