"Temporary Insanity", 60 gallon build

[Phil Edwards]

2.26.17 Pre-WC Photo Dump-

Switched up some things with the camera and shut the filter off. Still at the "really fancy point and shoot" stage, but learning and progress are being made.









This Crypt is quickly becoming my favorite plant in the tank. Can't wait until it hits critical mass and explodes.




New plant that I grew from some Asian seeds. Not sure what it is yet, but it's been doing well in the tank at work so I decided to bring some home.


S. repens that got tossed in there a week ago.


Sad panda 🙁






Little lily lost in leaves








Another promising species started from seed. Have no idea what this one is either.


Poor Rotala.


Best shot I could get of the P. erectus, it's in a really tough location for photographing.


More Ludwigia!


Overhead shot to see how fast that S. repens grows. It's a race between that and the L. brasiliensis to see which one takes over the foreground first. At this rate I'm tempted to bet on the Staurogyne.


Second competitor for King of the Foreground



Thanks for watching,
Phil

 

[Phil Edwards]

3.11.17 Update-

The lenses are coming, the lenses are coming...well, actually they're already here. It looks like I'll be doing an inadvertent comparison run between the standard 80 and 120 degree lenses. The last screw on the 2nd light was stripped just enough to prevent changing the lens. Talk about getting upset. EcoTech's customer service has been great so far, but now it's time to really put them to the test.

Things I've noticed: 1- the wide angle does a lot better job of blending the different light to make a whiter looking light. 2- looking at it is bright AF, moreso than the 80 degree.

I also got a nice little care package from a US hobbyist of some beautiful cuttings. I still can't remember what they all are, but they're nice. Most of his plants ended up in the front to get as much light and circulation as possible with the exception of Proserpinaca palustris/pectinatus which went in back to fill in empty space.

Oh yeah, and the tank got a full rescape. Since I'm going to be gone for 10 days I had to do a major trim so I figured I may as well move the wood around to get better circulation. That ended up freeing a lot of room, especially in the front and left. Even so, I think I'm going to have to take some of the wood out eventually, it's just taking up too much real estate. Now that I can't do the scape I'd originally planned it's time to start thinking about the next step.

I'm not sure the pictures are good enough, but you may notice a lack of Crypts in the midground. I'd been having issues with shadows from the wood taking up a lot of light-space in the last arrangement so this time I shoved most of the Crypts in the shadowed areas to make room for the more light-loving species.

Oh yeah #2, I was so pissed off with that damned screw that I ended up finally cleaning all the aquarium crap out of the living room. That made the wife very happy. Plus, it gives me more room to take pictures.


Random shots of the wood while out of the tank












80 degree lens at ~22 inches from surface and 120 degree lens ~ 16 inches from surface. Both fixtures are at 50% intensity and PPFD/PAR is almost exactly the same at the surface and along the substrate.





No species were removed, in fact some got more due to topping and replanting. It's amazing how re-arranging the wood opened up space.






80 degree lens


120 degree lens


That's all folks!

 

[Phil Edwards]

3.16.17 photo dump-

I'm heading out for a work trip until the 26th and am leaving all the tanks in the care of my wife. I figured it would be a wise thing to get some before-trip and after-trip pictures. I trust her ability to follow directions and am not worried about some disaster from lack of care, but I do want to record what happens when I'm gone for that length of time.

Just after putting cuttings from a US hobby friend in. They're hard to see, but I think I got some closeups in the massive photo taking binge.


Why yes, here they are!














Mystery plant #1- I hesitate to call it by any genus or species name until I've had it identified. Thankfully I've got seeds to go with the plant tissue.












Nelsonia still just holding on




More of Greggz's Ludwigia


Top-down of whateverthehelltheseare






Still my favorite plant in the tank, but the P. erectus is quickly catching up




Hmmm, what could be wrong with the Buces, I wonder? Too close to the lights? Roots still not recovered from the H2O2? Screwed up nutrient supplementation? All of the above?




