Nero's Journal

[nero]

Alrighty then, I'm pretty far into the setup to be starting a journal, but I had a look at the original photo of my tank last night, and though wow, it's come so far so fast! And I found myself wishing I'd taken more photos. So, as long as I'm photographing my tank, I thought I could share it on here while I'm at it.

To get started here is the tank as it was an hour after I set it up. The filter media was matured in my old tank, so thats why there is already a fishy in there.
(I'm using thumbnails for those of you with slower connections, just click to view larger image.)


The fish in there is Old Grandma Swordtail, who has been with us forever, and looks like she will outlive us all. I have to admit that at this point I didn't really have much of an idea about how I wanted the tank to look, so I kept most of the plants in their pots for a while and moved them around a bit.

This Next image shows the tank at an intermediate stage. I had bought all of my plants at this point, but was waiting for them to grow out so I could do a better job of things.



At this stage I had added more gravel, and decided that I wanted it nice and bushy at the back, and to have the rocks carpeted with riccia, the wood carpeted with java moss, and hairgrass surrounding the rocks. The Caboma had just started to take off in this photo. I had added more fish as well; here is a shot of one of the angels.



The last shot for this post was taken about 10 days ago, but exactly one month after the start of the tank. Not the best photo, but it does show things bushing out a bit.



At this point I had rearranged things to how I wanted them, the sword was moved to the left corner, covering the filter intake, and the crypts and stricta were changed. In my next post I will have the current photo, which shows I have removed a few plants since then - I wanted to cut down on some of the variety.

The plants are all growing like mad, except for the riccia, which is dissapointing, but the caboma is set to take over the world, I must have trimmed about 3x the volume of what is in there now!

Tank Stats: (as they are now, not back when the photos were taken)

Tank: Aquaone980: 215L 99x47x75cm
Light: 145w light (fluoro - 3 tubes came with the tank, two 30w 10000K, one 25w lowerK, and ive retrofitted another two 30w tubes as well.) Blue LED moonlighting.
Heating: 100w Aquaone
Filtration: 1000L/H Jebao Canister
Co2: 6L of DIY yeast with venturi reactor.
Substrate: Small aquarium gravel with Red Sea Flora root additive and "dinosaur dung" fert tabs.
Ferts: Dosing with "dinosaur pee" Which doses Nitrate, Potassium and Trace. Phosphates are so high im not worrying...
Livestock: 1 swordtail, 1 bristlenose, 3 Angels, 7 Guppies.
Flora: Eleocharis parvulus(hairgrass), Cryptocoryne willisii, Ambulia sessiliflora, Echinodorus major (amazon sword), Hemianthus micranthemoides, Java Moss, Riccia, Myriophyllum papillosium, Nomaphila stricta.
Photoperiod: 10hours a day
Water Chem:
Nitrates: 5ppm
Ammonia/Nitrite: 0ppm
Phosphates: 5+ppm
gH: 80ppm
kH: 60ppm (about 3degrees)
pH: around 6.8
Temp: 25C

 

[George Farmer]

Nice progress. Well done.

Keep on top of your yeast-CO2 to help prevent possible algae issues. Have you considered a pressurized system?

 

[nero]

Thanks George,
Have I considered a pressurised system, oh boy. I consider it every day, but I've just moved to a more remote area and I need to do more research about refills. Just today I stopped by the hardware store to get the parts to make a better reactor. Hopefully that will help stabilise the injection a bit. I'll post some pics of the reactor when it's done. Actually, algae has been pretty light on, When I first set up I got a really bad flush of hair algae, which then literally stopped spreading overnight. Now all the new leaves are crystal clean, and im slowly removing the older infested ones. I imagine the sudden stop was due to a critical plant mass being reached

Actually, I'm having a bit of trouble right now, I wanted to take new photos today, but my water has been badly cloudy for a few days. I was expecting it to clear up, but its still there. I'm not sure of the cause but I am suspecting my canister filter, as I am new to canister filters and im wondering if i've done somthing wrong... It was all so much simpler with my trickle filter..

I'll post some pics tonight and let you guys know about my little (expensive) trip to the LFS today!

Nero

 

[nero]

Update:

Well, I seem to have just spent most of my day and most of my money on the tank.... and what do I have to show for it? A cloudy mess. I want to cry every time I look at it. Ahh well, I'm sure it will settle down soon enough.

Right: stop number one was the hardware store. Picked up some pvc tubing caps and some barbed joiners. Ive put them together to make an external co2 reactor. Reasons for external reactor:
1) The NOISE of the venturi is driving me insane
2) Want to make best use of the co2 generated
3) Regardless of if the mist of co2 made by the venturi is better for the plants, I think the mist looks horrible.
4) I have millions of dollars to blow on the tank and I love swiping my credit card.

This is the finished reactor; all it is - a pvc pipe with end caps epoxied on and siliconed, barbs siliconed into each end, airline fitting siliconed at top of reactor. Now I'm just waiting for the silicone to cure.






Stop number two was of course the LFS. Where I weakened and again swiped my bottomless credit card and bought 10 White mountain minnows, 10 glass shrimp and 4 peppered cories. This wasnt an impulse buy at all, ive been wanting them for a couple of weeks, but the fish stores in my area (read: 2 hours away) are seriously lacking. So the closest one ended up being the only one to have them, but at seriously inflated prices. On the topic of fish, I can see how a tank which is planted and just has minnows would look stunning, but I enjoy watching different fish to much to get really hung up on the aesthetic like that. Maybe I could set up a smaller tank and do a..... <slaps self on wrist>


A couple pics of my hardware: This is the canister filter, 1000L/h, jebao brand which seems somewhat undiscussed on these forums, but I think generally its a fairly average filter, and no-where near the quality (or price) of eheim.





