FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Chaos,

Congrats on the new tank, although I have a rather hard time calling a tank a Nano when it is larger than various members standard tank .

Anyways

Let me try to help you where I can, or at least give you my opinion:

First of all, I have no idea about your substrate as I have never used it and I haven’t heard too much complaint about it either, sorry about that.

Now to the tank itself: You sure do have enough light to grow quite a variety of plants. Also, this much light sure supports your vision of adding a DIY CO2 system, the sooner you do this the better. And you might want to begin reading up on “the other plant need”, namely fertilizers.

Some things I have noticed, but remember that it is only my opinion:

- The heater will sit in the back when all is said and done, right?
- I am not too wild about that background, do I see that right that it mimics a brick wall? A single colored one, either really dark (black or dark blue) or light (light blue to white) would look better.
- Your selection of wood appears to be rather massive and will take up quite some space in your tank. I might be wrong there as wood has the incredible ability to shrink once plants grow in (not literally of course, but from a visual perspective). I would prefer a skinnier branchy wood. Also, based on the fact that you hold the wood in place to show us how it should be laid out, how do you envision it will hold itself once the tank is planted? Last but not least, I don’t think having a rather large piece of wood straight up all the way in the front of the tank will look good as it takes away depth perception.

To the plants:

Well you sure have a lot of options . Glosso should grow in the tank, and so will many many others. I would say that you should flip through a book or two and/or some plant websites. Find the ones you like visually and we will discuss them here. One thing to keep in mind though is that your tank, despite my earlier statement, is still a small tank, and plants with large leaves will make the tank look small. And one thing one wants to do with a small tank is make it look large.

To the fish?

What do you have in mind there. I am a little confused about your statement that you “cant use so many plants that the fish I get will not have much space to swim”. This is less a question of many plants as it is a question of what plants. You can have the whole ground of the tank covered with Glosso and have way more swimming space left then if you add only one Amazon Sword. I guess the right thing to do would be to have small ones in the middle front, with medium high on the side front, and medium to high in the back. Or something like that .

Well, I hope this will get you started,

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Maximus,
Ya know what I think you did I good job with the hardscape. It's not always easy to arrange the wood and rock together. Once the green grows in it should look very nice.

All those anubias are good. I'm not familiar with Monosolenium tenerum, but Bensaf might be. There are alot of mosses you could use on the mound including xmas, java, taiwan,etc. Here's a link to a good moss website.

http://www.aquamoss.net/

My Scapes

Almost any fish store should carry anubias nana, I found it out here in the middle of nowhere, in the north, you get where I'm coming from? Anyway, I would stick with the mound and not try the grassy foreground as it looks much cleaner without. I love that tank Bensaf showed. The rock arrangement looks great. That liverwort and the nana would look great on it. There are two java ferns that would also fit, the regular and the 'windelov' variety. I love that plant! And mosses are great for coverage as well. Good luck and keep the pics coming, I'm looking forward to seeing this nano cube emerge.

"If you're afraid you'll make a mistake, you won't make anything."
-Family Circus

For the grass, I would be looking for somthing much shorter than the one above, 5cm tops

Chaos

__________________________________
- - - Humorous Bit of Wisdom - - -

Hello all,

Ive got both the rocks and wood in my tank. Below is a photo of the dry run of the formation. The rocks and wood are in the tank, but because of the gravel the water is still a bit too cloudy to allow a picture to be taken. The mound looks moderatly big in the tank but there is some foreground left which is good.

http://picshosted.com/v/6705/DSCF00221.JPG

Also, I have found a version of annubis which looks ideal for my tank:

http://www.tropica.com/productcard_1.asp?id=101H

Possibly also something like this:

http://www.tropica.com/productcard_1.asp?id=002C

or for the foreground (which i know some are recomending against, but im thinking about it)

http://www.tropica.com/productcard_1.asp?id=067B

Also, java moss or some other moss was mentioned. Any suggestions are welcome, particularly for small plants or somthing in the background, though I am fine sticking with the black background at the moment.

I am wondering where I should expect I can find these specific plants, in particular, the tiny anubis plant. [if a web site they need to ship to washington dc] Also, If these are going to take a while to arrive should I get some fish in the tank. I dont know if it is a bad idea to leave the tank without any biological activity that I want (i.e. will anything bad accumulate if I wait much longer to introduce fish?) I have biospira so I think I should be able to introduce two lemons without any problems.

Input on any of this would be helpful, thanks all,

Chaos

Last edited by chaosmaximus at 05-Jan-2006 11:58

__________________________________
- - - Humorous Bit of Wisdom - - -

Hey,

Things are making sense. I feel like I can move forward a bit at least.

For the creek water I am not worried about biological things, Its the chemical ones that concern me. There is sometimes an oily look to the water. I will have to decide if I think i can remove any chems.

Ill post a picture of a dry run of the mound asap.

Thanks for the advice. Chaos

__________________________________
- - - Humorous Bit of Wisdom - - -

A big question for me is while you said this will be easy to maintain will this be easy to move?

It doesn't get any easier ! Just pull out the rocks and wood. No plants to uproot. Most will be attached to the wood rocks very strongly by that stage. There's no need to silicone the rocks and wood together. Just pile them on top of one another in a fairly stable manner.

First, for the structure, it will be composed of just rocks and wood? or will there be peat as well.

There's no need to use peat anywhere in the tank. All plants will draw nutrients from the water column through their leaves , they only use their roots if the water is too lean in nutrients. Anubias,Ferns and Mosses are specifically build to draw nutrients from the water. The roots are more for anchoring them to the woods and rock.

Either way I will be doing rock collecting near my house most likley (depeding on how the creek water looks).

Just make sure they are the same color/type. Don't worry about the atwer , you can wash/boil/bake the rocks to get rid of any nasties.

If there is no peat are all the plants attached to the rocks ones that survive on liquid ferts alone?

Ok time for your first fertilizing lesson ALL plants will do very well by just ferilizing the water.No need for fancy substrates or peat. In fact unless you really know what you are doing avoid Peat like the plague.
BUT do not confuse fertilizing the water with just using a liquid fert. A typical liquid fert only provides micronutrients. These are a wide range of nutrients that the plants require small quantites of , hence the micro. You will also need to add macronutrients. These are the ones that the plant needs in abundance and must be present all the time - Nitrate, Phosphate, Potassium,Calcium. We also add these to the water, either in powder form or in liquid form if you use the Seachem range. How much or how often is added is dependent on a number of factors,light/fishload/plant mass - mainly is carbon added and if so, how. We'll get to that later. For this tank I would definately reccomend the Excel approach. Use Co2 later when you've becaome a sick sick junkie like the rest of us and have got some experience under yopur belt and want to build that huge planted tank of your dreams. You will succumb, it's a when not an if

For lighting, should I keep the 50/50s.
Get rid of them. They will make the tank look like complete and utter crap ! We are not building a boring mass of grey rock like the salty folks Can you get a K reading from the bulbs. If one of the bulbs is 10K that would be usable, it has a nice white light, anything above that will be too blue and will wash out the colors of your fish and plants.

If the foregound was planted with a short grass of some form would that in fact be more maitnece? If there was grass then there would be no need to vacume that gravel so that would be less matinence? Just wondering.

Yes a foreground grass would be more maintenance. BTW you'll quickly find that vacumning a will be the least of your work worries in a plants tank ! The joy of a planted tank is it's dynamic, it's always growing therfore it's constantly changing. The grassy plants while way less work then fast growing stem plants still require maintenance. They spead throughout the tank by producing new plants on runners, eventually you'll have too many and need to tidy them up and remove some. Noramally this not too much work, it's just in such a small tank it'll happen quicker and you don't have much room for your hands to do the delicate work required. I'd aim for something that never needs your hand to go in. But it's your call.

BTW, that's about the worst rendering of tank design on MS Paint I have ever seen but I catch your drift.

Tetra , yeah Ingo's right about the plant. Unlike the Dwarf Hairgrass it produces runners very high up the leaf. Some people like this , others hate it and trim the runners off immediately. Maybe that's what Amano does. Or as it's him, he's probably using a completely different plant then we think !!! The plant he uses looks very much like a plant I picked up in Singapore and love - Vallisnera Nana. Very very thin, almost hairgrass thin, but much less "stiff" looking then hairgrass, more flowy and a richer color. I have some pics of mine if anyones interested , you can compare.

