My girlfriend and I recently started our own freshwater Ecosystem aquarium. We started relatively minor for our first one and decided to do a simple 10 Gallon Tank. We went to a store on January 3rd (yesterday) and picked up our tank, light, plants, substrate, filter, heater, and wood piece. We got our stones and gravel from a local trout stream, and we boiled the fuck out of it before placing it in the tank. We spent all of last night setting it up and planting everything so we'd be ready to move shrimp, snails, and fish into it once the nitrogen cycle is complete. I'll post pictures below of the setup process and will answer any questions you guys might have.
We settled on having the back of the branch pointing towards the back corner of the aquarium. We then moved the filter to the same side of the tank. In the picture above, imagine the filter on the opposite side.
We had to glue the moss and the anubis plant to the rocks and the branch piece before filling it with water. To keep the water from fucking up the substrate on the bottom, we placed a piece of bubble wrap over the branch and bottom and slowly poured in ~2 5gallon buckets of water. It worked pretty well, given how clear the aquarium is in the picture above.
We planted our remaining plants and introduced our top floaters (Phyllanthus Fluitans) to curb algae growth. This should help the plants thrive before we get any serious cleaners in the tank (Shrimp and Snails). Our goal here was to create a little slice of life taken from a pond near a waterfall. Water movement is minimal, and the filter that pushes out the water is aimed toward the glass, creating a backwash effect along the top left of the fish tank. This keeps our top floaters from being buffeted by the surface of the water. Moreover, it keeps them afloat, which is imperative for their survival.
I was sooo happy to see that some of our plants were harboring hitchhikers! We counted 3-4 Snails in the tank after everything had been set up. This was a really fantastic find, and it meant we had a couple of glass cleaners hard at work. I hope they survive, because that means my tap water is already at a safe level for nanoorganisms like these small snails. I will test the tank water in a week and see if it is safe to introduce Fish, shrimp, and snails. I do have a bottle of beneficial bacteria that I can introduce to speed up the nitrogen cycle, but I will do that later.
I am super excited to see the plant growth in my tank over the coming weeks. I hope they all survive and thrive in their current habitat. I also hope our little hitchhikers can live as well. I know they are from the plants, since we had the larger rocks and gravel at a steady boil for over an hour. This should've killed all foreign material and life.
If anyone is interested, the idea for this came from the YouTube channel linked below. We thought it would be a really cool idea to build our own tank and continuously harvest the plants as they grew.
https://www.youtube.com/@MDFishTanks
Specifically, this is the video we used as inspiration for many of the plants and the look we were after.
We settled on having the back of the branch pointing towards the back corner of the aquarium. We then moved the filter to the same side of the tank. In the picture above, imagine the filter on the opposite side.
We had to glue the moss and the anubis plant to the rocks and the branch piece before filling it with water. To keep the water from fucking up the substrate on the bottom, we placed a piece of bubble wrap over the branch and bottom and slowly poured in ~2 5gallon buckets of water. It worked pretty well, given how clear the aquarium is in the picture above.
We planted our remaining plants and introduced our top floaters (Phyllanthus Fluitans) to curb algae growth. This should help the plants thrive before we get any serious cleaners in the tank (Shrimp and Snails). Our goal here was to create a little slice of life taken from a pond near a waterfall. Water movement is minimal, and the filter that pushes out the water is aimed toward the glass, creating a backwash effect along the top left of the fish tank. This keeps our top floaters from being buffeted by the surface of the water. Moreover, it keeps them afloat, which is imperative for their survival.
I was sooo happy to see that some of our plants were harboring hitchhikers! We counted 3-4 Snails in the tank after everything had been set up. This was a really fantastic find, and it meant we had a couple of glass cleaners hard at work. I hope they survive, because that means my tap water is already at a safe level for nanoorganisms like these small snails. I will test the tank water in a week and see if it is safe to introduce Fish, shrimp, and snails. I do have a bottle of beneficial bacteria that I can introduce to speed up the nitrogen cycle, but I will do that later.
I am super excited to see the plant growth in my tank over the coming weeks. I hope they all survive and thrive in their current habitat. I also hope our little hitchhikers can live as well. I know they are from the plants, since we had the larger rocks and gravel at a steady boil for over an hour. This should've killed all foreign material and life.
If anyone is interested, the idea for this came from the YouTube channel linked below. We thought it would be a really cool idea to build our own tank and continuously harvest the plants as they grew.
https://www.youtube.com/@MDFishTanks
Specifically, this is the video we used as inspiration for many of the plants and the look we were after.
