giant tank for killis

[killi69]

Thanks Robbie and a very belated thank you to markj, firefly and Edvet, and off course to Zanguli for sharing those great pics of the river near Kinsuka. Sorry for my long absence, it's been eight months, so I will be posting an update here very soon.

 

[killi69]

Since my last update, I have been steadily increasing the ‘root mass’ by adding smaller pieces of root branches to the base of both islands, as well as thinning out some of the ferns and providing lines of sight, through planted ‘streets’ of Anubias cutting through the ferns.

The aim is to try and create more interest overall, compared to ‘just’ having large masses of ferns which provided great shelter for the fish but on the whole blocked much of the depth of view.

Although on the one hand, the plant mass of ferns has been reduced, the placing of additional ‘root systems’ along the bottom, has provided additional shelter for the fish with further opportunities for under-planting.

Overall, I have been aiming to increase the number of layers in the tank;
- Floating leaves of the Aponogeton crispus red and Cryptocoryne balansae
- The mini java ferns attached to the top ends of the branches
- The various ferns inside the branches
- The streets of Anubias growing through the branches
- The bottom root system under-planted with Anubias
- Crypts planted directly around the base of the mounds

Prepared 'streets' of Anubias to be placed inside the branches;



Overview since August 2013;


Caloglossa algae growing on branches above Anubias 'street';

More wood and under-planting;



Added a load of Anubias nana bonsai. I used cable ties to place Anubias around the roots at ground level, which is a lot easier than tying directly to the wood, especially at this depth, and allows more flexibility for moving around later on.





Close up showing various layers of planting and 'see through' view points;

 

[BigTom]

Ace! I absolutely love this tank. I see that weird red algae is still doing well.

 

[Ady34]

Great to have an update Andre and the tank is still looking super. Nice to see it still evolving too.

 

[killi69]

Then, I moved house! Moving the tank was off course by far the most complicated part of this and I organised the tank move two weeks before my own.

Last picture before break down;


Borrowed some butts from Aquatic Design Centre (a big thank you to Greg and ADC for this)


For those who might remember reading about my experiences of buying the tank at the start of my journal (and discovering a small crack in the glass after moving), I decided to take no chances this time and brought in the professionals;


as well as some other keen helpers;


The move was also an opportunity for me to try and address some of the water quality issues I was having and discussed earlier in my journal (see #126). Despite two powerful Eheim 2180s, filled with lots of filter floss, there were still lots of water particles which resulted in brown residue and some algae on the leaves of many of my plants;




Every week I was battling to clean the brown slime off the leaves and I was loosing more and more leaves. You might notice from the pictures above how over time, the Aponogeton leaves reduced in mass, many with holes in them.

So I decided that in order to increase flow, I would forsake the very top layer of my tank - the floating leaves of the Aponogeton and Cryptocoryne balansae had to come out. I balanced this out by creating another structure of branches that would reach the top of the tank, using cable ties to hold them all together;

I then tied mini java ferns to the top ends of these branches to provide additional layers at the top level and new places of refuge for my fish.

To further improve my water flow and filtration, I made a number of changes to my filter set up, with the help and advice from Greg at the Aquatic Design Centre. First of all, I bought two very fine and very large sponges (about 1 ft long). In one, I DIY’d an inlet for both of the intake pipes of one of my Eheim 2180’s.

I use black piping and black pvc tubing underwater instead of the ugly see-through or green eheim stuff. Black works much better IMO when trying to hide tubing etc behind plants, especially against a black background like in my tank.The black pvc piping I sourced from Wickes Round Conduit - Conduit - Electrical -Tools, Electrical & Plumbing - Wickes. Its 20mm external diameter but fits fine. I also use it to make spraybars. The black pvc tubing (16/21mm) I sourced from BRAIDED HOSE AIR / WATER HOSE END OF LINE and use for connectors where possible or to lead piping in or out of the tank.

