After about 20 years of not having an aquarium, I decided it was time to set a new one up. I have been thinking about it for a couple of years now and with the COVID19 pandemic and a permanent change to working from home the time was right. There was a good deal on a 35 Gallon bow front aquarium on Kijiji so that’s where I started. This was mid January, a good project for the new year.




I knew that I wanted to go with all live plants. To do that I needed something better than typical Aquarium gravel. After doing some reading on a couple of Aquarium websites, I decided to go with CaribSea Eco-Complete. It was a little more expensive at $60.00 a bag, and I needed three bags but it seemed like the best for what I wanted. It’s interesting because it comes wet. It’s packaged in a liquid Amazon black water solution that helps jumpstart the biological cycle in the aquarium. So far it’s worked well, my plants are growing nicely. I couldn’t find anyone locally that had it in stock, so I ended up ordering it off Amazon. It was one day shipping with Prime, so it worked out well.





For the plants, I went with another local vendor that I found on Kijiji, Calgary Aquatic Plants. I spent $50 on plants and another $30 on some tools and accessories. I particularly liked the Glass Planter that sticks to the side of the tank and allows you to put some small plants higher up. I stuck with fairly basic plants, Siamensis, River Buttercup, Rotala, Red Ludwigia, Taiwan moss and Weeping Moss. I would later add a few additional plants







After a minor disaster to be describedlater, I added a small three gallon quarantine tank to the shelf under the main tank. Which also let me make use of the original small Stargate as well as some of the gravel, plastic plants and other ornaments that originally came with the big tank.



At this point, the tank set up is pretty much done, it’s into maintenance mode with minor adjustments here and there, and probably some plant trimming soon.