"Temporary Insanity", 60 gallon build

[Phil Edwards]

Captain's Log 11.10.16-

The plants arrived yesterday morning! I have to say, I'm very impressed with the hardiness of the Aqvainnova plants. The poor things spent a week and a half in a box getting to my place from Europe, with a stop over in Chicago for a few days during a convention. The only species that didn't handle it too well was H. pinnatifida, which, in my experience doesn't handle prolonged dark periods very well anyway. This is the first time I've used tissue culture (TC) plants extensively and have to say that for the most part they're easier to use than I'd expected. The plants that were grown emersed in a greenhouse were EXTREMELY easy to use; thanks in no small part to the growing vessel. All I had to do was gently pull the bunch out of the glass ring and presto, instant bunch with a root wad. Ironically, due to the extreme density of fronds, the Needle Leaf Java Fern was by far the hardest to work it, being nearly impossible to tie down without creating gaps in the foliage. Solution: let them grow for a while then tie and re-place.

For those not familiar with how Aqvainnova grows their non-tc plants, they use a little glass ring with plastic holder inserts for hydroponic culture. Compared to my experiences with traditional rock wool in pots, they're clean and very easy to use. Needless to say, I'm going to keep all of them for future use. I'm not sure if this method is patented, but I would love to see it become an industry standard.

Enough talk, on with the pics!

Unboxing-





















New to me Crypt species. I look forward to seeing how this one does in the tank.







The tank just before planting. Here's where my impatience got the better of me and created a small problem. The inundated substrate in the fore and midgrounds wasn't very cohesive and shifted easily while planting. Say bye bye to the nice even slope. 🙁
















My variation on George's One Pot Challenge: 5 rocks, 3 species, in 60 minutes. I thought I'd try a little emergent iwagumi set up with any extra plants. We'll see how it turns out. I'm not a fan of iwagumi in general, preferring the look of wood, and havent done a rock only hardscape in over 10 years. It was a nice challenge and I'm looking forward to seeing how it matures. I may have to start doing more iwagumi to increase my skill in that style for the sake of being more well rounded as an aquascaper.



Thanks for watching!

 

[EdwinK]

Quality of plants looks perfect. Cryptocoryne costata 'Green' is a commercial name of C. albida. From my point of view it's an 'easy' plant to grow.

 

[Phil Edwards]

Thanks for the info EdwinK, that's good to know. I agree, the plants are excellent and I'm really looking forward to working with them more in the future. For now I'm going to sit back, try to relax, and keep my hands out of the tank for a while. HAHAHA, good luck to that!

 

[Alexander Belchenko]

Looks great. It seems you have some room at the back, do you plan to put there more plants or just dedicated to be empty?

 

[Phil Edwards]

Looks great. It seems you have some room at the back, do you plan to put there more plants or just dedicated to be empty?

Alexander,

I had originally requested a variety of stems for the background, but shipping dimensions and other considerations limited the amount of plants they could provide. I'm just grateful that they were able to provide the most important stuff; the midground anchor species and foreground. If I need to look to hobbyists for background stems I can, but I'd prefer to wait to get more plants grown by the same company when they become available for sale in the US.

 

[alto]

It's official now, Aqvainnova will be supplying all the plants, except for the Java Moss which is coming from Rachel O'Leary. Aqvainnova recently made a deal with Seachem to distribute their plants under the Aquavitro brand here in the US, which is really exciting news for we Yanks.

I missed this earlier - plants look great

I guess that makes this my first sponsored aquascape.

and well deserved given how quickly you threw that Iwagumi together - rock placement impresses!

alto, could you explain what you're saying about spectral change with intensity change a bit more please?

Sorry I was looking for the article but cant seem to find it ... seems I've deleted the email as well 😳
I'm certain to run across the article again while looking for something completely different 😉
(that was how I found the driver details the first time around as well )

 

[Phil Edwards]

Captain's Log 12.4.16- Got stems and fish!

After a few week's waiting, I was finally able to order stems and fish for the tank. It was about time too, with about 2 square feet of empty immature substrate things were starting to get a little brown around the petioles. It was more difficult than I thought to balance the needs of the fully planted fore and midgrounds with not wanting to overdo it and have a huge mess with the unplanted background. Now that that's been solved and a minor shitload of Otocinclus have taken residence, things are looking like they should again.

