6g Led Tank - Aquascaping

bamboosharkbark · 11-08-2011, 08:34 PM

This is a neeeew 6g tank I just set up recently. The Lighting as mentioned are LEDs and was a DIY project and very easy to complete after I'd read up on the method on various reefing forums. These lights are still a little uncommon among freshwater but I can tell you that so far the ripple effect and color temperature has me satisfied! I got the leds and the driver from rapidleds.com. I'm using 2x 3w cool white xpgs and 1xwarmwhite xre, and the driver is a meanwell LPC 35-700. Believe this should be sufficient light for my 6g but hope its enough for my rotala color up nicely.
To hold up the piece of aluminum heatsink that I mounted my LEDs on I just bent a piece of thick enough aluminum to a right angle, placed the LED heatsink on top and epoxied them together. Finally screwed the thing onto the back of my shelf. Easy! cool..
Going to be using a diy yeast Co2 setup with a nano differ for Co2 and dosing flourish excel occasionally and adding some regular flourish.

Aquascaping:
The Rocks are actually petrified wood I found on Ebay from a seller called kdd1957 and the substrate is pool filter sand.
So far I've only got some anubias planted but soon I'll be planting some rotala rotundifolia along the background and adding some Taiwan moss.

Inhabitants:
Waiting for my lfs to receive next shipment so I can grab an Indian dwarf puffer or two if they get male and females. If for whatever reason that doesn't work I may get a few neon tetra.

Thats all for now and thanks for checking out my thread.

CURRENT FTS:
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The Leds and heatsink on the aluminum arm:
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My filter with some clear acrylic teeth cut from a hatching box divider making it almost like a hang on the back refugium. I want to put some ludwigia in there to grow emmersed:
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Where I screw the aluminum arm holding the heatsink to my shelf:
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bamboosharkbark · 11-09-2011, 05:02 PM

Little Update on my progress, I got plants today, unfortunately not those I was hoping to get but nonetheless something. I got Ludwigia (not sure of which sp. maybe you guys can ID?), plant that the guy called Japanese star rush (again no ID), some water sprite for the "refugium" and some cabomba which is also in the fuge since I have no clue if I even want it. Also a tiny bit of Taiwan moss that I anchored under an anubias rhizome.
Anyways have a look at my tank and any advice on my scape would be much
appreciated.

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and the water sprite plus cabomba in the HoB
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bamboosharkbark · 11-09-2011, 05:52 PM

question: will this tank be ok without any fish at all for like a week? I heard the plants need ammonia but I'm already adding flourish excel and Co2 in one or two days. Should I add fish food for ammonia??

Storms · 11-10-2011, 04:22 PM

The tank looks great! You should be fine with no fish for a while. Let your tank cycle a bit before adding the fish.

bamboosharkbark · 11-12-2011, 11:30 AM

Hey guys got a problem with my anubias, when I got them I dipped them in a hydrogen peroxide solution to get any hair algae off. Now the leaves look like they're dying. I'm not sure if it was the h.p. dip but dont think itd be regular excel dosing or too little light.

Any help on what I should do? Do I cut off the effected leaves?

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bamboosharkbark · 11-14-2011, 03:29 PM

I decided to try something bold to save them so I grabbed an empty fluval edge tank that I had sitting around to make an emersed set for them. So I put the rhizomes in a pot of soil and covered the top with some plastic wrap. So far the single leaves left on the two rhizomes seen to be doing fine.

I have a few concerns however because the air in the tank smelled bad and I have no heater in the water. Room temperature is 78 and I live in the tropics so humidity should be 76% outside according to a weather forecast. Is a heater absolutely necessary for the water to warmer than the air?

I discovered one of my anubias had the tip of the end of its rizome rotting, so I cut off the tiny bit and the end looks green and solid now.

I spay the plant occasionally with club soda (carbonated water with potassium bicarbonate, potassium citrate and potassium sulfate).

Any advice on how to continue?
Some pics:

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bamboosharkbark · 11-29-2011, 04:03 PM

Ive got a few new java ferns and also added 3 glowlight tetra as well as 3 neons. I got rid of the Japanese rush plant since I didn't like it.

Here's a picture of the setup now:

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the anubias are slowly gowing big roots now in the emersed setup and one has grown a new leaf. No signs of rhizome rot either. I added diy co2 which releases the co2 into the air in the container and growth on the ludwigia definitely increased. Also added in some Taiwan moss which is doing good. Humidity is more or less 85%

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