24gal planted nanocube build

[nugpuffer]

So the other day I scored I 24 gallon JBJ nano cube for cheap off CL. I've been looking to upgrade my 10g tank for a while now and this will suit me just fine for a while.

Here's a pic of the nanocube with the matching stand:

The tank is in great condition, and after scraping coraline for about 2 hours I got it looking good as new. The person I bought it from had said that the ballast was broken, but after testing both outputs, I found that it worked just fine! One of the bulbs needs replacment, but I had to do that anyway since I am converting it to a planted tank.

Closeup:

Right now the tank is cycling and should be done in a few days. I will be using either eco complete or black 3m colorquartz for the substrate. I have also ordered 2 36 watt 6500K PC bulbs and will be running DIY CO2 for now. However for lighting I am probably going to start off with one 6500K bulb and the one dual 10000K/actinic that is already in the fixture.

For decor I ordered this piece of manazita driftwood from cbbeautys.com:

As far as inhabitants go I currently have about 100 red cherry shrimp and a dozen neon tetras moving over from the 10 gallon. Off the top of my head the current plant stocklist includes: bronze crypt wendtii, crypt lucens, cambomba, java ferm, java moss, rotala, corkscrew val, amazon sword, hornwort, and 2 different types of anubias. Most of the larger plants such as the anubias and amazon sword will be moved over to my 55gal as soon as I upgrade the lighting.

Here's a shot of the 10gal I'm upgrading from:

*sorry for the crappy cell phone pics -- my digital camera refuses to turn on at tme moment.

 

[Rockbass6]

Looks good, the ten looks kind of cramped, excuse for a new tank!!

 

[katana1200]

Nice find! I've been looking at these biocubes for awhile now. Looking forward to seeing the finished product. Now, I need an excuse for another tank lol.

 

[Adhlc]

Nice, I'll be looking forward to seeing this progress. Any updates yet?

 

[nugpuffer]

Grrr... USPS was supposed to deliver my new PC bulbs last Friday. I was home when they supposedly came by, but I'm thinking they just decided to be lazy and left the delivery slip in my mailbox instead of coming to my apartment. Went to the Post Office today and my package is mysteriously lost in transit. So now I have to wait until tomorrow to figure out what happened. /Rant

Anyways, my substrate should be arriving later today and the driftwood should be coming soon after, so I will be able to begin laying the hardscape. I have been fishless cycling for a week now with current ammonia levels @ 0ppm and nitrite levels are beginning to drop as of today (currently @ 0.5 ppm).

I will be ordering some additional plants this week to fill out the foreground and add some color in the back. These include dwarf hairgrass, Hemianthus 'Cuba', moneywort, flame moss, and ludwigia peruensis.

I'll post some more pics when I get the substrate in.

BTW thanks for the comments!

 

[nugpuffer]

I ended up going with Aquariumplants.com's Own Freshwater planted aquarium substrate. I bought a 2gal bucket of the black diamond color. After doing a little research on it, I found that it should work well for my purposes.

It said to only rinse once so I put it bit by bit into a steel pot strainer and rinsed it until the water ran clear.

After rinsing the substrate out, I drained 90% of the water in the tank and put the substrate in. When filling the tank back up, I noticed that the water was still clouding badly, so I did 3 or 4 water changes (only filling the tank ~halfway each time) and then filled the tank all the way up. Now the water is perfectly clear and hopefully by thoroughly rinsing the substrate now I will be able to avoid cloudiness in the future when moving stuff around in the tank.

(*the water looks cloudy in the pic, but thats just the low quality of the camera used. I'll borrow a DSLR from a buddy once I get the tank planted.)


I will probably begin working on the hard scape later today.

 

[snow]

I looks so nice, good job.

 

[nugpuffer]

^Thanks!

Got my power compact bulbs in today. I'm going to run the 10000K/Actinic alongside one of the 6500K bulbs for now to see how it works out. I can always switch in the other 6500K bulb later. It sure looks much better having some of the lighting in the red spectrum, as well as the blue/white spectrum.

Also, I threw in a small power head to increase water movement.

I went ahead and did some of the initial planting/ hard scape to see how things would look. I'm still waiting on more plants and driftwood which probably won't arrive until next week.

Notice how much of the blue tint was taken out after adding the 6500K bulb.

On a side note, after pulling up all the plants in my 10g I found way more RCS then I thought were in there. I guess they all don't always come out at feeding time.

 

[darth pike]

I like what looks to be that step ladder planting idea on the right there.

 

[nugpuffer]

^for the "step-ladder" effect I used a ceramic fountain I had lying around. It has 4 different levels, each of which hold enough substrate to plant in.

I wasn't sure about the looks of it at first when no plants were in the tank, but now it looks pretty nice. The driftwood should hook right over the top of it.