The other sponge, I connected to a Aqua Clear 70 Power filter and made a small spraybar for its outlet which I clipped against part of my original spraybar which runs along the length of the tank at the top at the back (and blocked the holes in the original spraybar running behind it, thus also increasing the flow through the remaining holes of the original bar).


Both sponges are placed in the back corners of the tank and, big as they are, they are almost completely hidden behind the wood and plants and are hardly noticeable. I clean the sponges once a week and they come out really filthy, so they are obviously doing a far better job at mechanical filtration than these fancy Eheim pumps of mine. The water is a lot cleaner now, with hardly any dirt settling on the plant leaves.

The other Eheim 2180 is still running – without an external sponge fitted to it – and its inlets are situated at the back in between the two islands.

 

[killi69]

I continued to add more layers and bought a whole load of additional ‘roots’ to go at the base of both mounds;


Here some more recent pictures of the new set up;

















I will come back again soon with an update on the fish population.

Thank you for watching,

Andre

 

[Edvet]

The move improved your tank, so you did wel, grats.
My personal findings are rthat a big tank with loads of fish and plants will always a bit murky. I find in my own tank i am always battling dust in the water.

 

[tim]

This tank just gets better and better, great to see such a detailed up date hopefully won't be another 8 months for the next one 🙂

 

[killi69]

Ace! I absolutely love this tank. I see that weird red algae is still doing well.

Thanks Tom, I am glad you like it.

Yes the Caloglossa algae is still there but currently it is not as neat as I have shown it in one or two pics above. I have found that you need to tie it around a branch or something at first, and soon it will look something like this;


but, after a while, however, it becomes a bit wooly and fluffy and prone to picking up debris and needs tying down again;



I lost much of it in recent months when I introduced some Kribs to the tank and they enjoyed nibbling it. I have since got rid of the Kribs and have the stuff growing again but I need to start the process of tying it around something - it also needs to be tied to a spot which is away from other plants or else it will start attaching itself to any leaf that touches it. It can also spread, as bits break off and multiply in between plants in the gravel etc. When I broke down the tank for the move there were quite a few areas in the gravel among the plants where they had moved to independently, but that never bothered me. I have never found it reached plague proportions but have read accounts on German websites of people who had to break down their tank because they could not stop it from getting out of hand... It all depends on your tank conditions I suppose but I am aware there is always that risk.

 

[Olivier]

Nice addition to the foreground! Those irregular shaped roots recalled the ferns. They add grounding to the front and achors those ferns in the substrate. Really nice tank btw 🙂


Envoyé de mon iPhone à l'aide de Tapatalk

 

[killi69]

This tank just gets better and better, great to see such a detailed up date hopefully won't be another 8 months for the next one

Great to have an update Andre and the tank is still looking super. Nice to see it still evolving too.

Thank you very much for the vote of confidence, Ady and Tim. I often take a picture when i make changes to the tank but finding the time to upload them and update the blog is another matter. I am sure I am not the only one struggling to keep up with tank maintenance, let alone have time to fiddle around with uploading updates. But good to see it all on screen now its done.

Nice addition to the foreground! Those irregular shaped roots recalled the ferns. They add grounding to the front and achors those ferns in the substrate. Really nice tank btw

Cheers Olivier, it really amazes me how much wood I can keep adding, without it looking too overcrowded, although some might disagree. The trick I think is also to not to have too many plants, so that plants are not hiding the wood too much. Not always easy to cut back on plants as I do like the overgrown look.

I forgot to mention that I also changed the lighting a bit, swapping one of two white T5s with a pink one. I know many on the forum don't like the pink bulbs but in combination with another colour I think they give off a nice warm hue and bring out the red colours in fish and plants in a nice way.

 

[sanj]

Lovely, I think I said it before, but this is one of my favourate tanks on here.

In the last few months I have also been having issues with brown coating on leaves and particulate matter in the water column. It got really bad when I was away for a couple of weeks. I am wondering whether those eheim prefilters might help?

Love the scaping and the fish.

