Social Feed

Time to start a new thread.

I’ll fill in some details later, but I’m working on the hardscape now. Any and all criticism is appreciated. The vision is nothing more, and nothing less, than something appealing to the eye.

90cm x 30cm x 30cm Lifegard Aquatics ultra clear bookshelf tank. Buce and anubias on the hardscape, stems towards the back and center, mid to front carpet with some changes in shade and texture down to a flat grade on the right side of the tank.

Lily pipe inlet and skimmer will be in the back left corner with the outflow in the front left to hopefully achieve circular flow. I’ll be running an in-line diffuser. Light will be the P600 Pro that I regrettably did not upside to 900. Oh well. I’ll mount it high and hopefully it’ll have enough spread.

I have some dragon stone and red lava rock rubble I’ll use at the base to blend into the substrate, as well as some stratum I may or may not cap with.

Hello everyone,


Today I finally moved from my old aquarium, a Juwel Rio 180, to a new optiwhite tank built by Genesi Acquari.


I decided to make this change for two main reasons. First, I never really liked the aesthetics of the Rio 180, and its plastic frame made it somewhat limiting when it came to using lily pipes and other cleaner-looking hardware. Second, I had been dealing with persistent staghorn algae issues, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to start fresh.


For reference, this was the Rio 180 before I dismantled it today:





Most of the plants in this new setup were taken from the Rio 180 before dismantling it today. I trimmed healthy tops from the old plants and replanted them in this aquarium, hoping they will establish themselves properly and grow much better under the new conditions.


And here is the new tank on day one:

Tank Specifications​

• Tank: Optiwhite aquarium by Genesi Acquari
• Dimensions: 100 × 40 × 40 cm
• Volume: 160 L
• Lighting: Chihiros WRGB II Pro 90
• CO₂: Inline diffuser with refillable cylinder
• Filter: Oase BioMaster 2 Thermo 600
• Substrate: Dennerle Black Gravel 1–2 mm
• 
  
• Additional equipment:
• OaseSkim (which I will likely remove soon and replace with glass lily pipes featuring an integrated surface skimmer),
• Neo Flow Reliever
• Hanna's digital testers For no3 po4 and fe

Water Parameters​

• pH: 7.1 → 5.8 with CO₂ running
• KH: 0
• GH: 5–7
• TDS: 120 ppm
• NO₃: 6–7 ppm
• PO₄: 1.25 ppm

Setup Date​

June 3rd, 2026


Some additional shots of the new setup:

Questions​

What do you think of the setup so far?


At the moment, the Monte Carlo looks a bit "lifted" rather than hugging the substrate. Is this something I should be concerned about, or will it naturally settle and develop into a proper carpet as it adapts and produces new growth?


As mentioned above, most of the plants were transferred from the Rio 180 that I dismantled today, so they may need some time to adjust.


Thank you all for stopping by, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions!

I started my first tank as an adult about a year ago, and have posted updates on it in my other journal , the Beginner Scaper Journal. I had intended the other journal to be a journey for this new tank but there were so many variables and many questions about the other set up that i thought it would best to start this new journal.

I am going to hold on to my beginner/amateur flair to the post since I think this is such a great hobby and want newcomers to know that everyone started as an amateur

Tank Inspiration
Dennis Wong's planted tanks. If you guys don't know who this is, I have already served a good purpose by introducing you to the founder of the 2Hr aquarist. He has a scientific horticulturist approach to planted tank that resonates well to my scientific mind. He is one of the few that I have read and listened to who mentions the different schools of thoughts when it comes to managing planted tanks and does not stick with a single approach.

Anyways a long winded rambling to say that everyone should read through the 2hr aquarist website. His products are all called APT (Advanced planted tank), and i think that is what his company was called before. His current display tanks are all planted tanks, which are beautiful mostly without hardscape but with lush plant growth and do not follow the rules of Dutch scaping. To anyone who wants to understand his philosophy more, i would recommend in addition to the website watch some videos where he has been interviewed.

I wanted to re-create this type of tank, but obviously as a beginner/amateur. I am hoping to learn more about growing plants with my ultimate goal to advance to a next scape which might be more nature style where i can take the knowledge from growing plants and now incorporate hardscape to it.