I'd also been having some issues with CO2 microbubbles aggregating in reactor's input side, and the resulting poor dissolution, causing variability in concentration when it was needed most. The fix was easy, add a bit of bio media to the bottom of the chambers and reverse the flow. Now the microbubbles stay micro inside the reactor and there's minimal loss through the outlet. This makes for happier plants and a happier Phil.

Current species list:
(From Aqvainnova)
Glossostigma elatinoides
Lilaeopsis brasiliensis
Cryptocoryne wendtii 'Bronze/Tropica'
Cryptocoryne costata/albida
Cryptocoryne x. willisi
Microsorum pteropus 'Narrow Leaf'
Anubias barteri v. nana 'Petite'
Bucephelandra motleyana
Rotala rotundifolia
Alternanthera reineckii 'Mini'
Staurogyne repens

(From Florida Aquatic Nurseries)
Hygrophila pinnatifida
Hygrophila corymbosa 'Kompact'
Pogostemon erectus
Bacopa monneri
Rotala macrandra
Didplis diandra
Cyperus helferi

2x Nymphaea sp. that are being rehabilitated for a coworker


FISH!
Trigonostigma espei Espei Rasbora x 25
Barbus filamentosus African/Angolan Banded barb x 11 I'd ordered Desmopuntius pentazona, but someone screwed up and sent these instead. They're a pretty fish and may turn out even better than the 5 banded barbs in time. We'll see.
Otocinclus affinis x 23

1m and 2f feeder guppy juveniles that got included in one of the bags and thankfully found their way out of the main tank and into the overflow. They're now living happily in the sump until I can figure out what to do with them.


Picture time







In other happy news, my brother's giving me his old camera for Christmas so photo quality should dramatically improve in the near future.


Thanks for watching,
Phil

 

[alto]

Otocinclus affinis x 23

that's an impressive # of otos - hope yours are better trained, mine always end up feasting on any Nymphaea sp I might have 😡

Barbus filamentosus African/Angolan Banded barb x 11 I'd ordered Desmopuntius pentazona,

twice as much fish 😀 just watch they don't sample a bit too much of the plant life 😉

Thanks for the update

 

[Phil Edwards]

I've noticed a bit of what look to be nibble marks, but they seem to be limited to the parts of the plants that are transitioning to submersed growth. They're probably rasping at any algae on those parts and end up cleaning them off the plant in the process. We'll wait and see what they do with/to the new and healthy growth.

 

[rebel]

Looking very schimck! Looking forward to the growth phase.

 

[Phil Edwards]

Thanks Rebel. I just did the first trim today. Some of the stems in the back had already reached the surface so it was time for a hack and fill-in-the-blanks. There'll probably be one more major hack down after this to get rid of emergent growth then it's all grooming.

 

[Phil Edwards]

Captain's Log 12.22.16- Mixed reviews

I've been having trouble with CO2 and algae since the last update. Thankfully, the shrimp arrived yesterday and a bunch of them quickly found their way into the overflow...of course. Time to make a new strainer! Also, there was some issue with CO2 and the reactor. I got a needlewheel impeller for the CO2 pump and it chops the stuff up nicely, but somewhere between there and the first reactor chamber the little bubbles conglomerate back into bigger ones. I've tried a couple different adjustments in hopes of fixing that, but no dice. It's back to dissolving big bubbles old-school style. I keep telling myself that in the end, as long as the gas is dissolving that's all that really matters. I got a top for the overflow, made the trickle drain higher to reduce turbulence in the overflow, and got the drip tray sealed up nicely. I'd previously only had a sturdy plastic bag covering the opening on the drip try box. This time I taped it up completely. Those changes seem to have worked well in the short term. We'll have to wait and see how they do over the long term. As far as plants go, the only species that aren't doing well are Cyperus helferi and Pogostemon erectus. I'd expected that though, they've been notoriously hard for me to get adjusted to submersed form. I'm not going to remove any of them in hopes that some little bit somewhere will start growing. If not, then it'll be time to find something else to fill those spots.

On the up side, most of the plants are growing. I did the first trim and replant and gave the moss a major thinning a week or so ago and things are perking up nicely. I also got a quartet of Scarlet Badis and hope that at least one of them is female. They're tiny, tiny, tiny right now and are lost in the foliage. I look forward to seeing them when they're larger.

Pictures will be forthcoming after Christmas.

