[Psittac]

I need help and thoughts about aquascaping my first aquarium. It's a 130g angelfish tank. I plan on seperating the tank into three sections with a large sword in each section. That way my mated angels can pick one section and feel seperated enough to leave the rest of the tank to the other angels.

What plants would segregate a tank properly? (23in tall)

Lighting: the lighting will be Power Compact 4x65w (2 6500, 2 10k) plus one 20" 96w 6700k and later I'm going to add two 3' 96w PC bulbs.

On one of the sections I want to make the substrate raised by a rock wall division. I saw an awsome contest entry on youtube that had a river going down some rocks.... I doubt I'll be able to recreate something as nice but I was thinking of using fine white sand to use as the surface on the upper portion, then have it "pour" down the rocks into a small "white lake" at the bottom. The rest of the substrate will be topped with black sand.

Groundcover: I want to do a ground cover, I've always liked the grasses. Substrate will be fired clay with a sand top. Any advice on getting a good cover over the bottom?

 

[Psittac]

Well I'm pretty much stuck with the lighting I've got, it's all PC but eventualy I'll have 548 watts.

In my very limited lighting experience T5 penetrates better, is this correct?

Since the PC is my only option what ground cover would you recommend? I'm just going to have to buy plants meant for my lighting.

 

[Psittac]

Well I'm uncertain of what I'm doing for fertilizers. I was thinking about doing the mineralized substrate posted on this site, but after talking to my friend and his wife I'm thinking that will be getting me in way over my head.

So far I'm planning on the clay substrate with sand covering, then I'm going to let the fish fertilize the tank slowly. If I need to do something differently down the road I can. I'm still very uncertain of this part so any advice is very welcomed.

For CO2, I'm going to piece together a pressurized system as cheap as I can. My friend said that I should get a solenoid to turn the CO2 off at night or it could kill my fish so thats a little extra money I may need to spend.

Another question I had is about stocking levels for fish, I was also told that by putting more fish in a tank you greatly increase your chances of algae and cyano bacteria. My tank is lightly stocked for a 130 but heavily stocked when compared to just about any quality aquarium I see online.

 

[Psittac]

The clay substrate I'm getting is SMS Charcoal or Oil Dry, it's just fired clay and it's very cheap.

 

[Psittac]

Thanks for all the posts, esp the links tex girl, I'll look into them.

For now I'm thinking I'll just stay at low lighting considering I can turn all of my lights on or off in sets of two bulbs.

I just got done putting 100lbs of substrate in and it's rather thick. It should be good enough to get me into the hang of things and some day when I know more of what I want to do then I can add something to the substrate or do things differently. For now I'm gonna stay as simple as I can while keeping a workable tank.