Complexity's 90g Planted Tank Journal

[mgarrido]

Were did you find those electrical strips at?

Microcenter or Fry's

BTW Really nice tank, love that rocks

[FuzzyDragon09]

Awesome! It's got a nice clean look and I love the rocks. Put more anubias in. It looks good against them. If the tank looks that good now, it will look amazing with fish in it!

[wvgdiscus]

Fish Gallery can get you some black tubing talk with Omar or Don.

Were did you find those electrical strips at?

[Rico]

Really nice. i love the rocks.

[FrontosaurusRex]

awesome tank. Tang tanks are my favorite. Cant wait to see it when its done.

[Complexity]

Thanks! My husband has said it reminds him of the moon. My daughter wanted to know "is that all you're putting in there?" It's quite a departure from my planted tanks.

What I'm hoping is that the decor stands back enough for the fish to pop out once I put them in it.

[cichlid1409]

nice clean look . very nice.

[Complexity]

that looks awesome. I wish there was a way to get black tubing for the rena's

It's coming! I have customflo kits coming in tomorrow which will replace the Rena tubing with black ones. I also plan to add some narrow leaf java fern to the corners to help hide the tubing.

[Complexity]

Thanks! I didn't get any help other than suggestions here on the Box. All of the different ideas helped, and I just kept at it until I got something I could live with.

The funny thing is there are twice as many rocks in the tank than what can be seen. The line the entire back of the tank. The sand has completely covered quite a few. Only time will tell me if the fish will dig out the sand to make caves which will expose the rocks or not. I still want to add some rocks either way, but after working with them for so long these last couple of days, I decided that I wanted to take a break and just go with what I have now.

Edited: I have rocks on my brain! I should have said that I didn't get help with the rocks, but I did get help with getting the tank moved from the garage to the stand. Tim (armthehomeless) and Rico came over and moved it for me. I am so thankful for their help! I didn't mean to leave them out when I said I didn't get help. I had worked with the rocks for so long that I totally forgot that anything else existed!

[newb]

that looks awesome. I wish there was a way to get black tubing for the rena's

[FIREFISH]

Looks really nice. Glad to see you finally got the help you needed.

FF

[Complexity]

Edited March 2012: I'm converting this tank into a planted tank. Click here to go to the first post in this thread about the conversion.

I finally have my new 90g tank set up! Tomorrow, I hope to have some fish for it. Here's a few pics of what I'm starting with. I'm sure I'll change a few things around, but I think this will work for now.

Equipment details:

Power Strips. The first thing I needed to do was wire the cabinet for electricity. I already had the two electrical strips so I installed them in the cabinet. They weren't very expensive and also offer surge protection. I prefer to have two power strips in my tanks. Everything that I want turned off when I do water changes is plugged into the bottom strip while everything else is plugged into the top strip. That way, I just have to turn off the big switch on the bottom strip for maintenance, and I know everything will be turned off that needs to be turned off.

Cabinet Lighting. I bought a simple T5 light from Lowes to light up the cabinet. I have done this to all my tanks and find it extremely helpful. I mounted it using heavy duty velcro which makes it easy to pull back down to change the light bulb when needed.

Filtration. I decided to go with two Rena XP4 canister filters. I may switch to wet/dry later, but I wanted to stick with what I know for now. I chose the XP4s because I already have Rena canisters which means I can easily stock polishing pads for them all; plus, I like that they can contain a large amount of media for bacteria. I will kick start the canisters with old media from the XP4 on my 75g tank. I'll take the media from that filter, split it in half, and put in the two new XP4s. I have Eheim Ehfimech and Substrat Pro on the way. Should arrive tomorrow.

UV Sterilizer. I also already had the large UV sterilizer. I bought it a year ago, and when I first plugged it in, the bulb blew. I was supposed to return it, but never got around to it. So I decided to just get another bulb and try it again. It's working great now!

Lighting. For now, I just have a small light strip over the tank so I can see what I'm doing. I have ordered a TEK 4x54w T5HO fixture for this tank with plans of only running 2 bulbs at any given time. What I want to do is put new bulbs in my TEK fixture for my 75g tank and put the old bulbs over this 90g tank. So not only will I only use two bulbs, but the bulbs will be older.

Decor. The back of the tank is painted black. The rocks were called Magma Rocks which I think are probably Basalt. They are extremely heavy and dense! The sand is pool filter sand which I really like. I didn't even rinse it! I wasn't going to put any plants in the tank, but I think I will add a few basics for accents and color. I stuck an anubias in there just to get an idea of how it would look.

Fish. None right now, of course. I want to put smaller cichlids in here which leads me to Tangs. I don't intend to be anal about it so if I see a fish that I really like that will mix well with the other fish in the tank, then I'll go ahead and do it. The main thing is to cram as many colorful and interesting fish as I can so the smaller the fish, the more I can have.

On with the pics! There are actually more rocks than what can be seen. The sand is hiding a lot of them. What I'm hoping is that the fish will dig out the sand to create caves. I might add more rocks, as well.