This is the dodgiest co2 setup in the world, I will get round to tidying it up soon....:




The Tank itself looks like this at the moment, like I said, cloudy:





I had removed one of the swords from the middle as I thought It did nothing for the tank. As you can see the plants have started to bush out nicely. The hairgrass is starting to look better, and the stricta is doing very well, but not growing UP as much as I wanted, more just getting bushy. The HM is slooooooowly slooooowly establishing. I only finished painstakingly putting that in a little while ago, so I am hoping once it recovers it will take off a bit more. Of course the new cories are playing havoc with it. I can see why it can be a major headache to get started.




The Hairgrass is being fairly slow to put out runners, but it is definatly improved since last week.


Here is an atrocious pic of my Myriophyllum, it is growing quite fast, but generally only the top couple of inches is a nice green colour, the lower leaves tend to go quite brown. I guess it must be lack of light, which is dissapointing, as I think it is far prettier than the caboma when it is bushy.



A minnow :



Well, that wraps up this post, please, if you have any ideas or comments or suggestions post a reply! Tell me how my co2 is about to fall over and explode, then leak out of the cabinet so I come home to find the dog drunk off the alcohol and sugar!

Nero

 

[nicklfire]

Hey dude,

that's looking sharp, you seem to be at the same expertise level as me... kinda intermet-advanced. The only thing i'm curious about is why your using 10000k spectrum lighting. I would think that would affect the plants in a negative way because they prefer 6700k. Maybe i'm wrong but just wondering.

Your kinda like me with the whole co2 thing, i wish i could go pressurized, that's my next thing, i'v got all the other toys and now co2 definately.

Anyways dude, glad to talk to you, nice looking tank, hopfully we can get knowledge off each other in the coming future :0

 

[nero]

Hey Nicklfire,
Thanks for the reply! Nice to know theres someone out there

Thanks for pointing that out, to be perfectly honest I can read about co2 and water parameters and ferts till the cows come home, but as soon as someone starts talking about spectrum and Kelvin and <yawn> all that other stuff, my eyes glaze over. So the 10000 tubes are just the ones that came with the tank. When I added the 2 extra tubes I chose the ones that said plants on them (lol, I go to all the effort of co2 and ferts and everything then with the lights just go "oo, this one has a picture of plants it must be good"). So Next time I lift up the lid I will write down the numbers and post them on here. Then Maybe I can tape my eyelids open long enough to read about which ones I should replace....

Hope to talk to you more soon!

Nero

 

[nicklfire]

Lol understandable,

I dont know many people running marine lights on a freshwater tank but if it works than that's great i suppose. Plants will definately excell if they are given the proper light spectrum. 6700k is all you need to know bro 10 000 will be for like reef tanks and stuff hehe.

hope to see more progress :0

 

[Dave Spencer]

Nice job on the reactor. Do you have anything inside it to help break up the CO2 bubble?

Dave.

 

[nero]

Hi Dave,

Thanks! I was pretty pleased with the reactor... thinking it looked all proffesional and all... I just tried hooking it up then and found a minor leak at the air input. So I unhooked it, thought "stuff professional", got that tube of sillicone and practically emptied it onto the reactor. SO, tomorrow I should have a watertight reactor.

I didnt put anything in to break up the bubbles after reading a few different guides and accounts on people having no troubles without adding anything into the reactor. Im only using DIY, so I was hoping that the force of the water would be enough to do the job. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. My only concern now is that while I had it hooked up just then the DIY seemed to have trouble injecting into the reactor against the pressure of the water. I didn't have it hooked up long enough to see if it would reach a good pressure and then work fine, but I was actually expecting suction to occur at the air input rather than resistance?
If anyone knows about that please let me know!!

As always, any input is appreciated, and thanks for taking the time to look at my journal guys and girls!

Nero

 

[nero]

Been awhile since I've posted due to the tank undergoing two incredible blooms of bacteria/green water and me subsequently wanting to throw the whole damn thing out the window.

I will try and get some pics tonight, but suddenly a couple days ago it just cleared right up.

The external reactor was a total disaster, so i'm sticking with the powerhead distribution.

At the moment I'm not happy with the caboma. It grows incredibly fast, but not nicely. Ive put some of the cuttings into my other low light tanks and it is gowing beautifully lush and bushy and green. In the high light tank It grows strappy and not a nice green. Any ideas on what I can replace it with?

Ive taken the rocks out as a precaution that they may have been causing the cloudiness. I would like to get some nicer wood to grow the java moss on, and I'm currently growing the riccia in my small tank to try and get a decent amount of it.

Stay tuned for some pics!

Nero

 

[lljdma06]

Good, it cleared up for you then. Your tank is new and greenwater is a common problem, especially when the distribution of CO2 isn't consistent. What's your water quality (hard or soft) and do you know specifically what cabomba you have? There are three species and they are often mixed up in the trade and sold under the same name. Two of the species like soft, brightly lit tanks, the other prefers harder water and can get by on lower-light tanks. I could never get cabomba to grow for me, but I have liquid rock for water. What's the wattage and size of the tank where the cabomba is leggy, and what's the wattage and size of the tank for the cabomba that's behaving?

Tank looks really good.

llj

 

[corey01]

Awesome! looks really good a nice peice of mangrove or bogwood would touch it up a bit