Last edited by bensaf at 01-Jan-2006 21:12

---

Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Yeah, well I assume you actually understood the drawing. Ill assume that I do need a few rocks and will go looking tomarrow.

I guess ill deal with weather or not to plant the front in a while and try to manage the mound thing first.

Chaos

__________________________________
- - - Humorous Bit of Wisdom - - -

I love your drawing

A square cinder block with fins sticking out, plus little plugs that look like my hair in front of it, lovely

Traveling is never easy, I am most certain it will get messy no matter what you do.

Many plants survive on liquid ferts alone, only a few species require explicit fertilization through the substrate. These usually have an elaborate root system anyway and that wouldn’t be feasible for your tank in the first place, IMHO. In the worse case you would be able to add root tabs (or spikes) in the substrate for the plant that needs it.

I would not keep the 50/50 as the actinic is for sure not doing you any good and actually might (not sure) help the algae. A good K range to get would be 6,700K to 8,000K, 5,000K and 10,000K are ok as well.

Well, foreground or not, maintenance would have to be done. No foreground = gravel vacuuming, foreground means trimming and vacuuming the yuckies out of the plants. To sum it up, plain gravel would be less maintenance.

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

All hail me indeed

Bensaf, i really think Ive got the idea now and Have attached a HD rendering of what I think this would look like in my tank.

http://picshosted.com/v/5794/untitled.bmp

This seems like a good to deal with the wood. A big question for me is while you said this will be easy to maintain will this be easy to move? I will be moving the aquarium from here (was dc) to boston, an 8hr drive in septemeber. This is a ways away but I feel I should consider this.

If you still think I should go for the mound, given the move, I have some questions.

First, for the structure, it will be composed of just rocks and wood? or will there be peat as well. Either way I will be doing rock collecting near my house most likley (depeding on how the creek water looks). If there is no peat are all the plants attached to the rocks ones that survive on liquid ferts alone?

For lighting, should I keep the 50/50s. Im sure I can kind of trade em in with the aquarium company but I shouldnt wait long to do that.

If the foregound was planted with a short grass of some form would that in fact be more maitnece? If there was grass then there would be no need to vacume that gravel so that would be less matinence? Just wondering.

Chaos

__________________________________
- - - Humorous Bit of Wisdom - - -

I guess the plant is Eleocharis acicularis. Although it looks like it grows new leaves out of the base in the Amano tanks I think to remember that Bensaf mentioned that they acrually have new shoots on various heights of the original plant.

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

That looks like a 40g oceanic cube, so not alot of light at all. Also it's a deep tank so the foreground would probably be a major headache from a maint. and growing prospective.

What type of hairgrass is that in the back that would grow in that light?








My Scapes

All hail Chaos Maximus !!!

You're not quite getting me on the mound idea. The samples you posted are examples of a style known as "iwagumi", surprisingly difficult to pull off.

The design I'm thinking of is like the one below, which is a tank by Jeff Senske, one of my favorite scapers.

The advantage is it's esay to do and more importantly maintain. It's the type of tank that stays looking good for years. I think it's ideal for the tank size/shape you have and is really the only way to ustilise that thick wood effectively.

You can see the rocks wood and plants are piled up in the center creating a mound. Note the foreground is not planted to cut down on maintenance. The Anubias hide the wood well with just enough showing to create a natural effect. Very very little work to keep the shape.

You wouldn't need the full amount of light you have but it won't harm either. I'm assuming it's something like 2 X 24watt bulbs which is not a huge amount of light. The excel would help avoid a lot of algae issues especially with plants like Anubias.But if you went with mainly Anubias moses I'd err on the side of caution and just use half the light.
Again note the amount of lights on the tank below.There's 3 x 20 watt bulbs. Not sure of the tank size , anyone take a guess ???
bensaf attached this image:


Last edited by bensaf at 31-Dec-2005 23:38[/font]

---

Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Chaos

I can already see that we will have lots of fun with you in our planted group.