Equipment
Tank
- Waterbox mini 25

• 60 cm x 40 cm x 40 cm
• 90 liters or 24 gallons
• This is a big upgrade from my 29 gallon standard tank. The silicone work is flawless.
• It does come with a leveling mat.
• It is deeper and slightly taller than a 60P or UNS 60U. I thought it would be useful to have more depth.
• Background - Thanks to @Jeff Miotke suggestion

Stand

• Waterbox stand - Black
• The main contention is that it does not come with side holes like some of the other expensive stands do.
• It just comes with opening in the back, so getting the tubing out is messy.
• The door attachment is a soft close but it needs to be leveled which can be finicky
• I did add a magnetic holder for tools and will add some light as well at some point.
• It does come with leveling foot holders.
• It is nicely built other wise.
• I wish it came with a pull out like the Oase stands but guess would be very expensive.
• Overall Ok, but nothing to highly recommend about.

Filter

• Oase Biomaster 350 thermo
• Replaced the biological media with Seachem Matrix
• Replaced one of the foams with Seachem Matrix as well.
• Steel lily pipes from GLA with extension. I think many of liked this company. But I personally would not buy anything again from them. They had quality control issues with this. One of the holders were metal and other acrylic and they would not send me another metal one. These are not the cheapest especially and you also have to buy extension separately. These are made by a chinese company and not made by GLA.
• I used to have glass lily pipes but got tired of cleaning them.

Skimmer

• I read many people commenting that using a skimmer attached to the inflow or outflow might be a pain to adjust, so ended up getting the Oase Crystal skim

CO2

• Fzone Co2 inline diffuser
• These work great and this is the second one that i have gotten. Trouble free but might need to replace parts of it if it gets clogged. Important thing is that it can be opened to clean.
• I have a Fzone dual stage regulator
  • Cheapest that i could find and works very well - highly recommend

Water

• I use RO water and remineralize it with APT Sky to a GH of around 4. Use the calculator on APT webpage.
• My goals are to have a low KH, and GH of around 4 - 5.

Substrate

• APT feast about 12 Liters
• You can read about my experience cycling it here using Dark Start (sort of)
• I did not want Aquasoil in the front of the tank and wanted a thin lining of gravel so used a gravel from Carribsea, and some smooth lava stones to separate them. More about this later but i don't really like the way it turned out.

Lighting

• Chihiros WRGB II - 10th anniv edition - 60 cm.

Plant List (Links provided to their care on the 2 hr Aquarist website if interested)

Background

• Left - Rotala blood red
• Middle - Rotala Tulunadensis (From Burr Aqua)
• Right - Alteranthera Reineckii Rosaefolia

Midground

• Left - Blyxa Joponica
• Middle - Ludwigea Arcuata, Pogostemon Decannensis, Rotala Florida, Staurogyne Repens
• Right - Syngonathus Belem/Macrocaulon(From Burr Aqua)

Foreground

• Left - Lobelia cardinalis mini
• Middle/Right - S.Repens and Montecarlo
• Still to come - Eleocharis Aricularis mini (in the place where the stones are)

Misc

• Clump of Hydrocortyle Tripartita to absorb nitrogen - Trust me you do not want this plant for any other reason, will take over your tank and get everything into a tangled mess.

Fish List (Preliminary)

• 4 Rasbora espei
• 2 Otos
• Will be adding more from my prior tank

Maintenance Parameters

• Lighting - 30% - 8 am - 3 pm
• Co2 - 40 ppm by Hanna co2 kit, 5 am - 3 pm
• Fertilizer - APT 1 - Still not settled on a routine but the recommended dose for daily dosing would be about 2.3 ml and i do about 2-3 ml every 3 days.
• Water changes 75% every 3 - 4 days, will make it weekly in the next couple of weeks

Photos
photo 1 - Day 11
Photo 2 - Day 20
Photo 3 - Day 21 - Current - Testing - Ammonia 0, Nitrate about 10 on API kit - Changed filter outlet location to get reduced current
Photo 4 - Day 21 - Side view

Thanks for reading so far!

