75 gal - The Embiggening

[noahm]

So my 20 gal is in need of more room. Journal here : https://www.fishforums.net/threads/20g-ecosystem-dirted-offshoot-from-40g-thread.491338/

I was able to convince my better half that 75 gal was best for everyone

While this could go in the general FW, or planted tank journals, It covers a lot of general tank stuff and lots of plants, so I think I'll have in planted.
This will be a 75 gal display tank with a 20 gal long sump/refugium, heavily planted, with lots of nano fish. It's basically just an upsize of the 20 gal tank, with more room and a little bit different aquascaping. I plan on moving all of the fish, most of the plants, and using the same wood from the 20. I am currently waiting on the tank to finish, I didn't want to risk petco tanks, so I had Glasscages build the 75 with an overflow in the back left corner. This will be another dirted tank with creek mud, etc.

While I'm waiting, I started collecting equipment and am nearing finished on building the stand. I will try and dedicate a bit more to explaining, but for now, I have a few pics. The stand is birch ply with Ambrosia maple. I had a bunch of Ambrosia maple in the shop, so I made all of the trim out of that. The doors will be bi-fold since I don't have a ton of room to open big door. It still needs finishing and that will darken up the trim.

The stand will go perfectly with the rocks I found. I wasn't expecting to find this kind of rock, but while I was wading in the creek, I found these interesting rocks encrusted with some darker formations. I don;t know what kind they are, but I like them. Cool socks, I know.

In any case, I will post more about how it will all go together and what equipment, plants, and fish I plan on having soon.

 

[MattW]

Wow! I loved your 20gal so I'm expecting this tank to look on par or even better than that tank I really like that stand as well, great craftsmanship! Can't wait to see the next updates of this project.

 

[Fishmanic]

You have an awesome 20 gallon tank. Looking forward to seeing your vision come to life for your 75 gallon tank. Hope you enter them both in our Tank of the Month contests.
December TOTM is for 16 Gal and smaller
January TOTM is for 17 to 30 Gal
February TOTM is for 31 gal and larger


@connorlindeman

 

[noahm]

Thanks!

I'll take a little time to go over some of the details here and when I have stuff put together, I'll add pics. Also, let me caveat this with the fact that I sold a good amount of shop tools I don't really use before taking this on, so I was able to afford some things that I normally wouldn't. It might look like a pretty nice list of equipment, but I had to negotiate that budget carefully.

Tank:
75g standard dimensions (48 x 18 x 21). I originally was going to go with a 65 gal acrylic, but after looking at the finished product in my head, I knew I needed some extra height, I've always felt like the bog wood in the 20 was too close to the surface and I will be putting in the 75. My wife said the tank can't be any taller than the current one so I made the stand shorter -- simple fix. Glasscages is pretty close to me, so I went with them. I originally was just going to go aqueon, but there were just a lot of horror stories. I know there are many aqueon tanks out there that are still kicking, but I just want to be on the safe side and these guys are local and the tank comes drilled and ready to roll.

Sump:
Sumps are the best. If you can, I highly recommend them. You get a bit of extra water volume, some additional room for filter media or bioactivity, and you get to put all of your hardware (heaters, filters, pumps) somewhere out of view.

The sump is a 20 gal long (Aqueon, lol - small and very low risk). It will have three chambers. The first is where the return pipe will enter and will be a stack of fine/med/coarse filter sponge like you would use in a mattenfilter. It will probably be 6 inches of the tank as I think the squares of filter I got are 12 x 12 so I can cut them in half. The overflow has two holes and I will be doing a Herbie style where the main return line is valved to create a full siphon with the secondary to carry the small amount of extra. This is a pretty silent overflow design (no gurgling). I had a Beananimal style on my reef tank, so I can attest to the silence of this type.

The center (Refugium) will probably be 16". I am debating on how much to give the return pump. This will house more mud and some leaf litter as well as some random plants and moss. Refugiums are traditionally more of a reef thing, but the idea is you get some additional biofiltration and more importantly lots of copepods and other critters have a safe haven to reproduce and get pulled into the main tank for live food.

Pump:
The final chamber will house the return pump. I purchased a Sicce. I was a planning on going Eheim, since I had that on my reef tank back in the day, but for whatever reason after too much research on the internet wound up getting the Sicce Synchra 3.0. It will support about 700 gph, but I will dial it back with a valve. The return will split into a loc-line Y with two random flow nozzles.

