# El Natural 60cm



## sciencefiction (28 May 2014)

I decided to finally set my 54l tank with soil. It's been running 2 years as a normal low tech.

If I catch all the shrimp today it could be today, if not ....soon. Do not expect quality aquascape. I'll plant it for long term convenience rather than fiddling with scapes plus I do not possess any aquascaping skills  I just want happy plants.

Specs:

Tank 54L Juwel Koral
Light: Arcadia Classica Stretch LED
Soil: Verve fruit and vegetable planter mixed with 5-10% red clay capped with the old white sand it's already in there.
Filtration: Internal Fluval U2 450l/h and a sponge powerhead driven filter(may or may not leave the sponge filter as it gets very crowded)
Flora: undecided yet. Currently the tank has moss, small anubias, dwarf sag and crypt beckettii pink. If any room left I may add a dwarf version of crypt beckettii, hydrocolyte tripartida, ludwiga and two dwarf versions of echinodorus but that maybe a bit too much.
Fauna: undecided, shrimp, snails and something else, either ottos only or a school of pygmy corys.  May or may not try selectively breed my mutated blue cherry shrimp that are popping up in another tank.

Sorry, no pictures yet.


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## allan angus (28 May 2014)

sounds like a plan


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## Lewis G (28 May 2014)

Sounds good, looking forward to the pictures. I've been eyeing up the Arcadia LEDs for a while now. Have you used them before? Are they any good?


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## sciencefiction (28 May 2014)

allan angus said:


> sounds like a plan



Thanks Allan, still on the catching shrimp stage. Hopefully over by tomorrow. 



Lewis G said:


> Sounds good, looking forward to the pictures. I've been eyeing up the Arcadia LEDs for a while now. Have you used them before? Are they any good?



It looks very good aesthetically wise. I like it, it's thin, very light and effortless to "install" if one can call it this as I just placed it over, it has it's own legs. I can fit the cover over it too.
 The colour is on the pink side which I tend to like, looks very good to me and has the shimmer effect too. So far I tested it on just crypts and dwarf sag only and they've been growing visibly well(despite me leaving them with no ferts as I neglected the tank) but I am going to have to see on more demanding plants. 
It has a moon light option(red) which is cool but one needs to flip a switch and can't set them with the full light on a separate timer. Obviously it can't be dimmed but I think they come on the low side intensity wise so for a high tech it will definitely need two of these I think.
I would buy another one no problem and I need extra light for my 5f and thinking to buy the longest version of it too.

When I set up the tank tomorrow hopefully you can see how it looks in the tank although it doesn't come as well on pictures as it is in reality.


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## sciencefiction (28 May 2014)

Well, there are more shrimp in the tank than I thought.  I can't catch them all with plants in because they are in the dwarf sag and moss so I am going to have to siphon them out with water somehow and then pour them back in another tank.


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## sciencefiction (30 May 2014)

I ripped the plants out. It was a nightmare catching all shrimp. It wasn't too bad with the larger ones but there were lots of 2mm ones that are almost invisible. Every time I look I find some.


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## Lewis G (30 May 2014)

Sounds tough. I had a nightmare chagning substrate in one of my tanks. It will be worth it though, the plants will love you for it.


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## sciencefiction (30 May 2014)

Well, the tank is down to a bare substrate now. I was just going to take the sand out but decided to inspect the tank for more shrimp when I saw a baby otto stuck to the glass!!

My two ottos in another tank spawned a few days ago. I moved a few cuttings from that tank to this one and I must have moved an egg too because there's a baby otto munching on the glass.
I am going to give it a chance and run the tank bare for a while because if I move the otto it can die. It's probably going to die anyway after I ripped the tank apart but I'll give him a fighting chance.


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## sciencefiction (30 May 2014)

Just so there's a picture in this thread this is where I moved all the shrimp to, look at the amount of shrimp  And that's not all of them


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## Chrisvx220 (11 Apr 2015)

How did the baby otto do? 

Love that last photo, that's a lot of shrimp!!!


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## sciencefiction (11 Apr 2015)

He's alive and doing great. I put lots of info about him in the nano walstad tank journal but haven't uptated it recently.
He's been living in that cherry shrimp tank and he's now almost fully grown.  It's been almost year and it's only recently that I started confusing him with the adults. I'll try to take a picture tomorrow as the lights are off now in there.


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## sciencefiction (11 Apr 2015)

By the way, I never reset that tank above. After I raised the otto, I threw in some fish to keep it going.  Right now there are baby platies in it. Maybe I'll reset it this summer because I have the soil and everything waiting, plants have been in a bucket for a year, lol, but some light to keep them alive.


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## Chrisvx220 (12 Apr 2015)

Great that he survived! No more babies since him then?