There has been some good growth, some expected filamentous algae/diatmos and some melting, all expected hopefully this would not get too bad.
The Rotala blood red, Florida and Ludwigea arcuata are doing great. Both the florida and Arcuata seems to do much better on the aquasoil than on my prior intert substrate.
Blyxa melted a little but getting better, the Tulunadensis is struggling. The rest holding stable.
Interesting observation - The Rotala blood red, started putting out lot of roots and side shoots which i think is mainly because the plant was being pushed by the current to almost bend sideways and I believe it is thinking that it close the surface and doing its thing. With the changed filter outlet location I am hoping that it will be more erect and when i cut and replant there will be less roots. 2hr aquarist has written about this as well, but i think the bending sideways leading to rooting is not mentioned.

I am not liking the layout as much as i thought i would. Have been discussing with BurrAqua and have some suggestions but still thinking about this. Thoughts and suggestions welcome. Hopefully lot of people with (@Burr740 , @Dennis Wong @Art @techman81 @Pepere @Unexpected @Naturescapes_Rocco @Jeff Miotke @BenB @DutchMuch ) and without experience will follow and share this tank journey with me.

This is a great forum and i have tagged people that i am familiar with on the forum who have answered my questions and helped.

Hi all, first post. Thought it'd be fine to start a new thread specifically about yugang reactors for smaller tanks, under surface area 3000cm^2 (for the most part). Guess this could be a journal to some degree, but I think this thread is more for info than sharing my tank. I know people are generally using pvc pipes and fittings to DIY their reactors and to keep the cost down. I wanted something that looked super nice and was already "prebuilt". After scouring the internet for the longest time, I found that these PC water cooling reservoirs should serve that purpose.



Maybe someone's tested this already and found out that it doesn't work, but I wanted to put this out there since I haven't seen anything on it. I don't want to gatekeep this and I hope that this gives people another option since not everyone may have tools readily available. Since this is considered a PC component, there are a number of options available for fittings that I'll get into in a bit that make this great.

There are a few downsides though:

1. Limited diameters. I've only seen options for 50 or 60mm diameters. The 50mm ones have 40mm inner diameter, and 60mm ones I assume have 50mm inner.
2. Limited lengths. I've seen them as small as 6cm long all the way to 40cm long. The caps/lids range from 6-10mm thick.

Largest I've seen is 50mm and 400mm long. Useable diameter and length, let's say are 40mm and 380mm respectively. If you want a pH drop of 1.5, largest your surface area can be is 2690cm^2. Obviously you can stretch this if you don't need that large of a pH drop.

3. Standardized G 1/4" thread. This isn't as common a fitting (in the US at least). This thread size can be good or bad.
4. Some others mentioned later.

As for the upsides:
1. Clean look, no DIY necessary, no PVC glue, certain listings come with brackets and screws.
2. Inexpensive, I got a 210mm variant for ~$15USD
3. Outlet is offset to the side. You can rotate as necessary to control in overflow mode.
4. Others mentioned later.

Again, this is for PC water cooling. 95% of the parts I've seen are made of brass. They are however either chrome or nickel plated.

hamfist said:

I have not seen any adverse affects at all, and I do have low KH, low pH water. There are a few amanos living happily in the tank too.

Its a 150g tank with weekly 50% water changes though, so dissolved metals from the connectors must be minimal. You have got be thinking about changing them for nylon ones though.

Click to expand...

Not sure if this will be an issue since brass is ~60% copper. Hamfist's tank is also huge compared to my 60p and it may be dependent on water changes. Having the plating on the fittings will lower the corrosion rate since we are in acidic lower pH water. I honestly don't think this should be a problem at all. There are acrylic and stainless steel options out there if you look for them. I've heard nickel plating is best.

As of right now, I have my ADA 60P freshly cycling on a dark start. I was able to test the co2 functionality (not measure co2 levels). I am able to get a co2 bubble to develop inside and work with overflow. My "reactor" is 210mm long and has 50mm diameter. Calculating with the inner diameter (40mm on mine) and the useable length (190mm if you take away cap length), I should theoretically be able to get a ~1.4ph drop.

