Details about our planted aquarium.
Our planted tank is a 180l Juwel Rio 180. It had the internal filter system ripped out by me quite a few years ago however, and is currently filtered by a Sicce Genio2 external. Lighting is currently 2 T8 tubes fitted into the Juwel light fitting, a 30 watt ZooMed FloraSun and a 25 watt Zoomed UltraSun Trichromatic, and now it has an additional 39 watt T5 Aquamedic Planta tube, so now it’s more on the medium light setup border somewhere.
I also add CO2 using a combination of a Nutrafin Natural Plants system running 24/7 and a Dupla CO2 Set Omega running for about 8 hours a day during the lit period. I don’t however use the commercial refills for these, prefering to make my own mix using dried yeast (the sort for bread makers is the best I have tried), bicarbonate of soda, sugar and water. It’s much cheaper that way, and makes refilling them a doddle. I have also tried using the same yeast as I use for wine making, this works much faster and starts much faster, I’m currently seeing if it lasts as long as the breadmaking yeast though, as the extra CO2 produced using this yeast isn’t really neccessary.
Animals This tank is currently stocked as follows:- 2 Male powder blue gourami (Colisa Lalia) 2 Female powder blue gourami 5 Neon Tetra (Paracheirodon Innesi)(was supposed to be 12, but the shop only sold us 6 and we lost one) Quite a few platties (not sure how many, they are left over from when we used to keep livebearers in there) 8 Kuhli loaches 1 Sailfin Plec Plants The tank is planted as follows:- Ammania species Crytopcoryne Affinis Cryptocoryne Wendtii Ludwigia Natans Valisneria Spiralis Bacopa Monnieri Echinorus Parvifloras