Black water Setup

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
co2 wont be a huge benefit running low light but it wont hurt either if you already have the setup. the reason a lot of plant people avoid sumps is the surface agitation will let the co2 gas out and be useless to plants. good blackwater plants include mosses, ferns, anubias, and crypts. most of these require very low light and will be fine in the soft blackwater. i like to attach these plants to driftwood to get them closer to the dim light and also leaves a natural look. crypts are the only ones that will need to be planted in your substrate.
 
I'm beginning to think that my original plan of dual fx5s with inline CO2 reactors might be the best bet for this setup. This is something I'm a little more familiar with than a sump setup
 
Also I have upgraded the tank to a 300 measuring 96x30x25. I am planning on running 3 of the lights listed in the link below with a controller that allows for sunrise and sunset functionality. Let me know if this is too much light too little or will it work fine. I was told I would need 3 of them for my 210 measuring 72x24x30 to keep most any plant happy so I figure 3 of them maybe 4 on a black water tank would be perfect

http://store.drtimsaquatics.com/Gro-Beam-1500-Ultima-Natural-Daylight_p_505.html
 
Blackwater tanks are beautiful. Unfortunatly they generally don't do great as planted tanks, plant options are somewhat limited. In a 300 some lillys would grow up towards the surface where the most light is concentrated and make an authentic look. The other concern is matching your water perameters when doing water changes you have to make sure you don't have abrupt changes in PH and hardness. I've used driftwood, leaf litter and peatmoss along with several small water changes with aged water as opposed to large ones to aviod shocking the system. These set ups are not the easiest to maintaine but once you get it down they are beautiful. Some of the anubius sp. tied to driftwood in the upper half of the water columb will work too along with some Java ferns/moss. HTH.
 
That's just murky.

This is a black water tank

2i9jyud.jpg


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This is the look I'm going for but would like a little green to it. I was originally going to do a heavily planted tank but I like the black water setup so much more. I really like the idea of using lilies in the tank now I just need to look into which ones would work in that environment. I'm also considering putting a storage tank underneath the main tank to autofill and be able to keep additional black water in
 
I will post a list of the few plants I am considering for the tank. Also another member introduced me to ADA substrate and now it's a must have the only issue is I noticed the bags are 9 litre bags. I found a conversion that converts liters to pounds but I am not sure if that is the correct way to go about it. Any help on this is greatly appreciated.
 
H_leucocephala.jpgHYDROCOTYLE LEUCOCEPHALA
Limnobium2.jpgLIMNOBIUM LAEVIGATUM
Phyllanthusbetter3.jpgPHYLLANTHUS FLUITANS
These are the plants I will be placing in the tank as of now. I am trying my hardest to keep everything in the tank completely native to the amazon. If anyone else has any suggestions on good amazonian low level light plants please let me know.

H_leucocephala.jpg

Limnobium2.jpg

Phyllanthusbetter3.jpg
 
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