A little bit of maintenance tonight again, finishing off cleaning the second set of glassware. I use a ‘jbl cleany’ pipe cleaner to get into the tubes and finish off with a ‘dennerle cleanator’ in the lily and outer glass which is also excellent for the salt lines.
Quick sand vacuum to remove detrius and a rub over with the soft pad algae scrubber to the glass panes to remove a small amount of biofilm and the jobs a good un’ ready for an early morning water change.
I’m finding a little and often approach is working best, with the general cleaning that you need to be able to see being carried out when lights are on and the large water change done early before the photoperiod.
I really don’t look forward to glassware and pipework cleaning but once it’s done its a great feeling as the tank looks so much nicer.....
Moved the drop checker again tonight to the very bottom front corner (least obvious co2 area) of the tank to monitor co2. Ive always thought that even a dc is just a guide much like a bubble counter as they can be influenced by injection type, location etc etc. Misting from an atomiser could throw the result as microbubbles diffuse directly into the dc rather than dissolved co2 from a reactor having to diffuse back out of the water giving a ‘truer’ reading of co2 levels? However that said, it is a good tool to give an idea, I guess the misting offers co2 in a different way to the plants than that of a reactor so at least you can use it to see where the co2 is getting to. Perhaps an ideal scenario would be to use both a reactor and atomiser to maximise co2 availability.
Cheerio,
Quick sand vacuum to remove detrius and a rub over with the soft pad algae scrubber to the glass panes to remove a small amount of biofilm and the jobs a good un’ ready for an early morning water change.
I’m finding a little and often approach is working best, with the general cleaning that you need to be able to see being carried out when lights are on and the large water change done early before the photoperiod.
I really don’t look forward to glassware and pipework cleaning but once it’s done its a great feeling as the tank looks so much nicer.....
Moved the drop checker again tonight to the very bottom front corner (least obvious co2 area) of the tank to monitor co2. Ive always thought that even a dc is just a guide much like a bubble counter as they can be influenced by injection type, location etc etc. Misting from an atomiser could throw the result as microbubbles diffuse directly into the dc rather than dissolved co2 from a reactor having to diffuse back out of the water giving a ‘truer’ reading of co2 levels? However that said, it is a good tool to give an idea, I guess the misting offers co2 in a different way to the plants than that of a reactor so at least you can use it to see where the co2 is getting to. Perhaps an ideal scenario would be to use both a reactor and atomiser to maximise co2 availability.
Cheerio,
.......
Nice maintenance tips btw... 
I’d already ran the cleany pipe through the lily pipe in the image above. I don’t use any bleach generally, the only benefit is the little closed end which the brush doesn’t reach. When that gets particularly bad I will soak in a bleach solution overnight and use a donor outlet to keep the filter running.
.
lemon tea I think 
