New to Planted Nano -- Help please.

[Dddd_]

Hello all. First post here. I love all the tanks and I watched a bunch of planted nano videos on youtube and they look awesome. So here I am.

Problem: I have no idea how to accomplish my goal. So if someone could offer some advice/tips/tricks I'd be most appreciative.

Here is what I am thinking: I want about a 5+ gallon tank for my desk. The next part is what I need help with. I want to have the awesome looking nano tank on the desk, but I would like a larger water volume. So I would like an external 'jug' to increase the volume. This would be hidden out of the way.

See below:



The jug would be sealed with a rubber stopper. There'll be an input hose that enters the jug and hangs only partly into the water. The output of the jug will bring water from the bottom of the jug back to the display tank.


SO??? Is this feasible?

The grey box with the red '?' mark will do the heavy lifting. What could this be? A canister filter? I am a newbie here.... If it were a canister filter it would have to create enough flow to keep the system running.

I want it to be planted. I have no idea on lighting. So I am researching... any advice here would be appreciated as well.

I am thinking of using a 5 gallon poland spring jug as the external water volume. This way I could disconnect it and dump it. It would be roughly 40 lbs so that would be feasible for water changing.

Would I be able to stock fish here or just shrimp? My dream would be shoal of chili rasbora and some shrimp (maybe cherry shrimp). Would this work?

Any way I am a total newb so some advice would be appreciated. I am in the planning and budget stage here so advice on equipment, setup, etc. is needed.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

[radioman]

I would think you would need two pumps unless you had the jug of water higher than the tank and had the water siphon back into the tank. What you could do is siphon the water to the jug below the tank and have the filter pull it back into the tank. So just your picture reversed. Why do you want more water? Stability?