scientist0724
Members
So, as many of you know, I'm attempting to build a river tank to use so I can breed my flash plecos.
I'm trying out Hydroton, clay balls used for hydroponics, as my base because my plecos poop a lot! Poop is always flying around the tank when the plecos move around in their current tank, and I didn't want that in the new setup. I wanted something that would suck the poop down like an under gravel filter, but also something that would allow my plants to still grow. I've seen this similar setup in paludariums and thought, why not for my plecos?
I'm using a flourite/laterite substrate mix because I didn't want the substrate to degrade quickly and I needed the substrate to be heavy enough to not fly around with the swift current.
Large rocks are placed by the output spraybar because there will be some Stiphodons in the tank too. I'll be swapping out some of the smaller rocks from time to time, because I will purposely be growing algae and coating Repashy Soilent Green on the rocks for the Stiphodons to eat.
Right now I have a few rocks holding down the driftwood pieces and cholla wood until they get water logged. I have a piece of large driftwood in the back of the tank that was in another tank for a year and it still won't sink. It's going to be "permanently" held down on two ends with rocks.
Filtration is a Marineland C-530 canister filter (which we nicknamed R2D2 because it's huge!) that I got from another GWAPA member at our last meeting. I had to repair a hairline crack in the intake valve in the valve block because it started leaking when I first ran the filter. I used a special plastic epoxy and then swapped the outtake and intake valves. Richard helped me with this. Knock on wood, so far, no more leaking.
So here are some pictures of the build over the past week...
Enjoy!
Arlene
I'm trying out Hydroton, clay balls used for hydroponics, as my base because my plecos poop a lot! Poop is always flying around the tank when the plecos move around in their current tank, and I didn't want that in the new setup. I wanted something that would suck the poop down like an under gravel filter, but also something that would allow my plants to still grow. I've seen this similar setup in paludariums and thought, why not for my plecos?
I'm using a flourite/laterite substrate mix because I didn't want the substrate to degrade quickly and I needed the substrate to be heavy enough to not fly around with the swift current.
Large rocks are placed by the output spraybar because there will be some Stiphodons in the tank too. I'll be swapping out some of the smaller rocks from time to time, because I will purposely be growing algae and coating Repashy Soilent Green on the rocks for the Stiphodons to eat.
Right now I have a few rocks holding down the driftwood pieces and cholla wood until they get water logged. I have a piece of large driftwood in the back of the tank that was in another tank for a year and it still won't sink. It's going to be "permanently" held down on two ends with rocks.
Filtration is a Marineland C-530 canister filter (which we nicknamed R2D2 because it's huge!) that I got from another GWAPA member at our last meeting. I had to repair a hairline crack in the intake valve in the valve block because it started leaking when I first ran the filter. I used a special plastic epoxy and then swapped the outtake and intake valves. Richard helped me with this. Knock on wood, so far, no more leaking.
So here are some pictures of the build over the past week...
Enjoy!
Arlene
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