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aclofty887

Seedling
Joined
2 Jul 2014
Messages
23
Hi

I thought I would create this journal about my new aquarium. I have kept many planted tanks over the years and when I was working in an aquatic shop in the early 2000's we had the Amano books and I would look at every photo with awe and admiriation and I said one day I would give it a go. Well after spending the last 10 years on marines I figured I needed a new challenge and a new way to drain my wallet lol. I went for an Iwagumi as I love the tranquil calming affect it has, I'm not too fussed about the specifics though I have tried to follow the basic principals along with my old knowledge of creating focal areas.

I decided to go for CO2 as I haven't used it in the past. I deliberately have done things on the "cheap" to see what can be accomplished, I trialed a 36W PAR38 LED on a Marine reef nano that cost £75 and it rivalled if not beat most of the TMC tiles in output so I know it could be done.

I will list what I have used first and then the initial pics.

Aquanano 40L without it's light unit
MarinereefLED E27 Goosneck fitting
15 Watt 90 degree lens COB LED PAR38 bulb - with a 20 Watt on its way for comparison.
ADA Aquasoil Amazonia
Seiryu Stone
CO2art Dual Stage Regulator with solenoid.
Metal bubble counter screwed into needle valve outlet
CO2art advanced Sodastream adaptor
Sodastream bottle
cheap Chinese glass diffusor
CO2art nano drop checker
black acrylic
CO2art glass lily tube.

The first photo shows the setup

FrontView_zps5f6882af.jpg


The tank's main view is the front though it will often be seen at the right hand side so I needed to build it with that in mind.

I have used the following plants;
Eleocharis sp Mini
Alternanthera reineckii 'mini'

I wanted to use the alternanthera to break the green matt up and to add a splash of colour and intrest whilst also using a stem plant to help keep nutrient spikes down.

The following photo is what the tank looks like after 2 weeks of a gradual DSM.

DSC_0070_zpsd9b24e89.jpg


The problem was I was intending to do a proper DSM for a month though after the first week the top layer was struggling and the Reineckii was struggling, so I added 1 litre of water to the tank every day until all the plants were covered, by this time I didn't have a single plant float. I also split 2 tubs of the Eleocharis up into individual plants which was a lovely task.

The tank has now been full for a week and I have started CO2 injection. At approx 2bps my dropper is changing to almost yellow but still on green. I am adding Aquaessentials macro+ on a daily basis.

I would like to point out my "fixes". I had read about people struggling with the pump and from my experience having all the flow hitting a point at the front glass would have disturbed the substrate way too much. I bought a small piece of black acrylic of a certain auction site and cemented it in then simply used a very small piece of tubing to attach the lily tube to the pump, the tube keeps the pump about 6" off the floor of the tank. The diffusor sits on the bottom of the tank, it releases it's bubbles upwards and they get drawn in by the pump which then spits the out in the tank. This works brilliantly and you can clearly see where the bubbles are flowing, the only issue is now that with the lily pointing downwards it only needs the pump on its lowest setting to push the flow down to the plants, on the next power level up we get a bit of movement of substrate, full power would send a months worth of hard work into suspension! I am going to wait until the carpet has formed a bit more and then increase flow. I also removed half the sponge to increase flow.

My plans moving on is to have s mall colony of shrimp and a main schooling fish of approx 10 fish which will be micro rasbora size (probably chili rasbora) and maybe a few bottom to mid micro fish like CPD since they can hide in the Reineckii. Other than that I am just going to see how it goes.

The current light spread does cover most of the tank but due to the primary stone casting a shadow the top left is a bit shaded, I have a 20 Watt coming so I will try that and see how it goes, if I think the light is too much I can always raise it, so far I am very impressed with a sub £10 bulb, the light in photo 1 is my 36 watt marine bulb and the second is the floodlight, I know they're completely different spectrums but the coverage is about the same with the same intensity.

I apologise for my ramblings but it is exciting me to think of what the tank will look in the future and if anyone is thinking of using any of this equipment I hope it inspires them. If you have suggestions for shrimp/ fish, plants etc or if you have any questions please let me know.

The water still has a high ammonia content though it has started to manufacture Nitrite, if anyone want to use a bacteria supplement to speed up cycling Tetra Safestart is the best product I have ever come accross. My pH is 6.3 (the Aquasoil really has done a number on it) with the heater set to 25C. I have left Nitrate and Phosphate for now while it settles in though I will be using the Red Sea super accurate ones (I believe they can be used on salt water)

I hope to have a photo next week hopefully with my DSLR since my phone is pretty pants at taking photos of tanks lol.
 
Here are the photos for the fixes nickmcmechan, sorry they're pretty rubbish but there isn't a lot of space to take photos.

DSC_00711_zpse2c99d09.jpg

This is the diffusor setup, you can just make out it sits on the bottom so the bubbles go underneath the pump. Very few bubbles reach the surface in this section.

