Equipment

Now we need to set up the tank equipment. This will include filter, heater, CO2 and lights. You will want to make sure you have a multi-plug higher than your tank as you should have a drip loop for electronic appliances in water.

CO2
I'm not rich enough to get proper CO2 yet so I have a Seachem Bio System from Hartlands. This is basically a sealed bottle with a clip, a silicone tube, a diffuser power-head, and bottles of yeast and sugar. The yeast reacts with the sugar in warm water to produce CO2 which is sucked through the pipe and diffused by the power-head. This system is not actually sufficient for my 270l tank, but I will be using easy plants so hopefully it will work out. CO2 is poisonous to fish, but there won't be enough of it in my tank to worry them. I will run the power-head 24/7, but if you have a proper system you will have to turn it off at night using a timer or a tank sensor. When I can afford it, I will definitely be trying out a proper pressurized CO2 system.

Filter
I would suggest going for an internal filter or an external cannister filter, the reason being that you don't want to disturb the surface of your aquarium. You need to keep as much CO2 in the water as possible. Sam's Aquarium sells a wide range of filters at good prices. Make sure you get one that can handle the volume of water you have in your tank. I chose an Eheim cannister filter. If I had the extra cash I would probably have gone for a Fluval. Hopefully your manual-reading skills will get you through setting up your filter. I also bought a surface skimmer attachment for my filter which can improve the look of your tank.

Lights
The cheapest and easiest lighting that is still very effective is T5 fluorescent. I bought Sylvania Grolux tubes specifically designed for growing plants from The Lamphouse and found an affordable 2-bulb Odyssea light fitting which clips over my tank at Sam's Aquarium. When buying a tube, make sure that its colour profile is mainly in the red and blue range. Many people hang their light fitting from the roof, but if I tried that where my tank is the ceiling would come down. You could put in more lights, but more lighting means that everything in your tank will grow faster, including algae. If this is your first tank, you should start with low lighting and get all the other factors right, otherwise things could get out of control.

Heater
I bought a fairly expensive Eheim heater because of some scary stories I've heard about cheap heaters breaking in various ways, but there's not much to this piece of equipment. Set it to the temperature you want (probably about 25 degrees celsius) and plug it in. You will also need a thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature. Stick it to the inside of your tank at an angle of about 45 degrees.

Thats about it for equipment. Next is to fill up the tank and put some plants in it!

Hardscape

Right, we still have a glass box, only now it has bits of sand and rock in it. Not terribly exciting. But now we come to the first section which will actually look good - the hardscape. The hardscape is the material that will give your aquascape shape (along with your substrate). It usually consists of various kinds of rock or wood.

The first thing that you absolutely have to have is a patient audience with the ability to balance on the edge of a really thin board. This is Friendly Cat.

The easiest wood to get seems to be Mopane wood. There are a few pieces in most aquarium shops, but I found that Pet Adventure has by far the biggest selection. I'm sure that I must have thoroughly annoyed them by shifting the entire heap of driftwood out from under the shelves to get at the best pieces.

The easiest rock to find in Cape Town seems to be sandstone, which you can pick up all over the place. Just be sure you're permitted to take it away.

Try to get several pieces of hardscape, because you want to be able to set up different combinations and arrangements until you find one that you like. Usually either wood OR rock is used - it is very hard to create a good design with both. I started out hoping to do an iwagumi tank, but I didn't really "feel" my arrangements. Possibly my substrate should have been much deeper for this type of design, or perhaps I just need more practice. In an iwagumi tank you always have an odd number of rocks and you always use the same type of rock throughout the design.

Next I tried out the driftwood, with much more satisfactory results. The general idea is inspired by the mound design in Nature Aquarium, where the aquascape builds up towards the center of the tank. I chose driftwood with thin ends to point outwards and heavier sections to weigh down the base. Ideally, you should soak the wood for a few weeks before using it. If you don't, the water will be yellow for a long time due to the tannins in the wood. This does no harm to your tank, and I actually don't mind this look. It reminds of the water in streams such as those found in Kirstenbosch. The other reason to soak your wood is that if you don't, you will inevitably get some "floaters" which will actually seem sentient in their single-minded determination to destroy you carefully planned design. I was in too much of a hurry to do this, so I just plonked the wood in and weighed it down with a bag of flat smooth stones which I got from Atlantic Pebbles. Luckily I had only one really persistent floater.

