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Reborn

Truly amazing scape Viktor, still looks excellent, how long you going to keep this running? Also out of interesting how deep is the substrate at the back of the tank? Cheers keep up the good work :) :clap: :thumbup:
 
LondonDragon said:
Truly amazing scape Viktor, still looks excellent, how long you going to keep this running? Also out of interesting how deep is the substrate at the back of the tank? Cheers keep up the good work :) :clap: :thumbup:
Click to expand...

Thanks Paulo :)
I wanted to redo the tank around december but did not had aqua soil at that time :) poor me :)
I thought will do a new tank for the IAPLC 2013 but now it is late. Will use the existing ones.

Probably will change this tank in a month or so.

The back substrate is 30cm deep :)

These are older photos but you can get the idea how it looks from the back.... massive ;)

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Found this shot. This is how it looked when i set it up.

The front sandy area is filled with aquasoil a bit as the amano shrimps worked all day to hack my work. But seeing the tank 8 months afer, i still have a big slope which is good. Thanks to the stones which help me in that. :)

7441865966_ff9325deec_z.jpg
 
Great looking tank and journal. Its nice to see your 'home' tank as well as ypur usual gallery tanks. I can appreciate how having to maintain tanks at work you want a less demanding tank at home, yet you still pull off a stunning tank. That was quite a steep gradient at the back and h
Great to see that it survived the life of the scape. Did you use any substrate support / plastic strips or was it just supported by the rocks and root biomass?
 
Most of the better scapers seem to eyeball cO2, they start with some relative measure of dosing for CO2, then they tweak and adjust slowly from there.

I do the same thing with the pH/Kh chart.
Also, as you depress the pH with CO2 gas, the concentration will increase a lot more(eg, it's non linear) for each 0.2 units of pH.

Say you have a KH of 3 degrees.

At a pH of 7.0 you would have 9 ppm
At a pH of 6.8 you would have 14.3 ppm
At a pH of 6.6 you would have 22.6 ppm
At a pH of 6.4 you would have 35.8 ppm
At a pH of 6.2 you would have 56.8 ppm
At a pH of 6.0 you would have 90 ppm

Differences between each 0.2 pH units:
5.3 ppm
8.3 ppm
13.2 ppm
21 ppm
33.2

So your pH measurement and observations need to be very good when you use more CO2. If you over do things at the higher ppm's, it only takes a little bit of change to dramatically increase the CO2.

This is one reason why many people fail when adding more CO2 and gas their fish instead. If each 0.2 pH units were only 5 ppm difference, then it would be pretty easy to adjust CO2. This is also a good reason to buy a nice CO2 regulator, needle valve etc.
Since many use the drop checkers and there's little differences between the colors and those color changes are at best, 0.2 pH, what does this say at the higher ppm's of CO2? Not much.
I think they are terrible and have caused more issues than they have solved for hobbyists.

Or if they use colormetric pH measure? Similar.
A good 0.01 accuracy pH meter is likely the best relative measure for CO2 using pH.

I knock my pH down about 1.4 pH units. This is about 47 ppm.
If it went to 1.6, then I'm at 75 ppm's, if I back off just a hair, 0.1 pH units, then I'm about 1.5 pH units, I'm at 59 ppm. 1.3 pH units, 38ppm, 1.2 pH units, about 30 ppm.
And so on..........

Tweaking CO2 is not some simple thing. It's not something to just wing it and assume the drop check has to be correct.
A good pH meter can help make small tweaks and adjustments.
 
Tom, thanks for your thoughts on it. I agree with you of course. Since we're running so many tanks it is not too hard to set an ok level for CO2. I am not saying it is bulletproof, but until fishes and shrimps doing well and plants grows well i am fine. :)

By the way do you have any recommendation on a good pH meter? The ones i tried in the past i hated. They were inaccurate and damn slow. This is probably because they were in the 50-80 bucks range. Any useful one for a hobbist?
 
viktorlantos said:
Tom, thanks for your thoughts on it. I agree with you of course. Since we're running so many tanks it is not too hard to set an ok level for CO2. I am not saying it is bulletproof, but until fishes and shrimps doing well and plants grows well i am fine. :)

By the way do you have any recommendation on a good pH meter? The ones i tried in the past i hated. They were inaccurate and damn slow. This is probably because they were in the 50-80 bucks range. Any useful one for a hobbist?
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Check this out. I use their combine PH, TDS, Cond, Salt and Temp meter. It is really good.
Oakton meters for pH, conductivity, TDS, ORP, DO, temperature, and humidity measurement
 
viktorlantos said:
Tom, thanks for your thoughts on it. I agree with you of course. Since we're running so many tanks it is not too hard to set an ok level for CO2. I am not saying it is bulletproof, but until fishes and shrimps doing well and plants grows well i am fine. :)

By the way do you have any recommendation on a good pH meter? The ones i tried in the past i hated. They were inaccurate and damn slow. This is probably because they were in the 50-80 bucks range. Any useful one for a hobbist?
Click to expand...

