Joined: Feb 24, 2007 Posts: 3641 Location: Gurgaon, Haryana
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Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 1:55 am Post subject: DREAM ::120 Gallon Journal :: Update 1st June
Hi Friends, I have started a planted 120G tank. I am putting up this journal, so I can key down all my experiences through the journey and can get your help, encouragement and help through out this project.
I am giving the name of this project 'Dream' as for last one year I was just trying to start this tank but could not do this due to different priorities at home front. Finally this is the time to get started.
Lets take a quick look at the basic details of this tank.
Size: 50"x24"x24" (It's a 124G custom made tank with 12mm float glass)
Stand: It's sitting on a Iron Stand made with L Angles. It's my own design and again custom made one. Lets take a look at the stand.
Substrate: Yes.... this is not going to be an ADA tank. I will follow normal year old method of Laterite+Peat and River Sand. I picked up a bag full of Laterite when I went to my native place last year. From the color you can see this is reach with High Iron content. This is a crushed small gravel form of Laterite brick.
As it is pure laterite, hope it will help me to bringdown the pH little bit. The next part was to add a commertial substrate with the laterite available in India. It's known as 'Soilrite' but not exactly for aquariums(Thanks Trevor Sir To Discover this). But lots of hobbyiests have tried this with success while growing aquatic plants. Soilrite is a mixture of Canadian Peat Moss, Vermiculite and Solirite. Vermicules are kind of volcanic ash and famous for its very high ECE.
So my bottom layer is a mixture of Laterite and soilrite. Total thinkness of the bottom layer is arround 1".
I topped it up with 2 types of River Gravels. For the back and Mid ground plants I have used 3-4mm River Gravel where as for the foreground carpet plants am going to use finer river sand of arround 2mm. Below is the River Gravels used in Back and Midground.
Total substrate thickness at back is arround 5" where as it is just 2.5" at foreground. Used pieces of Thermocol to make the initial slope at the bottom and spread the substrate layers top of it.
Hardscaping: I have used only Rocks for Hardscaping. The tallest one is arround 1.5 feet high where as rest of the rocks are hardly 6" tall. We had a detailed discussion on finalising Hardscape for this tank before in forum itself and will like to thanks members to help me finalizing the Rock setup.
Here We Go,
Sorry for the lousy condition of the tank glass. Too lazy to clean them up. As of now the tank left for cycling. I will love to avoid the initial algae attack to some extent with a cycled tank.
BOOM Setup: I will be using 2 x 150watt MH for lighting. I have picked up 2 8000K astralux bulb for this tank. The MH are placed 1 feet above of the water surface to avoid extra heating. To fix these MH top of the tank, again I sat with pen and paper to design the stand and came up with this.
the complete stand is splitted into 4 parts and bolted together, so if I want to move the tank later somewhere else, it will take just 5 min to split the stand into bits and pieces.
I am a good boy.... so before my wife kicks me out of my apartment, I painted that ugly iron stand last weekend.
CO2 Setup: I will be using a 4.5KG CO2 Cylinder and a AquaBay CO2 Kit along with Dymax tower type Internal CO2 reactor which will be driven by a Powerhead of 700lph capacity. Later I have a plan to upgrade it to a external reactor may be an Aqua Medic.
Filteration:
Control Unit:
A good utilization of a lazy Sunday Afternoon. I have made the Switch control board.
I give 2 inputs to the board. 1 from 15Amp Line another from 5 Amp line. I have connected each timer to different Amp input line. And there are 4 independent switches which are not connected to timers and taking 5 amp input.
As I have used 5 pin timer, I will get double output. So I made the design like something so when Timer 1 will be on my MH will Glow and when It will be off One spot light will be on. Same for timer 2. When it will be on, My CO2 will start and when it will be off my Air pump will Start running (Just An Example. I am not going to airate the tank at night even.)
Here is the plant list, what I have planned for this tank.
Yesterday I have completed plantation. But still working on that. Plants got stuck in Singapur Airport for 3 days and came in a pathetic condition. Will update you with pictures soon.
My special thanks goes to Raghu, Tarun, Deepak, Seetharam and Bhaskar. They helped me a lot to kick off this project.
Oops forgot to say thanks my betterhalf, who gifted me the CO2 Setup and Eheim 2217.
Last edited by Tirtha C on Tue Jun 02, 2009 12:11 am; edited 20 times in total
Joined: Aug 20, 2008 Posts: 225 Location: Kolkata, West Bengal
Status: Offline
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 4:39 am Post subject: Re: DREAM :: Making Of A 120 Gallon
Hi tirtha,
nice start... but if u r doing this for AGA 2009 then i have a lil suggestion.. as much as i read from AGA sites they hate different textured rocks in same scape.. so if possible try to put similar textured rocks in this scape.. otherwise no problem
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 12:42 pm Post subject: Re: DREAM :: Making Of A 120 Gallon
Dear Tirthankar
Good Beginning
A request for you, please post in details about the progress on bimonthly basis, so that new planted tank beginners can have an idea how to start and maintain. Make it a true and worthy to read planted aqualog.
Regards
Kaushikda
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long way to go.. keep updating. 
..... i am alos in the making of my 175L planted tank, so i m going to follow this very closely.
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