Reasons:

- You are funny and witty
- You do your homework
- You are ambitious (as can be seen by the tanks you selected as possible models)

You said you read the other thread where I criticize “Nano”, don’t take that as belittling to your tasks at hand, that is not my intention. I just have a different vision of what small means as I am trying hard to someday soon get a “true” Nano with maybe 3G up and running.

Have a Happy New Year, and I hope we will have lots of fun and excitement next year when we (hopefully) see your tank being set up and blossom.

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Hello all

Little fish-

Ive seen your critcism of 'nano' in another thread so I should say 'nano cube 12 dx' is the trade marked name of this aquarium.

The aquarium has a false back where the filtration is and there is space for the heater to be hidden back there. I was doing an equipment check at that point to make sure it worked.

You have a rather good eye looking at the background. It is an intersting illusion you saw. I had just filled the tank for the first time and there were lots of bubbles sticking to the sides, these create the texture you see in the background. The lines which made it look like brick are the fill lines at the end of a bucket of water. The actual background is just black plastic of the false back.

To be honest, while I knew the measurements of the wood it looked rather skinnier in the ebay auction picture. I was supprised by it but am going to try to work with it anyway, though it will probably create a bit of a chalenge. I am not planning on relying on magic to hold up the wood. I got some slate and stainless steel screws to hold the wood at whaterver angle I decide.

Tetratech- You are absolutly right about the light. I thought the 50/50 bulbs were an upgrade and assumed I would be getting freshwater ones. I will get that fixed in the next week or so.

Bensaf- I think I am following that you mean about the mound but I am not compleetly sure. is it something like these but focused around the wood?

http://www.aquabotanic.com/images/birgitglosso.JPG

http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2004.cgi?&Scale=514&op=showcase&category=0&vol=0&id=36

If I follow you the mound will make the wood the centerpiece and the plants more like a decoration, this makes sense because of the size of the wood. Trying to minimise the wood would probably be futile. Surrounding the wood with a low lying grass like plant like the one in the very front of this http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2004.cgi?&Scale=514&op=showcase&category=0&vol=0&id=18 may be good. Let me know If i understand the idea correctly.

Im going to play around with the wood layout and try to decide about where it should go, particularly the verticle piece.

At the moment for fish I keep thinking about lemon tetras or von rios. these are about the smallest tetras I can find around here (not counting neons which I think might be upset by the bright light)

Bob- Im glad Im not the only person who has had trouble with this substrate. I got the water clear again with a bit of filtering and will be carefull with the flourite in the future.

Thanks all

Chaos


__________________________________
- - - Humorous Bit of Wisdom - - -

The fluorite is an excellent substrate but it is difficult to rinse and therefore you will generally have quite a bit of suspended particles in the water.

My recommendation for working with this substrate is to place it in the aquarium with just enough water to make it moist. Position your hardscape, rocks and wood. Then plant the aquarium starting with the low growing plants to the background plants.

Slowly and carefully fill the aquarium. If you think it is filling too slowly then slow down even more. Use a shallow bowl or plate to disperse the water onto the substrate. Once the water has reached a depth of 4 or 5 inches, you can increase the flow ever so slightly as you are trying not to stir up the substrate.

Fuorite becomes much more workable after a period of time in the aquarium, it's just a pain when you want to really make some progress.

__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

Yes, Bensaf you are right about he light. It's obviously blue.

I think that mound arrangement is a nice idea, but with that plant selection isn't he better off with just 2wpg.

BTW - What's the deal with the temp probe. Did that come with the tank. I never understood all those wires just to track temp.



My Scapes

The "Nano" tanks usually have the heater and filter built into the back ?

Looking at the pics the light does appear very blue so they probably do have saltwater bulbs. Change them to daylights. The saltwater bulbs will just make the plants look radioactive !

See how big your hands look in that tank ? You don't want them going in there often to uproot and replant. I'd avoid almost all stem plants.
I wouldn't be keen on DIY Co2 on such a small tank, way too unstable. For what I'd do with it Co2 would be unneccessary anyway.

The wood as tetra pointed out is very thick. If you intend to use it there's really one layout that would work IMO.

Go for a mound type aquascape.

