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So I am in Cairns at the moment and went to see Paul at Aquarium world, a small shop in Cairns. He has been doing planted tanks and breeding shrimp since 1982 (well he showed me his first co2 tank and that was from 1982) and knows a thing or two. I used to live in Cairns and I remember seeing his shrimp tanks around 10 years ago, all planted and running co2 and it blew my mind. I have managed to keep my obsession under wraps until the wife decided to get herself a small tank for mothers day - now the genie is out of the bottle!! Anyway as I am in Cairns for a few days I thought I would drop by and ask Paul about my tank build. My main question was, "Can I do this without CO2?" That is can I have moderate to high light and grow some cool plants like H'ra or Wallichii. So anyway Paul goes all Voodoo and sells me some laterite and a packet of rotting leaves. He tells me to put this against the glass under all of the substrate and then the laterite, and then he gives me some hardwood aquarium sticks and says to put these in as well. Finally when I get home I am to find some really hard wood - I have some ironbark that the fencers left over when they did our house fence, burn it and put in some of the charcoal. Then the powersand and ADA amazonia over the top. According to the Voodoo incantation this will incubate a source of carbon dioxide for a long time to come and in such a shallow tank will allow me to go pretty high light and grow some cool plants! So what do you think? I am going to make some youtube vids of the set up - will be interesting to see what happens either way!! Really interested in your thoughts!! Have a great day sub

Hi team, So still working on my tank stand and have come to a point where I have to make a decision.. In my imagination my tank is in the middle of the bench and there is an opening in the timber on one side for the outflow pipe and there is an opening in the bench on the other side for the inflow- so the current runs in one direction Right to Left. Looking online however I see a lot of aquascapers having the inflow and outflow in the same position on the tank. So in that case the current flows to the end of the tank, gets turned around and comes back on the other side.. Do you guys have a preference? How do you set up your lily pipes on your tanks? I have done some looking online for an answer but there is nothing definitive.. so just asking what you prefer and why Thanks and have a great day Aaron

never question the juju, voodoo man KNOWS what he is doing.Give you good medicine, make plant and shrimp grow and grow. Make many more plant and shrimp then tank can hold.

Yeh so I did consider just going and getting some rotting leaves out of the bottom of a creek.. but these leaves are in a sealed plastic packet and goodness knows how long they have been in that shop!! I dont know if it is great advice or not, but I am definitely going to give it a shot. As soon as Paul started talking about laterite my ears pricked up because I had seen that name in some of my internet research on naturally boosting CO2 just a while before. I think it is definitely worth the experiment (and wife is firm on no CO2!) ?

Check out this reply from the planted tank forum.... The length of tank will be problematic with only one return nozzle, you got probably around 6-7x turnover of tank realistically with that filter, which is plenty. Pump is rated a 600l/hr, realistically depending on how you pack media and head height/length of hose it has to push against figure 500l/hr or slightly less moving in and out of tank. If your using inline co2 reactors and/or heaters knock another 10% off that. I’d split canister output to a Y and set it up as 2 returns to tank, one at back wall blowing water downward at 10-15° angle, high->low, moving water right to left. Nozzle at left end blowing at 5-7° angle to right just under surface making surface ripple for good gas exchange. This will cross tank back to front and when it hits front glass and spreads out, it will sweep water left to right as well as sweep water and gases down front glass down to plants at bottom. You’ll be setting up good high->low nutrient and gas movement around tank as well as setting up a mild rotating current around tank that will keep debris moving around till filter intake can pick them up. You’ll see plants all over tank wiggling slightly in that light breeze of a current but none of those currents will be so hard that fish can’t swim or plants getting blown over sideways. That’s how I would setup this tank if I was doing it. (Back to me) - As it happens I did end up keeping the ADA short lily pipes for DOOA aquariums and also bought a VIV knock off set from Hong Kong - so I could actually do this.. I hadnt really thought it would be needed. What do you think? I kind of am still leaning towards the inflow and outflow at each end, just for uniformity of the current and plants movement, as the shallow tank and rocks and everything will be going with the "flow".

I agree with JayC that it probably doesn't matter much, but I do like the flow idea that you would get bu putting IN one end and OUT the other end. I would put them both on the back each end so that keeps the appearance of the whole tidier, assuming you will be covering the back of the tank somehow? It also makes sense as this is a long shallow tank to help circulate the water having them opposite ends. Simon

Hello guys, currently i have Tropica Soil Powder Substrate in my tank, which doenst buffer my PH. Its constant on 7 PH. Im using RO Water with Salty Bee Shrimp GH +. my question is: - can i put some new Ebi Gold Shrimp soil substrate in the corner? Could this hurt the Tank? How should i replace my old Soil? - Maybe put the new soil inside a cup and than in a corner of the tank? to buffer the PH? could this be working?

Some breeders put the substrate in a container and then put the container in their tanks, but it obviously depends whether you can stand to look at it like that, I couldn't myself, but they do it to make changing the substrate really easy! By just doing a corner the substrate won't last as long as doing the whole tank properly so it will work, but it just won't last for long. The more buffering substrate there is the longer it will remain steady so you can't improve on replacing the entire old substrate. It may be possible to put the new buffering substrate over the top of the old substrate if the old substrate isn't very deep, but again this really isn't going to gain you anything as you are still going to need to re layout/scape the tank, so you may as well remove all the old substrate anyway? There really isn't any shortcut that will mean you will have a nice looking scaped tank that won't need to be done again soon and a small amount like a cup full will need replacing often and likely cause swings in the parameters! As long as you keep the old water in buckets with all the bits/filters/plants etc in it, it shouldn't take more than a week for the cycle to sort itself back out I would expect using as much of the old water as you can? Simon

Sorry for the confusion to clarify the cardinia tank is shrimp only no berries yet or baby’s I have 2 neo tanks woth guppies and a separate nursery tank with baby shrimp and guppies the net breeder is in one of the neo tanks with guppies which is why I have it. when the baby shrimp grow large enough that I think they won’t get eaten by the baby guppies I transfer them over to the nursery tank woth the baby guppies. side question: is Seachem flourish shrimp safe? I used to use it weakly for the plant’s but stopped when o got shrimp..

I don't think it matter which you choose. When people have the inflow & outflow on one side of the tank, it's usually for aesthetics and convenience. They put the canister on one end and have shorter pipes run to one side of the tank. It means less pipes and obstruction for viewing on the other side. This is best done on tanks that can be viewed from all sides. Tanks that are viewed from the front only, can have pipes run in the Left-Right orientation. The background will cover any unsightly pipe runs.