 

[killi69]

Lovely, I think I said it before, but this is one of my favourite tanks on here.
In the last few months I have also been having issues with brown coating on leaves and particulate matter in the water column. It got really bad when I was away for a couple of weeks. I am wondering whether those eheim prefilters might help?
Love the scaping and the fish.

Nice one sanj! Its really great to get such feedback from people with amazing tanks like yourself, BigTom and others whose tanks I really admire and find similarities with (lots of wood with plants).
I have come to the conclusion that these big Eheim 2080 type filters suck (or not) for mechanical filtration. Even when I packed them with floss (including around the edges of the internal baskets to try and force all flow through the floss), they still did not come close to cleaning the water.

The move improved your tank, so you did wel, grats.
My personal findings are rthat a big tank with loads of fish and plants will always a bit murky. I find in my own tank i am always battling dust in the water.

I think Edvet has a point about big tanks with lots of plants having some debris floating about. Especially, I think, when you also have large mounds of wood in there as well. Lots of organic material (plants and wood) which together form huge obstacles preventing consistant overall circulation. In my tank, there are some 'dead spots' behind the mounds where debris gathers, which catfish and other boisterous fish whip up from time to time.

I was able to improve the situation by both increasing flow and filtration by adding another powerhead and using two large and very fine sponge filters. They are nothing like the standard Eheim pre-filters, the ones I use are far bigger (prob 40x10x10cm) and are gigantic and much finer in comparison to the very small and coarse sponges fitted inside the Eheim pre-filters.

Eheim pre-filter;


Compare this to the sponge capacity of what I am using;


As you can see from the photo above, mine have an internal home-made bar inside with holes drilled in along the length of the bar so that dirt is sucked into the sponge from the top to the bottom in both corners of the tank. This in contrast to the regular external filter set-up where intakes are only situated in the bottom corner of the tank where circulation is often poor in tanks like ours due to the mass of wood and plants in front of the intakes.

So, in answer to your question, sanj, I would definitely recommend the big sponges to you, especially if you can find a way to hide them (which in your tank should not be a problem). The colour of the water I wash the sponges in weekly is evidence of how much dirt they collect - no comparison to the dirt collected in the Eheims. A disgrace really considering the Eheims costs hundreds. As I wrote above, either fit the sponges to your filter intakes, and/or just rig one up to a power head and increase your flow at the same time, which will help both filtration and dirt from settling on your leaves.

Disadvantages;
- you need to be able to hide the sponges, so they would only really work for larger tanks
- they need weekly cleaning, which adds a bit of time to the maintenance regime
- depending on your layout, you risk wood etc being knocked around a bit every time you remove and replace the sponges (due to their large size). For me it still works, though I have to be careful and replace some bits and pieces every now and then

 

[sanj]

Thanks for the reply Kili,

It is a consideration, although I am quite liking the idea of a seperate powerhead, although it is another thing that adds to electricity cost, but at least it would not slow the main filters down.

 

[Edvet]

Kili did you make that hole in the foam yourself? I am trying to figure out how to do that, in smaller sponges i use a sharpened copper tube , but in such a larg block i haven't figured it out yet.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Kili did you make that hole in the foam yourself? I am trying to figure out how to do that

I use similar sponges, they make them for Koi pond etc in 4" (10cm) x 4" x 4", and lengths of 6" (15cm), 8", 12" (30cm) and they are drilled to an inch (25mm) of the bottom, with an inch (25mm) diameter hole.

You can buy an insert for them, but I've always DIY'ed one.

cheers Darrel

 

[killi69]

Hi Edvet and Darrel. Mine came with only a small hole, just big enough for a standard 16/22. I used objects with increasingly larger diameters (first other piping, then a broom handle and eventually the pipe I intended to insert) to open up the diameter of the sponge. It does take a little patience and some brute force but will work eventually.

 

[Greenfinger2]

Hi Killi69, Great journal 🙂 Stunning Aquascape Fab fish too

 

[BigTom]

Yeah, updates please!

 

[Samuran]

As he said! Any updates!?