Use rocks to support the wood in whatever layout you decide. Cover some of the rocks with moss. Taiwan moss is a good option , it's smaller neater and bit slower growing then others.

Cover up that wood with Anubias Nana Pettite, you'd get away with the regular Nana but nothing bigger. Use the Anubias on the lower parts of the wood and create a mound. Some patches of moss on the upper portions.
Alternately use Narrow leaf fern or Wendelov Java Fern to crate the mound (avoid other ferns, they're too big) and fill in gaps in the rocks or between wood and rock with the Anubias Petite. You can add a Crypt at the back or corners.

Glosso will be a bit of work, stuff grows real quick and when it reaches critical mass needs to be up rooted and replanted. Something like Cryptocorene Parva would work well.Or you can just leave the foreground empty or fill with small river rocks, this will complement the rock/wood/Anubias/Fern mound nicely.

Use Excel. It's cost effective on a small tank, one bottle would last a good few months. It'll help keep algae away from the slow growing plants. Work out a good fert routine.

This would be a very attractive and almost zero maintenance tank. You'd hardly ever have to put those huge hands in there.

For fish , keep to really small ones. A school of Microrasboras would work well.
Alternately a group of Female Bettas, or Sparkling Gouramies. These are slow moving "prowling" fish, they'd love hunting around the mound and wood/rocks. A few nice shrimp like cherries would add interest.

Forgot to mention the snails. Don't worry about them. They are hard to avoid anyway. As long as you don't overfeed and keep the tank clean they'll go pretty quickly anyway. Female Bettas will snack on them especially the small young ones.

Last edited by bensaf at 30-Dec-2005 21:59

Last edited by bensaf at 30-Dec-2005 22:03

---

Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Yes, those "nano" cubes are very nice looking tanks.

My fish question is which light set do you have. I know you have 48watts, but do you have the freshwater planted bulbs or the saltwater. Most people get this tank with the saltwater setup which means you have a dual bulb half looks white and half looks blue (actinic). The actinic won't do much for the plants, so if you have that bulb you really don't have 4wpg, if you have the freshwater bulbs (6700k) than yes you do have the full 4wpg and I would highly recommend co2 from the start or you will have algae problems with that kind of light. In fact if possible I would only run half of the lights until you get the co2 going. The ability for the plants to use waste and ferts will be limited and it will open the door for algae.

As far as the wood, that's a personal thing, but I do agree with littlefish that it's big and too close to the front. I do like working with big pieces so it can work with the right plants to support it, but is does need to be moved back from the front.



Last edited by tetratech at 30-Dec-2005 16:18

My Scapes

Hello All,

Ive been reading and planning for a while and finally have my new aquarium, a Nano Cube 12 DX setup. I dont know what plants I should use and have quite a few other questions about planting in general.

My aquarium is 12 gallons and measures a little bigger than a 12" cube. It has 48 watts, 4watts/gal and flourite substrate. Puictures of how I plan to setup the hardscape are below. Also the location of filter intake (top left) and output (top right) probably need to be taken into account while choosing plants. I expect to add a diy CO2 system at some point in the near future after the plants are setup.

I think I would like the aquarium to look well planted, but cant use so many plants that the fish I get will not have much space to swim. I think having somthing like glosso as a foreground, or something else rather short, and then a few plants in the back behind the DW would work well but I dont know too much about this.

My local store has an ok selection of plants but they also seem to come with snails which concerns me. They are very small ones and there are some babys in the water (I think thats what look like big paramecium swimming around). I dont really want to have the snails and Im not sure if I should look for a different source, internet perhaps.

Also, at the moment the substrate is very dusty, or muddy. I added it to the tank carefully after rinsing it some but it still made a bit of a mess with the water. I let the silt settle and was able to clean things up a bit. Is that silt nutritionally important for the plants? I ask because everytime I go to disturb the plants to set somthing up or vacume it is going to make a rather large mess. If its not important I think I can remove most of it without much troubble.

Thanks for the help

Chaos


The tank, Nano Cube 12 DX

Front view with me modeling the wood

Side view

Other Side view

__________________________________
- - - Humorous Bit of Wisdom - - -