Visions, Delusions, Tragedy!

I'm a pretty lazy guy, I have no problem admitting it. I also get excited quite easily, when it comes to certain things. Working on my aquarium happens to be one of them, and combines the laziness in way that I'm in a hurry to get to the point where I can just do nothing! Sometimes it would be beneficial for me to slow down a bit, as I was reminded when I was working on getting stuff into the tank. But before I go into that, I'll start from the bottom, har har!

Now that I had the frame, could start the actual painting! In my previous posts I mentioned the choices I had made with my first tank, and the first choice I made brought upon a change. I'm talking about substrate, and the size of the grain of sand, to be precise.

Previously I had used sand with the grain size of 0,1-0,6mm. Even though I had plenty of malaysian trumpet snails in the tank to stir the bottom, I think it got a bit too clumped and cloggy, and this resulted in poor conditions for the roots of the plants. Using sand as the bottom substrate was pretty much given, as the Botia kubotai like to graze on the bottom, so I made the choice to try a bit larger grain, 0,5-1,2mm, and see if things would go a bit better.

Before the sand went in, I filled the bottom of the tank with a healthy layer of Tetra Complete Substrate, hopefully it will keep the roots of the plants happy and nourished. Last time I had used Tetra Initial Sticks, so a case of change was present here as well.

Next was the hardscape. I had a bunch of mangrove roots sitting about, and I decided to supplement them with a selection of stones. I didn't want to pay a lot of coin for some "designer" stones from the aquarium stores, and the heavy snow cover on the ground made it impossible to source them from the nearby woods. So what did I do? I headed to the sauna! Olivine Diabase stones are used in the stoves of saunas, so the answer was obvious. I didn't actually take the used stones, but bough a 20kg box for dirt cheap. I hand picked the most suitable ones and left the rest to wait their turn to be placed into the stove.

I set the mangrove roots and stones on the sand, tweaked, stared at the tank, tweaked some more, and presto! Heres's how it turned out:

So where's the tragedy I mentioned in the beginning, you say? Well, the sand I chose came in a 25kg bag. I planned to lift the bag into the tank and stab a hole in the side to get the sand out. It went well to the point where I had the bag halfway in the tank. The only problem was that I hadn't moved the lights from the way properly! Of course the bag hit the front T5 tube and shattered it to pieces. Stupid me! Of course the tubes are special tubes, Juwel T5 45W 895mm ones, so a regular tube wont do. I didn't want to order a tube online and wait several days for delivery, so had to pony up the cash at the Local Pet Store, which is far from cheap, even for regular customers. Live and learn...