Equipment, substrate and water

The basic equipment list is :-

• a 48"x12"x15" glass tank, with a volume of 142 litres. Once the substrate was added, thie water volume was down to about 130 litres, with plants and wood reducing this to around 120 litres of actual water.
• Two Fluval 2 filters, one at each end
• 200 Watt heater
• three Triton 48" fluorescent tubes, each controlled by an Arcadia lighting controller and fitted with an Arcadia reflector
• Three carefully chosen pieces of Mopani wood (a very dense wood, suitable for tanks as it sinks and does not leach tannins after the first week or so).
• Custom made wooden cabinet and hood (which was a lot cheaper than any of the ready-made ones we saw).

Filtration

As mentioned before, the tank was always intended to be heavily planted, so the lighting was chosen accordingly. Due to the length of the tank, we felt that a single filter at one end would not be very efficient, especially considering the fact that most plants prefer a low flow. For this reason, two filters were chosen.

The only other equipment to be added was a home-made CO2 reactor. This was basically an old lemonade bottle, mostly filled with water, two cups of sugar, a teaspoon of yeast and a teaspoon of baking soda. A tube carries the CO2 into the same plastic box that we had on the Mark 1 fishtank.

The PSG is located in a leafy suburb of Manchester, UK. This area of the North-West of England has some of the softest water in the country. The water comes out of tap at a pH around neutral, but was slightly lowered due to the CO2 injection.

Decoration

To enhance the natural look of the planted tank, we decided to include some pieces of wood. Our LFS had a good selection of mopani wood, a very dense wood suitable for aquaria. After spending quite a long time on the LFS trying various pieces of wood out in one of their empty tanks, we settled on three good sized pieces.

These three pieces were soaked in the tank for a couple of weeks to allow the tannins to leach out. Regular water changes helped here. After about two weeks, the water was no longer being turned brown by the wood. It was around this time that the plants arrived, so that was the end of the soaking !!

The picture below shows the middle piece of wood. This has a horseshoe shaped base, with a tall stem that almost reaches the water surface. There are also some pieces of slate standing up against the back of the tank.

Substrate and Fertilisation

This one really confused me for a while. There are so many different opinions as to what makes a good substrate that it is very difficult to get a clear picture. In the end, we decided to go for a simple clay-based gravel, with fertilisation additives. We used eight bags of Aquagrit, which gave a 3" depth substrate. The bottom 2" of this was mixed with Flora Sticks and the top 1" was left plain. Flora Tabs were inserted below each main plant or bunch of plants and Flora pride was used as a liquid fertiliser.

We had looked at various DIY fertilisation recipes, but in the end decided to try the Flora approach. Judging by the first few weeks, it seems to have been a good choice.