During one of the many UK lockdowns, I took the time to decorate my home office and as part of that decoration, I wanted to get back into a hobby I used to have about 15 years ago - aquariums and aquascaping. As an easy way back into the hobby, I opted to get myself a Fluval Flex 123 litre aquarium and build a heavily planted tank in the "Nature Aquarium" style. That style lends itself to a good amount of hardscaping (wood and rocks), as well as planting that gives a very natural look. This has now been running 2 months and looks like this
This is what is know as a "high tech" tank, in that I run high lighting intensity, add a large amount of fertiliser as well as injecting CO2 into the water. I'll be making some posts on some of the more complicated and detailed stuff in the coming weeks and months, as well as talking about a new aquarium that I am going to create in the new year.
For now, here are some overview details of the tank
Fluval Flex 123 litre
CO2 injection from fire extinguisher using a regulator to get about 30ppm co2. CO2 is injected inline into the pipework between pump and spraybar.
Lit using Fluval Aquasky 2.0 and Fluval Plant 3.0 LED lighting
Filtration is inbuilt but uses 2x Ehiem pumps as well as a 200lph skimmer to give a total tank turnover of about 10x per hour.
Custom built spraybar to replace the fluval duckbill outlets that came with the tank.
Hardscape is Seiryu Stone and Mopani Wood
Fish
- Harlequin Rasbora
- Cardinal Tetra
- Emperor Blue Tetra
- Longfin Zebra Danios
- Otocinculus
Other fauna
- Nerite Snails
- Amano Shrimp
- Neocardinia Shrimp (red, yellow and orange)
Plants
- Rotala Rotundifolia Hra
- Hygrophila lancea Araguaia
- Myriophyllum Guyana
- Myriophyllum mattogrossense
- Pogostemon erectus
- Cryptocoryne undulatus Red
- Monte Carlo
- Rotala Rotundifolia Green
- Alternanthera reineckii Mini
- Staurogyne Repens
- Hygrophilia Polysperma
- Java Moss
- Bucephelandra
I'm feeding the fish a mixture of dried flake food an my own culture of Grindal Worms which they seem to love.
Here are a few pics of the inhabitants taken with my phone
There will be plenty more to come on this tank, as well as a series on me setting up my new tank which is going to be in the Iwagumi style (just rocks and plants)