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Office Nano: 3 Gallon Iwagumi (coming to an end)

55K views 125 replies 38 participants last post by  AnotherHobby 
#1 · (Edited)
Tank Shot (6/20/13):



I have decided that my aquarium obsession would be best served if I had a nano tank in my office at work. In the interest of keeping maintenance easy to handle and to keep a relatively low profile, something less than 5 gallons seemed like a good size for this. I didn't want to spend a ton on this project, so Mr Aqua's 3 gallon rimless at just $34 shipped was a good fit. The goal was to keep it relatively cheap while looking slick, so here are the other equipment selections:

Tank: Mr. Aqua 3 Gallon (MA-109A-2)
Lighting: Finnex FugeRAY 12"
Filter: Zoo Med 501 mounted under the desk
Filter Input/Output: Ebay 10mm Lily Pipes
Heater: None (office is kept at 72 degrees 24x7, which will suffice)
Substrate: Fluval Shrimp Stratum
Plants: HC & Staurogyne Repens
Hardscape: Seiryu Stone only
Care: 1/4 EI fert Dosing and Excel

I'm doing a dry start with the HC in hopes that it roots well. I've read that Fluval Stratum is light and notoriously difficult to plant in (buoyant plants tend to let loose). And HC is notorious for floating. So let's hope all goes well in 4 weeks. Thus, the next 4 weeks will be uneventful here, with the occasional growth update.

With everything finally here, I scaped it out yesterday and today and got some great feedback from people here. It's amazing how small of a space 3 gallons is to work with. Just a little under a foot wide, about 1/2 foot deep, and only 8" tall. I'm happy with how it turned out though, so I planted the HC this afternoon.







Live webcam (only updates between 7am and 4pm CST):

 
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#3 ·
Yeah, it has saran wrap on it now. I just took the pics before I put it on since saran wrapped tanks aren't real sexy and all. ;)

The plan is to open it up each day, do an air exchange and mist it, and then cover it back up. Except Saturday and Sunday since I'm not there. I hope it'll be okay missing 2 days each week.

It's also tilted back now to help even out the water in the soil for the slope.
 
#6 ·
Thanks for the compliments!



I'm guessing that once I put water in it I'll have to raise the light. The top of the hill in the back left corner is 5" from light and the lowest in the front is 7" from the light. At these distances the back corner is probably in the neighbor hood of 60+ par and the front is probably 50ish. Without injecting CO2, I could end up with an algae farm at those light levels, but hard to know if I'm dosing excel.

The light would be very easy to hang since there is a cabinet over that part of my desk. As you know, Finnex has a great PAR chart, so it'll be pretty easy to adjust the light as needed and then watch the plants respond. Raising it 12" above the lowest substrate would probably give me 25-30 par all around. Proper light will be somewhere between the two.

I don't need to get fast growth once it's filled in — since I'm doing DSM it'll already be filled in. I just need enough light to keep it nice and healthy. I have no idea how much PAR that will be. It'll be a fun experiment though. It'd be great to find a balance where excel, some ferts, and the right light level will allow it to sustain a healthy life once it's well rooted and filled in.

All of the HC in the pic (3 pots worth) was only $18 from my LFS, so it'll be a cheap experiment either way.
 
#8 ·
So the Zoo Med filter came last week. I don't need it for another month, but I figured I'd play around with it. It's rated to 79 GPH, but everybody says that's not even close and that it's only good for < 5 gallon tanks. That's what I was hoping for because 79 GPH in this thing would be a whirlpool.

I ran a whole bunch of tests on it and discovered that mine will pump a "real world 32" gallons per hour when it filled with it's provided media and sponge, plus 1 additional cut to size AquaClear sponge, and using 40" worth of 5/16" hose on both the intake and output. That's plenty of flow for this little nano tank, and will turn over the water 10x per hour. I'm happy with the test results.

