74l Journal

[fozziebear]

i would still add some more plant mass if i were you, if wouldnt hurt, and it doesnt have to be planted, you could get something like pennywort, or egeria those both have anti algae properties i think, they release a chemical which supresses certain algaes, if not those just get some floating plant. (anything but salvinia natans aka duckweek, amazon frogbit is a good choice)

 

[denis coghlan]

i would still add some more plant mass if i were you, if wouldnt hurt, and it doesnt have to be planted, you could get something like pennywort, or egeria those both have anti algae properties i think, they release a chemical which supresses certain algaes, if not those just get some floating plant. (anything but salvinia natans aka duckweek, amazon frogbit is a good choice)

I will definitely look into it. In other news I was just looking at the dimensions of the tank and I had always assumed that it was a 90lt tank (what it was sold to me as) but it now transpires that it is only 74l (16.37 UK gallons) so I have been slightly over dosing with the ferts. I feel sort of moronic for not having done the math before starting this project. You live and learn!

 

[fozziebear]

hahaha i got my tanks volume wrong about 4 times, dont worry about it, not like your stocked already or anything, do you have any ideas on fish?

 

[denis coghlan]

do you have any ideas on fish?

I was thinking of a shoal of Harlequin Rasbora but not the normal Trigonostigma heteromorpha but a lesser know sub-species called Trigonostigma hengeli. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the standard Harlequin Rasbora but in my opinion the lesser know relative also know as "Lamb Chop Rasboras" is one of the best looking fish out there. My brother accidentally got a couple of them about a year ago and was sold them as the standard Harlequin Rasbora but on further inspection found them to be the better looking brethren. They are more iridescent than any tetra and hold formation better making for a great display. Here is a snap Trigonostigma hengeli. If anyone has kept them in highlight setup can they let me know how they fared?

 

[aaronnorth]

You do well to make the tank look a lot bigger, i always thought it was bigger than 90l

 

[Luketendo]

Do not worry about the tenellus, I have some and until recently I thought it was doing rubbish. I had set this tank up mid January and recently the two plants have given out two runners each.

And my tank doesn't have good nutrients and co2 either.

 

[Jer-]

I dont have the Hengels, but I have rasbora espeis. They have no problem being in a High light tank, but Ive found that they dont like to form a very tight shoal.

I agree about the Harlequins.

Jeremy

 

[denis coghlan]

Man O' Man! It went from a small green area on top of a rock to a hair algae bloom of epic proportions. I preceded to make the algae bloom worse by doing a number of stupid things and not being able to recognise what the actual cause of the problem was. With some handy pointers from some people on a aquarium plant specific forum, I will have hopefully manged to reach some sort of equilibrium in the tank between the light, co2 and nutrients.

So this is what happened;

The Lilaeopsis brasiliensis was still not growing and was beginning to turn yellow and curl so I thought it was a direct result of insufficient light and nutrients, so I lowered the light box and increased the nutrient dosing.

BIG MISTAKE! The plants turned even yellower, cast their leaves and algae ran rampant in the tank. The cause for the problem was insufficient co2 even though the drop checker was green there sill wasn't sufficient co2 for the intensity of the light. I had also been dosing lean with the co2 because I didn't want my newly acquired ottos to suffer. So, it remedy the situation I have removed the seven ottos and have crancked the co2 up so that the drop checker is reading a very bright yellow colour. Hopefully this will provide sufficient co2 for the required enzyme activity within the plant.

I also had a small condensation problem in the light box since it had been lowered to be flush with the tank. So I added a small 12V PC motherboard cooling fan to extract the air from the hood and draw in dry air from the room. The major problem with this was trying to get the fan to run very slowly and at 3V is still ran to fast and was very audible, so I placed a 50% resistor in the live wire to cut the voltage in half and the made the fan run at 1.5V. Perfect!

How the tank looks at the moment

 

[fozziebear]

wow is that the tennelus or the basiliensis thats taken off like that? did you take clives advice and move the ottos and up the co2?

 

[denis coghlan]

wow is that the tennelus or the basiliensis thats taken off like that? did you take clives advice and move the ottos and up the co2?

ha ha, not a chance! There has been no such plant growth in this tank so far! After the first batch of very poor quality tenellus disintegrated after a lack of co2, I bought two really good quality pots this Saturday and added them to the tank in the hope that they might help abate the algae problem and raise my hopes and the look of the tank. I've never seen such large pots of tennellus before so hopefully the extra biomass will also keep the algae growth to a minimum. As for the ottos, they have been moved into a 20l tank for the time being giving me the opportunity to really flood the tank with co2 and get the drop checker well into the yellow as clive suggested. Although it has only been two days since I have been pounding the tank with co2 the basiliensis has started to throw up new shoots (rub my eyes with disbelief) so hopeful things are looking up. However, the algae is still very prevalent!

 

[fozziebear]

hehe give it time m8 patience is key in this hobby, im having a bit of an algae outbreak in my tank atm due to fluctuating co2 levels, so ive upped it and im leaving it like that, i did notice last night though that my plants started pearling like mad about 2 minutes before lights out lol typical eh, keep at it mate it will be a wicked scape once it gets going, and blimey that is a lot of tennelus!



PS. are you manually removing the algae and doing more water changes? something like twice or 3 times a week, dosing after the waterchange?

 

[denis coghlan]

my plants started pearling like mad about 2 minutes before lights out

PS. are you manually removing the algae and doing more water changes? something like twice or 3 times a week, dosing after the waterchange?

Yeah, my plants are pearling very well. In fact, some of the tennellus has micro bubble literally streaming out of the stoma on the undersides of the leaves. this leads me to believe that I might be pushing them a bit hard.

And as for the algae management, I try and remove as much as I can with a tooth brush but it can bit a bit of a problem as it often pulls up all the small rosettes of HC and then I have to plant it all again. I do about a 3/4 water change every second day and dose after. I'm lucky that the tank is only 74l and I'd say that 20l of that is rocks and substrate! So to change 40l isn't such a big task.

 

[fozziebear]

i just use my fingers to remove algae, its a lot easier and less fiddly than a brush or anything, dont worry about pushing the plants too hard, the growth rate will pick up with the extra photosynthesis.

 

[denis coghlan]

i just use my fingers to remove algae, its a lot easier and less fiddly than a brush or anything, dont worry about pushing the plants too hard, the growth rate will pick up with the extra photosynthesis.

I will give your method a go and see how it works, thanks for the tip.

 

[SuperColey1]

I use my fingers too. lol

Either that or I ignore it and wait for it to go once the problem is solved. he,he

Andy