The Behemoth Tank

[plantbrain]

Fish would detract in this case from the offending piece of redwood

Is that....is that bogwood doing what I think it's doing

Yes, don't tell me I'm a bad aquascaper and only know the science.
I have wood and know how to use it.

I think when you get to this scale and $$$, having an awesome fish load to go with the awesome scape and plant load is par for the course.

The tank has a little algae right now, due to low CO2, what else is new
So I have a guy I know down there that will amplify things fior the CO2 till I come back on Thursday-Sunday to do some work on it and add some more weeds and touch things up.
I use all sorts of tools for working on tanks like this.
Namely a pair of angeled scissors and giant tweezers that are surprisingly nimble.
Whyen the water change is done,, 50% of the water is gone, so you have to only go down about 20" since the gravel is 3" in front and nearly 12" in the rear. ADA As is also very neat to scape with if you like slopes, since it's clay and semi soft, you can pack and mould it and make the shape stronger, when planted, the roots will still penetrate and form and nice stable slope.

I learned this when I was working and standing on ther Aqua soil.
There is no power sand in this tank.

There are no fish in there and there will not be the total stock level for about 2-3 months, Shrimps and Ottos are first. Then smaller fish, then rose lines, hatchets etc, Discus and finally altums.

Stocking is an art every much as scaping is.
I'm good at that and the client is good as well.

Cardinals are fish food essential for the discus and altums, but that's fine.
We are going to use red worms, (earthworms) and purge them of the dirt in the intestinal tract (you place them on the bottom of good size jar, add filter floss over them and add enough water to wet the floss and 1-2", they will go up throught the floss and expel the dirt along the way)- and also CA black worms, also purged via cold mike for several minutes and then soaked in Vitamins and protein powder. Client has a refrig/freezer all for fish foods etc in the back room where the filtration and life support is.
We went around a few times with the live Black worms thing, I know brine and red worms are free of the bad stuff, but we have been using the black worms and consulted the top folks in the USA about it, so I never got any negative feedback and had only positives.

We also have several large "dinner plates" in the tank for the fish to feed from. They are large petrified wood pieces that have been cut and then gouged out by a stone mason to make depressions.

No one has done this to my knowledge.
I like one, I think the other 2 are much to contrived personally.
Still, pretty neat and there's a story behind it.
The one larger 160lb piece looks better because the depression goes well with the natural flow of the piece.


Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[George Farmer]

At last I've managed to get the time to read through this thread properly. If you have the time Tom I have a few questions.

60 Rose Lines? Are these Puntius denisonii (red line torpedo barbs as they're known in the UK). They're gonna love all that swimming space!

Why the need for O2 injection?

How many Altums do you reckon you'll lose? I assume they're wild caught so will be used to v. low pH.

Are you dosing EI straight away? K2SO4? Any extra Mg or Ca or is there enough in the TMG?

Are you using pure RO?

What temp?

Can't wait for more updates and photos. Thanks again for sharing.

 

[nathan01]

looks huge where do u keep it?


Looking forward o see it planted

 

[plantbrain]

Update: redid the scape as the client's taste finally changed for the better.
He gave it a lot of thought and went with another plan that was more suitable to the materials used, namely an odd out of place tree and a large petrified rock that was much too close to the front.
Pick axed a 120lb petrified log into a nice angled cut so we had 2 nice matching pieces. Lots of hard manual labor goes into such a tank if you want to know
Spent about 20 more hours of work on the tank after SCAPE left.

I organized some plant groups better, added 100 Crypt balansae from Arizona Aquatic Gardens. Thanks Peter! AAG took good care of me for this order.

The tank as as messed up as it could have been due to a number of things, but with simplification, good materials, ideas and work, the tank as back in a mere 3 days.

I reduced the lighting at the surface from 800 umol down to 600 and run the MH's 6 instead of 14 hours (did not listen to me and paid the price). Most anyone that knows me knows I'd never suggest much more than 10 and never for MH's.

CO2 was messed up, redid the entire system, made my old style manifolds, redid the lines, added ADA beetle bubble counters(5 of them), Added the venturi mazzii's, this is the first tank to use them for CO2 as far as I know and they really blast mist unluike anything else possibly can at this scale.

That's an amazingly effective device.

The room itself is the first pick of designers such as Verschee, Hilfinger, and Louie Batan, Louie got the room, it'll look quite neat later

Still a construction zone for a few more weeks.
Did not get too many pics, but other folks have.

I'll get them up when I have a chance, I has some of the filtration system etc.


Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[madcaow]

mad

 

[QuotheRaven]

Wow.....perhaps 800 Kuhlii loaches for the tank
Superb, utterly breathtaking and another large amount of expressions.
Nice work

 

[plantbrain]

Ludwigia granulosus

 

[madcaow]

does that plant have really stiff stems??

i had something similar in my tank and it went terribly. looks very nice tho!

 

[confusion]

Here's a couple of basic questions:
Did I read correctly that the 1000 cardinals are food for the discus'?

I don't understand the purpose of extracting the dirt from the red worms? is that to ensure they don't contain "contaminated" soil?

What is the purpose of the large water changes? I always assumed that larger tanks would operate as a more complete ecosystem, particularly if it's heavily planted.

 

[catfish_mad]

Thats a jar dropping tank. If only i had one(well i can dream anyway). Cant wait to see it finished with the fish in.

 

[plantbrain]

The Discus have never seen Cardinals, they will eat a few likely, Cardinals are generally fast enough to avoid being food and folks commonly keep them together.

Main thing is that the cardinals are cheap and easy to add more of, even with good quarantining, they can have issues, but once doing well, they should be fine. The Amano shrimps are much more likely to be eaten.
Some losses are expected for such critters, Discus and larger more rare items will be removed if they cause trouble and have issues.

Removing the dirt from worms means better digestion, more protein, less junk in the food etc.
Large water changes are standard for well run planted tanks. Stabilizes things and makes dosing easy.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Rodders]

How the hell do you put things in there and plant etc?? do you get in the tank lol?

 

[netcode]

How the hell do you put things in there and plant etc?? do you get in the tank lol?

at the start i would imagine he gets right in.. and the rest is done with large tweezers

 

[Tote]

By the time the water levels come back up, you get out

You can also hang with your knees a certain way to get lower if need be.

Yeah, know the feeling with my 20 gall

Seriously, fantastic to see what goes into producing a tank on this scale - thanks for sharing.

 

[plantbrain]

It is a lot of work.

Regards,
Tom Barr