In September 1998, the new PSG fish tank was set up. This page documents the birth, growth and (hopeful) maturity of a heavily planted tropical fish tank.
From the start, the tank was envisaged as a planted tank with fish in, as opposed to a fish tank with some plants. This attitude influenced many factors in the set-up of the tank. These are described below.
We have some photographs of the tank at various stages in its life. These will hopefuly be put up here as soon as we can get them scanned.
The main events in the life of this tank will (hopefully) be documented in A Fishkeeper's Diary at the end of this page.
The basic equipment list is :-
As mentioned above, the tank was always intended to be heavily planted, so the lighting was chosen accordingly. Due to the length of the tank, we felt that a single filter at one end would not be very efficient, especially considering the fact that most plants prefer a low flow. For this reason, two filters were chosen.
The only other equipment to be added was a home-made CO2 reactor. This was basically an old lemonade bottle, mostly filled with water, two cups of sugar, a teaspoon of yeast and a teaspoon of baking soda. A tube carries the CO2 into the same plastic box that we had on the mark I fishtank.
The PSG is located in a leafy suburb of Manchester, UK. This area of the North-West of England has some of the softest water in the country. The water comes out of tap at a pH around neutral, although the tank pH is expected to be slightly lower due to the CO2 injection.
this one really confused me for a while. there are so many different opinions as to what makes a good substrate that it is very difficult to get a clear picture. In the end, we decided to go for a simple clay-based gravel, with ferilisation additives. We used eight bags of Aquagrit, which gave a 3" depth substrate. The bottom 2" of this was mixed with Flora Sticks and the top 1" was left plain. Flora Tabs were inserted below each main plant or bunch of plants and Flora pride was used as a liquid fertiliser.
We had looked at various DIY fertilisation recipes, but in the end decided to try the Flora approach. Judging by the first few weeks, it seems to have been a good choice.
Due to the limited choice available in most aquatic shops, we decided to try out a mail order company for the plants. A timely article on this subject appeared in Practical Fishkeeping a couple of months before, so we used this to make our decision as to which company to use. Their recommendation was for Greenline Aquatic Supplies, based on the high quality of the plants in the review selection.
Our initial order consisted of the plants detailed below. Our decision was basically made by going through their catalogue and looking up the plants in the "Interpet guide To Aquatic Plants" by Barry James (Salamander Books). Any plants that seemed suitable (ie attractive, easy to grow and not too demanding of high lighting) were noted. This gave us about seventeen species of plant, most of which were ordered.
On reflection, we probably ordered too many plants. For one thing, they grew so well, that we ended up having to give loads away after a few weeks as we could not fit the cuttings back into the tank (well, not if we wanted any fish in there). Furthermore, the tank might have looked a little better with the same overall number of plants, but of fewer species. This would have given a much larger display of each plant. Maybe if we ever set up another planted tank, we might try this out and see. (although we've got our eyes on a river tank next. Then a ciclid tank. Then ... well, you get the picture).
The table below shows the initial plant list, along with the number of plants ordered and comments on their condition. Overall, we were quite pleased with the plants, although not as much as the PFK article had led us to expect.