I have used the Pinpoint American Marine brand, I've spoken with them many years ago, must have been usign the same product for a good 15 years.
I change the probe once calibration drifts too much. I also make sure there's no stray current in the water(electric ballast, pumps, heaters etc), I turn everything off and then wait and see what the pH does. then I turn things on, one by one to check if it does anything to the pH(always depresses pH, never raises IME).

100$ or so. I have a nice Hack HQ40 and the LDO, pH, Conductivity, Redox and I make custom pt tip redox probes for sediment field use, but.......not exactly hobby grade stuff or cost.
I think the Pinpoint is pretty good and easy to use, calibrate. The Oakton is a good meter also, I use the higher range for Conductivity and TDS for research.

My pH drops about 1.40 till about 5-6 hours, in, then drops a bit more to 1.60 for the last 2-3 hours.
This suggest the plants have had a lot of their fill of CO2 already and most plants will hog CO2 when the lights 1st come on, so lots of CO2 right away is the best approach, then you likely can taper off late in the day. I shut my CO2 off the last 15-30 minute of the light cycle.
Since my light is on a controller dimmer, the start up is well matched with the CO2 and the light intensity. So by the time I'm at 100% full light, my CO2 has been at 40 ppm or so or higher for a good 1 hour.

I also use the animals and plants, and algae as metrics to adjust or make changes to the CO2. You can tell pretty well, and I think many do not bother with ANY testing really once they are good at this.
But this is hard thing to teach new people.

If the CO2 adjustments do NOT work, I do some water changes,. trims, clean the filters. If those do not work, I then adjust light.
Still, the pH meter will help a great deal with smaller quantifiable CO2 adjustments and can be moved to tank to tank easily.
At least you have some relative reference and if you can measure the KH well, then you are in okay shape.

All KH errors will error on the side of having LESS CO2 than you think you might have if you use the pH/KH /CO2 table.
It will never have MORE CO2 than you think is actually there, so this error favors the livestock, but also favors people having LESS CO2 than they believe.
So people get algae all the time because they think they have good CO2.

Whereas yourself could look and quickly tell there's something wrong with the CO2. Just by seeing algae, the plants, and the general condition, you can sum up what is wrong pretty fast and then resolve the issue.
Going back post hoc is nice. Because you have a nice tank as a reference. I think that is the only way to test anything in planted tanks frankly.

That's a mean looking slope in that tank prior to planting Viktor!
 
viktorlantos said:
Thanks G.
I used a similar one like this:
Oakton product details
But i found it innaccurate on pH and slow. TDS and EC is good from this type.
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I use the same one for two years now. It is slow on PH test, but it is also damn accurate. The trouble with this kind of testers is that you have to leave them in water for 30 minutes or so for conditioning and then do the test. They also need to be calibrated often.
When this one I have gets old I don't think I will be buying any other PH meter at all.
I didn't notice any improvement in my aquariums after the use of expensive testers and tests. So i will use what I have now for as long as it works and it will be the last.
 
Last week i tried to make a few shots only with studio lamps. I usually use the tank light with supportive lighting so this was new to me. Removed the 4x54W Arcadia and added in the 2x500W Bowens to light it up. Was an interesting stuff to do. I am not 100% love with the result, but looks diffrent than what i did before. Only had an hour to play with it.

I do used hard plastic paper which is usually used for light tables in photography. So i layed that down to the tank from the front to the back. And the whole tank got covered this way on the top and the back. The studio lamps nicely lighted up this plastic canvas.

Here you go, the plants are not 100% top condition as here they are still growing back from the ealrier trimmings.... it takes more and more time as the setup is 9 months old here!

Loved how the grasses (Acicularis) looked in the back. Not reflected like when i do the regular way.
Also the stones gives a smoother look not that sharp with this light.

:)

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Hi all,
viktorlantos said:
By the way do you have any recommendation on a good pH meter?
Click to expand...
If you have water low in salts (below about 100microS) you really need a solid state ISFET chip pH meter to get accurate pH measurements. The problem with all electrode pH meters is that pH becomes problematic as you approach pure H2O (or 0dKH). Around pH7 measurements are always likely to vary, because pH is both a ratio and a log10 measurement, and at pH7 (10-7 O-H and H+ ions) small changes in ratio lead to large changes in pH (this is what Tom alludes to earlier in the post).

If you want to get accurate pH measurements, you really need to calibrate the meter before every use in pH4 and pH7 buffers and look after the electrodes very carefully.

cheers Darrel
 
Stunning Viktor, looks pretty good with those lights, I feel is gives it a more natural feel, not so in your face as with the previous lights, more subtle.
 
Victor,

Another great layout from you.
It's funny that i renewed my 300l aquarium this weekend with a similar slope and valley. Rocks, however, are very different... And you are a real aquascaper :)

Do you used anything below the substrate to make the slope?
 
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