meeki/bladen river themed tank

[Tripping Willow 91]

Your time with small fish and intricate scapes will serve you well on this side of the hobby too. It’s all proportion. You’ll develop a masterpiece.

For sure, I've learnt a lot from my planted tanks and I've come a long way from my first attempt in April 2019.

Thanks, I really hope so ?. I'm in the UK, most of my hardscape and botanicals are/will be locally collected and the plants I'll use (at least for now) will be tiger lotus (not sure how well this will do in low light) and buce, both saved from my previous scape. Obviously as nothing I'm using is native to the bladen river or that region I'm not aiming for a biotope correct tank, more of something that ? closely resembles it. Also the tank is in my living room and I have a missus so it's gotta look nice ?

 

[Tripping Willow 91]

Merry Christmas all. Sadly I've not done much at all over the Christmas holidays regarding the the tank, still not a drop of ammonia has touched the water. Only update is that my steel pipes arrived for my smaller 12/16mm tetratec filter and were not long enough ?. I've actually got my tank backwards because the front was badly scratched so my filter cutouts are on the front and are not being used, I couldn't be bothered to cut the trim brace combo off, spin it around and re silicone. I decided for best flow I would position one filter rear left and one front right giving a nice circular flow, I previously cut a hole on each side of the cabinet to accommodate the pipework. As I'm not using the intended filter cutouts it means my inlets/outlets have to go over a large amount of trim before entering the water, the larger 407 pipework is just long enough but the tetra outlet was sitting above the water line creating lots of noise and the inlet was in the top third of the water level. Seeing as my old dad is a metal fabricator I had him extend them with 316SS, the outlet was extended 50mm so will now sit under the surface and the inlet 200mm so can now be positioned just above the substrate. I had no idea how much water was lost to evaporation on open tops so next on the list will be cutting some old Perspex I have to use as a lid. Also looks like I'm growing lots of biofilm on the wood.

 

[Tripping Willow 91]

The cycle begins ? On Tuesday I added 7ml of 9.5% ammonia which has taken me to around 3-4ppm, right where I wanted it, now I'll monitor things and play the waiting game. I may add some seachem stability along the way, as it's said to contain anaerobic bacteria and I'm hoping my filter/media can provide the required conditions for this bacteria to live. I've filled both my filters with lava rock, the tertatec also has a sun sun prefilter, I'm hoping the slowed flow from the prefilter along with the dense lava rock will be enough to harbour some denitrifying bacteria and hopefully the stability will give it a head start. I've not got the tetratec running yet as I seem to have misplaced the bottom plug for the intake so I'll sort that first. Before adding ammonia I decided to drain the tank and remove some sand, I've never used sand but I've read that if it's too deep, pockets of toxic gas can build up so I removed a little to get it closer to 2"-2.5" throughout. Whilst I had the tank drained I had a play around with the hardscape and also added a few non biotope correct plants I saved from my previous scape, a few little bits of bucephalandara and some red tiger lotus. I think the buce will work well but I'm not sure how the tiger lotus will go with the low watt lights I'm using (I added a second Asta f20), these lights are only 16w and the tank is 55cm tall so the light loving lotus might struggle a bit. I'm not sure I'm convinced with the hardscape, I might have a little play with it again or perhaps once I've added some thinner branches and gravel I might be happy. I don't wanna over do it with hardscape, I'd like to keep it fairly simple and easy for maintenance but I also want to provide plenty of shelter, territory and sight breaks for the meeki. What do you guys think so far?

 

[Tripping Willow 91]

Both spots front shot

 

[..puSkar..]

Looks mint ?

 

[Tripping Willow 91]

Looks mint ?

Thank you

 

[Tripping Willow 91]

Happy new year all, little update.

Filter number 2 is up and running and my cycle has began. Tested my water this evening and my ammonia has dropped to 1ppm and nitrites are around 0.25-0.50ppm. Far to hungover to be using a jigsaw today but tomorrow I will hopefully cut my Perspex and get a lid on this thing

 

[Tripping Willow 91]

Got the lid done. Not sure how well it will fair, I made my previous lid out of poly carbonate as I've heard Perspex can absorb moisture and bow but I had this piece laying around so thought I might as well give it a try

 

[mrrobxc]

For sure, I've learnt a lot from my planted tanks and I've come a long way from my first attempt in April 2019.

Thanks, I really hope so ?. I'm in the UK, most of my hardscape and botanicals are/will be locally collected and the plants I'll use (at least for now) will be tiger lotus (not sure how well this will do in low light) and buce, both saved from my previous scape. Obviously as nothing I'm using is native to the bladen river or that region I'm not aiming for a biotope correct tank, more of something that ? closely resembles it. Also the tank is in my living room and I have a missus so it's gotta look nice ?

I don’t drive myself crazy trying to go overly notions correct when it comes to plants either. I try to make my tanks natural but it’s impossible to source a lot of livestock from some of the more obscure habitats. I hear you 100%

 

[Tripping Willow 91]

I don’t drive myself crazy trying to go overly notions correct when it comes to plants either. I try to make my tanks natural but it’s impossible to source a lot of livestock from some of the more obscure habitats. I hear you 100%

I'd love for it to be 100% Biotope correct but yer I'm not gonna go crazy trying to source all my materials from the region I'm trying to create. I didn't wanna spend loads of money on this scape and I'm enjoying the challenge of trying to create something similar to the meeki's natural habitat with materials I already have or can locally forage, it makes the tank feel more personal ?