The home built Big Clear Kahuna tank - with the 2006 discus aquascape - met an untimely end. It had a massive failure of a seam. Can you say “75 gallons of water gushing onto my wooden floor!” ? My wife can.

I’ll post later on how I built that tank, and how you can avoid the mistake that I made on that one. It’s easy. But for now I’d like to share my submission to the Aquatic Gardeners Association (AGA) 2007 Aquascaping Contest. I got a new tank - this time a 180 gallon - and named it Son of Kahuna, after the dear departed.

These pics are pretty early in the tank’s life. It did not remain this way. The lights were just too bright for the anubias, and they had to be replaced. The green spot alage (GSA) they kept getting on their leaves was driving me nuts. But this is what the tank looked like in the fall of last year at photo submission time.

Technical Info

Plants
Amazon Sword (Echinodorus bleheri), Anubias Barteri Round Leaf (Anubias barteri v. Round Leaf), Anubias Nana (Anubias barteri v. Nana), Anubias Petite Nana (Anubias Pygmy Nana), Bronze Crypt Wendtii (Cryptocoryne wendtii v. Tropica), Red Rubin Sword (Echinodorus v. Rubin), Red Tiger Lotus (Nymphaea zenkeri), Tawain Moss (Taxiphyllum alternans)

Fish/Animals
100 Ghost (Glass) Shrimp (Paleomonetes sp.), 25 Amano Shrimp (Caridina japonica), 5 Singapore Flower Shrimp (Atyopsis moluccensis), 5 Swartz’s Cory Cats (Corydoras schwartzi), 5 Zebra Loachs (Botia striata), 15 Oto Cats (Otocinclus sp.), 50 Green Neon Tetras (Paracheirodon simulans), 9 Discus (Cobalt and Leopards) (Symphysodon spp.). And if you look hard, you may see a single miscellaneous white tetra. It’s not consistent with the aquascape, but it came to my family, desperately needing a home.

Decorative Materials

25 ft. driftwood, secured with ADA Woodtight, 1″ ADA Bright Sand. Sword plants and crypts are planted in shallow pots of ADA Aquasoil over ADA Powersand.

Background
black acrylic sheet

Lighting
2 x 150 watt HQI MH, 10,000K

Filtration
Ocean Clear 340, Eheim Pro II 2026, Lifegard 25 watt UV. System flow rate set to 2.8x tank turnover / hour.

Additional Info
This tank and aquascape were designed to provide a visually pleasing planted environment for discus, while still requiring relatively low maintenance. The plants, fish, crustaceans, and systems supporting the tank, all work together to keep tank maintenance requirements low - currently one weekly 45-60 minute maintenance session. Multiple, small, automated water changes each night yield an equivalent of 50% water change every 3 days. Three tank outflows are plumbed thru the bottom of the tank, with two returns over the top. Pre-filters on outflows and return nozzles are obscured by plants. No equipment was removed for photos. CO2 in-line injection with Mazzei venturi. CO2 kept at 45 ppm by pH controller. Daily micro fertilization with 9 ml ADA Green Brighty Step 2. Potassium dosed to keep tank at 25 ppm at the beginning of each day (prior to uptake). Nitrogen and Phosphate are found in the tap water used in water changes, keeping the tank at 8 and 0.9 ppm respectively. Neither is dosed.

I went kinda “all out” on the technical aspects of this tank. I’m sure someone’s got a more technical setup somewhere, but I’ve not seen it. It certainly makes keeping a planted discus tank this size visually appealing (no equipment in the tank), and easy to maintain. I’ll post more details on that later.

If you read my post on the AGA 2005 Big Clear Kahuna, it’s worth noting that that tank never really took off. Plants would do OK for a few months, and then begin to die. This repeated multiple times. And the poor plant health (and all the silicates from the sand) prompted a nasty thread algae outbreak. Ultimately I tore the tank down out of frustration and found the source of all of my ills. A silver plated coaster! I had used one to prop up some cardboard keeping the sand separate from the soil as I was setting up the tank the first day. And I forgot to remove it. That coaster began to dissolve and leach into the soil. And silver is devastating to plant roots. Look it up. So there’s one stupid mistake to never repeat.

Anyway, after I tore the Big Clear Kahuna, I named my next tank Kahuna’s Revenge. And by that time I had decided that I had learned enough to try to keep some discus. It has a reputation of being hard - keeping discus in a planted tank. And it’s not easy. But I wouldn’t call it hard. There’s just a little extra attention to detail required. For example, many discus keepers regularly use medications that will kill plants. And may plant people use fertilization dosing levels that would make discus sick or unhappy. Like I say, it’s just paying attention to the details. But it’s not really hard.