| Scientific Name | Common Name | No Ordered | Comments |
| aglaonema simplex | malayan sword | 2 | Excellent specimens |
| anubias nana | 1 | Also excellent quality | |
| bacopa caroliniana | bronze round bacopa | 5 | Good quality plants with enough length to provide 7 or 8 decent stems. |
| barclaya longifolia | 1 | Just a small bulb with no growth on it. Took about two weeks before we saw any growth. | |
| echinodorus cordifolus | radican sword | 2 | Not too impressive. There were very few leaves and no root stock when they arrived. |
| echinodorus tenellus | dwarf chain sword | 5 | Quite good quality. |
| eleocharis parralus | mini hairgrass | 10 | Absolutely loads and very difficult to seperate. We planted them in clumps. |
| eleocharis vivipara | common hairgrass | 5 | Very long. Most of these didn't last too long, but the few that survived did well. |
| gymnocornea spilanthoides | spade leaf plant | 5 | Loads of the stuff. Thick stems and large leaves. We cut these down and ended up with about 7 or 8 good plants. |
| hygrophilia difformis | water wisteria | 5 | Healthy and a decent size. |
| hygrophilia polysperma | 5 | A reasonable size. As this is a fast growing plant, we cut them down and planted 7 or 8 smaller stems which grew well. | |
| hygrophilia salicifolia | willow leaf | 5 | Quite large stems in good condition. Again, these were cut down to produce 7 or 8 good plants. |
| limnophila sessiflora | 5 | This came wrapped in newspaper to keep it damp. Unfortunately this was difficult to remove, but we managed. There were actually two or three varietes supplied, with a couple of extra altogether. | |
| microsorum pteropus | java fern | 2 | Only two leaves on each, but healthy and a good size. |
| nymphaea maculata | red tiger lotus | 1 | A pathetic looking specimen with four straggly leaves in poor condition. Amazingly enough, this grew really well and had about nine strong healthy leaves within a few weeks. The original leaves died off as the new ones grew. |
| sagittaria platyphylla | 2 | Middling sized plants, in decent condition, but with no root stock. | |
| vallisineria torta | twisted vallis | 5 | A lot of brown leaves on these. Not bad, but certainly not good. These did OK in the tank, but not as well as everything else. |
As well as that lot, we also had a Java fern, an Echinodorus Schlueteri and two Amazon Swords left over from the other tank. The Java fern was quite happy, having grown a lot since we originally bought it. This was spilt into two decent sized plants, as well as two babies that were growing on the leaves. The other plants were all in a very bad state, with little or no foliage and the few surviving leaves being brown and sad. We put these in the new tank out of sentimental feelings as they were some of the original plants that we bought.
The growth (or not) of these plants is documented in A FishKeeper's Diary below.
Planting the tank turned out to be a nightmare. Apart from the obvious problem of trying to plant a heavy selection of plants (ie trying to get your hand in between plants that are already planted without bashing them about too much), the Aquagrit turned out to be significantly lighter than ordinary gravel. this meant that many of the plants would just not stay down. As soon as they were planted, they would pop out of the substrate and float to the surface. Particular culprits here were the aglaonema simplex and the sagittaria platyphylla, which are about the most buoyant plants we have ever seen.
Planting took two full afternoons, followed by many hours
replanting specimens that leapt out of the substrate over the next
week. Following discussion in rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants,
we tried dirty tactics. The stem plants had tissue strips wrapped
around the bottom of the stems, which seemed to hold them down much
better. The larger plants had small stones tied to their bases and the
stones buried well into the substrate, holding the plant down. This
worked well, although one of the aglaonema simplex managed to break
free from its moorings about three weeks later. Ho hum.
When a new tank is set up, various parts of the biological system have to establish themselves. In particular, two sets of bacteria have to grow. The first set of bacteria convert ammonia (which is produced by decomposing fish waste) into nitrites and the second set convert nitrite into nitrate. When the tank is set up, very few of these bacteria are present. When the first fish are added, their waste produces ammonia which encourages the first bacteria colony to grow. This produces nitrites which encourages the second set to grow. When this has been achieved, more fish can be added and the bacteria colonies grow some more. This process is known as cycling and is the bane of the new fishkeeper's life. The ammonia and nitrite spikes that occur during cycling can give levels that are highly toxic to fish, resulting in death or injury. The most common beginner's problem is to put too many fish into a tank at once, resulting in sudden deaths from the spikes of ammonia and nitrite.
We were interested in the idea of cycling the tank without fish. The advantage of this is that there is no risk at all of losing fish as all of the spikes occur before the fish go into the tank. the simplest way to cycle the tank without fish is to add ammonia to the water. This simulates the introduction of fish and starts the cycle.
Due to the difficulty in obtaining pure ammonia (or anything that we could be satisifed was pure), we used ammonium bicarbonate instead. This comes as a white powder that dissolves readily (with a lot of fizzing) into water. Not knowing how much to use, we added a level teaspoon to the tank. A water test around an hour later (to give the water time to mix) showed an ammonia reading off the scale of the test kit !! Oops. never mind, without fish this was not a problem and it would get the cycle going faster.
Exactly two weeks later the tank was cycled. The ammonia and nitrite levels were zero and the nitrate level was around 10 mg/l, which is acceptable for fish. We were somewhat surprised at the speed of the cycling, but this was probably due to the plants extracting Nitrogen from the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates along the way.
Most of the fish are now in the tank (see a fishkeeper's diary below). The final planned fishy stock is as follows :-
This section of the page details some of the major events in the life of the tank. It is here for interest, in case anyone is actually interested in how things went !!
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