• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Is it just random luck?

somewhere you should be able to find exchange rates for CO2 gas microbubbles (relative surface area to volume is everything) in water with various dissolved CO2 concentrations - if you're attached to a university, appreciate the open access journal opportunities 😀

I have a 90 x 45 x 50 cm tank with an Eheim reported flowrate of ~950l/h (filled with all the supplied media), a Tropica CO2 diffuser - bubbles travel a bit but rise pretty quick to the surface (various degrees of agitation from the spray bar which is situated on the (short) LF side of the tank, while the intake is on the (short) RH side) & I can still (almost) gas those fish within 30min 😳
Sadly my tank looks nothing like those pictured 😉
 
Why doesn't my Mrs look like Kate Beckinsale, bought her the same dress and everything :arghh:

Stop comparing yourself (if you are) to shops or manufacturers trying to sell you a product. There are are plenty of ways to overcome any problems when people are employed just to do that job. Whatever Co2 is being dissolved is obviously enough to keep most of the plants happy and not kill the fish. It's a shop, they don't really care how much they waste, it's neglible in the grand scheme of things. Totally different to a layman buying everything out of his own hard earned.

I'm guessing they're glass inlets and outlets, not Eheim 😉 .....they're slacking 😀
 
cant be water stagnant , i can see ripple on the surface , perhaps more dead spots due to the hardscape .
 
Have you been to the green machine? I went up a few weeks back and their tanks are all the same, low flow, CO2 going straight to the surface, and awesome growth.

It's due to the fact that the tank is so mature and with ADA filters they never lose flow rate so small amount of flow that gets round nearly all the tank works well. As for CO2 bubbles going straight up to the surface, so long as there's enough dissolving into the water where the rest goes doesn't matter 🙂.
 
TBH it might just be the pictures at the beginning of the thread but the light doesn't look very high to me. YEs looking at the light they may look really bright but in the tank it looks pretty dark to me. Like I say it might just be the pictures.
 
There's another tank near the till of ADC. It's fabulous and every time I see it i can't help but wonder what the hell I was doing wrong with my tank. I know we shouldn't really compare one tank to another but frankly it's hard.
Again this tank has a glass diffuser sat relatively high in the tank, moderate-high lighting (in my opinion) and low flow from an external filter via a single outflow. The growth and health on this tank is insane!
I'd often go back to my own tank with elaborate spray bar configuration and CO2 high enough to make the water look like lemonade and wonder why I had to go to such lengths.
I reckon they have some sort of cyber-hydro future machine that makes everything syncro-fertilize. That's science.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
The opinion from a pure amateur here but I think NC10 gets closest to the truth when he said "the shop doesn't care how much they waste" (although obviously there are limits!).

Have you ever noticed how many staff they have at the ADC? There are loads of them. The last two times I have popped by, I have seen one of the staff cleaning the ADA mini cube gardens in the window. I wouldn't be surprised if they get multiple cleanings per day. I'm sure most people could maintain spotless tanks if they were essentially a full-time caretaker!

The shop gets wholesale rates and I imagine their turnover / revenue is huge, squandering CO2 for example does not matter to them. They do not need to be particularly efficient, just generate sales using idealised tanks.

I am not saying that the staff / management there are not very well accomplished and excellent aquarists. And they probably do have a few secret tricks as well. Just that we are comparing a tank being kept by hobbyist who is usually on a budget holding down a full time job and looking after their family :drowning:, and a tank being kept by a caretaker who is paid to keep it spotless 10 hours a day, with almost unlimited resources at their disposal! :artist: :greedy:
 
Tank 1
It is the best plant growth I have ever seen in a tank, online or otherwise. As you can see from the last picture, Co2 is fed from a single glass diffuser on the side of the tank, and there is minimal flow being provided by the filter, from a single small outflow. Most of the water in the tank is not moving at all, basically stagnant.

This tank used to be maintained by Greg, but now by a different woman called Roxana(?). I had a chat with her about the tank maintenance.

25% of the water is changed weekly (mixture of tap and RO)
Sera Florena fertilisers are dosed daily (micro only)

She had no idea what the Co2 concentration in the tank is, or what wattage the lights provide. I can tell you that the lights above the tank are a photon H-bomb. They are the brightest lights I have ever seen on a tank. I counted approximately 2 bubbles per second through the diffuser.

The KH is kept at 4 and the pH is kept at "a good level".

Phosphates are limited to 1PPM "to prevent algae".

So here it is. Massive light. Low Co2. Low nutrients (no macro ferts). Low flow. Poor water change schedule. Incredible growth. Healthy plants. No algae
Click to expand...

Tank 2
An in-tank glass diffuser with Co2 bubbles going straight to the surface of the water and then disappearing. A single outflow at the opposite end of the tank.
Tank is right next to a window, getting loads of sunlight in addition to the strong lights on the tank itself, and no algae to be seen anywhere
Click to expand...

Tank 3
Again this tank has a glass diffuser sat relatively high in the tank, moderate-high lighting (in my opinion) and low flow from an external filter via a single outflow.
Click to expand...

From these descriptions it doesn't sound as if the shop is "squandering" CO2 or other resources on these tanks 😕
 
Well, they are probably achieving quite good CO2 dissolution by simply blasting in microbubbles through a glass diffuser, most of which are going to waste. Pretty inefficient, not ideal for a hobbyist, but easy to maintain and unobtrusive for a shop display. They presumably get wholesale price CO2 refills delivered regularly to their door. Also presumably they have plenty of spare diffusers that can be circulated for cleaning, again not necessarily ideal for a hobbyist and a big downside of using these devices.