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## sciencefiction (12 Apr 2015)

Chrisvx220 said:


> Great that he survived! No more babies since him then?



No, they never spawned again, not that I've seen and the adults spawned in a different tank.  I had moved some plants from that tank to this one and there must have been an egg on them.


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## sciencefiction (24 Apr 2016)

I just found this thread hanging in the air. I'll update it because I like conclusions. The story isn't uneventful
I never ended up changing the substrate or planting it properly.  I binned the plants that were supposed to go in there.
I ran the tank bare for a good while. It housed fry from time to time.

At some stage I put back one crypt in there, don't ask why I put just one....I just couldn't be bothered to plant the tank as I was still planning to put soil as substrate.  The crypt happened to love the solo experience and threw runners everywhere, until I caused a massive algae outbreak by overfeeding a bunch of fry that were the current occupants. There was a thick layer of diatoms, blue green algae and BBA. It was manky looking. I had never seen such severe algae outbreak for all the time I've had tanks. I did daily water changes while raising the fry and it still didn't prevent the algae.....Too much frozen food...

 I moved the fry out, emptied the tank, trimmed the poor crypts which were left down to a leaf or two literally. In about 2 months or so the algae ran its course. The plants started recovering. 

In the meantime two of my other tanks broke. That was last year. One of them is the tank with the kuhlis and hundreds of shrimp on the above picture. Everything I could save from my 130l tank got moved to the 54 litre tank. I lost two kuhlis and several ottos. It was a nightmare period. I also threw in some anubias that had nowhere else to go.

Currently the tank is overstocked with 6 khulis, 2 ottos and 5 corydoras. The latter decided to breed so I've got 4 self-surviving baby corys. I tried to catch the adult corys to give some room for the small ones to grow but Its impossible with the amount of plants. I'll keep trying....
The tank is not aquascaped for aesthetics. It just ended up the way it ended up.

A glimpse at my crypts below as I happened to take a picture a couple of weeks ago.  They seem to be loving that old plain sand that's in there for 4 or so years. I won't be bothering with soil now...
Light is still the Arcadia Classica Stretch 18W on 12hrs at night time 
Ferts-only iron. My water is hard and iron availability has been a problem
No additional co2

I know it doesn't look like much but those crypts sprouted from one plant only. They are actually all over the tank but the left side is shaded by anubias just floating on top.



 



The left side is a bit of a jungle as I dumped some anubias on top of the crypts at some stage. Here is mama cory.


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## rebel (24 Apr 2016)

Thanks for taking the time to update!


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## sciencefiction (1 May 2016)

I just wanted to show the colour metamorphosis that the crypt is going through in the last weeks. All the leaves are now turning dark wine sort of colour. There is probably a reason for it...to be figured out...I've noticed that this crypt (beckettii petchii) always changes leaf colour depending on the conditions. I know that at very low light levels the leaves stay dark green and do not turn pink or red. But what drives them to go this wine colour....I am not sure..


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## john dory (1 May 2016)

Beautiful crypts

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk


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## dw1305 (1 May 2016)

Hi all, 





sciencefiction said:


> All the leaves are now turning dark wine sort of colour.


Does the tank get any ambient light? If it does it may just be the increase in light intensity from the brighter daylight and longer days. 

cheers Darrel


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## sciencefiction (1 May 2016)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all, Does the tank get any ambient light? If it does it may just be the increase in light intensity from the brighter daylight and longer days.
> 
> cheers Darrel



It's quite  possible. The room in which the tank is in is definitely brighter because of the more regular sunshine entering the room, however the tank gets no direct sun light at all. Still, the longer days may have an impact considering the light schedule of the tank.  The tank light is switched on at night from 6pm to 6am, meaning that the plants are never in complete darkness because of the ambient light throughout the rest of the time. I should be having an algae factory by all accounts but I don't   I was just looking at the specs of the light unit yesterday out of curiosity and the manufacturer claims that the par level at the bottom of a 30cm tall tank(which is the height of this tank), taken in water at 6cm above the water surface, is 22. At 20 cm the par level is 38.  I've placed the light unit 2cm above the water surface, meaning its almost immediately above the water level.


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## sciencefiction (8 May 2016)

The led light failed today. It's just 2 weeks outside the warranty. How convenient  I think its to do with the transformer/dual switch controller because it stinks of burnt...


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## sciencefiction (13 May 2016)

Hi everyone. I just wanted to say that the retailer (SWELLUK) is sending me a replacement light. My light was out of the 2 years warranty by two weeks. I am so delighted and pleasantly surprised!!!  They were also very efficient and easy to deal with. I wish all retailers were so responsible. They surely are on my top list of retailers now.


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