The filter I'm using is the Biomaster 350 thermo. Tubing is 5/8" for this, and this is one of the downsides I want to get into. This is for PC cooling like I mentioned and they generally don't use tubing that large. If you're running a filter that uses 12/16mm tubing instead of 5/8" (16/22mm) then you might have a much easier time finding fittings to work. G 1/4" thread is roughly a 1/2" opening. I'm not actually getting less flow with this because I realized the 16/22 quick tap valves I use actually have a 1/2" opening on the inside as well. This G 1/4" thread shouldn't be an issue then. FYI, G 1/4" is the same as 1/4" BSPP. (british standard pipe parallel)


I tried making my setup as NEATLY and good looking as possible. Above is my final work (as of now). I have some tube trimming to do though to make it nicer. Another thing I want to mention, the first time I tried this, I connected my outlet straight to the yugang reactor. I saw this thread reply (below) saying that their 2" pvc (~50mm) had no issue with the flow speed after adjusting their tap valve. That was not true in my experience. My reactor should be about the same size as this one, but the water rushes through very turbently:

TRyan said:

@Yugang has been so generous and helpful to me, held my hand through the calculations and parts questions, and opened to for to the world is CO2 reactors. I wanted to say thank you and that I appreciate your help.

Here's what we came up with. This is for a 60U (24" x 14") 20 gallon tank. 2" clear schedule 40 conduit 6" in length. At first, I mounted the reactor above the canister filter with both 90° elbows pointed down like so.View attachment 5115
This worked ok, but ( I'll add that I built another reactor for my smaller tank) the other reactor has a slightly different design due to space limitations and it worked better. Both of those 90° elbows faced up. So I moved the reactor down and turned both elbows upward like soView attachment 5116
The flow is more gentle and less bubbles. I control the CO2 flow with a regulator. I did not install a bypass or overflow. I'm using double tap disconnects for maintenance and flow adjustment purposes. I'm running an Oase 350 on this tank and need to throttle it down a bit anyways. This quiets everything down and stops the gurgling and sucking in air at the skimmer. I easily hit 1 ph drop in 40 minutes. I'm using a John Guest fitting for CO2 connection, which is threaded into reactor body using 1/8 x 27 NPT tap and 21/64 drill bit.

Such a huge improvement over the inline diffuser I was using. No more micro bubbles!

Click to expand...

And so I had to resort to making a simple bypass. One lesson I learned, don't get a cheap valve on amazon for $5. I placed the valve on the bypass initially:

It slowed the flow so much that almost all water was going through bypass even though valve was fully open. (Don't get cheap Y or T splitters either...)
Here's a video of the flow WITHOUT a bypass. Video starts with tap valve already slightly shut 25% of the way and slowly getting shut more as you can see:
View attachment IMG_7536.mov
It doesn't matter where you put the valve but I think it makes more sense to put it on the reactor side. You can control how slow the flow is that way. Ff you place it on bypass side, you can never slow down water through reactor that way - only more going to it.

You might ask, where's the co2 supposed to go if you don't have the inline accessory that I have? Well there's a threaded acrylic pipe that comes with this reactor if you look at listings. All you need to do is get a 4/6mm push connect to g1/4" male thread fitting for a few bucks and your issue is solved. The threaded acrylic pipe can also be screwed off and there are more extender fittings and such to replace that if you search them online. Options like the 60mm length reservoir I posted above may only have 2 outlets, but the larger 400mm example I gave has 4 holes with different hole positions too. You can place a purge valve that slightly works (there's literally a fitting for that too). The main outlet hole is still offset as well. (another example shown below) Any hole you don't want to use? Just buy a g1/4 plug. The benefit of using this PC cooling reservoir is the amount of fittings they have that can work for your needs.


For my setup, I ended up using a $3 dollar plastic garden hose splitter that has 3/4" GHT (garden hose thread) that was two valves on it (best of both worlds). I also bought the appropriate barbs to fit into it (so hosing can attach). Because I wanted to put this is my AquaForestAquarium Archaea cabinet, everything is packed really tight. Would be nicer if tubing had more room to move and didn't kink as easily. Just a tradeoff so you see I had to use elbow barbs and keep some tubing real short.

