KpT

Hi everyone

I am at the final stages of my biotope now

It may sound funny becasuse the tank has been up and running sicne i changed it to a biotope for a long time now but i have changed it around a lot and have finally settled for what i want after experimenting with what you can do with the south american scene, and trust me ive tried everything.

So some final ideas to make the tank at its best have come to mind.

As it stands, the tank is:

3ft long
white slica 1 and half inches deep
2 fluval internal filters, 2+ and 3+
lots of bogwood
lots of moss
few stones and a tree trunk cave
ONLY FISH IN ARE A PAIR OF RAMS

over the past i have had loads of cardinals, many fake big amazon plants, a failed floating plant, a few almond leaves, moss as a floor of the tank, lots of catfish, coloured ferns and a lot more.

But ignoring all that i want to finally:

DARKENING the sand somehow to enhnace colour of fish to follow
RE leaf litter the tank to make it more natural
RE install the peat filtration but have it hidden undera big cave with coloured bubbles
have better FLOATING PLANTS
have SLOWER moving water
PLANTING some swords and vallisneria
add plant pots and caves to reduce agression
and ADDING some ****************atoo cichlids and apistogrmma Nijessni-macmasteri plus some bottom feeders

THEN THE TANK WILL BE COMPLETE AND ITLL JUST BE MAINTANENCE TO KEEP UP

THE THINGS I NEED HELP WITH WERE CAPITILISED OUT OF THE LIST

DARKENING

i am not sure how to darken the white silica sand?
I want to use soemthing that wont affect the water and that can be messed with when i turn overt he sand
I was thinking maybe FIRST LAYER, that you can mix in with gravel to help the plants grow( which is brown


FLOATING PLANTS

Last time i bought a flaoting plant was also the first, i have no idea how to look after these well unfortunatley, so it was a waste of 4.25 becasue for once i didnt do my research
The plant got blown around by the current from my filters, the roots broke off when it got in the way at water changes and it just never grew becasue i couldnt find a way to fertilise it well.
The frogbit is supposed to feed of nitrates but the water is pretty pure so theres not a lot of that.

SLOWER

I need a way of slowing down my filters wihtout the risk of too much **** building up?
There is a flow reducer on the fronts of them but i dont want to put them down becasue they dont seem high enough wehn there at full, i think this is becasue the peat gets clogged in them easily and there getting a little old. I dont mind if the solution to this is buying an external filter, if that would be wiser?

PLANTING

Planting the swords and vallisneria im thinking will be tricky, as the substrate is shallow sand, but every profile for these cichlids insists ona planted tank, and im with them as regards reducing agression so im not sure. I also am not sure how to fertilise them plants either as i have not donw planted tanks for a while.
All i know is all plants apart from swords are very fussy and require a lot of CO2 and light yes?

ADDING

Last but not least, the stocking of the aquarium has always baffled me, some people have managed to keep way over the limits with success and others who have even tipped the boundaries have failed miserbaly and have had to start from scratch.
So i obviously want to stock wisely, cautiously and slowly in the most logical order for territory.
All three of the new cichlids mentioned need to be 1 male to 3 or 4 females and im thinking thats like 14 fish all together working it out, and they all have potential to grow to about 3 or 4" so this is over my stocking density already without thinking about bottom dwellers.

So im asking about adding, as regards which out of the fish mentioned to add would be best, like most worth it to add if you like. And which bottom feeders would be okay with them as well

Thanks so much for your time reading all this

Any responses will be greatly appreciated

Cheers

Sam

PS; the new species if forgotten to choose from are the ****************atoo cichlids and apistogrmma Nijessni-macmasteri!!

lew2000

I was wondering how you were progressing on your tank. I tried leaf litter - almond leaves and some oak leaves (even more tannins), read all of the articles i could - diiverted the outflows becuase i didn't want to restrict the filter(s) GPH via spray bars at the bottom back of tank to reduce currents and i put the inlet tubes at the top. I went with a black/brown/off white gravel mix (very small gravel) instead of sand to get some color differential and i now use Marc Weiss Keta-Peat Nuggets instead of peat to soften the water and its easier than the peat - more expensive of course but seems to be a little more controllable. I stopped using the Oak leaves - the leaf shape seems to create nooks and crannies for more junk to pile up versus the Almond leave's smoother edges. . Lighting - i went with silk plants when reading about spectrum/wavelength penetration through the brown/dark water, was going to require most likely metal halides or a **** of alot of T5's?? Still a work in progress

KpT

hey im not sure if im supposed to be commenting on this thred at such a late date but i didnt realise my thread had been put as a result on google and found this when i was looking up to check about leaves to use.

Gratefully youve answered my question perfectly, i got almond leaves first time but then i was told they werent south american, but tbh i know this is bad but id prefer to be practical than have it perfect if you know what i mean.

The bad bit of news is that no one has adviced me against getting live plants and now that ive got a sowrd im thinking it was a bad idea, thers just NOT ENOUGH LIGHT so even with ferts good substrate and loads of C02, its justy not growing.

So the question is, where did you get your silk plants from as i am very interested in them for sure.

Cheers

Sam