It is my pleasure to present the January 2005 Tank of the Month:
Daniel Larsson's (defdac) 310 liter aquarium! Congratulations Daniel!
Introduction
My name is Daniel Larsson and I live in Sweden in a town called Linköping (pronounced “Linchirping”). I’m 30 years old and am currently working as a consultant for Ericsson.
Experience
My parents have had a 160 liter stainless steel aquarium since I was a kid, and this is me caught on film doing something to a fish I probably shouldn’t do.
I didn’t think much about aquariums until I got high speed Internet access while at the University and stumbled over a couple of Takashi Amano tanks. I immediately decided that I was going to have an aquarium like that when I moved out of my dorm.
When I got my first job and moved to a bigger apartment I got my 310 liter tank and made all the mistakes a planted aquarist can possibly do – using massive amount of clay and peat as suggested by other planted aquarists here in Sweden was one of them. I’ve battled all the kind of algae and cyanobacteria was especially hard for me to get rid of.
So I started to search the Internet for information about planted tanks and started to discuss them on Swedish forums. I found my way to the Aquatic Plant Digest, and from there everything started to look better, especially thanks to Tom Barr.
I started to understand cyanobacteria and that some of them use heterocysts to extract nitrogen from the air. High levels of KNO3 and KH2PO4 irradiated them for good and I could start to focus on aquascaping instead of plants and algae. I’m into this hobby for the design and aquascaping part, and all the weird plant physiology knowledge is just a “bonus” for me.
Tank Details - 310 liter tank with the dimensions of 125x50x40 centimeters. I think it’s too big and clumpsy so I will convert to three 60 liter tanks in the future so I can have several designs going on at the same time.
6x40 watts of T8 Philips Aquarelle without reflectors in a hood that's too tight. New tanks in the future will probably use some kind of pendant T5 lighting or Metal Halides so I can have an open top.
Hagen Fluval 404 acting as a CO2 reactor. I hate it, especially the fact it has broken down a couple of times and above all it’s noisy! – I have it wrapped with towels. I will get an Eheim in the future.
CO2 cylinder with JBL regulator + needle valve and BioPlast magnetic valve.
Hagen Biomax, Ehfimech and Ehfisubstrat in the Fluval 404, and also a Hagen Quickfilter which I use after water changes to polish the water really well. I try to fiddle with the filter as little as I can so it’s important to have filter materials that don’t clog but still provide for excellent nitrification to get low and stable ammonia levels.
Parameters- My tap water is soft in both alkalinity (~2.5 KH) and total hardness (~4 GH), so I’ve been troubled by the Ca:Mg ratio quite a bit. When I dose 5 ppm Mg as suggested by calculators I get severe Calcium deficiencies, and even if I stop Mg-dosing I still get Calcium deficiencies in plants like Althernanthera reineckii and Ludwigia glandulosa. Raising the total hardness with CaCl2 has helped a lot. The other tap water parameters are good (low on everything).
I make >100% water changes once a week. I take two hoses, one in and one out and let the water change as I prune and fluff the plants and scrub of algae from the glass. I also let the filter run. This usually takes one hour. When things look bad I let the water change even longer and I kick back in the sofa watching TV and fluff the plants every 15 minutes. Very effective way of getting rid of green water. The trick is the fluffing and letting the filter run as the water change.
My current dose is: 0.2 tsp KNO3, 0.2 tsp K2SO4, 0.2 tsp MgSO4, 25 mls of KH2PO4 stock solution (2 tsp in 200 mls of water) and 30 mls of NutriSi stock solution (1.2 tsp NutriSi in 300 mls of water). This should render me about 0.1 ppm Fe, 2.5 ppm NO3 and 2.5 ppm PO4. PO4 is good. My plants love it.
Substrate is plain gravel. All my substrate fertilization experiments have gone bad and water column fertilization was the key turning point when everything started to grow really fast.
I start my CO2-injection one hour before lights go on rendering me a tad to high CO2-level in the morning ~40-50 ppm but this goes way down in the middle of the day to around ~10-15 ppm when the plants photosynthetisize at their peak rate, but it works.
Aquascaping
The current design is convex and concave. The wood is concave and the plant group is convex. I wanted to try the 3D-perspective-illusion Takashi Amano often makes with driftwood making the tank look deeper and leading the eye away from the confinements of the tank. The driftwood forms a big hug, hugging and welcoming the viewer and in it’s lap I placed the solitaire Ludwigia glandulosa.
My first intent was to make an all hair grass design, but I couldn’t throw away all the plants I’ve collected over the years and I don’t have several CO2-enriched tanks so I did the best I could with the plants I had.
I never think of biotopes when I aquascape. I’ve seen pictures of biotopes and they are frankly quite dull (well ok, I’ve seen some that look rather nice). I’m in this hobby because I strive for the Takashi Amano look. That is what I like, and I don’t find it important to find a completely new way of designing tanks or finding the “Swedish” look or something like that. I know what I like, I do it and it will be written Daniel all over it even if my inspiration mostly comes from Amano.
Here are some more picture of my tank as it changed:
September 7, 2003
September 14, 2003
October 8, 2003
January 10, 2004
June 4, 2004
September 11, 2004
Should you have any questions, please let me know.
Regards,
Daniel Larsson
Tank of the Month: January 2005 
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