My fittings right now are brass but I found one seller on ebay (shipped from China) that has G 1/4" male thread to 5/8" barb in STAINLESS STEEL. However, it is BSPT (british standard pipe thread) so this one tapers inwards and will probably need teflon/very tight twist to seal with the o-ring. BSPT fitting can go into a BSPP threaded hole, but BSPP cannot go into BSPT. Someone correct me if I'm wrong about that, but I'm fairly certain that is the case.

If you've read to this point, I think this should be enough to understand what you can do with this PC cooling reservoir. It has limitations size wise and a need for a bypass if you don't want to slow the flow on your tank too much (depending on your filter), but it really is a nice cheap option that we can use for our hobby.

Please correct or question me anywhere!!!

--------------------------------------------

Just links to what I bought for anyone curious. I hope links are allowed. I don't have any commission to these. Just purely for info on what I have.

You can buy these for cheaper on AliExpress. I just didn't want to wait and paid a little more for the items. They're from the same supplier, but I also recommend finding a higher quality brand. The one I have is 50mm outer diameter. I think companies like Freezemod have higher quality ones, and they might be 60mm. Do your own research on this, I didn't do enough on this side.

Some other hard to find accessories:
- If you're trying to replace inlet cap, make sure the cap you find works. Here's one I found for 50mm diameter:
- I believe the acrylic reservoir itself is this (please check yourself!!):
- This one is super nice, it's a rotatable cap replacement you can get. Set your in/outlets exactly where you want. I'm not sure if 50 or 60mm diameter though:

I also mentioned not wanting to have to drill anything. You might wonder how to attach those brackets without doing so. I bought adhesive stickers with screw ports from AliExpress, and used screws/washers that came with the reservoir:

Can probably get on Amazon as well. The adhesive first, then stack 3 washers next, bracket next, thread the screw through the bracket hole -> washers -> adhesive screw port.



-------------------------------
Random thought:

I found this one singular option that I've not tested. It looks so similar to the internal bypass option that yugang himself devised. (a prebuilt option at least) It's slotted but to be honest, I don't know if it would work well. If you search for aluminum pc water cooling reservoir, you will find this. Only comes in one size unfortunately. Again, I have NOT tested this.

I apologize for my hiatus-- life has kept me busy as well as my other hobby projects. Some of you may have read my other journal on my Nature/Garden style hybrid, where I decided to switch pace from fast growing stems and rescape the tank to a traditional Nature style scape, which better suits my busy schedule.

I wanted to wait to post my initial pictures until I had gotten most of the plants in and arranged. Some plants were reused from the old scape and new ones were added. I'm still waiting on some Trident Fern, Blyxa, and Crypts to arrive, but those will be the final additions and then the scape will just be set to maintain and mature mode.

The hardware is still all the same, but for the purpose of starting a new thread I will reiterate the list of hardware.

Tank and Hardware:
Landen 100p
39" X 17.71" X 17.71" ~50 gal
Two Week Aqua T90 Pros
Oase Biosmart Thermo 600
GLA Dual Stage Regulator with inline diffuser
Fresh UNS controsoil, Black Fine
Beach Driftwood and Ancient Stone

Flora:
Eleochari Ascicularis'mini'
Staurogyne Repens
Elatine Triandra 'Fluorescence'
Bucephalanda sp 'Brownie Ghost 2011', 'King Devil', 'Neo 2015'
Anubias sp 'Nana Jade', 'Chili', 'Stardust Mini Coin'
Rhaphiadora Beccarii
Hygrophila Pinnatifida UK Variant
Java Fern 'Needle Leaf', 'Needle Leaf Mini', 'Orange Narrow'
Ranunculus Inundatus
Blyxa sp Japonica
Cryptocoryne Spiralis Tiger 'ADA Variant'
Nymphoides 'Taiwan'
Nymphaea Micrantha
Nymphaea 'Zenkeri'
Homonoia Riparia

Fauna:
15 Cenepa Red Pencilfish
15 Platinum Rummy Nose Tetras
2 Wild Type Honey Gourami
~25 Blood Orange Neocaridina

I'm basically running the same photoperiod as before, but added in a half hour ramp up and ramp down, so 1 hour ramp and 6 hours on, 45% Intensity on a custom color setting. Co2 injection rate was adjusted to account for slower growing plants, but still set to come on 2 hours before lights on. I'm dosing 5mL of APT 3 daily and 8mL of Seachem Advance to try and get my hairgrass carpet recovered.

