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"Temporary Insanity", 60 gallon build

It's since gotten much worse Edwin. Anything that has fine structure; moss, fern roots, foreground plants, etc are getting covered by the stuff. The foreground now looks like our new President's hair.

Thanks Tim. I was just talking with someone else on a US forum about how I've had diatoms at the start of every tank with soil-based substrates like this; regardless of the brand. This just happens to be the worst case by far. I attribute that to lack of experience with the new lights, tank dimensions that I'm not used to and how that affects flow and such, and not yet finding the sweet spot with the CO2 system. Unlike past systems where I'd used the same lights, tank, filters, etc for years, this is a whole new ecosystem to learn. There are a lot of variables I need to get a handle on before I can say I really know this system, not the least of which is how it changes as it matures.

LOL shrimp. I kill them. I kill them all. 🙁 I'm surprised the SPCA hasn't put a court order against me keeping shrimp with as many as I've massacred over the years.

The hardest part is not falling into the ego trap of thinking {I'm a "seasoned veteran" and shouldn't be having these problems!!!} and letting that keep me from being patient andusing this as an opportunity to learn. Patience, humility and an open mind are some of the most valuable things in this hobby.

<Edit>

Edwin, I just checked your journal and saw that you've got a thriving community of cherry shrimp. I'd appreciate your expertise and advice on how to keep them in a high tech planted tank.
 
Phil Edwards said:
Patience, humility and an open mind are some of the most valuable things in this hobby.
Click to expand...

If you know these things you'll definitely overcome all problems.

Phil Edwards said:
Edwin, I just checked your journal and saw that you've got a thriving community of cherry shrimp. I'd appreciate your expertise and advice on how to keep them in a high tech planted tank.
Click to expand...

Well I wish I could help but I do nothing special for them although I have "rule no.1" to all my tanks with soil based substrates - high oxygen levels due to surface movement no matter if I'm degassing CO2 or not. I find CO2 levels not that important as long as they are stable. High oxygen levels helps your fauna, flora, bacteria and archaea be in top condition and perform at maximum rate. Please pay attention at Amano's tanks, how could you reach 30 ppm of CO2 on 500 litre tank if you are using 25 mm glass diffuser? So personally I think that this digit is somewhat overestimated these days.
 
I think you're spot on about the oxygen Edwin. That's one of the reasons I recently raised the outlet. I've also been seriously considering adding an air bubbler to the sump that'll run during the dark period. Back when I was an actual aquatic plant researcher (as opposed to an aquatics industry professional) I came to believe that dissolved organic carbon is the main cause of algae and increasing O2 in a system will greatly benefit the microorganisms that consume that DOC. That being said, I've made a lot of changes recently and need to let things settle a bit before making any other changes.
 
Some note about shrimps, e.g. cherry shrimps. They seem to slightly prefer moderate hard water, then soft. If you say your water is very soft, I guess you need to re-think your re-mineralization routine, and up both GH and KH levels.
 
One stem plant is not nice, the rotala indica or something similar to it. Looks like it lack something, light? Is it me or i am right? The sixth photo from upper from this post, forgive my english. Maybe it is just adjusting and needs time.

Michel.
 
So I lied when I said I wasn't going to make any changes to the system. I made a rookie mistake and forgot a fundamental rule of fluid dynamics...pressure increases dissolution and to create pressure you need to restrict the outlet...which I wasn't doing. All my tweaking had focused on restricting flow through the system from the pump end rather than the discharge end. For the moment I'm using a true union ball valve at the end of the discharge line until I can get the parts I need to hard plumb a valve into the discharge pipe. What a gross misuse of an expensive piece of hardware, LOL! The valve is closed almost all the way; it's open just enough to pass enough water to keep the microbubbles from aggregating in the input line. After a little examination, only the finest of the fine microbubbles are making it into the in-chamber discharge intake tube. We'll see what the drop checker looks like when the lights come on tomorrow.


Michel,

You're absolutely right, it's R. rotundifolia aka "Indica" and it's not doing well at all in that picture. In fact, it was one of the indicators of something not being right with the tank as it's a species that normally grows like crazy under good conditions. It's located in the right rear corner which is the far end of circulation (the outlet's in the front right) and it hadn't been receiving much light. Raising the outlet improved circulation to that area. Raising the lights and increasing their output to 100% helped to improve spread and increase light input to that part of the tank. A week or so after taking that picture there's visible improvement. Once I remember to bring the camera home from work to get update shots I'll put them up.
 
1.31.17 Update-

Bad news: the diatoms are continuing to grow at an embarrassing rate. Nearly everything has at least some amount of infestation. The worst part is that the most affected plants are the ones that are most likely to uproot or get dislocated during cleaning/siphoning. That's making it extra difficult to effectively remove large amounts of the stuff.