Cheers,
Phil

 

[AndyVox]

Absolutely love the scape and the setup is great! Good work.

Out of curiosity, is that a hang on overflow? If so which one is it and how are you getting on with it? I really wanted to go sumped on my new build but didn't want the hassle of drilling and then having a weir box, a hang on could be ideal for me but I've always worried about the reliability of them, not keen to come home to a flooded dining room, but it'd be great to have auto top up and all the equipment hidden away inside the sump.

Thanks
Andy

 

[Phil Edwards]

Hey there Andy,

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, it's a hang on the back overflow. I've used them with great success from the very first high tech tank I did through today and I couldn't be happier with the one I've got now. The worst thing about it is getting the mesh just right to keep the shrimp from getting sucked in...so far with only modest success. The model I'm using is a CPR CS 102 with a full siphon mod. Sumps require a little extra forethought and tweaking for CO2 efficiency, but with careful planning with the plumbing they're an excellent filtration option. Current overflow design is leaps and bounds better than it was back in the day and I have almost zero fear of flooding. One just has to be careful to get a box rated for the pump's flow to keep from losing prime (too low flow) or oveflowing (more flow than the box can handle), make sure the return has an anti siphon hole, and don't fill the sump more than it can hold when the pump's off. You do that and you're off to the races.

 

[AndyVox]

Hey there Andy,

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, it's a hang on the back overflow. I've used them with great success from the very first high tech tank I did through today and I couldn't be happier with the one I've got now. The worst thing about it is getting the mesh just right to keep the shrimp from getting sucked in...so far with only modest success. The model I'm using is a CPR CS 102 with a full siphon mod. Sumps require a little extra forethought and tweaking for CO2 efficiency, but with careful planning with the plumbing they're an excellent filtration option. Current overflow design is leaps and bounds better than it was back in the day and I have almost zero fear of flooding. One just has to be careful to get a box rated for the pump's flow to keep from losing prime (too low flow) or oveflowing (more flow than the box can handle), make sure the return has an anti siphon hole, and don't fill the sump more than it can hold when the pump's off. You do that and you're off to the races.

I'm definitely going to have a look into it then, I've got a couple of Ehein compact 5000 lying around from my marine days. Hopefully turned down the lowest setting at 2500lph and through a co2 reactor it would be low enough to work and give me some adjustability.
Great info!
Such an incredible setup!

 

[Costa]

Very nice set up. I'm curious as to how many otos you lost during the first days after they were introduced in the tank. I had like 40% 🙁

 

[Phil Edwards]

Thank you Costa. I normally estimate 50% death with Otos. At last count I was down to about 75%. I'll have to do another count next time I do a big trim.

 

[Phil Edwards]

1.25.17 Update

Still battling the infectious, awful, horrible, extremely irritating stringy diatoms. It got so bad that I tore the whole tank down, took all the moss off the wood; cleaned it and tossed the dying parts, scrubbed the wood with a sponge, kept the worst of the affected plants in the dark for three days, and redid the whole damn thing. That only worked for a few days before the crap came back.

On the up side, I got a 20" canister for the CO2 instead of the three smaller ones. I was losing too much gas to bypass with the smaller cans even though there were three. Now I'm dialing in how much I have to crank the pump down relative to the CO2 input to keep the microbubbles in the canister from flowing straight into the outlet pipe. Previously, the stem plants were struggling badly and starting to die. Since then I've raised the lights as high as they can go and increased the max intensity to 100% at photoperiod peak to get as much spread and light to all sections of the tank as I can. I also raised the outlet and that's increased circulation. Those things seem to have improved growth a bit, but time will tell. Finally, all the plants were showing signs of Ca and Mg deficiency even though I had been dosing enough to bring concentrations past 20 and 5ppm, respectively. My guess is the substrate's inherent softening (read: divalent cation adsorption power) capability was stripping the water. My water's already VERY soft so I've since doubled dosages and increased frequency. I sent an email to Seachem the other day to see if they have any data on this that might prove useful in the long run. If not, the only option seems to be dose heavily until it reaches saturation.

Long story short- most plants seem to be improving even though the algae is winning the war to take over the tank.

Now for the pics:

 

[EdwinK]

Doesn't look that bad from the pictures.

 

[Tim Harrison]

Despite the diatoms it looks awesome Phil. I had the same problem with my latest
It burnt itself out eventually and disappeared...with some help from my Amanos😉