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60 litres of Chaos

Tim1343

Member
Joined
17 Nov 2022
Messages
53
Location
Cumbria
This is my first effort at a ‘high tech’ planted tank. I’ve had aquariums and ponds on and off over the years and shut down my reef tank in December for a number of reasons. Mainly cost but also time. The first few days I felt gutted and wondered what on Earth I’d done. And I had to get something else up and running quickly to deal with the unbearableness of being aquarium free. But that feeling of doubt has completely gone now. Everything that’s in this tank- substrate, hardscape, fish, critters and plants- cost far less than a single coral that may or may not randomly die! So I’m quite content that I’ve made the right decision, because even if I make an absolute mess of it, to rescape and start over will be pounds for the whole tank, not hundreds of pounds for a few square inches.

And no more messing around with RO, barrels of water, refractometers, measuring half a dozen different parameters to parts in a billion, panicking every time a coral has a sulk. I’m certain I’m oversimplifying planted aquariums but for now I’m happy in my ignorance!

So I decided to use a 60 litre quarantine tank I had left over, that I was able to get an aquaone stand for. In fact I think it’s an aquaone tank thinking about it. It’s not Optiwhite but I’m ok with that, for now.

I’ve got it running with an Oase Biomaster 350 thermo at 24°C, a Fluval Plant 3.0, EA scaper pipework and a CO2Art regulator on a wifi plug timer.

The hardscape leaves a lot to be desired! Three lumps of elephant stone, a bit of overpriced log, all over a bed of Fluval stratum capped with fine sand. There’s a distinct lack of shops in my area unfortunately so if it’s sold in a MHA, then likely I’ll be using it.

I’ve then added a variety of plants (I have a list somewhere but I’m awful with remembering names) again from MHA.

The fish I’m quite pleased with, just because they’re fascinating to watch. 15 neon green raspbora and 6 dwarf corydora. There’s also 4 red shrimp, think they were called Sakura grade or I’m maybe imaging that. Anyhow they’re also great to watch.

The plan, of sorts, is to see what I can grow first without too much fiddling, then plan something better later, based around those successful plants.

My current regime is two squirts a day of APT complete, with big water changes. There’s bits of algae popping up but I’m sure it’ll settle in time.

Thanks for reading, here’s a few bad photos with my iPhone…
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That's the beauty of planted tanks - they can be as complicated or as simple as you want them to be. Those rasboras look stunning in there :)
Very true! I’m really delighted with the rasboras. I was intending on going with some neon tetras, possibly green ones. But when I saw these I was amazed, hard to see in the photo but they are almost luminescent. And they shoal tightly pretty much all the time. Which is super to watch. ☺️
 
Decided that I literally cannot ascertain the colour in the drop checker with any degree of accuracy. So I bought a Bluelab pH meter.

Today I think I’ve just about managed to work out the CO2 concentration. I have a kH of 2 with a liquid test. Just out of interest tried a sample in a Hanna saltwater kH tester which came back as 2.1. No idea if that’s accurate but still ‘2’ so…

pH before the CO2 and lights kicked in was 7.0. By midday and three hours of CO2 it was only down to 6.7 so I tweaked the bubble counter a little and waited. I took hourly readings and it slowly continued to fall and by around 3.15pm it had reached 6.2 which was roughly where I was targeting as that would be around 40ppm CO2 in theory. However an hour later the rasboras had shoaled tightly together near the surface at the back of the tank and I could see increased respiratory effort. It had overshot to a pH of 5.9.
I adjusted the bubble counter back a fraction and did a 70% water change and within half an hour the fish were back to normal. The pH was back up to 6.1 so looks like the limit is pretty tight in this tank. Definitely glad I stuck to the plan of being around all day and was able to react to the overshoot.

The CO2 is off for today and I’ll be back watching it again tomorrow, hopefully the tiny adjustment will be about right. It’s running at 160 bubbles a minute, or 2.6 per second.

Growth this week has been steady and I have the lights running at 100% for a full 8 hours so if I can get the CO2 nailed hopefully it will settle nicely. Still not missing the saltwater side! 😊
 
I think I’ve got it sorted. Was at 6.5pH/20ppm CO2 as the lights switched on this morning (with the CO2 already being on for an hour and a half) and then it fell to 6.2 pH and seemed to stay there throughout the day, which is 40ppm and the livestock seem to be ok with this.

Still be keeping a very close eye and I doubt I’d have got it anywhere near using the dropper. Managed to run a reef tank without a pH meter but for dialling in the CO2 it’s been invaluable and in my (inexperienced) view nigh on impossible to be sure where you’re really at. What I do know is just using a dropper I was miles out, hugely under-dosing CO2.
 
So really enjoying fiddling with this tank. Even with things that aren’t quite as I’d like, such as a bit of algae. The feeling of relief that if a plant isn’t doing ok it’s only cost a few quid is such a difference to the old reef tank. I do not miss the stress! Needs a clean and tidy up and it’s weekly water change today. I also bought some yellow shrimps and some amano shrimp which seem to love going down the overflow skimmer and into the filter. Not sure if it’s some sort of shrimp extreme sport. They get released during the weekly prefilter clean and then seem to go straight back down. Tried a bit of trimmed foam but it messed with the skimmer so having a think about that one.
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The overflow skimmer has proved itself a right pain in the bum this week. With a snail finding its way down the pipe and getting jammed. So I’ve had enough of that for now. It’s been swapped out for a skimmerless intake. The weekly water change later so no doubt I’ll find this weeks shrimp selection in the prefilter, but hopefully for the last time! 🤣
 
The chaos continues… now have an Oase crystal skim running which is nowhere near as good at reducing surface scum but doesn’t suck in shrimps and has the added benefit of providing some flow at the rear of the tank. Added my old ATO which is helping keep things a bit more stable. And dosing 2hr aquarist EI automatically as well. Added some neon tetras, more dwarf corys and a pair of kribs. Totally overstocked but the oversized filtration seems to be managing fine. Thrown a variety of plants in there, some worked, some didn’t, algae has ebbed and flowed, the lily thing seems happy it’s growing huge pads and needs frequent trimming or it covers the whole surface.
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Some different applications of these various sizes of stainless screen have prevented shrimp in my skimmers. I know yours is very different, but some application of this screen, cut and shaped per application may help. Need tin snips. For inflows, i have inlet sponges and inlet strainers I use on some tanks. I also use course matten cut to fit on some filtrations setups where shrimp get past skimmers. Nice selection of plants, looks lively colorful.
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