Good news: A guy here in the US just sent me a big fat load of gorgeous and healthy cuttings for testing/observation. Seeing how they do in the next couple of weeks will hopefully clue me in to what's going on in there.

Current specs:
Light: 2x Radion XR15-FW at 7,500K 24 inches above the water's surface. Photoperiod is a 12 hour parabolic increase/decrease (Natural Lake setting) with max intensity at 70%, approx 50 watts per unit. There's about a 5 hour period where intensity is 50% or greater. Glosso and Lilaeopsis are doing great in a zone that receives the least amount of light according to EcoTech's PAR diagram. That's one thing that makes me wonder why the stems in the back aren't responding as well as expected.

CO2: Still chugging away at 6-8 bps coming on 1 hr before the lights do. Even though there's noticeable gas build up in the morning and significant build upas the day progresses I think I'm going to have to up CO2 even more. The drop checker never gets that nice color on the border of lime green and yellow, but it does get to light green. A number of plants have bubbles on their leaves, but I see no active pearling. A number of the stem species are growing, just not as fast or as robustly as I'm accustomed to.

If someone can lend experience to make a Cerges reactor even more efficient I would appreciate it. A Danner 200 with a needle wheel impeller is running the thing. For some reason the one on this tank isn't working as well as the ones I've had on larger tanks in the past. At the moment water and gas are going in the inlet and out the outlet with a ball valve at the discharge point to create resistance/pressure and only the smallest bubbles are making it through. I've considered adding bioballs and/or rigging up some sort of recirculation line but that would make things in the stand even messier than they already are.

Ferts: NO3 - 2 tsp (21 ppmish), PO4 - 0.5 tsp (5 ppmish), K- 1 tsp (10 ppmish), Ca2SO4 - 1 tbsp (20 ppmish), MgSO4 * 7H2O - 1 tbsp (5 ppmish) three times a week; twice after water changes and one more for good measure. CSM+B 0.25ish tsp once a week.

Added a small powerhead in the rear to improve circulation to the right rear corner that receives the least amount of flow.


Cheers,
Phil
 
That's definitely something I've considered and am open to either reducing peak intensity or decreasing photoperiod; perhaps both. Even though circumstances are rather frustrating at the moment I want to give it another week or so before making changes. It's difficult to be patient and make small changes with enough time to see the results, but I'm doing my best. 🙂 Things will eventually make a turn for the better. Tomorrow would be nice. 😉
 
Hmm.. I don't have scientific research to back this up - just my experience - but when that happens it's because of excess lighting and nutrients - especially macro nutrient "N". If you are dosing, I would stop immediately. I would also on top do a 80-90% WC to get rid of all nitrates. If your plants haven't rooted, they will not be optimally growing. Also, sorry to the people who have to keep reading this, but I HIGHLY recommend ramshorn snails to combat diatoms. They are so good at eating dead leaves, eating diatoms, GDA, algae on the walls... its just such an efficient way to keep your tank clean. Don't like them anymore? Put an algae wafer, lure them in and take them all out. I have these guys in all my tanks and I just LOVE them.
 
Thanks for the input Doubu. I've done just that, sort of. Reduced the light, have been doing 2x 70-80% WC per week and dropped my N input by half.

All of the plants that root in the substrate have rooted, it's just that the pull from sucking the diatoms is strong enough to uproot them if the siphon is moved. That stuff's worked its way throughout quite a bit of the mass of glosso and lilaeopsis. grrrrr
 
2.8.17 small update-

Well, I got the whole tank (read: substrate) cleaned the hell out and rescaped on Sunday. I think there was 1/8 inch of fine silt in the tub after a drain/refill/drain cycle. Good thing the mrs. didn't see it (I hope). The hydrologist in me loved seeing the dendritic drainage lines, but I digress. All of the rock got pulled out and most of the wood got re-aligned into more of an upright fashion, moved toward the rear a bit, and bunched a little more closely in the middle. This will hopefully solve a couple issues:

1- Create space right under the lights for stems
2- Allow for better circulation around the tank edges and within the wood structure
3- Allow(ed) the attachment of all the Needle Leaf Java Fern, A. barteri 'Nana', and B. motelyana onto branches that get good flow

While the plants were out of the tank they all got a nice peroxide bath, only stupid me forgot to spray the wood so all the infected moss got put right back into the tank. Here's to hoping the little bit that made it back in won't make the tank look like Trump's hair again.

Other notable things that happened:
1. The lights got put on their new 55% for 6 hours/day schedule.
2. I got fed up with the needlewheel blowing the microbubbles through the reactor and made a few modifications.