Heater:
Innovative Marine Helio. This was really a decision about fitting long stuff in the sump and this solution worked well.

Lighting:
This is where I splurged. I went with a Week Aqua P1200-series (again, too much time on the web). I wanted control of spectrum, intensity and sunrise/sunset effects. I almost went with Chihiros. I have been very happy with the Aquarium Co-op Easy LEDs, except for the lack fade-in fade-out daylight effects, so I wind up having to turn them off mid-day so I can enjoy them in the evening. This way I can just adjust intensity but keep the lights on longer.

The nice thing is I haven't had to hurry since I already have a tank. I have taken a lot of time to just do it the the way I think is best and spread out some of the expense.

I will try and get on and add some more this week about the living stuff -- Substrate, plants, fish and critters. You might remember I have some affinity for good living subtrate. There's a bit of fun in there, so hopefully you guys find it interesting if nothing else.

 

[noahm]

A couple of pics of the nursery. I had a few plants I really wanted and sometimes they are out of stock, so I went ahead and ordered some TC cups and threw everything in the "nursery" 10 gal I had spare. There's a bunch of Crypt. parva 'mini', about 7 clumps of Crypt. crispatula 'Tonkinensis' , some Crypt 'pink flamingo' and my favorite new one to try, the Crypt albidia 'red' (the real pink one). Also, there's a bit of monte carlo that I took from the 20 and gave it some room to spread.

Mostly I plan on using the plants from the 20, but I wanted more parva to spread around than I currently have. I originally bought Tonkinensis for the 20, but I think it is was mislabeled as it is clearly not. These TC starts seem correct. I really wanted the tall grassy look. My daughter saw the albidia and said "Get it". I agreed. I am really curious to see how it turns out. The pink flamingo I an neither here nor there about. I may just wind up giving them away. The mature plants don't really fit the structure I want -- they are a broad rosette. We'll see.

 

[noahm]

I decided to do a quick side project since the weather's nice and I happen to have some extra bulkheads that I didn't like for the DT. My water change water comes from the creek.
Said creek:

I get water from the creek and put it in a 30 gal rubbermaid can. It's also where all of the extra plant growth goes when I trim the tank and thin out floaters. It was just a trash can with a screen haphazardly set on top to keep mosquitoes from breeding.

After some plumbing:

And some hacking:

Now I can fill 5 gal buckets without dipping into all of the plants. The center of the water column is generally pretty free of debris.

A few notes:
If you are new to bulkheads, always used silicone grease -- pretty much on any rubber gasket or o-ring ever. It saves so many potential leaks.

The lid hacking was done with a combination of the vibe tool and snips. The vibe tool was good for getting started in the thick plastic, but the snips did a better job at that point. I just used a hole saw on the drill for the can holes.

The bottom valve, in case you are wondering, was an afterthought. I figured since I was doing all this, a full drain would be nice.

I found some interesting snails in the bottom. I will post pics in the next post.

 

[noahm]

So I found these snails in the bottom of the bucket from emptying the trash can out fully. They are all about the same size and none are larger than about 3/32" diameter. I have never seen this type of snail in the tank, so I assume they came from the creek and just only stay at the bottom of the trash can. I only have nerites and Malaysian trumpets in there. Anyone else encounter these?

 

[noahm]

Also, finished the stand. I have a bit more gap between the doors than I like, but that's because I didn't account for how low profile the hinges are. I may put a strip of something on the inside to keep the refugium light from showing too much.

 

[MattW]

So I found these snails in the bottom of the bucket from emptying the trash can out fully. They are all about the same size and none are larger than about 3/32" diameter. I have never seen this type of snail in the tank, so I assume they came from the creek and just only stay at the bottom of the trash can. I only have nerites and Malaysian trumpets in there. Anyone else encounter these?

View attachment 354449
View attachment 354450

Interesting

@Donya ? Any ideas?

 

[Donya]

Looks like a species of Gyraulus - tiny Planorbids that often go unnoticed in systems because of how small they are. As for the source, hard to say. If all you were collecting from the creek was water though, then they more likely were on a plant.

 

[noahm]

Looks like a species of Gyraulus - tiny Planorbids that often go unnoticed in systems because of how small they are. As for the source, hard to say. If all you were collecting from the creek was water though, then they more likely were on a plant.