These are the pics I submitted to the Aquatic Gardeners Association (AGA) 2006 Aquascaping Contest.

Technical Info

Plants
Anubias barteri, Anubias barteri var. nana, Anubias barteri var. nana petite, Crinum calamistratum, Cryptocoryne crispatula var. Balansae, Marsilea minuta, Vesicularia fasciculata

Fish/Animals
40 Otocinclus vittatus 50 Caridina japonica 70 Paracheirodon simulans 8 Symphysodon spp.

Decorative Materials
ADA Aquasoil substrate on top of ADA Powersand special with borders of ADA Bright Sand. Moss and Anubias planted on over 20″ of driftwood scaffolding.

Background
none

Lighting
54w T5 HO 10,000K and 54w T5 HO 6,700K

Filtration
Eheim 2026 (950 l/h)

Additional Info
Daily dosing: 12 drops ADA ECA, 1.3 ml ADA Green Brighty, 25ml solution of K2SO4 (equivilent to 2.5 ppm K). Pressurized CO2 injection to 35 ppm. 20% daily water change.

You’ll note that I’m not adding dosing any nitrogen or phosphates. With my city water - which has about 7 and 0.7 ppm respectively - it’s not necessary. Plus with the discus and their copious amounts of food, they add a good bit of nitrates to the water. In fact, without that 20% daily water change it would have been tougher. And that 20% water change sounds like a lot of work. But I’ve got it completely automated. I don’t have to lift a finger.

I’ll post more info on that, should you be inclined to try it yourself. It sure eliminates the biggest time consuming chore in this hobby.

Mickey’s 20g was not my only entry in 2005. I had really finished that tank early in that year. My real project was a tank I build myself, from big panes of glass. It was a 75g, and since I used very clear low iron glass (no green tint) I called it the Big Clear Kahuna. The BCK, as it was known in a few forums, came to an untimely end. This aquascape itself was doomed.

But it looked OK early on. So here are the pics I submitted to the Aquatic Gardeners Association (AGA) 2005 Aquascaping Contest.

I was trying to create a biotope, the looks of which I had never seen anywhere else in planted tanks. I wanted it to look like the sandy bottomed bayous I played in as a kid on the gulf coast, with similar plants and fish.

Technical Info

Plants
Echinodorus cordifolius, Eleocharis acicularis, Eleocharis montevidensis, Hemianthus callitrichoides, Ludwigia Repens, Nymphaea rustica, Nymphaea zenkeri, Nymphoides aquatica, Vesicularia dubyana, Riccia fluitans

Fish/Animals
Micropterus salmoides “Largemouth Bass” - 1, Lepisosteus osseus “Longnose Gar” - 1, Crossocheilus siamensis “Siamese Algae Eater” - 1, Botia striata “Zebra Loach” - 2, Caridina sp. shown in a photograph is not a permanent tank inhabitant.

Decorative Materials
Cypress tree stump and a Cypress “knee” for hardscape. Cypress “knees” are protuberances that grow upward from Cypress roots, often breaking the water surface, a common sight in gulf coast swamps. Substrate is Eco-Complete in the planted areas, with quartz river sand for the “stream bed”.

Background
Black matte posterboard

Lighting
6 x 54 watt T5 Tek light, 10 hour photo period. Most of the day at 2 bulbs, increasing to a 6 bulb “noon day” peak

Filtration
Eheim 2026, outflow through hidden bulkheads in the bottom of the tank. Return through twin lily pipes over the side.

Additional Information
Growing up on the Gulf Coast of southern USA, fishing in cypress forests, with their myriad mazes of cuts and channels made by the passage of boats and water, while holding such fascinating aquatic life, created for me a deep love of that environment. This is rendition of how such a cut through a cypress forest, like those I grew up passing though on boats, might actually look underwater. - - - Though great pains have been made to keep this true to a real cypress forest, a few practical considerations keep this out of the biotope category. Botia striata have been used for snail control, Crossocheilus siamensis for algae control. And Vesicularia dubyana on hidden rocks provides a temporary barrier between the two substrates, to be removed when the foreground is fully mature. - - - Many Nymphaea, like the N. zenkeri here, are not indigenous, but have been present in USA cypress swamps now for around 100 years due to introduction by humans. - - - The Riccia was unplanned, though it is native. It snuck in on the Hemianthus callitrichoides and spread to the Eleocharis acicularis. Since that was both lovely and quite true to the invasive nature of that particular native aquatic weed, it has been allowed to continue spreading along the bottom, just as it would in nature. - - - This is a “point-in-time” tank. It is hard for me to imagine a recreation of any cypress swamp without the ever present top level predators that inhabit them. These fish can eventually outgrow all but the largest of tanks, and will eventually require replacement by juveniles. While this may not be considered “sustainable”, neither is the use of any fish population that do not breed in an aquascape - they have to be replaced when they die. Once the predators are a bit larger, the SAE and the loaches will be replaced with larger, mature Lepomis megalotis (Longear Sunfish) to fill their niche within the tank. So the tank should be fun to watch for a year or so any way, while hopefully being somewhat representative of true conditions. - - - With the exception of the temporary addition of a background to provide contrast for photos, this is the way the tank looks every day in our family room. No equipment was added or removed, no special lighting used.

