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GA 90P slow grown fern tank

viktorlantos

Aquascaper
Joined
25 Oct 2008
Messages
1,598
Location
Budapest, Hungary
This is one of our tank also in the gallery. We used the ADA Solar Green bulb advantages to build a green mossy, fern tank with Bolbitis, Microsorum, Weeping moss, Hygrophila Pinnatifida, Anubias species. For carpet we used glosso here as we never used that before.

Tank parameters:
90P (90x45x45) Opti White
2075 Eheim Pro 3
Pressurized CO2
ADA Aqua Soil Africana for substrate
ADA Power Sand Special
ADA Fertilizers daily with Easy Carbo
30% water change weekly with full RO
ADA Solar with green bulb for lighting
ADA Gravel and Seiryu used for decor along with Borneo Wild wood.

The tank is 6 month old now approx, and in this timeframe it had many faces, because the slow growers really started in after 3 month only.

Setup day:

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1.5 months old:

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2 months old with white bcg

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a nice piece out of the water

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3.5 months old here

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shooting for IAPLC 2011 around this time. a small detail

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and i shot this today the tank is 6 month old today

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from bottom

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a bit overgrown here, but as you can see this changed a lot on it's way.

hope you liked this time travel with this tank. ;) :thumbup:
 
Awesome mate.

It looks like you've nailed the ADA way of things. I'm slowly coming around to the ADA 'force' :geek:

Is the 'RO' water change system something you've learned recently? Do ADA recommend this?
 
Thanks mate ;)

Well for substrate we have great results with their products, ferts works well too. This tank is an ADA system example in our gallery, but we also use EI in some of our other tanks.

I am quite happy with the ADA stuff, never had problems with it except its pricing ;)

On the RO stuff we decided to go the soft water way from the beginning. In our country the tap water is around 15-25GH and around 15KH. If you check the ADA tanks at Niigata they have soft water in most of their tanks. TH10, TH20, TH100 where they use Seiryu. I've seen many brilliant tanks from Spain from CAE http://colectivo-cae.blogspot.com/ with soft water also. Germany and Poland also produce a lot of soft water tanks as they have this from the tap.

So we decided to go the soft way. :D Not mixed back with tap water. Just pure RO. And i have to tell you the plants looks great in all of our tanks. Even if this is ADA fertilized or EI. Fishes, shrimps love it. Actually they are breeding there like Apistogramma Agassizi. So i do not have a reason to drop this thing. We have a large RO machine which produce enough water a day for fill an 500L barell. So we can do all maintenance a week with it.

I never seen such a healthy mosses like we have since we're using this. Ditto for Bolbitis and Microsorum species. But HC is performing well with many other plants too.
 
Thnaks Viktor.

Interesting info on RO.

I've wondered whether my tap water has changed over the last year. Plant health has not been to the same standard as before.But...and a big but, my 60L, with tap water is looking pretty healthy, the most vivid green.

However, my ferting has changed, so maybe this could be the reason. also ADA substrate system, lights etc.

My way of thinking is changing.

Thanks again. :thumbup:
 
Great tank Viktor, as Mark said, very ADAish :thumbup: I'm so jealous at you because you can look at your beautiful tanks every day :angelic:

Here in my area we also have very hard water, and I was thinking about investing in RO device, but now I have become lazy with water changes and I just use a 10m garden hose to fill the water in and out. With RO device water changes would be much more complicated, with a lot of water on the floor :D How do you deal with that when you change the water in your tanks? And related to that, do you add anything more to the RO water than N-P-K + micro, to compensate the loss because of RO?

Tnx :thumbup:
 
We have a 500L barell where the RO is produced. At water changes we use a hose to drain the tanks, and another which push the RO with an Eheim Compact pump from the barell to the tanks. Goes quickly and no water on the floor.
We're using the Eheim locks at the end of the tubes to shut them down at the end.

Not adding any extra because of the RO. Not boosting GH, no additional salts etc. Just the regular fert regime.
 
viktorlantos said:
We have a 500L barell where the RO is produced. At water changes we use a hose to drain the tanks, and another which push the RO with an Eheim Compact pump from the barell to the tanks. Goes quickly and no water on the floor.
We're using the Eheim locks at the end of the tubes to shut them down at the end.

Not adding any extra because of the RO. Not boosting GH, no additional salts etc. Just the regular fert regime.
Thank you for the answer my friend :thumbup: I have not enough space in my relatively small apartment for a 500 l barrel, but it is definately worth thinking about. I need a 100 l barrell. And an RO device too :D It seems like my credit card might be in function soon :lol:

Cheers :thumbup:
 
Hey viktor, great tank really like what you do with them very natural which I'm a big fan of.
Yes been reading above, so you just use 100% RO and don't add a drop of anything else.
Does this mean the rocks add the hardness needed?
Water are u water parameters? If u test the water:)
Also is you RO system / barrel heated? How do u get it to temp?
Cheers mate
 
Cheers ;)

Yup 100% RO on our display tanks. In some cases the rocks hardening the water like in our large iwagumi scape with seiryu stones, but others are not. Hardness is around GH 2-6, KH 1-4.

