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I originally purchased this tank to start a pico reef but decided to go much bigger. I am basically using this to house my long-time aggressive Betta that lives in my 8.5 gallon riparium (realistically 5-6 gallons). That riparium tank is being upgraded to a 15.8 gallon to become a high-tech community riparium with grasses, carpets and moss. Therefor all the stem plants will be transferred into this 5 gallon Marineland Contour all-in-one.
I am going to refrain from letting this become another wild directionless riparium, however this photo has inspired me to add a terrestrial fern to the back of my tank to compliment any emerging driftwood. I have already located the fern and it seems to be doing fine in my riparium so far, it is not a Boston Fern I have one of those as well and I put them side by side so you can see the difference. The Boston is on the right, the one on the left stays narrow.
I began gathering plants for the Contour 5 in the corner of one of my tanks, you can see the terrestrial fern above in the rear. I have a large species of Amazon Sword as a background centerpiece since this tank will be so tall. To its left I have Vals and Elodea which will sway in the return pump nozzle. To its right I have Moneywort and an unidentified Coontail/Parrots Feather from the corner of my local pond it does really well in the aquarium and will survive in extremely low light, it is a very thin version of the Elodea on the opposite side. Moving away from the back wall, next row forward left to right would be Madagascar Lace, Crypt Beckettii, possibly dwarf sword/unsure yet. I will also have some Anubias in there somewhere as well as a Banana plant, with some carpeting plants/grasses around the outer rim where there is no dirt.
I used this "organic" soil I have not seen before, I picked out any chunks of bark/wood/mulch and formed a mound in the center. I do not want any soil near the edges because the gravel will be too thin, so I started with the edges to hold the soil in place then I capped it and raked the gravel upwards toward the center from the edges. All the gravel is from an established tank, I rinsed it with my top off water.
This is what I decided to go with, I removed the bio-sponge from the filter media basket and I am going to instead use a Purigen bag rated for a 100 gallon tank there. This is because I will be using just the mechanical filter basket frame to stuff with filter floss instead of replacing it and paying for cheap floss glued to the basket frame with a sprinkle of cheap carbon inside. As a domino effect I now need to replace the bio-media since I removed bio-sponge, so I added a ceramic media bag rated for a 50 gallon tank in the sump by the surface. This may not be in the media baskets flow path but it has a much greater surface area than the sponge had and it may get more oxygen where it is rather than down in the media basket, I traded the flow-path for more surface area I guess...not like this is a big deal because the substrate will hold lots of bacteria. I added a capful of Jungle bacteria blend to the ceramic bag before adding it to the tank as well.
The light is okay but minimal, but there is room to add more lighting in the hood fixture. I had a spare 10 gallon LED hood around I was able to rob the lights out of, they are perfect I can add one to each side of the factory LED strip. Just holding them in place with my fingers and toggling the switch on and off I can tell it doubles the lighting and makes what I thought would be okay stock lighting look useless!
I used aquarium sealer to attach the lights, came out great!
The tank is now cycling, it is very cloudy white (lights off) I am afraid of doing a water change too soon but I think this is all minerals from the soil. If I do a water change I will dump more bacteria blend into the ceramic bag to compensate for the cycling loss. I am waiting until the cycling is complete to add my Purigen bag.


I am going to refrain from letting this become another wild directionless riparium, however this photo has inspired me to add a terrestrial fern to the back of my tank to compliment any emerging driftwood. I have already located the fern and it seems to be doing fine in my riparium so far, it is not a Boston Fern I have one of those as well and I put them side by side so you can see the difference. The Boston is on the right, the one on the left stays narrow.


I began gathering plants for the Contour 5 in the corner of one of my tanks, you can see the terrestrial fern above in the rear. I have a large species of Amazon Sword as a background centerpiece since this tank will be so tall. To its left I have Vals and Elodea which will sway in the return pump nozzle. To its right I have Moneywort and an unidentified Coontail/Parrots Feather from the corner of my local pond it does really well in the aquarium and will survive in extremely low light, it is a very thin version of the Elodea on the opposite side. Moving away from the back wall, next row forward left to right would be Madagascar Lace, Crypt Beckettii, possibly dwarf sword/unsure yet. I will also have some Anubias in there somewhere as well as a Banana plant, with some carpeting plants/grasses around the outer rim where there is no dirt.


I used this "organic" soil I have not seen before, I picked out any chunks of bark/wood/mulch and formed a mound in the center. I do not want any soil near the edges because the gravel will be too thin, so I started with the edges to hold the soil in place then I capped it and raked the gravel upwards toward the center from the edges. All the gravel is from an established tank, I rinsed it with my top off water.




This is what I decided to go with, I removed the bio-sponge from the filter media basket and I am going to instead use a Purigen bag rated for a 100 gallon tank there. This is because I will be using just the mechanical filter basket frame to stuff with filter floss instead of replacing it and paying for cheap floss glued to the basket frame with a sprinkle of cheap carbon inside. As a domino effect I now need to replace the bio-media since I removed bio-sponge, so I added a ceramic media bag rated for a 50 gallon tank in the sump by the surface. This may not be in the media baskets flow path but it has a much greater surface area than the sponge had and it may get more oxygen where it is rather than down in the media basket, I traded the flow-path for more surface area I guess...not like this is a big deal because the substrate will hold lots of bacteria. I added a capful of Jungle bacteria blend to the ceramic bag before adding it to the tank as well.



The light is okay but minimal, but there is room to add more lighting in the hood fixture. I had a spare 10 gallon LED hood around I was able to rob the lights out of, they are perfect I can add one to each side of the factory LED strip. Just holding them in place with my fingers and toggling the switch on and off I can tell it doubles the lighting and makes what I thought would be okay stock lighting look useless!


I used aquarium sealer to attach the lights, came out great!

The tank is now cycling, it is very cloudy white (lights off) I am afraid of doing a water change too soon but I think this is all minerals from the soil. If I do a water change I will dump more bacteria blend into the ceramic bag to compensate for the cycling loss. I am waiting until the cycling is complete to add my Purigen bag.