I am thinking that if they are in the tank, they might get eaten by either the neons or the gourami. I have never seen a horn-shaped snail in the tank though besides the nerites. There are a ton of tiny trumpets, but they are too hard for the fish to eat. I am pretty surprised as there are all kinds of oddballs in the tank from importing creek mud and leaves -- even a couple of freshwater polychaetes and some very tiny worms that have a habit like garden eels, rising partway out of the substrate and waving around gently. I keep a close eye on the tank and even have a couple of magnifiers handy for anything odd.

Thanks for the input. I'm always curious about the little things.

 

[noahm]

The tank should be cured and ready this upcoming week (possibley the next). Hopefully I can get it picked up before the holiday.

In the mean time, here is the sump. Left is the filter area, middle is refugium, and right is pump/return. The high short baffle in the middle right is to prevent floating plants from going over the weir :

I am slightly concerned that the pump area is too small and will result in having to pay too much attention to top-off. I may increase it by 2 inches in width (currently 6 x 12 x 8" tall (about 2 gals). I will test run in it back into itself this weekend to make that decision. The first chamber results in a 9" water depth, but the second chamber drops to 8". The idea is to prevent backflow of debris from the refugium.

The filter is just a stack of increasingly finer sponge filter from Swisstropicals. Basically a mattenfilter with easy access for cleaning. I may add some ceramic or other filter media below the riser (just two strips of acrylic to hold up the sponge). I may find that the layering configuration is not optimal and wind up using some other order or combination, but I am starting out with coarse >> fine - one of each resulting in 4 layers.

A bit overkill, , but a 17" bandsaw makes easy work of filter sponge. Maybe I should reconsider how I trim my plants, too:

 

[noahm]

So I resolved the pump/return chamber concern by getting an auto top-off. I went with hygger for no real reason other than it was at buceplant and I had a $20 gift credit. I will use my spare 10 gal as the top-off container so it will be easy to just dump 5 gal buckets into. There's enough room in the stand for it to fit perpendicular to the 20 gal long with room to spare for dry goods. Ultimately this will help with water changes too. I can throw another pump in the 10g that can be plimbed to fill the display if needed.

 

[noahm]

Tanksgiving has arrived. There's a few tank-only pics here: Glasscages 75 gal. They did a super job with build quality. I have it up and running with only a few hiccups, so expect a more posts over the next day or so.

 

[noahm]

Substrate

If any of you followed my 20 gal build, you know I can travel outside the bounds of "common" practice when it comes to substrate. It is based on both an education in horticulture science, experience, as well as some willingness to accept risk (hitchhikers, etc.). Since I have the 20g up and running, I was able to take my time and do this build a bit more methodically and source my materials with a bit more knowledge of the lay of the land.

I have almost an acre with about 150' of a sizable creek out back. I found two distinct soil types. One is what I would typically call a clay-loam. It is a bit darker and higher clay content, but with substantial organic matter with lots of lignins to give it good structure (crumbly, but not overly so).

The other soil I sourced is in an area where sediment settles out a bit more after flooding. It is more of a silty loam. There is more silt, less organic, and less clay, but what clay is there is iron-rich. It has the more orange-ish color. Any time you see soil that is reddish/orange-ish, it is likely higher in iron, but often is pretty high clay content as well. This is a happy medium. Clay is good in that it holds tons of nutrients due to the particle shape and surface area, but some clays can make for poor oxygenation due to clumping.

I had a bag of play sand that I don't like for tanks due to color, so I added some of it in to give everything a bit more of a sandy content, but not too much. Finally I added in some organic worm casting because...why not. We then played hand mixer for a while and broke up most of the clods to where they were less than and inch. You don't want to pulverize soil too much as it can damage the structure so much that it can create a pan layer (solid mass).

All mixed up

Finally, we got a bucket of the good stuff. This is muck, right from the creek. There is a small backwater where sediment settles. It is full of rotting leaves and mud (and critters). I used it in the 20g.

Overall, it winds up being about 4 parts each of soil 1, soil 2, and creek mud, 2 parts sand, and 1 part worm castings. I mixed the mud in the tank for ease of working.

Finally, I gave it about 3/4" of natural looking "multi-purpose" sand from HD. I like the look of it. It hides things well. See pic next post.