I tested further because I want to mount the canister filter under my desk. Lots of google searching speculated it won't work well, but in my real tests it didn't matter if it was at the same height as the tank, 18" lower, or even 3 feet lower. It still pumps water at the same 32 GPH rate at any height.

We'll see how it does as it gets gunked up, but preliminary tests are good for use on my little project here.
 
#10 ·
Since it's in my office and I have a couple of computers in here (I'm an IT manager), I decided to hook up a webcam to it. It's taking a picture every 30 minutes. I plan on making a time lapse of the HC growing in over a month.

I have no idea if it'll pan out, but if it does it should be kind of cool. Hopefully it works out and I don't have to take the webcam down for some reason. Or, hopefully the HC doesn't die on me and make this an epic fail video.

In addition, there is a live webcam image in the first post now.
 
#11 ·
Hey, good luck with your new tank! :)
I just broke down my same exact tank a few days ago, doing a 3 gal iwagumi of HC isn't easy. At least it required more attention than I was willing to give. Keep us posted, and here is my journal on it: http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=111058

Also, got more info on how you automated the webcam/shots?
 
#12 ·
I'm not too worried about maintenance. It's at work with me, so I sit right next to it for almost 9 hours a day. I take about a 1 hour lunch break every day, so I have built-in time to mess with it. We'll see how it goes though.

As for the webcam, I'm using a free piece of software called ImageCaster on the Mac. It has a lot of control over size, overlay, format, multiple schedules, etc, and even handles doing a secure copy to my remote web server. One schedule keeps a single image updated every 30 seconds (the one in teh first post), and a different schedule takes a picture every 30 minutes and increments the file names so as to not overwrite previous shots. One month of growth over a time lapse should be about 15 seconds long at 30 fps. It's the only piece of software I'm using, and everything is built-in. The webcam is a Logitech QuickCam Pro.
 
#15 ·
Yessir. That's new HC, and 1 pot less of it.

If you want, I could put together a time lapse of HC starting to grow and then about 1.5-2 weeks in start to go brown and shrink. :icon_sad:

I went on vacation and didn't have any holes poked in the top. Mold grew in quickly, and by the time I got back to work there wasn't much I could do. I tired for a week or so to revive it, but then gave up and pulled it all.

I was busy for a week at work so I just put 2 new pots of HC in on Tuesday. I poked holes in the top this time, so we'll see how it goes.

My web cam isn't updating because I updated my web server. I should get that fixed this weekend.
 
#16 ·
Just an update here. It's been a slow process, but quite a learning experience. First off, as I mentioned, I killed all of my HC by letting it get too humid and then mold took over. If you want to see what HC looks like wilting away and dying, here is a time lapse video. This video covers a mere 2 week period.

Youtube: HC Dry Start Faulre

I took a couple of weeks off from the project after the monumental failure, mainly to make sure that all of the mold was killed, and so that the Fluval stratum could recover.

I replanted on February 26th (about a month ago), and I used roughly 1/3-1/2 as much HC this time. The plan was to take it slow, let the tank breath much better, and keep a very close eye on how the plants react to changes. I have found that at least in this small of a tank, you really need to leave it mostly open. I have the saran wrap loosely fitted with a 1" wide air gap, in addition to holes in it. I just wet it down every to every other day and keep the soil moist. It seems to be going quite well. It would be further along, except that I accidentally sprayed a little excel over all the HC, and then it just started shrinking hard and fast within a day. I forgot I had excel in the spray bottle from when I killed the mold. Within a few squirts I could smell it and I stopped right away, but it did NOT like that. I was able to recover it (that was about 2 weeks ago), and now it's growing like gangbusters.

Here is what it looked like on the webcam immediately after planting:



This is what it looks like right now (April 30th). It really started taking off just over a week ago, and it's doing really well! The HC is rooting all the way to the bottom of the soil (1" deep in the shallow areas).



Here is a better picture so you can see how it's filling in between the rocks.