We tested more the water in the first few months but nowadays just if we need to test something. Test was done by regular drop test and photometer too.

RO is not heated. Which means we have around 17-22 celsius in the barell. At winter time this is lower, for now this is warmer. Not heating it at all. All of our tanks loves the colder water. At wintertime our tanks are around 22-24 celsius more around 22-23. Now around 23-25 as we do use air conditioning to keep the tanks under 25 for sure.

Plants do not need warm water. They just grow much better in this colder water. We never have melting issues even with crypts this way.

So we just load the colder RO directly to the tanks. Fishes, shrimps just love that.
 
In the cycling time when we had to do frequent water changes we put more attention to the pH level. As the barell has low pH. Around 5.6. With daily changes this could shock the fishes however in most display tanks we have 6.5-7pH level. Nowadays with weekly changes there aren't any issues at all. We only had an issue 1 time in one of our tanks in the past 6 months with a water change.

Of course for fish tanks, plant holder tanks we're using tap or mixed ro tap water. We only use full RO on our display aquascapes, and our sensitive shrimp tanks.
 
Nice one viktor, really interesting to hear how you do it and maybe something for me to think about. I've always thought it should be heated a little before adding.
My 60l is just hard tap water and will be mainly a shrimp and moss tank. Sukuras at first and if they breed I will add some crs which almost certainly will appreciate the RO water.
I think I will now start using the method you are using....100% cold RO water that I can get from my lfs.
Really appreciate that mate I'll get back to you and let u know how I get on.
If you say it's great for your moss and your shrimp then I'd be silly not to follow suit.
One more thing vik , do you run you're co2 24/7 or is it on a solenoid timer? Is using RO water more susceptible to ph crashes with such low gh and kh ?
 
CRS loves colder water. They not do well above 25 celsius. So this is kind of another advantage. Just keep all the time under 25. They really do better around 22-24.

We only inject CO2 to our display planted tanks. There we're on solenoids for 10 hours a day approx.
But not using CO2 on our shrimp racks, however would have advance with CRS line for sure. We're thinking about to upgrade our tanks to this way. Even black tigers do much better in a CO2 tanks. CRS breed rapidly in our planted tank with CO2 injection and good filtration too.

pH issues could happen with CO2 injected tank and low KH. So just keep an eye on this on refill. We usually use active soils in our display tanks and shrimp tanks too so that could play an active role to stabilize the system and pH. Also CO2 injection or air pump plays a role too. We really not had any issues with pH swings except one time, but even there we were fast and fixed the issues with Seachem salts.
 
I can't believe it's that simple. I'm going to get my sukuras settled in first and see if they start breeding in my hard water. Had a couple berried in my nano which has same tap water.
When the time comes I will slowly exchange all the water bit by bit as suggested.
I'm going to be running co2 24/7 so ph swings/ crashes will be to a minimum and at the same time make the water slightly acidic which the crs like.
My water is about 24c so for mosses and crs it should be great:) Let's hope it will look as good as one of ur tanks!
 
While we're chatting can i ask a question. I just got a luminaire 2x24w t5. I have blocked on bulb off so only have 1 24w over the tank. Is this still too much light for moss? Tank is 26inch l x 12 h x 15w :) cheers
 
Great looking tank as usual. Plants definitely do much better in colder water. Here in Malaysia, normal tank water gets up to 31-32deg in the afternoon. We have to spend a lot on chillers to keep it at 25-26deg. You guys are lucky :)
 
Mrmikey said:
I can't believe it's that simple. I'm going to get my sukuras settled in first and see if they start breeding in my hard water. Had a couple berried in my nano which has same tap water.

Sakuras are bullet proof species. They breed everywhere. But if you go for more sensitive lines like we have, black tiger or CRS SSSS, CRS SSS, then soft water is needed.

You also can stay with harder tap water, but then go to a mixed range of CRS. A-C or for test S grade.
 
Mrmikey said:
While we're chatting can i ask a question. I just got a luminaire 2x24w t5. I have blocked on bulb off so only have 1 24w over the tank. Is this still too much light for moss? Tank is 26inch l x 12 h x 15w :) cheers

Too much light for moss?
Mosses do better with more lights and other optimal conditions.
But they survive in low light in some cases.

Check this

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This is Christmas moss in our tank which survive in very low light too. But you will never see this in such a beauty form like on the photo. We're using here the powerful ATI light with 4 T5 tubes to give the max power to the stems. But moss also looks beautiful in this condition. EI ferts, CO2, Easy Carbo, weekly 40% water change with full RO.
 
flygja said:
Great looking tank as usual. Plants definitely do much better in colder water. Here in Malaysia, normal tank water gets up to 31-32deg in the afternoon. We have to spend a lot on chillers to keep it at 25-26deg. You guys are lucky :)

Thank you my friend. :angelic:
Yup we're lucky that we have warmer weather only for 2 months at sumer time.
Not so lucky with the hard tap water on the other hand. :D

We have to use all the power and tricks to keep up with the Malaysian scapers by the way. :D
Still too much to learn. :lol:
 
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