New tank endeavor

[StirCrazy]

Well as you all know I sold my 94 tank and I am turning the stand into garage shelving (unless some one wants a stand real quick that will take a 24x24 tank up to 4.5 foot long.

anyways it is going to be a fairly large tank (between 115 for 24" tall, 144 for 30"tall and 173 for 36" tall, I haven't quite decided on the final design yet) but I want to decide what kind of tank I am doing before I start having stuff built and what not.

I do want plants, my last planted tank was beautiful for a low tech tank so I want to go a bit more high tech, better lighting, I have a co2 tank and regulator for CO2 injection and what not but I want to go with plants that grow to maximum heights to cut down on the labor of trimming. I used to spend 1 hour a week trimming my last planted tank. If I can get away with it I don't want to do any trimming so I can just focus on water changes and enjoying my tank.

I was thinking of a discus tank but that is out the window now as I don't want to spend 800.00 on fish.

so I need to know everything people are doing now from type of substrates, equipment, lighting, what to make for a co2 diffuser ect.

I also need some suggestions for fish, I want color but not hard water Ciclids, as my tap water is 18ppm hardness and I don't want to have to add a bunch of harness.

I am thinking of having the new tank drilled, so the option of running a sump is there or I can put a plug in the holes if I don't use a sump.

Let hear the ideas.

Steve

[trilinearmipmap]

OK here are a few thoughts.

I'd consider staying low tech if you want low maintenance. Between my high-tech tank and my low-tech tank, the high tech tank takes 10 times the effort and has more algae problems. The low tech tank is a 15 minute water change once a week, a good pruning every 6 weeks or so, and no algae period.

You don't need to spend $800.00 on discus, talk to Jason at Superior Aquaristik, you can get good discus for much less than that. However there are two drawbacks I have found to having a planted discus tank: discus eat snails which IMO are necessary for a plant tank, and discus produce a lot of waste which makes algae problems a little more difficult to deal with.

I'd think twice about a tall plant tank. First of all it is very hard to reach your arms in for maintenance, planting and pruning. Second the top leaves will shade the lower leaves, for a lot of stem plants this means leaves at the top and a spindly mess of stem and roots at the bottom, also any foreground plants will be shaded more by taller plants.

My low tech tank is onyx sand substrate, no CO2 injection, two 55-watt pc's and a 30 watt NO grow bulb over a 58-gallon tank, PMDD dosing 5 mL daily. This tank is in my office at work, I literally spend 30 seconds on it once a day feeding and fertilizing, and once a week a 50% water change. There are a few Amano shrimp, and schools of silver hatchetfish, cardinals and rummy nose tetras.

I like the onyx sand substrate especially with having very soft acid tap water, the onyx sand slowly dissolves and buffers the kH up to about 2 and the pH about 7.2, so there is no need to add alkalinity, calcium or magnesium like you normally would with soft acid water.

I would suggest this type of setup over a high-light tank if you want to enjoy your tank instead of working on it all the time.

[StirCrazy]

I am not to worried about algae as for some reason I can't grow it in my freshwater tanks. the remenants of my 40 planted tank is still running and I have 4 HO lights on it. At one point I was adding 1 cup of PMDD a day to try to grow something but still nothing. My fresh water tank has been running 6 or 7 years now with out a break or restart and I have never cleaned the glass and never had to (aside from the outside) I don't know why, could be the 6.2 PH could be the low hardness or a combo.

with the taller plants I was thinking of a teired effect with some tall in the back medium in the middle and short up front. not all tall.

I also want different colors so I think I will need to go with PC lighting and CO2 injection, but I am hoping throught carfull plant selection I can keep the maintance to a minimum. I guess at any rate I coukd just mow the tank when it gets overgrowen also.

I find that my Java fern doesn't do as well as I would like, it grows and multiplys but older leaves seam to disolve leaving the vein structure, and I can't figure out why, thought it was an iron deff, so I raised my iron.. no change..

Steve