Decided to try my hand at Iwagumi (first try at planted tank too!). Twist, I am trying to do a semi-low cost (but quality), high tech tank by making and/or finding as much stuff as possible, so I'll be keeping track of cost as well.
5/4/13: Got a 10 gallon at the Petco $1/gal sale and derimmed the top. Found some cool rocks for free by the river. Got a bag of MGOCPM.
5/11: Bought 3 pots of HC Cuba and divided it up and planted. I am going to go with DSM on this tank.
Light is a single 23W 5500K CFL vertical in a 6.5" IKEA lamp, mounted 14" above substrate. 12 hours burn period on a timer. Too much light, too little? I might go with 2 lights later for a more even spread.
Care to elaborate? I've seen plenty of tanks successfully convert emersed HC form to immersed HC form as long as you nuke the tank with CO2 in the first 3 weeks of flooding.
Next time do not set yourself up to be proven very wrong.
A few thousand folks have done extremely well.
So........
Common mistakes: sealing the tank up too much, it's better that it's not 100% humid, leave some opening, just enough to get a little condensation.
I can grow HC outside in full sun in California's dry weather if I water daily. I have had it growing on my bonsai. Freezing temps kill it though.
Poor CO2 is the most common killer once people flood their tanks, the DSM avoids the CO2 issue, so any one should be able to grow a nice lawn in while dry, but the DSM saves NONE if they cannot grow HC well submersed, which are quite a few folks.
I'm not one of them.
I'm new at this. What does MGOCPM stand for? I would love to see how cheaply I can do these sorts of tanks as well, so I will be following this thread closely. Thanks for the updates.
Miracle Grow Organic Choice Potting Mix. You can search for it on this forum. I would advise you to take the time to pick out or sift out all the larger particles like wood chips. I got lazy and didn't do it, and kind of regret it now. Hopefully my sand cap will be enough to hold the floaties down.
In terms of cost, I want to do it for cheap, but I still want quality, so I save when I could and spend when I should. The MGOCPM is a much better saving if you are doing a big tank (40+). I paid $10 for a huge bag and only used about 1/6 of it if that. Still cheaper than ADA Amazonia, but savings would've been exponential if I had a bigger tank.
6/19: A little over 5 weeks in, starting to see some real growth. A good sign that the roots are coming along. Got a slight case of BGA going on the low parts of the substrate. Tilted the tank towards the back to distribute water more evenly.
I am on vacation in Thailand at the moment. Probably flood it when I get back next weekend. That would put the DSM at 10 weeks. Still need to pick up some CO2 supplies, like tubing and reactor.
Well I was have been one of the ones with little
success. Things were looking good as a DSM.
Then I flooded the tank and instantly created a
brown mess. I have been bombing it with CO2,
and some new shoots are coming through, but
I don't know what is going to happen next.
I am wondering if I should pull all the brown out
and replant HC. Open for comments.
1st image DSM
2nd image right after flooding
3rd image 3 weeks later
Looks like the algae smoothered your HC. Did you reduce photo period to 4 hours and daily 50% Water change for the first week? I hope I can do better because the growth is amazing so far.
7/21 Bought ferts, a large Ista Max Mix CO2 reactor to run inline with my existing Rena Filstar XP3 and a bunch of miscellaneous CO2 stuff like tubing, check valves and drop checker.
Total cost thus far: $200
The HC now covers approx 98% of the floor space. Not misting for 2.5 weeks while I was on vacation actually aided in combating the BGA a bit. This DSM is now at 10 weeks and I am going to flood in a couple of days when I have some time.
1. HC Cuba is not as humidity demanding as you think. I honestly think it grew better during the 2 weeks that I was gone and did not mist at all. And I live in SoCal where it's pretty dry.
2. I made the mistake of "adding" nutrients by spraying with water from a water change (fish only). This invited the BGA to start appearing and not sure how much I really aided the growth. Use only root tabs or nutrients from aquasoil.
3. Leave a crack in your seal for gas exchange and to let some of the humidity to escape.
4. If you can see water on the surface of the substrate, it's too much water. You can see that there's little growth in the front 2 corners. Those are the low points and it was constantly flooded. Conversely, the back left corner was the highest point and I was worried that it would get too dry, grew just fine.
5. Tilt your tank if you have slopes to get a more even distribution of water level. Only add enough water so that your lowest point just begins to flood.
I'm flopping between flood or DSM when I start my tank very soon. I might do DSM just to have fun with some yogurt moss. I've done DSM before, but it was meh. I think I was going way too overkill on the moisture content.
7/27: Finally flooded the tank, all systems a go. Final cost = $200 I am not planning to have to spend anymore until I need to stock.
I am running CO2 at ~6bps, flow rate at least 250gph (25X turnover). Switched out the 23w CFL for a 13w and reduced photoperiod to 4 hours. Going to do daily 50% WC for 2 weeks with half EI dosing.
Here's to all or nothing!
Some pictures below. Any suggestion on what to plant in between those 2 rocks? Right now I am thinking Blyxa Japonica or DHG Belem, but I am open to suggestions (especially something red).
Tank Shot (please excuse all the equipment, I am trying to use as much of existing equipment as possible since this is my first planted tank experiment, if everything goes well, I will upgrade to move mostly everything inline and glass pipes)
My paintball CO2 setup with homemade bubble counter.
Rena Filstar XP3 next to Ista Max Mix Reactor. I feel like the reactor does a pretty decent job, especially given the price. It does make some noise, but I think it's mostly due to the amount of CO2 going in right now. I ran it for a bit without any CO2 and it's pretty silent.
Drop Checker Yellow? Check!
Obscene amount of pearling going on right now haha
I had a catastrophic failure of the heater due to I moved it higher in the tank and forgot to turn it off before changing water. It was above the water line for too long and blew up in 2 pieces. Yes it projectile itself into the wall.
Wow, that's no good. I can't believe that it broke that violently, it looks like the dry wall even cracked after it went through the glass. Must of scared you pretty good, haha. Hopefully your clean up efforts are going/went well.
I am at a lost of how to transplant into a new tank...
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