Amos has lived in three tanks. The second one (a 3' tank) has been set up twice. The first time was my first attempt at a tank intended explicitly for plants. The second time was re-creating the tank after I moved house, in June 1998. This page is a photo-sequence of the second setup. The move went reasonably well - I wouldn't do anything much different next time, so offer this as a working sequence!
The photographs cover only the setting up of the tank. Before that happened, quite a lot was done in a careful sequence. It went something like:
This is about five hours after getting into the house. At this stage all the rest of my possessions are still in boxes. Most of the fish, however, are already in a filtered tank.
Most of the fish travelled in plastic bags in the cool-boxes in the bottom left of the picture. A lucky few travelled unbagged in a coolbox with a corner filter that was running for all but about 30 minutes. The fish that go into the large tank have been transferred into the smaller tank on the floor to the right. The permanent residents of that tank are still in their bags in the red box (that's why it's still got a lid on). There's an even smaller tank about to be set up just out of the picture for the fish still in the red box.
The Eheim filter is from the big tank - at the moment it's running into the tank on the floor.
Note that all the equipment I expected to need was packed into the large tank, so it was immediately to hand. Also, that the small tank travelled drained, but kept its gravel.
I had made some little acrylic retaining walls in advance. I had problems the first time I set up the tank - I wanted a step in the substrate and found some nice looking slate blocks, but they weren't quite big enough to bury sufficiently to hold back the gravel very well. The plan second time around was that these would hold back the gravel and the slate would then be purely cosmetic.
That meant that I had to place the walls carefully before any substrate went in - they are intended not to move once filled up, so I matched them up against the blocks at the start.
Also in this picture is the heater cable in (almost) it's final position. It's held with suction cups so it doesn't move as the substrate goes in.
The heater cable is not used to maintain the temperature in the tank. It is much too low power for that. What it does is set up convection currents in the water within the substrate bed. This very slow water movement is sufficient to stop the water within the substrate going anaerobic. If the water were to go anaerobic, all sorts of nasty rotting processes start occurring and the tank can be 'poisoned' by assorted nasty breakdown products.
The first substrate layer was that salvaged from the previous setup as noted in the list of preparation (above). That meant it was already saturated, as you can see, and was quite messy to put in place. I did a reasonable job of separating out the layers from the previous setup, but this layer was somewhat contaminated with bits of gravel from the layer which had been above it. I don't think it will matter much.
The next step was to make up some more substrate. In the previous setup I had more or less equal layers of substrate and gravel. This time round, though, I decided to go for a deep substrate layer with a fairly thin gravel layer above. That, plus the fact that I couldn't salvage all of the previous material meant I needed some new substrate. I use Aquaponics 'Substore', which comes in a small packet to be mixed with 5kg of sand.
The new substrate is added over the re-used layer. This is much cleaner!
A possible problem with this deep substrate layer is that the convection currents discussed above may not be powerful enough to achieve the circulation I want through a deeper sand base. If that is the case, I will have problems since the substrate will become prone to anaerobic 'rotting', with the resulting dread poison gasses. However, I think it will be OK, and now I just have to wait and see if I am right.
The gravel is the final layer to go into the tank. This is a fine gravel, with angular grains of typically 1 to 1.5mm across. All the gravel I used was salvaged from the previous setup. That's mainly because the layer is around two thirds the thickness it was, rather than down to efficient salvaging.
I also added the slate blocks at this stage. In addition to the two blocks in front of the retaining walls there's a slab (at the bottom left of the picture) which is suspended above the gravel to form a reasonably spacious cave. One end rests on one of the raised blocks and the other on a smaller block mostly buried in the gravel. The slab is made secure with some epoxy putty in the joins.
With the gravel in, it is easy to see my retaining walls in action. So far they look like they are working exactly as hoped.
The next stage is to install the plumbing. This was almost trivial since I'd left it all in place from the previous setup, just disconnected the filter and then rolled up the pipes into the cupboards in the stand. Re-installation was thus just a case of un-rolling the pipes and putting the ends into the tank.
This is probably a good point to talk about the plumbing. Working from the top of the picture to the bottom there is:
At last some water goes in. This is all preserved from the previous setup. The bottles I used to transport it are in the bottom of the picture. A third is off camera somewhere, and was not added yet.
At this stage (still the day I moved house) I had had enough. All the fish were happy in their temporary tanks, so I went to bed.
Next morning the clarity of the water had improved somewhat. I added some wood (all of which had been in the previous setup) and put in the heater. At this stage the water was not quite sufficient to entirely submerge the heater, so it wasn't switched on yet.
Meanwhile the plants have been floating in the tank housing the fish.
If you look closely Amos is just visible through the glare off the glass in the bottom left of this photo.
The plants were transferred into the big tank. This is much easier at this stage than when the water is up to it's final level.
This photo has most of the plants that were transferred - I chucked some mangy specimens, and thinned out the others, but even so, you can see that the swords are not really happy for me. A couple of days after setup quite a few more plants were added (bought new) to bring it up to a decent planting density.
The third bottle of transferred water was added. This was enough to submerge the heater so I switched it on. To help it along I temporarily added an additional heater and also boosted it a bit with a couple of kettle-fulls of boiling water (taking care not to scald the plants).
The water was now high enough and warm enough for the filter to operate, so it was transferred from the small holding tank and set running. The extra heater was also removed around now.
The next big milestone was the transfer of the fish from the holding tank to their permanent home. All went smoothly, though they were stressed enough that the schooling fish schooled (angels left, rasboros right) and Amos sat and sulked (in the middle).
The water which had been in the holding tank was also transferred, raising the level even more. At this stage all the water in the tank (but for two kettles mentioned above) was water kept from the previous setup. As can be seen this was nearly two thirds of the water in the tank.
Some new water was added (passed through a couple of resin beds to remove all sorts of nasties the water company lets me drink) to fill the tank.
The pipe down the front of the tank is the return from a secondary mechanical cannister I hooked up to help water clarity.
The acrylic thing with a big bubble to the left is my fallback CO2 setup.
It uses a chemical process to generate a big bubble of CO2 which sits there
and gradually dissolves into the tank water. I use it when my CO2 cylinder
is off being refilled, and it's in here now because I've not set up the CO2
yet (that was about a week later).
With the secondary filter removed, the setup of the new tank is complete.
So Jane admires all my hard work!
To comment on anything (please do) email ian.web@astounding.org.uk