New 100 Gallon - Finally all set up!

MattyM · October 13, 2023

I scored this 100 gallon Planet Aquarium tank and stand from my LFS: 60.5" length x 18.5 depth x 19.5 height, and finally got it setup yesterday, an ALL DAY project, as I'll explain:

Still a bit cloudy today, probably a bacterial bloom/die-off. I used a bunch of seasoned media as well as Fritzyme 7, maybe a bit much but would rather have too much 😉. Readings are fine today, it's not heavily stocked.

Part of why this took so long is b/c I was moving these 3 tanks into it - all fish, the substrate from 1 tank, several plants and most of the water. Here's the aftermath:

When the new tank was ready, I acclimated the fish for an hour - adding a scoop of new tank water to the "old" bucket water every 15 minutes for an hour. It worked well, the fish colored up, ate, and where exploring in no time. This morning my male Honey Gourami was trying to get it on with the female. There's also neon tetras, ember tetras, blood fin tetras, choprae danios, male platy, panda and salt/pepper cories - along with a handful of amanos, nerites and other snails.

Hardscape

I got the majority of the hardscape a couple months ago - I'm lucky enough to live within a reasonable drive to an aquascape shop - so I had my pick of the litter, and planned this out:

Once I had the tank delivered (thank you LFS!) - I filled it and let everything soak for weeks, doing/practicing the occasional water change. I was traveling too much to do a full setup, and I was happy to let the stone and driftwood soak. This also let me get my filtration figured out - there's a Sicce Whale 350 and a BioMaster 600 thermo under the cabinet, along with inline CO2. My LFS only sells Whales, so I got one. It's OK - the Biomaster is built better. Regardless, I was planning on having 2 canisters.

I have a large enamel pot, and I wound up boiling as much of the driftwood as I could b/c the biofilm coming off it, even after several weeks, was insane. The boiling seems to help this. Now whatever biofilms forms will just be food.

Setup Day

I got my plants delivered Wednesday, so I took Thursday off work - and it took all day, and them some. But it was cool to see everything come together. I moved a bunch of crypts, dwarf sag, anubias and val from my old tanks, and ordered a bunch of other ferns, anubias, and buce - lovely specimens: