dennis

Well I figured it was time to do a few new things. First, I have created my first real Nano aquarium and second, I am creating an actual journal for it two new things for me. Hopefully this will be a learning experience for everyone. Let's get started shall we......

First, I built the the tank for this project from 1/4" Lucite CP I got for free. It was pretty badly scratched up on one face, so I assembled it with the good side in. After using Weld-On 3 to do all the joinery I sanded, buffed and polished the outside. See my thread in the DIY section for more info about this. Next I found a suitable place in my room for the tank and started to set it up. This was pretty fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants as I had no plan for what I was doing. I jsut made it up as I went.

First part of the setup, add activated carbon to the bottom. This acts as a good porus location for future bacteria colonies and helps to draw any organic nasties out of the substrate for the first few weeks. I used 2 of the little packets that come with Whisper filter cartridges......


Next I added a thin layer of ground up peat, about 1/2 a handful scattered evenly over the bottom. Remove any sticks or other large debries....


Next I added a cup full of mature substrate from an established aquarium (sorry, no pic of that) and then capped it with many handfuls of Onyx sand.....




Now the fun part Scape it! I used small broken bieces of some kind of rock I found at the local landscape supply place. It seems like some form of very loose shale. the cool thing is it is full of shell fossils and tiny holes, I assume from worms of snails in the mud the rock was formed from. Some pizza and a hammer and here is what I came up with....



Now I had to cut down the filter tube from the Whisper 10 I wanted to use....



and perfect fit for the tank.....



Now I ate more pizza and got a drink. This is alot of work for a Friday evening! Then I started preparing and planting the plants. I attached Microsorium Windelov and Anubias barteri var nana (sorry, no pic of the anubias) to rocks using dark green florists wire.....




Then I started the tedious job of seperating my dwarf hairgrass from the mix of marsilea species, moss and hairgrass I pulled from another tank. I ended up with several plugs, all neatly arranged on a chinese food container lid...




I planted these carefully as the substrate is very light and fluffy still. It will settle over time. I used 4" pointy tweezers that I picked up at the local pharmacy in the cosmetics section. For those hard to reach plaecs behind rocks, I used longer (18") aquascaping tweezers.

Here is the end result. I am still considering using HC for the very forground and I might loose the fern and anubias later, we'll see how things develop. Also I have added a few floating duckweed plants to help combat algae, etc for the first couple weeks. Now I just need to figure out a good DIY CO2 formula. I dosed the tank after it was all setup to have ~10ppm NO3 and .5ppm PO4. Also added half a capful of Flourish Excel. Tomorrow I will add 1ml of CSM+B mix. I plan on doing 10-20% water changes once or twice a week for the first few weeks then decreasing to 1 every 2 weeks over the course of a mmonth or so. Eventually I will get some shrimp, not sure what kind yet, from a friend and hopefully a couple Nerite snails.

Please contiunue to check in as I update the thread. As always in the aquascaping section, questions and critiques are encouraged.



and a shot of the whole setup....




Thanks for your time

turtlehead

Very nice scape, but dont you think that light this is pretty dangerous? I would use a desktop lamp.

dennis

Thanks The light used to be a desk lamp but unfortunate circumstance have allowd it to be reborn as you see it. I don't feel the light is dangerous although I do appreciate your concern. It is sitting on a full glass cover and th ebulb is only a 10 watt All Glass screw in CF. The entire fixture is not warm to the touch after being on for 7 hours. I have no childern or pets to knock it off so if the fixture ever comes in contact with the water, I will have much bigger issues to worry about

dennis

Less than a week and already rescaped it. I switched out the hairgrass, Eleocharis acicularis, for something that will hopefully stay smaller, Lilaeopsis brasiliensis and Hemianthus callitrichoides. I have dosed a very small amount of macros and traces to try and ge the ball rolling and I added 2 Nerite snails. I killed one with an accidental dumping of 7-8ml of Excel I think I will try gnome's gelatin reciepe with my next visit to the grocer's. Here are some updated shots. Feel free to critique. This journal is not just a contest journal, it is supposed to be helpful to people aswell. Hopefully it is....




Only visible side shot....

baj

Looks like a good start dennis. I was wondering about using HC and the Lileopsis, how would you control the lileopsis from sending out runners everywhere and getting in the way of your HC, or is that something you want it to do? Or just snip out errant runners everytime you see one?

dennis

The growth should be pretty slow so I will just snip-snip as necessary. The tank os only 8"x8" so not that much ground to cover.

turtlehead

The lileopsis will grow slow so no problems with runners, as for hc growth you will have a full foreground in about 4 months. Great start.