I was a but worried about a mini cycle since I had to replace all of my substrate, thankfully due to the lower ammonia release of Controsoil, the bacteria were able to handle it with no issues. The plants don't have any algae, but since startup with the last scape, I'm still dealing with a lot of GDA and hair algae buildup on the glass by the end of the week. I'm assuming it's due to the spread of the pendant lighting, so I'm not sure what to do about that other than to just wait until after WC day to take tank photos

Maintenance has been far more straightforward as the tank works towards balancing. The first few water changes were time consuming as I move plants around and try to solidify an appeasing layout, however I think I have now finalized my planting groups and am happy with things. Now I will wait for some Trident Fern mats to add behind the driftwood, Blyxa Auberti variant from Joe, and a Cryptocoryne Albida 'Costata to fill out the background, and then let things fill out.

Now for the fun part! Photos. I won't be taking many until the plants start to recover and fill in, but I did take a few of the more uncommon plants I have in here as I find those to be interesting to document.

Tank shot:
Java Fern 'Orange Narrow', which I've spent an incredibly long time trying to find and was finally able to track down 4 rhizomes, 3 of which are in here on nutripads and one in my farm tank as a backup. Some leaves are already getting some nice orange coloring on the tips, I'm very excited about this one and can't wait to see what it will do.

One of my Brownie Ghost 2011 clumps I've been farming, which I decided to use as a midground plant for some contrast:

Nymphaea Zenkeri, super common but showing such pretty colors under these lights that I couldn't resist:

Homonia Riparia, stuffed into the crevices of the driftwood. Waiting for it to gain some red and orange tones, but won't happen until my aquasoil finishes leeching, as this plant only develops very vibrant red coloring when under nitrate limitation:

Nymphaea Micrantha, a lily that I have not yet kept before but am really enjoying. The multicoloring speckles on the leaves are really beautiful and tie all or the other colors of the tank together on one leaf:


Let me know what you all think! I'd especially love to hear from those who were following the other scape.

Started a new tank with the idea of show casing Lagenandra meeboldii which I have not showcased before. Wanted to feature Hygrophila lower Hlaingbwe, but I removed it later as I think it would be too large for this tank.

New substrate, new filter, squeezed filter mulm from the other matured tank, then ran the tank one week day before planting. 100% water change after planting, then 100% water change every other day since then. Dosing 1ml APT3 after water change day, and remineralizing to 5dGH using APT Sky. Trying out the low water column dosing approach for the initial period.

Filter: Oase 250
Lights: Week aqua a430 80%
Substrate: APT Feast

Was going to Journal about startup issues, however, it seems like the tank has already stabilized, skipping diatoms and green dust phase.

Freshly planted for a couple of days:
13/2/2026


Replanted the tops for Myriophyllum roraima, Cut and replanted Rotala blood red to begin building up the bush form. Trimmed old leaves
Foreground seems a bit blocky for now, so I think I'lll move stuff round again. Probably when the BV grows out some more.
Pic on 23/2/2026

Readings at this stage:
Potassium: 2.3ppm
Ammonia: 0.1ppm

reduce water changes to 2 times a week.

I’ve been wanting to do a tank for a while that focuses just on finnicky plants -erios, lud. panatal, tonina and the sorts. So this is my detailed journal of how I start my planting process all the way from cycling to planting, fertilizing, water changes and the pitsfalls, lighting and what processes work best for me.

Equipment:
Oase biomaster2- 350
Fluval Visi-white 60P tank
Fzone CO2 regulator and a 2.5lb CO2 tank
Week aqua L600Pro Series Light
Fzone Brite60 Light
Yugang reactor made using a 375 mm PC cooling reservoir - will post another journal detailing this.

