The Planted Tank Forum banner

Low Tech Tank Show-and-Tell (low tech can be lush, too! =)

2M views 2K replies 841 participants last post by  LidijaPN 
#1 · (Edited)
Been a while since we had a thread like this, so I thought I'd start another, since this is the way I like to share and learn from other people. :smile:

The idea in this thread is to post a picture of your low tech tank(s), explain the setup (equipment, lighting, substrate, ferts, etc) and briefly explain a few things you've learned that do or don't work with your setup.
 
#1,263 · (Edited)
40B low maintenance

I went extremely low tech with it. The lighting is 1x39w on for five hours a day with no CO2 and ferts once every ten days or so.



Lots of root tabs and tap water top offs once a week with water changes about once every 45-60 days.



I dose Excel once or twice a week and feed the fish about three times a week. I do get a little BBA from time to time but I clip the leaf and go on.





I've thought about breaking this down and starting over again but it's so easy keeping this going. The tank is almost two years old now and I wish I would've put a little more thought into the layout on the front end but this was my first planted tank and it's been a valuable learning tool.

Thanks for looking and thanks for starting a post like this.
 
#1,264 · (Edited)
I went extremely low tech with it. The lighting is 1x39w on for five hours a day with no CO2 and ferts once every ten days or so.

Lots of root tabs and tap water top offs once a week with water changes about once every 45-60 days.

I dose Excel once or twice a week and feed the fish about three times a week. I do get a little BBA from time to time but I clip the leaf and go on.

I've thought about breaking this down and starting over again but it's so easy keeping this going. The tank is almost three years old now and I wish I would've put a little more thought into the layout on the front end but this was my first planted tank and it's been a valuable learning tool.

Thanks for looking and thanks for starting a post like this.
Dang! That's gorgeous!
What's the substrate?
 
#1,267 · (Edited)
Thanks. Those fish are Praecox rainbows or Neon rainbows and they normally aren’t that colorful. The substrate is Eco Complete, filter is Rena XP2 and the light is 2x39 watt T5HO by Deep Blue.

I’ve included a timeline of the tank for illustrating one simple fact: once I turned off one of the bulbs and decreased the photoperiod things got much, much easier. And to show how much you can learn from your mistakes.














I got away from a lot of stem plants and went with crypts, mosses, ferns and anubias and couldn’t be happier.

I’ve got a Mr. Aqua 11.4 with medium light and pressurized CO2 and it’s a total dumpster fire!! But, I wanted a lot of light and CO2 like we see in all the great tanks on these forums. For me, if you put some thought into the layout of a low tech setup it can be extremely rewarding.
 
#1,270 ·
This is my 55 awhile ago. Really easy low tech. Aquaticlife t5-ho, ecocomplete, jbj circulating pump, eheim 2215. All I do is occasional root tabs and water changes every week now that I have a decent amount of fish. Used to just tip off the water when I only had a few. Have had crypts, swords, and my madagascar lace flower in the tank. Thinking about doing dirt next time!
 

Attachments

#1,279 · (Edited)
Here's my 75 gal, first attempt at a planted tank. Converted it from a cichlid tank a couple of months ago. (Thanks in large part to this forum!) Ive been playing around with the hardscape and changing up the plant arrangement pretty much the whole time lol. Think Ive about got it Ok for now, gonna let it fill in some and take it from there.




* Photo noob here. Gonna make a proper journal soon as I get these camera settings figured out more. It looks much better in person :red_mouth


Tank: 48 x 21 x 18 inches, 75 gal, partial glass tops
Substrate: 125 lbs Black Diamond blasting sand
Lights: Two 48" T5HO (1 Coralife 10K, 1 Truelumen Flora). Two little Marineland LEDs at the very back (ones that come in a 24" hood).
Filtration: Two HOB I already had, a Penguin 350 and a Whisper 40.
Ferts: Osmocote root tabs, a bit of Flourish comp, daily Excel - all subject to change.



