Fish tank plant cloner

 Modify a Marineland brand "Eclipse" fish tank filter to be a mini plant cloning unit.*

For this mod, you will need a hack saw or jig saw to cut a hole in the lid, a bag of filter floss, a pair of scissors, and two foam sponges.  You will also need two light fixtures and compact florescent bulbs to give your cuttings adequate light. If your tank is in bright light you won't need the fixtures, but keeping a fish tank is bright daylight promotes lots of algae growth.

*This instructable will show you how to mod your filter, but does not cover how to set up or maintain a home fish tank.

Step 1 Aquire an Eclipse filter

 The Marineland brand Eclipse filters are common "all in one" filtering and lighting systems for aquariums.  They can be found used on eBay or possibly in a local thrift store.  They are also readily available online.  I already had one on my 20 gallon fish tank, and liked it, but did not want to keep buying the filter cartridge replacements.  So I now use plants to clean my water.

Comments

[RadBear]

Cool. Some more pics of before and after the cutting of the lid would be helpful. Do the plants filer as well as the carbon in the original cartridges?

And like Nizerbean I'm confused as to where the cloning is happening.

[denisek.sf]

The cartridges are probably necessary if you have a ton of fish in your tank, but I only have guppies, and I also have live aquatic plants in the tank.  I never have to clean this tank, not even scrape algae off the glass, so I think the plants I have in it are doing the work for me.  Also, I swapped out the florescent fixture in the hood with LED puck lights.  They use way less energy and keep excessive algae from growing.  The cuttings could probably root in indirect daylight, but I have no windows so I use a couple 5 W CFLs instead.

[denisek.sf]

I will add more pics as soon as I get back to my cloner.  I'm out of town at the moment.   

[Ninzerbean]

Is cloning the right word here? Are you getting your plants to root or are they somehow replicating themselves, maybe this is a new term I am not familiar with, but with my fish tank I just stretched netting across the top and stick the plant cutting in the water (the netting holds it upright and the big leaves stay dry) until it roots and then I plant it in the ground. Is what you have wonderfully shown here the same thing? Sort of?

[denisek.sf]

Rooting cuttings taken from a single plant is replication without sexual reproduction, so the new cuttings are genetically identical to the mother plant.  Cloning is just a fancy term for rooting cuttings.  Gardeners have been doing this for ages, so it's not just the biotech companies who have this technology. Which is great for gardeners who want to use this technique!

[consp51]

I have done the same thing before. But just for cloning, you can take the plant cutting and just stick it into a water jar, depends on the plant species, some will grow roots in a few week, some just rotten away.

I also have a bigger fish tank, i used those suction basket, and fill it with some sand and stick it inside the fish tank wall, this way, it can get both water and lighting inside the fish tank. Adding 2 additional lighting source just for the plant, seem a little wasteful to me.