When your design is done, you might feel that this looks pretty good all by itself. However, it has the potential to look much better once it is planted. Hopefully I won't regret proceeding....

Substrate

Now that we have a big glass box sitting on a supporting structure of some kind, we need to put down a layer of substrate to support everything else. This is one of the most important steps to get right, mainly because you can't change it later without stripping down your masterpiece. Your substrate will need to be deep enough to support your plant's roots and the grain size will need to be correct so that the roots can get a grip while at the same time not being crushed. I used the Hagen GEOsystem Fine Black River Sand substrate. I was about to buy Seachem Flourite (which I would still like to give a try in a future tank) but was lucky enough to spot several rather ancient-looking bags of GEOsystem under a shelf at the back of Sam's Aquarium. I bought all 28 kg, so I'm not sure if there will be any more available there. I have also seen it available at Elite Aquatics. I washed the gravel by putting it in a bucket with water, swirling it around by hand and pouring off the resulting murky water.

Underneath my substrate I used 2 kg of "Chinese special" Jin Di laterite from Pet Adventure. I also saw this available at Oceanson Aquariums. A friend had good results from this particular brand which is why I jumped at the chance to try it out. The instructions on the bucket were fascinating and included the directive to place the substrate in the rat. I came across a bottle of liquid fertilizer of the same brand earlier today which assured me that the contents would not harm my cows!

I mixed the laterite with about half of my washed gravel and spread it evenly over the bottom of my tank.

I then put the rest of the gravel on top of the mixture and sloped the gravel upwards towards the back of the tank to provide an impression of depth.

The substrate is probably the part of setting up the tank which involves the most work, so from here on its plain sailing. Allegedly.

Starting a planted tank.

Welcome to my first blog! I finally have something more interesting than my day-to-day life and the musings of my demented mind to share with the world. I am going to be setting up a planted aquarium. This is something that might be quite an imposing task even for those who already keep fish, and the hobby does not have a large following in South Africa. If you want to see why I would like to do this, look no further then the works of Takashi Amano for inspiration. Incidentally, my girlfriend and I already have 7 tanks between us, all of which have real plants in them, so I'm not completely new to the hobby. I've only been involved in fish keeping for about a year and my quick start is due to the expert knowledge of and assistance from Hartlands Aquatics. Also note that I don't have bags of cash so although what I do should be possible for most people, it also means that I can't always go out and order the most expensive equipment.

I would like to accomplish several things in the entries of this blog.

Firstly, I hope that my experience will be helpful to others who want to set up a tank like this one. From this blog you should get a perfect textbook on how to set up a mind-blowingly beautiful planted aquarium. Of course, you may also end up with a set of documents to consult every time you want to know how to obtain a hideous, algae-infested eyesore filled with dead fish and rotting plant matter. However, any scientist will tell you that experiments with negative results are just as valuable as those with positive results, so either way this should be a useful resource.

Secondly, I hope to be able to point South African readers in Cape Town to places where good equipment, hardscape and plants can be obtained locally. Maybe you too have tortured yourself browsing the websites of aquarium stores overseas or drooling over some ADA glasswork.... I don't think I have any ground-breaking secrets to share for anyone who is already involved in fish-keeping in Cape Town, but hopefully I can provide a useful list of places to visit.

I will try and detail everything I do with photos and not take anything for granted. For this post, I will discuss the tank itself. It was made by Roly's Aquariums who, in my experience, make the best and cheapest easily available tanks in Cape Town. I bought it through Hartlands Aquatics. It measures 100cm x 600cm at the base and is 450cm high. The bottom is made with 10mm glass and the sides with 6mm glass. The top and bottom are re-enforced on all sides with strips of 12mm glass. Obviously it has a layer of polystyrene siliconed to the bottom. I placed the tank on a table with a solid wood top and a metal frame on a cement floor. If the table doesn't hold up then this blog might be over a lot sooner then I anticipated. :)

I used a spirit level to check that the tank is level. As you can see from the photo I checked this quite late. It would be best to address structural questions before starting to set up the tank to avoid having to move it later on.

That about wraps it up for this post. I will leave you with a photo showing some of the equipment I bought for the tank which will hopefully get you to come back for another entry (if my enthralling prose has not already got you bookmarking this blog).