I don't plan on filling with water until I have 100% coverage with the HC. It's definitely slow growing on the right side. I might spritz a tiny bit of ferts over there to see how it reacts. I've also seen almost no growth to the left of the big rock. That HC is in the shade. I've added a light (not pictured) to hit it from the side, so hopefully that helps. I can aways transplant some of the HC that's really thick if I need to. If I transplant, however, I'll have to wait at least 2 more weeks to let it root before I can add water.

I'm not in any hurry though. This is just a fun little science project on my desk at work. It's fun to see how much people drop in now to check out the plant growth though. One guy is obsessed with me getting water in it. It's quite funny.
 
#20 ·
I am jealous, very nice setup. I am tempted to add a tank to my office but I am afraid I would not get any work done and would just fiddle with my tank all day. :smile:
Wear a headset, fiddle your way through worthless conference calls - that's what I do!
 
#21 ·
I had a similar issue with my dry-start. Great little nano. I guess it doesn't need to be that humid.
Yeah, I honestly don't think that HC needs to be humid at all. You just need to keep the soil wet. At least that's what I've found, but then again I'm working in a very small environment, so larger tanks may react differently.

One cool think about having a webcam take pics ever 15 minutes is that I can compare very easily what's happening. The most impressive thing is how much these plants grow over night in the dark. They grow a ton in the dark.
 
#25 ·
The webcam is back live in the first post! It is updated every 30 seconds during the photo period, so if you want to see how it's looking, the last pic in the first post is always current.

The HC is really taking off now. I've adjusted the lighting a bit to help out 2 areas. I added an external light to the left of the main rock to help the plants over there take off better. There is enough light to sustain them, but they grow incredibly slow. I think they'll be fine when it fills in. I also took the Finnex light and turned it diagonally and put it mostly over the right side of the tank. Growth has been slower over there.

I've also pulled up some HC from the really thick areas and transplanted it to the left of the big rock and over on the right side to help fill those areas in faster. I'm going to be on vacation mid next week, so if it's filled in good when I get back on the 20th, it might be time to fill it up with water. I'm not in a rush though, as this has been a really fun experiment. The time lapse of the current growth is very cool, and I can't wait to see it fully completed.

Here is how it looks now from a better angle than the webcam gives. If you compare to the pic a few posts up from 9 days ago, you'll see that it's doing well.

 
#27 ·
Fertilizing is unnecessary. All of that growth is without it. That said, it'd probably go faster with some root tabs. Last week I grabbed some ferts out of my fridge and fed them a little. The next day they were melting. If you look at the current pic in the first post, it's gone downhill fast.

I was pretty confused at first, but then recall that I put excel in my ferts to keep them from getting mold. I'm fairly certain that's the killer again. I feel like a total idiot for forgetting that. That's now 3 times I've halted progress and killed plants during this dry start. I'm a bit frustrated with myself.
 
#35 ·
Thanks for encouragement bump! I was super excited for the first month or two, and the excitement has been slowly simmering down. It's hard to stay excited for months on end while you literally watch grass grow. Then you kill it. Then you watch more grow, only to then mostly kill it again. Then you watch it bounce back really strong and are just a week or two away... And then almost completely kill it again. :icon_cry:

That said, I can't wait to flood it! I still love the scape, and above all, I'm learning a ton from the whole thing. :thumbsup:
 
#37 · (Edited)
I do too!! :bounce:

It's killing me.

If you look at the live webcam at the bottom of the first post, you can see the HC is filling in pretty good. I really want 100% coverage first. I'm thinking < 2 weeks to flood. The HC is growing pretty fast right now.

Once flooded I have to figure out what other plants I want to put in there. Not sure what exactly just yet though...
 
#38 ·
UPDATE: Now that I'm getting closer to flooding the tank, and the HC is really springing to life, I planted some staurogyne repens. I want one more plant for this tank, but I'm not sure what that'll be. I'mm thinking something grassy in the back. Any suggestions?

Here is how the staurogyne repens looks, and you can see how well the HC is filling in:



 
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