DSC_00721_zpsf99cd31e.jpg


As you can see with the second photo I have used a very small piece of tubing to attach the pump to the lily tube and luckily the lily tube has a decent sized suction cup so I can move the fitting up and down to adjust the height in the water. I know a Nano lily tube would have been best but I thought I would take my chances with a £18 lily tube instead of a £150 one lol.

The acrylic was very straight forward, you can buy black acrylic squares or circles from a retailer on ebay at different sizes. They came in a pack of 10 so I used 1 with some plumbers poly cement I had left over from a previous build to bond the 2 together. Well laets say they are now fused, the only downside is I thought I was careful not o use too much but I had some creep which remains white so not ideal but I didn't want to use superglue and I know once this stuff has set it's fine.

I guess it's lucky the shop I used to work in was one of the first to start stocking AquaOne, back then it was a buy bulk buy cheap outfit which got it's market share quickly and then started to ramp the prices up, still cheap compared to the likes of Juwel who always made me laugh with their price increases (I remember when the Trigon 190 came out a complete set went for about £350 lol). I knew my way around AquaOne stuff since they rarely reinvent the wheel with their more lower end, mass production stuff.

My next mission is to try and get a reactor going though with the cramped conditions it's going to be hard. If anyone knows of any micro reactors please let me know, I do end up with a lovely mist of bubbles going into the tank which annoys me a little bit.

Plant update: The Reinekkii seems to be struggling, on one hand the latest round of leaves are nice and reddy brown and considerably bigger than when I first purchased them but I appear to be getting melting of the lower leaves first going slightly green then disintegrating completely, stems are fine and there seems to be a quite a lot of existing leaves which are ok. I hope it's just the settling in period since I used DSM the new leaves which were created were not underwater so it might be that. I am dosing liquid fertiliser every day, I might attempt a power increase but looking at the micro bubbles floating around the tank the plants are getting new water around them. The Eleocharis appears to be doing very well with new growth appearing all over the place. The CO2 indicator runs at a steady light green almost yellow. If anyone has any suggestions I certainly welcome them
 
I'd like to point out that the £2.50 diffusor is creating a nice steady stream of bubbles though I have set the working pressure to just over 40 PSI.[DOUBLEPOST=1408473826][/DOUBLEPOST]I'm afraid it will be another smartphone photo on Friday with 1 weeks growth. I'm having to order a new charger for the DSLR.
 
OK Here is the 1 week update.

The following photos are 1 week after I started CO2 injection.

DSC_0391_zpsef52c0b1.jpg


DSC_0393_zps6a3629af.jpg


Ok, these were taken on my Nikon D5100, I have been out of the game a bit in terms of taking tank photos, I have ordered a Gorillapod so I can sit the camera on the table and then use a remote to take the photo so I get a better photo. I'm used to running in aperture mode as I find it easier in terms of lighting. An improvement on the smartphone lol.

OK now for an update on the plants, the Reinekkii in the corner have now been removed completely, they weren't getting enough light and they were melting too much which I think helped towards the oil slick. This oil slick then attracted CO2 bubbles to create a single mass of bubbles on the entire surface which I know couldn't have been doing them any good. I turned up the pump a smidge and that helped, just carried out a water change which has removed it so hopefully I won't get too much melting on the remaining Reinekkii, as you can see the top leaves have grown considerably. Hopefully the 20 watt will be here before I go on holiday. You can still see a mist of bubbles which I think I can live with now now the bubbles are diffusing properly on the surface. The Eleocharis is spreading nicely though the light might be causing it to grow a little longer than I was anticipating but we will see. Still dosing liquid fertilizer every morning and I have now made the decision to add a small bag of carbon whcih I am hoping will break up the organic load before it forms an oil slick. No obvious swing on the CO2 reg still showing a full bottle, only issue has been working pressure, when I kicked it off last week the working pressure dropped and continue to drop so I had to play with the blue know on the reg to set it back and once I got the BPS right it stays at 50 PSI now.

Now thinking since I will have a bit of space persuading the wife to let me have an 8 litre. Hopefully I will T off the reg, use the 15W and maybe grow some HC but we will see.

I'm going to jinx it now by saying only a small amount of green algae on the right hand rock so far. I will leave it a few hours and post current water parameters.

Stay tuned, lol
 
Water parameter update.

Ammonia 4
pH 6.4 towards the end of CO2 injection for the day, will test tomorrow morning before CO2 comes on.
Nitrite 0.25
Phosphate 0.36
Nitrate 0.5

Again I would like to point out I am using Red Sea Pro but from what I've read should work.

Tune in for next weeks update.
 
