Mr Aqua 12 Gallon Long Planted Build

[nycfatcow]

Mr Aqua 12 Gallon Long Planted Build UPDATE PICS!

Hi All,

Wanted to start a log of my 12G Long Planted Tank build. I already ordered everything and I am waiting for everything to come in.

Tank:
Mr Aqua 12 Gallon Long

Equipment:
Started with an Eheim 2213 then decided to go simple with a whisper 40
Jager TruTemp Submersible Heater

Substrate:
Eco Complete extra fine Black (20 lbs)

Lights:
Current Satellite USA LED + 36-48 inch

co2:
5lbs co2 tank
Azoo Regulator/Solenoid
Started with a ISTA Max Mix Reactor and went with the nutra fin bubble counter/diffuser

I plan to keep things simple and raise Glosso with maybe a piece a driftwood.

Pics to come when everything comes in!

:groupflip

 

[nycfatcow]

Finally got a lot of the equipment in and ended up making some edits to my original plan. Instead of splitting the co2 I decided to just go ahead and buy a new 5lb tank and regulator/solenoid. I also went with a ISTA Max Mix c02 Reactor instead of the Nutrafin bubble counter/diffuser.



The tank finally came in as well and I have to say that I am very impressed with the dimensions of the tank and the quality of the build.





After putting the tank on the table I realized that the 8.8 pounds of substrate that I bought is not nearly going be enough to cover floor of the tank. I immediately put in another order for 20 lbs of Eco Complete Extra Fine in Black. Not sure if I'm going to mix the substrate yet but this tank EATS substrates!

I also went to the LFS and after playing around with all the pieces of driftwoods, I plan on going with this scaping and making hills with the susbtrate and planting everything out with glosso only all around.



The next thing that i set up was the background for the tank. I went with frosted window film that I picked up on amazon and cut to size. The basic steps to put on the window film was:

1) Clean tank glass with any window cleaner and wipe down with a lint free towel. I just used bounty and after the glass dried I wiped every thing down with a piece of swiffer sweeper to remove any lint/dust.





2) Spray the tank with a soapy water solution and apply flim (make sure to keep every fairly moist the whole time),



3) After putting the window film on the moist glass and position the film in place start squigeeing starting from the middle and going towards the sides.

The final product from doing this the first time:



Closer shot:




Lights are also AMAZING! I'd highly recommend them.

 

[beastium]

Cool

 

[nycfatcow]

Glosso

Since my gravel is coming in tomorrow I decided to take the 6 pots of glosso that I bought to clean and remove all the yellow and dead roots and leaves. I thought that spending one day on prepping the plants and the next day planting would be the best way to split up the tedious task ahead.







I saw that from researching online, the idea was to cut down the plant into a "T" and to take the chain of runners and split them to 2-3 leaves bits for planting. The only problem with my pots were that it seemed that the glosso was growing vertically instead of horizontally and I had of lot of long pieces that looked like this:



I ended up taking the decision to cut the long piece into 3-4 different pieces for planting. I really hope that i didn't mess this up:



After about 2 hours of doing this i ended up with about a large golf ball of glosso ready to go!

 

[jaBX1]

nice, ill be checking in on this. mr aqua 12 is such a great tank. cant wait to see your scape

 

[ankgodawat]

images

 

[ankgodawat]

teating

 

[nycfatcow]

Update!!

Finally have some time to post an update of the tank and I made more changes to the equipment.

I ended up returning the ISTA max mix for the CO2 with the bubble ladder. I think that the ISTA fittings are poorly made and started leaking when I attached it to the Eheim. And talking of the Eheim I ended up just using a whisper 40 for the filtration. It seemed to just work better instead of all the tubing running everywhere for such a small tank.

Some pics of the scaping that i went with:

full tank view:


top left:


top right:



slow fill up with airline tubing:



almost there:


first full tank shot:


:lol_large

 

[nycfatcow]

Update 2

About 3 days in the tank started growing a little bit of white fuzz from new tank syndrome and some of the plants started to die off initially but a week in started to show some new growth.

one week in:


one week in close up showing growth :knockedou:


Two weeks in the new tank syndrome seems to have gone away but some of the plants have a bit of algae growing on them. Over all i think things are starting to fill in.

about two weeks in full shot:


left side:


right side:


close in shot:

 

[JonnyJ]

Great looking setup, thanks for sharing. What kind of camera are you shooting with?

 

[nycfatcow]

Great looking setup, thanks for sharing. What kind of camera are you shooting with?

shooting with my high tech iPhone 5 :smokin:

 

[nycfatcow]

Shrimps Added!!!!!

I am about a month in now and I am starting to see some incredible growth in the tank. :division:Throught that it would be a good time to introduce some of the RCS and CRS that I had bought earlier for this tank. I went with 50 RCS and 20 SS+ grade CRS. The CRS are supposed to be SS+ no entry hinomaru's that I bought off of aquabid. For those who have CRS what do you think of the quality of the batch that I received. Honestly, the pictures doesn't do them justice but it just seems that in the grading pictures I see online the SS grades are really intensely white and red with no transparency at all which I slightly see in the ones I have received. Any input would be helpful.

Some of the RCS and CRS getting acclimated to the new tank:





Shrimp and close in shot on plant growth:







Fullshot of tank as of 3/15/14:



I was also moving around some of my CBS S+ grades around and was lucky to get a nice pic of some pregnant females:

 

[iliriano]

Nice planted, tagging along..