CO2:
1.3 pH drop from a baseline of pH 6.8.

Aquasoil:
Three 5L bags of APT Feast

Cycling:

APT Feast being a high organic content soil - I like to cycle it for a full month at least using the dark start method before planting anything. This is even more important for me as I almost exclusively use tissue cultures for my plants. Because I will be injecting CO2, the tank was also getting injected with CO2 during its dark start. I know there’s opinion out there that it’s a waste and what not, but I think CO2 levels in the water might affect microbial ecosystem development in the long run, so I like to start off by exposing the microbial community of the tank to CO2 levels it will be seeing in the long run.
The water parameters 2 weeks after start dark cycle were as follows:
Total ammonia : 10 ppm+
Nitrite: 10 ppm+
Nitrate : unreadable as the nitrite levels were interfering with the API test. I eventually used a 25% dilution to read 30 ppm+ nitrates.
At this point I did a large (100%) water change to remove some ammonia and speed up the leaching process. The steeper the diffusion gradient between the soil and water the quicker the ammonia leaches, hence large water changes facilitates that.

After 4 weeks I did another water test and the parameters were similar as above. Proceeded to do another 100% water change.

After 5 weeks I did another water test and this time the parameters were:
Total Ammonia: 1 ppm
Nitrite: 2 ppm+
Nitrate: 40 ppm+
Decided to give it another week to see if the nitrites would drop to below 0.5 ppm.

One week later the nitrites had vanished. I did another 100% water change.
So it takes about 6 weeks to fully cycle a tank with APT Feast if you don’t use any old media or cycling aid.

Next step is to plant the tank. I wanted this tank to focus on mostly uncommon species:
1. Ludwigia Pantanal
2. Ludwigia Arcuata
3. Tonina fluviatilis
4. Rotala Macrandra
5. Macrandra Mini Red
6. Mayaca Fluviatilis
7. Rotala Florida
8. Rotala Bonsai
9. Ludwigia Cuba- white edge
10. Ludwigia Senegalensis
11. Lysimachia Parv. red
12. AR mini
13. Bacopa compacta white
14. Erio Vietnam
15. Erio Quinquangulare
16. Crypt Flamingo for my centre piece

Here’s a photo after planting. Not all the species listed above are present in the photo but I did eventually add them once I was able to acquire them.

I’m also trying to make a carpet with buce needle leaf on the left side, we’ll see how that goes. I plant on planting clumps of ratnagiricum in the carpet once the carpet has settled in.

OK, so parameters after planting:
1. CO2: 1.3 pH drop from a baseline pH of 6.8. About 55-60 ppm possibly. The verify by making sure my drop checker is yellow before lights on. I turn on CO2 4 hours before lights on and turn it off 1 hour before lights off.

2. Lighting at 80% strength. I hadn’t hooked up the week aqua yet at that point so it’s just 80% on the fzone which would amount to about 60 umol of PAR at the substrate. After a week, I installed my weekaqua L series and increased the PAR to around 100 umol at the substrate. I’m a big fan of using high light (80-110) umol from day 1 of planting, I think this gives plants the best chance at fast growth. The faster the plants grow adapt and generate mass the higher my chances on skipping the diatom/GDA phase. Here’s an 8 gallon tank below where I used a 100W grow light from Day 1 of planting and you can see how the tank is algae free and growing rapidly at the 3 week mark.


This method has worked really well for me, although the key to this method is to maintain very stable nitrate levels. Your nitrates could be anywhere between 0-30ppm, and it won’t matter as long as it is kept stable. A common mistake is to not replenish nitrates after a large water change.