Most of the foreground plants were planted within the last few days, along with the small wysteria and a sword you can barely see in the right rear corner. Also some Bacopa behind the rocks, so the background should even out pretty soon hopefully. Curious to see how the middle sword grows out. Got it from petco supposedly an Argentine. That's one of it's babies off a runner at seven o'clock.



You can see remnants of BBA still on the rocks, that's really the only place now. Had a bit more show up on some leaves early on. Spot treated the worst of it with H2O2. It seems to be going away for the most part.

 
#1,298 ·
30G tall, lighting is a single 15w cfl via clip on lamp. Used to be a 26w but ran into algae issues. Want to replace with LED lighting- im thinking the finnex fugeray. Set up riparium style with pothos and arrowhead vine in the top section and mostly anubias in the aquatic section. only thing that goes into the tank is fish food and 25% water change once a week. currently home to two platies, a few endlers and a bunch of their fry.
 
#1,308 ·
You say randomely but I noticed you stayed away from plants which have large leaves. I have 2 10g tanks and that is exactly the game plan
for me so that I can see better in my tank(s). A real tricky issue in a 10g tank. Still working on it...LOL...



36G corner
1 x 24" Current USA Satelite+
1 x 18" Current USA Planted



Some 30+ plant species that were semi-randomly dropped in:





Only the rear light is on:

 
#1,303 ·
Sorry for bad pic- haven't figured out how to completely turn off the flash on my camera. Also, emerald eye rasboras DO NOT SIT STILL.
29 Biocube, new style, up since January. I only added the main part of the plants after about three-four months, and most of the crypts are only about a month old.
Lighting is Coralife 36 watt actinic and 36 watt 10,000k
Filtration is just the stock filter, minus the bio-balls and plus a few sponges for extra bacteria room.
Substrate is about 2" of sand (not sure what kind), and it's a mix of two large bags of white and a small bag of black. The black was laid over the top and slightly mixed, and my cories love it.

Flora:
Swordtails
Crypts (several kinds, including a twisty one and a red one)
Some sort of plant that looks way too stiff to be aquatic but grows like a crypt, has a tuber, and has been underwater for almost two years
Micro swords
One little bit of planted water sprite
Hornwort
Some slightly unhappy hair grass
Duckweed
7" long java fern (huge!)
Hydrocotl (sp?) Japan
Some moneywort
Christmas moss
Hardscape is two pieces of wood, a full squirrel skeleton, and a third of a possum. Both sets of bones are coated in acrylic to (hopefully) keep them from leaching.
Fauna:
3 pea-sized horn nerites
3 half-grown amano shrimp
A bunch of cherry shrimp - added 50 a few weeks ago, who knows how many are still in there
1 X-ray tetra (will be rehomed soon, he was in there because of a bent spine but he recovered)
1 halfblack male guppy
1 lyretail male guppy (endlerXguppy intentional hybrid, quite pretty)
4 pygmy cories
12 dwarf cories
8 phoenix rasboras (basically chili rasboras)
10 ruby tetras
20 emerald eye rasboras
3 oil catfish
1 little female peacock gudgeon
And sometimes a cat footie.
 

Attachments

#1,304 ·
20 long
RED Sea FloraMax mixed with Eco Complete
Finnex Fugeray planted+ LED

No ferts the fish don't provide
change a 5 gallon bucket of water every 2 weeks or so

Flora:
couple of anubias sp.
Crypt Wendtii
Some other crypt
Some Hygrophila (Salicilifolia maybe?)
Ludwigia Repens
Pennywort
a few pieces of stray subwassertang
duckweed

Fauna:
7 corydoras
6 lampeyes
6 CPD
12 glowlight tetra
1 furcata rainbow
some swordtail fry I dump in here to save them from their parents
uncounted red rilli and fire red shrimpies
1 blue mystery snail
 

Attachments

This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top