Latest update. Photos for 2 weeks after CO2 coming tomorrow. I have had to make some decisions. The surface film is getting pretty bad, when I touch it it's like black almost the same colour as the substrate so I don't know if the co2 is reacting to any aquasoil in suspension and sending to the surface or not but I have made a decision to change lily pipes. Whilst the current lily is ideal for sending all flow to the substrate, which is brill for the Eleocharis it means you can't increase flow, I tried increasing flow to almost half power on this pump and you could see the substrate start moving. I have purchased the horizontal 12mm lily from CO2Art hoping I can send a bit more towards the surface and get more flow through the filter to pull matter in, this should in term improve nutrient flow to the plants along with hopefully better co2 dispersion. The indicator stays a constant yellowish green. Still don't know about the Reinekkii, I have now removed all of it from the right hand corner, there seems to be less melting in the central section but the plants original root system seems to have melted as when I trimmed the leaves off this morning the only thing keeping it in place were the roots coming off the stems into the substrate. The plants in general seem to be growing OK with new growth of E. Mini spotted on almost daily basis. No sign of algae but I have noticed a brownish dust collecting on the main right hand rock so I really think that flow is my nemesis here at the moment. Stay tuned hopefully I'll get it figured out.
 
Firstly, I have had enough of the Reinekkii and I have removed it, it was looking Ok but I decided it was looking too messy. Secondly I have just been away overnight and when I got back my Sodastream bottle was empty! The issue with this is that I keep a regular eye on it and it wasn't remotely near empty, this prompted me to check the drop checker and that was green so I hadn't had half a bottle of co2 end up in the tank. Both gauges were at 0. Does anyone know how a half full co2 bottle can just lose the co2 overnight!?

This is why I went for the Sodastream, I just took my old bottle to the high street today and I now have a replacement bottle without having to worry about finding the time to get an extinguisher refilled. New bottle on tonight so the tank is without CO2 for a maximum of a day. I will keep an eye on the new bottle and hopefully it won't happen again.
 
Co2 is in liquid in the cylinder, the pressure on the gauge will not start to go down until all the liquid is gone, by the time the gauge shows half full the cylinder is nearly empty. Soda stream is quite a small cylinder and i would change it when the pressure starts to drop
You can check the contents by weighing the cylinder
 
Thanks Big Clown, that does make sense, I did have some fun getting it to work first time and set the safety valve off a few times which would have drained it a fair amount. New bottle went in, in under 5 minutes, a lot faster than the first time lol. My new bulb has arrived so I now have a 20Watt bulb and it packs a punch, before the E.mini on the left hand side by the main rock had a shadow cast on it now it's getting a fair amount more light. I have update my daily dosage and still no sign of algae, hopefully the new lily tube will be here so I can turn the flow up.
 
Latest update. New lily pipe arrived and does the job nicely, sits just under the water creating a small ripple but generating a flow throughout the tank. Pump turned up to maximum, we will wait and see. Next step is to work out how to improve the CO2
 
Here's the latest set of photos, got my Gorillapod and it has made a bit of a difference.

DSC_0543_zpsbee8e1b9.jpg

DSC_0544_zps08cc7512.jpg

DSC_0546_zps136e345d.jpg


Sorry for the blur on the last photo.

As you can see, it looks a little different without the Reinekkii, I think for the better. I moved the drop checker down as it was reading yellow at the top but it is now green at the bottom so working on that. Hopefully as it settles it will get a bit shorter over time. As you might notice that bulb is a monster! £13 lol and £35 for the clamp from marinereef led. If needs be I can buy another but 35-40 watts for E.mini is a bit over the top.
 
hmm, just lost another sodastream bottle, something more sinister has to be going on here, was away when it dumped.
 
When you said you set the safety valve off. Which safety valve? You shouldnt be setting any safety valves off with that setup.
I would say you have a leak, a big one
It shouldnt be empty that quickly on a 60l tank my mate dan got 2-3 months out of a disposable welding co2 with an uncountable bubble rate and 120l tank
 
Thanks Big Clown, it was the way I was using the advanced sodastream adapter, I was trying to screw it onto the bottle with the adapter open so as I applied a bit of pressure the bottle started to vent which scared the crap out of me lol, once I went through it with CO2ART no further issues until now. Whilst I did check in the setup phase for leaks I haven't checked recently so before the new bottle goes on I am going to re attach everything and do some thorough testing to make sure. It could even be the sealing ring which attaches onto the bottle in the adapter, if it is then it's pretty bad to have gone already after one change.

The tank has now come down with long green string algae, I'm assuming it has come into being with the CO2 being off, the plants look fine and there has been a surge in growth, might be the tank has finally cycled.
 
If it is the sealing rings that are leaking then they can be replaced cheaply enough. The seals can be easily be damaged when attaching the reg/sodastream but a quick visual inspection, for damage of the sealing faces before attaching should prevent this from happening. Did you use spanners when connecting the adaptor to the reg?
 
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