The Angel Garden - Jamie's El Natural Journey Part 2 - El Natural

ultrajamie · 04-27-2008, 11:47 AM

Ok... here we go again!

Last year I set up a 'semi el natural' tank. Why 'semi' ? Well, i used more light than you might otherwise use in an el natural (4 x 38w tubes in a 240litre tank) and had an external filter. I also used a laterite and clay mixture beneth the substrate... but no C02.

This i what the tank looked like on set up:

This is what it looked like after a few months:

So... after a while this tank became really to much work. I revisted it and removed all of the stem plants... Oh, i also removed two of the lights... it became much more el natural... the tank matured into this:

It went really well until a mistake caught up with me... I used silver sand - my plants did really well, then all of a sudden they died back... and i discovered my subsrtate was rotten. UGH... REALLY ROTTEN.

I was quite disapointed having to tear the tank down... and it STANK. honestly... getting 15 - 20 kg of stinky clay, sand and laterite out of a tank is not fun.

Just redid it as a community tank and have raised some parrot fish and severums and a couple of clown loaches in it.

Anyway... The severums mean that my tank doesn't support many plants!

and i really miss my old 'lush' looking set up... I was looking at my tank today thinking 'i can do better than this'

Another thing happened... a friend gave me eight 1.5" angel fish... and i started thinking what a lovely idea it would be to do a tank with lots of onion plants for the angels.

So first things first:

I have 2 7" blood parrots and 4 4" severums free to a good home... along with a common plec and a red gibbceps. I am based in Norwich, UK... if you want them, PM me and they're yours.

MY PLANS:

I have another pressure on my hobby apart from a simple desire for more plants... energy prices in the UK are going up and up... so I need to reduce the cost of running my tank wherever I can. This means I can't justify tons of light again... and am going to have to replace my canister filter + UV with a sponge-based eheim internal filter that only uses 6w (aquaball 2012) - doing this alone will save me, over the course of the year, several times the cost of the new filter in electricity - the fact that I can sell the canister filter and UV to fund the changes to the system for what will hopefully be a cheaper to run and easier to maintain tank is an added bonus.

So, at this stage, I have questions...

1 - Do i need to strip the tank down completely? I've read about using frozen soil inserts... if i use these with root fert tabs... will that be enough to get the plants going? Basically, is a soil 'layer' essential?

2 - i've got pea-grade standard aquarium gravel what are the odds that this will stagnate? I REALLY don't want to go through that again.

3 - I live in a flat and don't have access to topsoil have any UK members here used any 'off the shelf' soil products with success? By that i mean commerical soil / compost - not expensive aquarium products,

Thank in advance for you advice.

So... This is where it begins. Again... eek.

orlando · 04-27-2008, 12:09 PM

Very nice, your crypts look nice and healthy. Very green

ultrajamie · 04-27-2008, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orlando

Very nice, your crypts look nice and healthy. Very green

you mean they DID? You did read the post... right?

orlando · 04-27-2008, 12:16 PM

They did, but your tank looked nice. Until your substrate died. Sorry to hear about it. Good luck with the re do.

ultrajamie · 04-27-2008, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orlando

They did, but your tank looked nice. Until your substrate died. Sorry to hear about it. Good luck with the re do.

Thanks...

Any input on any of the questions i have above?

bratyboy2 · 04-28-2008, 01:14 PM

ultrajamie~ i read every bit of your post...lol

the crypts DID indeed look very nice.
i have uses shelf type soils in my tanks and they really do very well. the thing is really just get the chearpest soil you can. if it has perlite then shake it through a strainer...its messy or if you can find get some without any in it.

pea gravel is a great layer onop of soil sound that sounds good.
onions get really tallso be prepared, but have fun dont hink to much about doing it better if you like it do it.

keep us updated

Shurik · 04-29-2008, 06:18 AM

Oh, this is too bad what happened to your substrate

, you had such a great looking tank!

But it’s great that I saw your post before I did something similar to it, thanks for sharing!

I just had 20 gal set up and started out with sponges, HOB and power heads and because of this experience, for my new 50 gal project I am looking only at canister filters. Yup.

My fish tanks are propagating like weed and I live in the flat just like you are, the energy price does go up and up. So there is a possibility my fish will force me out to the poor house. But still… Switching to the sponge filter only might stink.

It would be great if some knowledgeable people would post something about their ways to conserve more energy with minimum compromises and best outcome.
We all might use those tips.