#1: Added a gas input line at the reactor's input. The expectation is the larger (regular size) bubbles will resist flow better and result in more efficient gas use and faster drop in pH. I've been blowing through enough gas to run a system three times the size of this one only to have it take five hours or so for the drop checker to turn lime green. On the upside, the system holds onto the CO2 pretty well once it gets dissolved. It's getting it dissolved without using a ridiculous amount of gas that's the trick. This is pretty much how I ran the last Cerges reactor I used. This time I let a few "gurus" influence my decision making that lead to running the gas through the needlewheel. I can see how this sort of arrangement would be awesome for direct input of mist into a tank; it just hasn't been optimal for efficient dissolution in my system.

#2: Added a ball valve on the outlet side plumbing to control flow in a more elegant way than having a big gray true union valve in the sump. Everything looks a lot cleaner and streamlined.


If these changes don't make a significant difference then the last resort is to slap a 5 micron sediment filter into the 10" filter unit I've got laying around and plumb that sucker in. If that doesn't work then it's time to start pulling out hair and consider selling the whole sump to finance canister filters. These options are last resort options as I'd rather not do either for various reasons.


PICS!!!
Before-
012_7.jpg
Yes, that's algae in the reactor. I had a DSM tank (for future shrimp use) set up on the floor next to the stand.
In between-
013_5.jpg

After-
014_6.jpg

Tank pics will have to wait until I can bring my good camera home from work. The junk cell phone was good enough for the plumbing.
 
I hope you get to a happy place with this tank soon, it can be so demoralising. I've had a list of hindrances to me setting up my big tank but slowly plugging away. At least it has water in it now but that's about it!

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
 
Thanks Lindy. I don't want to jinx anything, but it's seeming like the corner has been turned. If it had been two weeks ago the Trump Hair Tank would have already come back. Just need to get the CO2 up enough to get the plants to the point where I see good pearling. That's one of my big indicators of plant heath, especially with the lights I've got.

As frustrating as this experience has been, I've learned a lot about all of the new hardware I'm using and hope to continue learning the ins and outs of the ecosystem as a whole. I'm sure there will be other Times of Trouble ,and I hope Mother Mary will come to me speaking words of wisdom, in the future. I hope that when those times come I'll have a good enough feel for things that fixing them will be less troublesome.

I hope you can get your tank up soon! I look forward to seeing its progress.

Cheers,
Phil
 
Looks to be coming along real nice to me Phil.Once its grown in it will be stunning.
As a matter of intrest how much flow do you get through the overflow box?Thinking about converting my current tank to a sump system.
 
Thanks Dave,

The pump has a nominal discharge of 3200 lph, so accounting for head pressure I estimate it's pushing 2700 lph or so. The overflow's been handling it all like a champ. Sometimes I wish I'd gone with the next larger model simply to reduce turbulence in the weir, but so far it's been great.

I've used sumps in almost all of my 90 gallon or larger systems and love them. It can take a bit of time to get everything set just right, as this current systems attests to. Once you get it done though they're awesome.
 
I've just changed over to a sump on my big tank. It's been running since yesterday and totally silent. Just slight hum from the pump but the eheim xlt thermofilter was noisier.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
 
Happy news, 2.12.17-

Ran a pH test this morning and got a 1 point drop, 7 to 6, in an hour. It was with an API test kit so the actual values are a bit suspect. A local friend is going to lend me his Hanna pH pen at some point so we'll see what the actual numbers are. Even so, it's a good start.

Current stats for future comparisons
1. Light - 50% for 6 hrs/day
2. pH - 1 point drop after an hour
3. 50% WC 1x/wk
4. Ferts - 1 tsp KNO3 3x/wk, 1 tsp KH2PO4 3x/wk, 1 tsp K2SO4 2-3x/wk, 3 tsp CaSO4 (Plaster of Paris) at water changes and 1 tsp mid-week, 3 tsp MgSO4 (Epsom Salts) 1x/wk, 1/32 tsp CSM+B 1-2x/wk
5. Excel - 60mL after water changes and 15mL daily (a little less than 2 times recommended dose). Will be tapering this off slowly as presence of algae dictates.

I'll be sticking with this regimen for the foreseeable future. Now the fun of taking regular pictures for time-lapse comparisons comes. 🙂

The next goal - Once the tank has matured and is stable for a while it'll be time to start adding shrimp. I've only ever had one planted display where I didn't outright massacre the poor buggers. Being able to keep shrimp alive for the long term is my next personal challenge in aquarium keeping.

Lindy,
Do you have a build thread? I'd love to see it.

Cheers,
Phil
 
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