Tank ready for puffers
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2018 3:07 pm
After moving to a much bigger home, I finally have enough room for a bigger tank: a custom quite shallow one, 350l with a format more common for reef tank or riparium.
It's 120cm long, 70 wide and 42 deep, with a very high canopy able to accommodate emerging plants.
It's built around natural planted tank concept, with small gravel capped potting soil as substrate, not much water change and no co2 injection nor chemical fertilizer...
But I have a quite large canister (2000l/h) and moderate led lighting, while hardcore npt use small canister or pump (only need water movement, no filter) and lower lighting...
in fact this tank is very similar to a previous tank I had in my old home, just scaled up (90l to 350l
). Last tank worked well, and this one, larger with a much bigger footprint, should work even better...
It will be soon 1 month since I filled and planted it, and for a natural planted tank it's long enough for being very likely cycled. Few inhabitants at the moment, a baby ancistrus, some red cherry shrimps, mts and other random snails, and microfauna that came hitchhicking the plants. They do very well, but this is a too low bioload and tank feel empty.
Not yet sure about which other fishes will be in there, apart from the ancistrus, but I hope to house puffers, either my first choice, irrubescos that I had the chance to house in my first smaller tank, or schoutendeni, that I find slightly less beautiful but that are perfect size and temperament-wise...
But ATM irrubescos are completely impossible to find, and schoutedeni are a little bit too expensive...so I will probably wait till this winter and see if things change...
Here is a pics of the tank, full of plant life but a little bit empty animal-wise
I will try to post more, once I discover the size allowed for attachments...
It's 120cm long, 70 wide and 42 deep, with a very high canopy able to accommodate emerging plants.
It's built around natural planted tank concept, with small gravel capped potting soil as substrate, not much water change and no co2 injection nor chemical fertilizer...
But I have a quite large canister (2000l/h) and moderate led lighting, while hardcore npt use small canister or pump (only need water movement, no filter) and lower lighting...
in fact this tank is very similar to a previous tank I had in my old home, just scaled up (90l to 350l
). Last tank worked well, and this one, larger with a much bigger footprint, should work even better...It will be soon 1 month since I filled and planted it, and for a natural planted tank it's long enough for being very likely cycled. Few inhabitants at the moment, a baby ancistrus, some red cherry shrimps, mts and other random snails, and microfauna that came hitchhicking the plants. They do very well, but this is a too low bioload and tank feel empty.
Not yet sure about which other fishes will be in there, apart from the ancistrus, but I hope to house puffers, either my first choice, irrubescos that I had the chance to house in my first smaller tank, or schoutendeni, that I find slightly less beautiful but that are perfect size and temperament-wise...
But ATM irrubescos are completely impossible to find, and schoutedeni are a little bit too expensive...so I will probably wait till this winter and see if things change...
Here is a pics of the tank, full of plant life but a little bit empty animal-wise
I will try to post more, once I discover the size allowed for attachments...