There were a few notable problems with this attempt at a Gulf Coast biotope.

First, those cypress stumps grew algae like nobody’s business. Even putting them in was a huge effort because they are incredibly bouyant. I had several pounds of slate bolted to their bottoms so that they wouldn’t float. But I had to toss them. The algae on them just got too bad.

Second, I had to lose the gar. I loved that fish. It was cool! But I found out (after the fact) that they are illegal to posses in my state. So I had it quietly tranported to a friends marine biology in a state where they were allowed. Bummer. I really liked that fish.

And finally… the bass! Or Mr. Piggie as we called him. That fish was a eating machine. And a regurgitating machine for that matter too. I could not keep fish in the tank with that thing once it got a few inches long. It would try to eat anything that moved. It made no difference if it was clearly too big to eat. If he could get his mouth around it, he would eat it, or kill it trying. And after it digested stuff - as much as it could - ir would regurgetate on the plants. Really looked nasty, and took a lot of maintenance. So Mr. Piggie had to go to a pond. Another bummer.

But it was fun trying to create a biotope anyway. If you are inclined try something similar yourself, I’m going to doing a review of Robert J. Goldstein’s American Aquarium Fishes, an invaluable reference on native American freshwater fish. And I’ve included a link to Jonah’s Aquarium, a great place to buy them.

I never planned on getting into the planted aquarium hobby. Truth be told, my son young Mickey got a cheap little plastic aquarium for Christmas a few years ago, and I was stuck supporting it. Needless to say we over stocked it, and had to buy a bigger one to fix that, but we over stocked that too. So we bought a 20 gallon tank. And I had a great idea… “Hey Mickey, if we put some plants in there, they’ll soak up all the amonia, and we can put in even more fish!”

Boy was I a chump. It didn’t work out like I planned, needless to say. But I did discover diatomic green water, and Internet forums where I could ask stupid questions. I could have done without the green water, but discovering aquarium plant forums was a wonderful thing!

The tank wasn’t much of an aquascape. But by the end of the year it was healthy and growing very well. So I entered it in that Aquatic Gardeners Association (AGA) 2005 Aquascaping Contest. It wasn’t a competitive tank, but it was fun to enter and be judged.

Technical Info

Plants
Alternanthera reineckii, Blyxa japonica, Cabomba caroliniana, Cladophora aegagropila, Cryptocoryne balansae, Cryptocoryne blassii, Eleochari sparvulus, Glossostigma elatinoides, Lilaeopsis novaezelandiae, Ludwigia repens, Microsorium pteropus, Riccia fluitans, Vallisneria spiralis, Straight Vallisneria, Vesicularia dubyana, Vesicularia fasciculata

Fish/Animals
Botia striata (Zebra Loach) 2, Crossocheilus siamensis (Siamese Algae Eater) 3, Hemigrammus rhodostomus (True Rummynose Tetra) 3, Mikrogeophagus ramirezi (Cichlid, BlueRam) 3, Otocinclus vittatus (Oto Cat) 2, Paracheirodon axelrodi (Cardinal Tetra) 12, Caridina japonica (Marsh Shrimp) 6

Decorative Materials
Single driftwood piece in corner, obscured by java fern and moss.

Background
none

Lighting
1 x 65watt PC for 12 hours, additional 1 x 65 watt added for 3 mid photo-period “noon” hours

Filtration
Eheim Ecco 2230

Additional Info
Flourite substrate, pressurized CO2, all water treatment in-line (heater, CO2 diffuser, CO2 sampling, fert injection, UV, filtration)

At any rate, I’m still a bit attached to this tank. My son Mickey helped me get it going, it’s where I started learning about planted tanks, and I had a ton of fun with it.