Also, in general, they have everything they need cheap and to hand. Need to dose something in particular, even if it is obscure? Takes 2 minutes to go and grab it from the storage cupboard out the back, and only costs wholesale price to use. For a hobbyist, that might mean waiting till you can get to the LFS at the weekend (or waiting for delivery for online order) and having to buy a set quantity (i.e. more than you need) at retail prices. Shops will get big economies of scale on almost everything.

Personally, one of the difficult things I have found starting out in this hobby is the constant need to keep acquiring usually insignificant things, which cost pennies but add up and are a hassle to organise. E.g. a single suction cup with hosing clip to keep an outlet pipe in the proper position. Little bit of mesh to attach some moss to. etc etc.
 
btw does anyone know what size ADA tank the big nice one downstairs with the emersed growth is?
 
Sorry to go off subject

@luckyjim

I hear you when you say about all those hugs adding up. I mean there are simpler ways of doing things. Get yourself do pets at home most of not all there plants are of the easier to grow variety, use earth capped in gravel and have a small pump with no media for circulation on a very very low setting. Put a desk lamp by it. A beta would love it 🙂 feed live foods and pellets. Yourl have the odd break out or problem but there really cool tanks.

A guy in here called Louis aka ghostsword was excellent at changing things that where meant for one hobby or just odd bits and peices and making them useful and at a fraction of the cost. One thing I remember was when hanging baskets inside tanks where the rage and they cost a little bit from the aquarist sites, Louis used this pot he found in a pound store that had suction slips on and did the exact same job haha but for a pound!! Just keep your eyes peeled and yourl find your bargains trust me 🙂


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
To be honest, I enjoy the challenge of trying the more advanced stuff, as I'm sure do most of us. I have a simple little low tech nano which I love, but if that were my only tank it would not be very exciting or challenging.

My point was more it is a pain when you just need little bits. For me that is compounded because I live in a rented flat and so I don't even have proper tools / shed / DIYable components. If I need a screw or a washer for some minor thing I have to go out and buy it!

Not so much of a problem for people living in proper family homes. Even easier when you have a full range of specialist stuff easily to hand like in a proper planted aquarium shop!
 
Just had a skim read of this thread so if it's been said already ignore me...but plant mass is the key - not just emergent either.
IME once plant growth reaches a critical mass the tank becomes unbelievably biologically stable.
Tulgey Wood (high-energy) has been torn down now but toward the end of it's life it went months without a water change, and I didn't really pay much attention to CO2 either, and I only chucked in fertz when I remembered.
But by this stage it'd long since become almost choked with plants - flow must have been minimal - but it was one of the most healthy, algae free tanks I've ever run.

Edit:
So back to the OP...no it's not just random luck...it's plants - lots of them IME and also judging by the scape in question.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm with Troi (btw Tulgey Wood was fantastic) - if you watch the Tropica set up videos (look at the pdf list of plant types & amounts :wideyed:) or look at ADA set ups, they are very heavily planted from the start, I suspect that algae crew also go in on the Tropica tanks (Amano puts in masses of "amano" shrimps & a good # of otos).


Perhaps the shop in this discussion invests $$$$ into the display tanks, but my lfs is very budget conscious with the display tanks (as they can end up very expensive).

I still maintain that a CO2 rate of maybe "2bps" is not blasting in the CO2.
 
Troi said:
IME once plant growth reaches a critical mass the tank becomes unbelievably biologically stable.
Click to expand...

Meaning basically no ammonia/nitrite, I assume, but surely plants can still have fert/CO2/light issues, especially as demand increases but CO2 remains the same (and seemingly low in this case). So even with negligible organics and high plant mass, plant health can be poor and ferts high -> causing algae?

You certainly have more experience than me and I am yet to reach anywhere near that sort of plant mass in my tank but theoretically...?
 
alto said:
I'm with Troi (btw Tulgey Wood was fantastic) - if you watch the Tropica set up videos (look at the pdf list of plant types & amounts :wideyed:) or look at ADA set ups, they are very heavily planted from the start, I suspect that algae crew also go in on the Tropica tanks (Amano puts in masses of "amano" shrimps & a good # of otos)).
Click to expand...
- you are right. Algae-crew goes in Tropica tanks as soon as possible after set-up ( usually ramshorns, otocinclus, cherries and amanoes in various numbers).
 
Crossocheilus said:
Meaning basically no ammonia/nitrite, I assume, but surely plants can still have fert/CO2/light issues, especially as demand increases but CO2 remains the same (and seemingly low in this case). So even with negligible organics and high plant mass, plant health can be poor and ferts high -> causing algae?

You certainly have more experience than me and I am yet to reach anywhere near that sort of plant mass in my tank but theoretically...?
Click to expand...

I think that perhaps my parameters were relatively stable despite my neglect and more than adequate for high density plant mass from the very beginning.
But either way I always advocate healthy neglect...so often I think that there is a tendency to over manage our tanks in to problems.
Tho' high plant mass has the potential to soak up mistakes such as too much light and subsequent CO2, flow and distribution imbalances...for instance.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sacha said:
How exactly does low phosphate limit the Co2 demand from plants? In particular, what are the molecular processes involved in this?
Click to expand...
It's no secret that phosphorous levels affect photosynthesis. You can find this information easily online. If PO4 is lacking, and thereby limiting photosynthesis, then it only follows that other nutrients including the carbon in CO2 would be needed in lesser quantities than when photosynthesis is occurring at a higher rate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top