I don’t know what kind of a canister filter you have right now, but its worth of a research to figure out what kind of changes you need to make not to end up like me with the whole pile of useless cheap little filters.

P.S. My latest discovery: Eheim 2236 is using only 5 watts!!!
And sorry about my English.
Cheers!

ultrajamie · 04-30-2008, 10:36 AM

Quick update:

The eheim filter arrived today but i wan't in so will have to go collect it. doh.

I bought a small bag of akadama http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akadama

It's a red clay-based material people grow bonsai in... it was reccomended on another forum for it's properties... i'll mix this in with my soil.

Someone is coming to collect my fish at the weekend... so hopefully i'll have some more interesting to post then.

More questions...

I want a 'grassy look' using tiers of different plants...

E. tenellus into blyxa japonica into sagiteria natans into valis... a 'slope' of plants gradually getting taller along the tank...

Which grows taller sagiteria natans, or blyxa japonica?

ultrajamie · 05-10-2008, 04:10 PM

So I redid my tank today... Lot's of pics below!

First things first, there's one essential ingredient that anyone should have to hand when stripping down a tank:

My replacement glassware from aqua essentials arrived - amazing service after the original order arrived broken. Thanks!

I had some bits and pieces laying around that i decided to use in the tank after the discussion in this thread http://ukaps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1582

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graeme Edwards

Hi guys,

Ive planted up a small tank in the Green Machine recently. I work the substrate with an influence from ADA's notion of thinking. When setting it up, I added a layer of Tropica substrate, then a layer of SERA syporax mini filter media granules and the Zambezi sand over the top of that. I added the syporax for the sole purpose of bacteria colonization. Now Ive not compared the cost of that to the power sand, but it works a long the same theme. you could use Ehime bio balls or anything that is small ( gravel size ish ) and highly porous.
I think its a clever idea. The tank Ive set up is only 4 weeks old now, so its still to early to say, but its looking good, healthy and the fish are very happy.
.

Namely I had a small amount of perlag (basically pumice pieces) and a larger amount of eheim Ehfi Substrat Pro that came with a filter i bought of ebay but never used because i already had mature media to put in it.

I also had my potting compost ready, which has been 'tinkered' with - the addtion of a small amount of sand, some dried out and powered red potters clay. and a few handfuls of crushed oystershell. There's also a couple of litres of akadama in there (got a small bag from a local garden centre, but that's all they had).

The first job i had was to clean out my Eheim external and leave the resulting mulm to settle in a bucket...

(mmm - lovely!)

While the mulm was settling i refilled the filter and set it up on a polysterene fish box, drain my tank, bagged my plants and transfered my fish to the box. I had to chuckle at the fish box - possibly the best filtered couple of gallons of water in the world (Vecton V2 600 UV, Eheim Pro 2 2028, Eheim 2012 internal)!!!

Obviously all the filters were turned down to a trickle in such a small space

Once the fish were taken care of, i started work on the tank...

First I added the mulm from my filter (having drained off most of the water), then the pumice - which actually didn't go very far but i chucked it in anyway. Then I added roughly an inch of the potting compost mixture. I had some ADA bacter 100 and sprinkled that on top of the soil too...

On top of this i added the Eheim Substrat Pro - worked out that i had just enough to cover the soil to a depth of a couple of CM.

And then the gravel went in to a depth of about 1.5" (the gravel was completely unwashed during the strip down, so i'm hopeful i preserved all the 'good stuff'

After this, I got to work on the hardscape, this was actually quite easy because i knew in my head exactly what i wanted - a 'hill' type structure with the pinnacle slightly off-centre... this is made of of red moorland root, a large piece of bogwood and slate pieces.

This is actually the first time i've planted a tank before adding water - SO MUCH EASIER! I could plant much closer together... why have i never done this before?

after this it was a simple case of filling up - with two surprises... 1, not a single plant came loose (touch wood) and the water remained very clear considering the layers of crap on the bottom of the tank

And so.... Drum roll.... this is how the tank looks filled:

It's going to take a fair while to fill out i think... and the crinum on the left is going to need some time (they arrived as bulbs and are currently wedged into tropica pots with rockwool and weighted until they start to root... So far though, I'm REALLY pleased!

More pics to to follow once ther water's a bit sharper and the plants look less bedraggled!

davemonkey · 05-10-2008, 05:47 PM

That's going to look awesome!