Eheim is in... well sort of

After having some issues with water clarity, we have decided to upgrade the built in AR980 filter to an external Eheim canister filter... that... and we want to get a metal halide light which won't fit with the old trickle filter..


As you can see we havn't fitted the Ehiem properly yet... just waiting for the good bacteria to be transfered to the new filter. Give it a week or two.

We have also read that Trickle filters introduce lots of oxygen into the water, which is fine, however in teh process it also gets rid of a lot of co2.

Updated Photos

Well here it is, our AquaOne 980 as it now stands.

btw there are Discus in there somewhere... they are still getting use to their new environment. a little different from the 55lt Bucket!

Stage 10 - Lighting

Now that the CO2 was cranking and the plants were taking off (except the ***) we decided to upgrade our fluro tubes. Not really sure this helped because now the tank looks darker.

This is becuase there are three Fluro tubes in the AquaOne light hood. 2 x 30w and 1 x 25w T8 fluro. And since you cant get a shorter pink 25w fulro, we had to get a 30w pink tube, a 25w PowerGlow and a 30w PowerGlow white.

Now that we have"been there, done that" we wouldn't buy the AquaOne 980. Simply because for a planted aquarium the lights are not adequate. Our fine leafed plants **** are browning off a couple of inches from the top.

We are now looking at getting the AquaOne MG1000 Metal Halide light.... problem with this is it won't fit with the built in Trickle filter... so we will need to buy a new canister filter too... proberbly get the Eheim 2028 so we can use it with our next tank..

Stage 9 - Glosso

After 3 weeks of waiting we decided to order some more Glosso from Boronia Aquarium Melbourne Australia. Ordered it Sunday, They shipped it Monday, had it 11am Tuesday was in the tank Tuesday night !

I highly recommend these guys, very speedy service. We paid $10 for a large punnet (100+ plants) + $10 postage. Our local place wanted $6 per pot 3 shoots per pot!

Because we had already put the fish in, we bought some stainless steel planting tweezers to plant the glosso. It took hours to plant all of the plants. I highly recommend planting glosso with only a small amount of water in the tank. 8-10 cm max... not a full 215 Litres..

Stage 8 - CO2

After an unfortuanate experience with our DIY CO2 system (drained the entire tank when a air line tube came out) we decided to look into a pressured CO2 system.

We investigated the options here, a cheaper system from Red Sea vs the Dupla and after a couple of quotes we discovered that for a complete CO2 system with ph / co2 controller was going to set us back about $1500 !!

So we checked out systems on eBay. They were cheaper online but still quite pricy. Then we discovered CO2 systems available on ebay.co.uk. Fortunantly I was heading over to Europe in 2 weeks so I pre ordered a complete system from Germany.

• 2 kg CO2 Cylinder
• Propper CO2 tubing
• Magnetic Soleniod
• Glass Reactor/Ceramic Diffuser
• 2 Guage Regulator
• Needle Valve
• One way backflow valve.

all for AU$240 delivered to the UK...

When I got to the UK my cylinder had arrived, a little battered but ok... then I discovered that they had shipped it full. So after emptying 2kg of CO2 into my friends green house, My friend packed it away ready for the trip home to Aust.


The next challenge would be bringing it back. Before we purchased the Cylinder we contacted Qantas and they said it will be fine, provding the cylinder was empty and we could show them the valve was open.

I got to Heathrow early, went to the BA desk, unpacked my cylinder and showed the checkin staff. Luckily I had prior permission, otherwise there was no way I would have managed to get it home. Everything was ok and the cylinder made it back in one peice. On the way home from the air port we poped into our local pet shop and had it filled $19.95 :)


We also picked up a PH/CO2 controller from eBay. It was a simple one that we plug into our Magnetic Solenoid. Works a treat for $110 delivered, not quite the $700 we got quoted in Aust.

Essentially it all connects up something like this...

Stage 7 - Fill her up

Now that most of the plants were in (and at this stage our Glosso hadn't arrived) We filled the tank up to almost the top with water. Again we used the Takashi plate method to add the water.

Once the tank was full, we skimmed all the floating plant bits out, and reconnected up the filter and heater.
We ran the tank without any fish for a week and then added 10 neons to start the Bio process again. Since we used our Filter on the Disucs holding tank, it still had all the good Biological matter in it So this helped get things rolling.

In the mean time our Discus holding tank was being filtered by our Aqua One mini filiter.

Stage 6 - Planting Time

Following is a list of plants we used..

1. Glossostigma E.
2. Java Moss
3. Amazon Sword
4. ...
5. ...

The first thing we did was tie our Java Moss onto the Dift wood. It would have been easier with no water in the tank, but we were getting fungus growing on our driftwood. We tied on the Java moss with some green cotton.

Once the moss was in place, we planted the Foreground plants first, then planted the larger ones at the back. We placed the *** evenly around the front on the drift wood, to help break up the brown of the driftwood.

Stage 5 - Time to add some water

Now that the Gravel and Drift wood is in the tank, its time to add a little water. Don't add all the water, about 10cm - enough to cover the gravel and a bit more.

Takashi recommends placing a plate upside down on the bottom of the tank and slowly pour water in over the plate. This helps to keep the gravel nice and smooth. Time to plant some plants !