Does anyone have Planted or Biotope Monster fish tanks?
- Thread starter Loganfish
- Start date
I’m slowly filling out my 300g but I do run into issues with small amounts of algae on the leaves I can’t be rid of despite 0.0.0 params but 0.5 phosphate usually. And plants being uprooted occasionally but I’m propagating faster than they get ripped up. I’ve only got fire eels as “monster fish” and they don’t take up much space outside of their pipes. And a few banded leporinus.
That background looks awesome so does the tank.
When I first set mine up, I was emulating parts of lake Gatun, because that's where the 1st fish in the tank came from, and where I collected the plants.
Once I started seriously collecting myself, the river topograhy where I was catching the species I wanted was quite different.
There are really no aquatic plants in those more east Panamanian rivers, so in order to get the benifits of true aquatic, I plants realized they needed to be in a separate sump, and only terrestrial plants (similar to the way they surrounding the banks.in nature.
Some of the fish species from these areas are consummate detrius and vegetarian users, and use every bit of organic matter that falls in the river,
except the toxic plants lining the tanks surface. The fish make use of every bit of leaf litter, branches, sticks, bark, ...everything.
Below toxic plants like dieffenbachia, and arden Corton are the only ones spared.
These allow the sump to be, an "argueably" more pleasing part of the system as opposed to solely be a "deposito" for man-made gear, and banal media chunks.
It allows for (along with the simple ammonia and nitrite elimination), the added benifit of "nitrate" reduction, not usuably afforded by normal means.
The sump below .
And some of the residents normally seen as snacks for cichlids and other predatory and opportunistic species.
lid
The current main cichlid tank below.
Once I started seriously collecting myself, the river topograhy where I was catching the species I wanted was quite different.
There are really no aquatic plants in those more east Panamanian rivers, so in order to get the benifits of true aquatic, I plants realized they needed to be in a separate sump, and only terrestrial plants (similar to the way they surrounding the banks.in nature.
Some of the fish species from these areas are consummate detrius and vegetarian users, and use every bit of organic matter that falls in the river,
except the toxic plants lining the tanks surface. The fish make use of every bit of leaf litter, branches, sticks, bark, ...everything.
Below toxic plants like dieffenbachia, and arden Corton are the only ones spared.
These allow the sump to be, an "argueably" more pleasing part of the system as opposed to solely be a "deposito" for man-made gear, and banal media chunks.
It allows for (along with the simple ammonia and nitrite elimination), the added benifit of "nitrate" reduction, not usuably afforded by normal means.
The sump below .
And some of the residents normally seen as snacks for cichlids and other predatory and opportunistic species.
lidThe current main cichlid tank below.
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Thank you, setting it up was quite an enjoyable project. Probably a once in a lifetime thing for me since I'm not really a hands-on type of person.
Very nice. What are your water parameters GH 0 , KH 0, ph ?
I keep my 450gal as a South American tank and my tank water stays at pH 4.4 , GH 0.8 ppm , KH 0.6 ppm. My phosphate averages at about 2.1 ppm but the tank also builds up ammonia reading pretty quick usually 0.6 ppm to 1.6 ppm at any one point in time (actually mostly ammonium at that pH, so harmless).
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Correction to the above: the GH and KH readings are in dGH and dKH, not ppm.
260g G sphenoza and corys and hoplos. 