3. Fertilizers:
APT 1 - 1.5 ml per day

4. Water parameters:
KH - 0dKH
Nitrate: 10 ppm
Phosphate: 0 ppm

Here’s the tank now after 4 weeks of growth:


The macrandra on the left had been trimmed last week and replanted, they had almost reaching 80% of the tank height. The tonina at the back has settled in well, some diatoms on the lower leaves which I’m not worried about. Although I don’t think that’s where I’ll kepp the tonina long run. I might use it as a midground plant and maybe move the panatal where the tonina is. You can barely see the quinquangulare behind the AR mini, but they seemed to have settled down as well. I planted 6 crowns and lost 3 within the first 2 weeks. I suspect damage from transportation - they smelled like cooked spinach when I received them.
So as is evident from above, even though I’m supplying higher levels of lighting, diatoms and GDA haven’t really taken a hold yet. The key has been regular water changes to remove detritus produced by the ramshorns, keep a stable nitrate level of 10ppm, stable CO2 at 50+ppm and good plant husbandry. I always make a point of trimming away older and emersed leaves so they don’t attract algae. The ludwigia white is actually emersed. I have removed all of its emersed leaves except the ones from the top 2 internodes and as soon as I will see sideshoots grow and develop past the 2nd internode, I will trim them and replant them and uproot the emersed stem and toss it. The plant arrangment is a little “block-like” as of now, but this isn’t really the final arrangement. I prefer to grow the plants out in a rough layout before I arrange them once they’ve all taken off.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I will add to it as the tank develops in the upcoming weeks.

was travelling for the past 3 weeks, so this tank hasn't had any trimming, water changes, or maintenance.
Frankly, I'm liking this jungle look a bit more than my usually well-trimmed tank.

Would love to build a Hillstream tank for some of these guys but a quick search indicates they're not easy to come by in the U.S.

Well I’m done talking about it, it’s time to get this journal started.

I have been really out of it the last year or so in terms of maintaining my own tank, mainly out of frustration with time constraints and inconsistency with dosing etc. However, I have now acquired a dream tank, rimless and with low iron glass like I’ve always wanted. While I loved having a sump and prided myself on putting it together, I’m past that desire. The AIO allows the same benefits with hiding equipment, and overall easier maintenance without climbing in and out of cabinets. Now onto the details of this build.

Tank: Planet Aquariums Tideline 62 Gallon AIO Lagoon

Filtration: (2) 250gph pumps on either side of the tank with center overflow into socks (I’m going to punch holes in the socks for now and stuff with polyfill, reviews state the socks clog way too quickly and there is no replacement sock as the insert is not the common round style). The baffles will be stuffed with the poret foam I have already from my sump for extra mechanical/biological.

Substrate: The bottom layer will comprise of bagged pond soil/peat/earthworm castings/ STS. This will be a thin layer and will mainly act as filler to raise up the cap of APT Feast. This is similar to a substrate setup I did when I first started back up in 2020, And that tank did very well. While capping with sand and relying on the dirt to feed the stems worked well, it did require a little more effort on my end with dosing. I don’t trust myself to be as diligent as some members on here are with their inert subs, so I’m taking the mulligan and using aquasoil as a cap, hence, “dirty soil.” This will be another island style layout, and the surrounding substrate will be comprised of Caribsea Carolina Creek Sand.

Hardscape: River rock (local hardscape center sourced) and malaysian driftwood. I have recently acquired another large piece of wood and I’m sourcing new stone this week, as what I have just isn’t meshing with my current vision for the tank.

Plants: …. I have not solidified my vision of what this scape will look like just yet as I haven’t been able to setup the hardscape to outline the island. The plan is to use a good amount of colorful stems, epiphytes, and potentially moss.

Lighting: I will be ordering the Week Aqua Z400 this week and am excited to test it out.

That’s all for now, more pictures and details to come. I should hopefully have the hardscape setup by the end of this coming week after acquiring more stone and wood.

CO2: Almost forgot, for Co2 injection I have made a DIY Yugang with a locking food storage container. It will be stored in the cabinet and the hook will feed into the return pump chamber on the right. I initially was bummed that I had to sacrifice storage to fit a 5lb CO2 tank under the stand, which also meant getting rid of of the 20lb tank I’ve only been having to fill twice a year. @GreggZ Will appreciate this, my awesome father in law suggested that I hide the co2 tank in the pantry closet which is directly behind that wall and just drill a hole for the co2 line. Since my father in laws word is pure gold in my wife’s eyes, that suggestion was approved! He’s just as much my dad too so I appreciated him supporting the project