The Anubias don't seem to mind. In fact, I think I saw one flipping the Buces the root.




That big piece of wood I mentioned a few posts back. Finally got it smuggled out of the warehouse. There's a lot of potential, but I need more rocks and stuff to be able to play with more angles. When I put it up to the tank it fit the space nicely. I'm thinking it would look really nice covered in H. pinn.









KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!.....get out of the photo frame!




That's all for now (but look for equally large updates to my other journals). I'll have my laptop with me on the trip, so I'll be watching you guys. No trashing the place while I'm gone.

Cheers,
Phil

 

[Grendel]

+1 for the update and pics, but +1000 for the straight shot of nostalgia some of those RPGs gave me. It's like I'm looking at the bookshelf of the 15-year-old me...

 

[Lindy]

This looks fantastic Phil. I don't have a build thread for the sump as I figure it has all been done before. I have a jebao dc 7000 pump running the sump and very happy with it so far. Takes a bit of extra time when doing wc to get levels balanced again and have bought a wee tmc auto top up for the pump part of the sump.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

[Phil Edwards]

This looks fantastic Phil. I don't have a build thread for the sump as I figure it has all been done before. I have a jebao dc 7000 pump running the sump and very happy with it so far. Takes a bit of extra time when doing wc to get levels balanced again and have bought a wee tmc auto top up for the pump part of the sump.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

Even if it's "been done before" I'd love to see some pictures of your system. There's always something to learn from other people. I'm curious, why do you have trouble getting levels balanced again?

+1 for the update and pics, but +1000 for the straight shot of nostalgia some of those RPGs gave me. It's like I'm looking at the bookshelf of the 15-year-old me...

LOL, I've had a lot of those since I was 15. Sadly, I had to get rid of most of my collection of primarily first printing sets of other games during a move a while ago. Before I got back into aquariums, I spent most of my free money collecting RPG books. These days I only buy source material for the older editions of the games I currently have. No more current edition purchases for me. It's Old School or No School! Finding a sourcebook I didn't know about back in the dusty corner of a hobby shop is half the fun, and most of the excitement.


3.26.17 Update-

Finally made it home after an exhausting, but exciting week at a huge pet industry trade show. Seeing old friends and all of their cool new stuff was certainly a highlight. Snagging free samples of TC plants to test and a new double output regulator was pretty nice too. 😉 The Mrs. did a bang up job of caring for the tanks so I came home to much less algae than I'd expected. There was the anticipated outbreak of "Trump Hair Algae", as my wife calls it; the diatoms I've been battling for so long, but I think I may have figured out a cause. Misaki followed my regular dosing regime to the letter so that's a constant and the lighting wasn't changed at all. HOWEVER, the substrate in the front left corner got seriously disturbed/moved which undoubtedly caused a release of nutrients into the tank. Thankfully the alga was mostly confined to the Java Fern and moss with only little bits in other places that was easily sucked out. The remedy? Pull out all the ferns to give to a friend requesting a lot of it and do a serious thinning/removal on the moss. With a little luck, this will set it back enough that normal cleaning will take care of it.

The only disappointing thing is some of Gregg's stems kicked the bucket as well as about half the S. repens. Not sure why it happened, but there's a good bit of everything still left so nothing was completely lost.

Thanks to a friend who's recently started repping for Denerle I was able to get a bunch of new stuff to test so the empty space in the substrate is getting taken up bit by bit.

List of species; some new to me and others not. Either way I look forward to working with them to see how they compare to other TC plants I've used. Pics will be forthcoming when the tank lights come on.

A. reineckii 'mini'
A. reineckii 'Lila' (testing these two to see what the differences are)
C. wendtii 'Kompact'
C. species 'Flamingo'
C. cordata (LOVE this plant and am really happy to have it again)
E. pusilla
H. callitrichoides
M. hirsuta
R. indica
P. erectus

I'm curious to see how the P. erectus and Crypts do compared to the stuff already in there. I hope that the substrate isn't too light to keep the foreground species down if the Corys decide they want to snuffle around them.

