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"Dutch something or the other" 120 Gal

Hi Tom
The tall spikey plant to the left?
I would remove and replace with something else, it seems to overpower the rest of the scape when grown in!
Lovely tank as always!
Cheers
hoggie
 
Tom, I'm trying to find information on your wet-dry prefilter constriction and operation principle. I find some items similar to yours on e-bay and on some marine manufacturer site. Here is video about installation and starting it from marine site:
Is it like yours? Can you tell us whether air pump should work all the time or it's required only to start the prefilter. In the case of power outage will this prefilter restart itself when power is back, or it needs some manual intervention? Thanks.
 
I 've read the all 35 pages. Fantastic scape with healthy plants. What is your NO3 week dose now? And typical level of NO3 in water ?

Cheers
 
This aquarium is fantastic! Plant health is amazing all appear to be well pruned and with fantastic colors, those plants with all this health and explendedor is certainly the dream of every aquascaper!!!
 
Hello Tom,

I have to say I really really adore this tank and it really makes me want to have such a colorful plant growth in mine as well.
Is there anywhere where I can find the overall stats of this tank? Like what its measurements are (all I know is that 120 gallons must be somewhere near 440 liters), the lighting, other technical equipment and most of all I'm interested in what levels of the pH, NO3, PO4, Fe, K, etc. you're aiming at.

Also, is there some kind of masterlist of what plants you keep in this tank? I do recognise many of them, but there are also quite a few that are not generally sold in Europe (at least that's what I think is the case).

I hope I'm not asking too many questions, but I'm greedy for details. 😀

Regards, Franziska
 
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Too stunning for words!

What sorted flow through rate is there? Do you have the plants swaying and a current the fish swim against?
 
Hello Tom,

I have to say I really really adore this tank and it really makes me want to have such a colorful plant growth in mine as well.
Is there anywhere where I can find the overall stats of this tank? Like what its measurements are (all I know is that 120 gallons must be somewhere near 440 liters), the lighting, other technical equipment and most of all I'm interested in what levels of the pH, NO3, PO4, Fe, K, etc. you're aiming at.

Also, is there some kind of masterlist of what plants you keep in this tank? I do recognise many of them, but there are also quite a few that are not generally sold in Europe (at least that's what I think is the case).

I hope I'm not asking too many questions, but I'm greedy for details. 😀

Regards, Franziska


The tank is 120 cm by about 75 cm x 45 cm basically.
Light is 120cm 54W T5 bulbs, a mix of mostly red and a couple of white blue.
Filter, CPR 1000 wet/dry filter, herbie style overflow.

Ferts are just eI, dosed 2x a week, I dose tracves more, and more frequently, 5-6x a week.
Water changes, generally 2x a week, about 60%.
I do not measure ferts, I do not need to with EI.

I'm not going to list every species, if you point something out, I' can tell you what the species is.

Too stunning for words!

What sorted flow through rate is there? Do you have the plants swaying and a current the fish swim against?

Generally about 700 gph, there's a slight sway in some locations, current for the fish, a little bit.
I have more current in my 180, less in my 70 gallon, and a lot more in the Reef.

Franziska you need to buy yourself a latest version of Adobe Lightroom to achieve that kind of colours and all the plants are available in Europe. If you need a shop list - PM me.

Not likely, as L sphaerocarpa is only available thus far through hobbyists and mostly in the USA. I have sent some to some hobbyists overseas, but it's not in commercial production as far as I know yet.
Same with Erio compressum.

In time, most of the aquatic plants end up wolrdwide within the hobby, but it just takes a few years for them to to be grown and then widely available locally.
I think we had 10 species when I started in the hobby, then in the early 1990's, maybe 30. Now it's maybe 400.

FYI, there's no photoshopping used. I use auto settings on a Canon G12, then resize or crop. The image processing sometimes changes the true colors that's in the Canon camera depending on the lighting.
I've shown how light colors impact the photo's and colors of the plants themselves.

Example here is with mostly blue and a little white, without the deeper red of the URI Red sun:
Redpantinthrcorner_zpsc28777e0.jpg

right under the red lights in the same tank just 2-3 weeks prior:
Center120oct5th_zpsc0b39486.jpg

The Canon MKII 5D has different colors for the same picture, no post processing is done there.
You can tell a lot if the images are dark, or the red plants or colors have a magenta hue.

Darker pictures remove some of the haze in the water, but they also make the reds much deeper blood red.
I try to keep what I see and what is actually in the tank true. If you embellish, then the people that come over and see my tanks will know I am lying.
I've seen this done a great deal on line and people insist they did not post process the colors.

I took their image and then lightened it up and it looks just like everyone else's plants.
the other plants next to them also looked like they should have also.

You cannot have a bright strong light, then a deep dark picture with little light and awesome red colors.
Bright light generally washes out red color.

Video is a good solution for people seeking to view what the tanks are really like.
 
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Generally about 700 gph, there's a slight sway in some locations, current for the fish, a little bit.
I have more current in my 180, less in my 70 gallon, and a lot more in the Reef.

Im a little puzzled, constantly being told that for a planted tank you need 10x (tank volume an hour) as a general rule.

However you only pushing 4x your tank volume an hour and have great growth.

Too stunning for words!
 
[quote="plantbrain, post: 373462, member: 62"

Ferts are just eI, dosed 2x a week, I dose tracves more, and more frequently, 5-6x a week.
Water changes, generally 2x a week, about 60%.
I do not measure ferts, I do not need to with EI.

[/quote]
Why do you change water twice a week?? Normal EI dosing assume 50%WC week. ??
 
The 10x filtering rule of thumb is just that, a rule of thumb... There are plenty of people here running large tanks which are far from applying this rule and still having superb tanks. I guess that if you are able to provide a good flow and the rest of issues are fine tuned you can do it.

Regarding the 2x WC, EI method does not indicates how many WC you need. It is a matter of what your plants ask for and the time you want/can devote to your tank. Personally I do 2x 50% weekly WC whenever I can (which is more or less always except when I have to travel). My tank looks much better like this. I also think that Tom's tank is somehow being pushed to the limit in terms of growing/ferts so the plants are probably releasing organic compounds at a fast rate... In that case, if I am not wrong, WC are a need to keep algae under control.

Jordi
 
10x applies to smaller tanks imo. <120L. Imagine the filter(s) you'd need for a giant 1000L to achieve 10x turnover.
 
Thank you for the Information Tom!

Wow, 2x 60% water changes every week does seem like a lot! I suppose I'm simply kind of lazy when it comes to water changes....
 
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