January 27, 2005
First!
Finally had time to set up my 5.5 gallon AGA tank yesterday (1/25/05). Had bought it before our honeymoon so didn't have time to do anything with it till now.
Equipped it with:
• 10 lbs CaribSea Eco-Complete Planted Aquarium Substrate from Absolutely Fish, aka my fav LFS (Local Fish Store).
• Hagen Elite Stingray 5 underwater filter from PetSmart.
• Hagen 25-watt Mini-Compact Submersible Heater from PetSmart.
• JBJLighting 14" Desktop Formosa Lighting System from Reef Encounter.
Took me practically forever to find a suitable lighting system for what I wanted to do with this tank (make it planted). Not many companies make strong lighting systems for tanks smaller than 10 gallons. This Desktop Formosa has two 18 watt bulbs so I'm pumping 36 watts right into the tank. As a comparison, our 12 gallon Eclipse system can only fit a single 13 watt bulb. Unless I retrofit it with do-it-yourself lighting. No handyman am I unfortunately.
Then planted it so far with:
• 2 narrow leaf chain swords
• a bunch of hornwort
• 1 tropica sword
• 4 corkscrew vals
• 1 narrow leaf sagittaria
• a cluster of floating salvinia
Still rather under-planted so will be on the lookout for more in the coming weeks. Need to get some low ground-cover type plants if possible. Oh, and definitely need to find a good piece of driftwood to fit.
Posted by ronin at January 27, 2005 1:14 AM