Some of the HC and E. pusilla went into Super Simple Setup 1 to grow emersed just in case.

Cheers,
Phil

 

[Lindy]

The difficulty is that the sump needs to go back to its usual running level, the tank needs to be at its optimum level and the water in the overflow needs to be at its optimum level. I'm still finding levels in the overflow go up or down as it is difficult to make tiny adjustments to flow with the gate valve despite it being "a good one" lol.. I think the faster the water is being pumped through the sump and overflow, the quicker you need to adjust your gate valve.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

[Progen]

The little plants with the long thin seeds which you'd grown from seeds look like Hygrophila Polysperma "Tiger". I have the same rubbish too and the Chinese are flooding the market like crazy through eBay, Alibaba and other online trading portals. Even a lot of supposedly respected shops are selling them, using the "manufacturers'" sales pitch of HC seeds which is total crap.

In a way, I'm glad that they're aquatic unlike some other similar packages which contained seeds from terrestrial plants.

 

[Phil Edwards]

The little plants with the long thin seeds which you'd grown from seeds look like Hygrophila Polysperma "Tiger". I have the same rubbish too and the Chinese are flooding the market like crazy through eBay, Alibaba and other online trading portals. Even a lot of supposedly respected shops are selling them, using the "manufacturers'" sales pitch of HC seeds which is total crap.

In a way, I'm glad that they're aquatic unlike some other similar packages which contained seeds from terrestrial plants.

Thankfully they weren't sold as HC seeds. They came in as part of a sample one of my bosses got at a major Chinese trade show. It's a pretty plant, but had to go. Perhaps I'll try it again sometime. Then again maybe I won't; H. polysperma is federally banned where I live. 😉

 

[Phil Edwards]

3.26.17 Update 2, admitting defeat-

After doing a major water change and algae suck I noticed that the Trump Hair was a lot more pervasive than I'd originally thought. After three outbreaks the ref called TKO and the bout was finished. Algae 1, Phil 0.

The result was I took out all of the wood, gave two pieces a serious scrub and wash routine, attached all of the A. 'petite' to one and all the H. pinn to the other. Those are the only pieces in there and they're strictly for structure. All the buces got pulled and put in SSS2. If they grow, great. If they die, too bad. Their roots were too tangled and the algae got in there really well. All the stems got a good wash and rub down, and those with algae on them got hacked back. If I see any part of any plant with that crap on it it's getting removed. Full scorched earth.

Everything got replanted while doing an 80% WC with the stems finally able to be directly under the pucks. Thankfully the Dennerle package I got had a lot of foreground species in it so there's not an obscene amount of empty space. I hope all these changes mean better circulation and better plant growth. Time will tell.

Before-















After-

















New plants-






















There we have it. An FTS will happen when the water's cleared enough to get a decent one.

 

[Progen]

This is how they're usually sold but I definitely didn't pay this price. Perhaps they've gotten bolder with the scam and started charging more.

 

[Phil Edwards]

This is how they're usually sold but I definitely didn't pay this price. Perhaps they've gotten bolder with the scam and started charging more.

Progen,

The L size is an unknown Hygro and the S size is Hygro polysperma 'Tiger'. Those look exactly like what I grew out. Both of those are Federally listed illegal plants in many states here in the US.

 

[Phil Edwards]

3.28.17 Photo dump-

 

[Phil Edwards]

I just spoke with Seachem and they're sending me some Flourish Advance to try out on the tank since everything is either a) new, b) got hacked to the ground, c) moved, or d) a combination of b and c. I can't think of a better time to try out a product intended to enhance establishment and regrowth than now. If it doesn't violate rules regarding discussion/review of products from a non-sponsor, I hope to share my thoughts and results. Unlike last time I tried answering a product question, I don't work for the company who makes the product. 😉