Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Life Begins - The set up

This is it. The aquarium is coming to life.
Although I haven't finished all the preparations and a few things are still missing I have decided to seize the opportunity and go ahead with setting it up.
This is the fun part where ones artistic view comes into play. There are many ways of arranging and designing a tank. For me it is very hard choosing between them but finely I settled on one design which I like.
The first part was arranging the rocks and sketching the layout

Next I added the substrate (a bag and three quarters of FloraBase) and readjusted the rocks positions.

The substrate is great to work with. It stays piled up easily and planting in it was very easy. Although I don't have a lot of experience with all the kinds of substrate available I think this one is very good.
Once everything was in place I added the light colored sand in the middle to form a stream like area

In laying out the hardscape I followed most of the "rules" of nature aquariums aquascaping but since the aquarium is square a few modifications where done which will be balanced out by the plants.
From above

The planting was done with the soil slightly moist so as to make sure the plants stay in. I've put in most of the plants I'm planning on having

And finely I filled it up with water, hooked up the systems and the aquarium is now alive.

Setting up the CO2 system was fairly easy. The reactor is very cool. It has this very neat tornado inside and it's working well. The canister filter was easy to work too and is very quite, I hope it stays that way.

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