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The Adventures of me and my 90g Tank.

5K views 41 replies 6 participants last post by  yobofofas 
#1 ·
Hey all. I'm going to try to update this journal once a week in an attempt to track my tanks history and, hopefully get a little info from all of you.

First, a tiny but about me: I'm returning to fish keeping after a very long hiatus and am thrilled at all the new developments and tech. The hobby seems to have become quite a bit easier since I left. My goal with this tank is a planted Discus/Amazon community.

Here's my specs

90g Truvue Acrylic Tank with left side overflow with 1" drain.
Current Satellite LED (48" standard, not plus)(thinking about getting another).
Floramax Red Substrate.
Obsidian Stone
Driftwood found at river (power sprayed and baked)

Filter:
30g Aqualine Refugium ; 1st chamber, foam filter and bio-balls. 2nd, Organic potting soil capped w laterite and Floramax 2 lucky bamboo and 2 wisteria. 3rd 400g pump bag of charcoal and bag of peat with Tru-Temp 300 watt thermometer.

I filled the tank last week and used Tetra Smart Start to get my Nitro cycle rolling. Yesterday I planted the top tank with 2 Amazon Swords and some Dwarf Hair Grass.

1st water test was today 7/31 and read as follows:

PH 7.4-7.6 (higher than I'd like. Thinking about using PH Down unless someone has a better idea??? I did just add some wood to the refugium also)

Ammonia: 2ppm

Nitrite: 0-.25 ppm

Nitrate: 10ppm (could be closer to 20, colors very similar on test kit.

I'm thinking about stocking the refugium with some helpful inverts like Amano Shrimp or maybe snails to eat dead plant matter. After I see them doing well I plan to start stocking fish in the main tank. Any input is welcome and please, let me know what you guys think of my set up.

Thanks
 

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#32 ·
Well, that sucks. Any suggestions as to a similar grass? I tried some smaller dwarf hair grass but 90% of it uprooted and ended up in my sump. I definitely want some shorter carpet grass or moss mixed with some longer.

Thanks for the info though.
 
#33 · (Edited)
Labor Day project.

Today I built an L-shaped spray bar to increase flow toward my overflow and it's working great. Also, more holes means slower flow which seems to have mellowed everyone in the tank. It'd be nice if I could find black CPVC pipe but apparently it doesn't exist?

The new fish are doing well, Rummy Nose jumped right in the gang with the others bringing the school to 9 which also seems to have chilled them out. Now that they have good sized school they aren't darting back and forth as much and seem to slowed down a bit. Both German Blue Rams are eating and have found some hiding spots they claimed as their own.

Today was also the first day I added Seachem Flourish and Potassium to my dosing regimen using the Seachem dosing guide I found: http://www.seachem.com/support/PlantDoseChart.pdf
I added these two at the advice of my LFS when I asked about some brown spots on my Anubias. Hoping this helps

All in all I'm pretty happy with how the tank looks and all my test levels look great. PH sitting at about 6.8 (thanks to Seachem Alkaline Buffer), Ammonia and Nitrites are both 0 and Nitrates about 5ppm.

I reintroduced the single strip Current Satellite LED because more light can't hurt. I run the Satellite plus on the Bright sun with some clouds setting which makes the light change slightly giving the tank a nice blue-changing-to-yellow-orange tint while the single strip stays on white. It gives the tank and fish some really nice soft color variation and the plants don't seem to mind.

As always I'd love your feedback/advice and I'm looking for some good carpeting plants. Maybe some more shrimp too?
 

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#34 ·
Tank looks good. For a taller grass like plant , you can get some jungle val. It would look good as a background plant behind the wood. As for shorter foreground, you could try dwarf chain swords.
 
#36 · (Edited)
I took some good advice and pulled the stupid Mondo Grass and replaced it with some Jungle Val and picked up some dwarf baby tears and dwarf hair grass.

I also picked up a semi-automatic C02 system and built a Rex Reactor with help from some other very informative and helpful peeps on this forum.

I wondering if my spray bar is getting enough flow and I'm worried that when I hook my CO2 reactor inline to the return my flow will suffer even more. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of surface flow but I feel like there's some particles just spinning around the tank from top to bottom and not finding their way to the overflow. Is this s flow issue or just something you have to deal with when your tank only has one overflow?

I suppose I could also take the "L" out of my spray bar. I just ordered some clear PVC parts to build a new, lower-profile, spray bar and am considering just running it across the back of the tank. I'm not sure the "L" bend that sprays toward the overflow is doing much of anything. I'd love some opinions here.
 
#37 ·
I hooked up my 18" Rex CO2 Reactor inline today running 2-3 bubbles per second and everything seems good so far. No Leaks anyway and no micro-bubbles coming out of the spray bar. Regulator is hooked up to my light timer so everything should be pretty automatic. The whole process was much easier and far less intimidating than I thought it would be.

I ordered some clear PVC to build a lower profile spray bar later this week but for now, I'm happy to say and didn't notice any loss of flow after introducing the reactor.

All good so far. Thanks to everyone for the info.
 
#39 ·
Yup! Things are going really well. I've been dosing the tank with Seachem products, pumping C02 and the plants have gone nuts. I'm trimming my Cabomba weekly and my dwarf hair grass is spreading like crazy. Unfortunately, my two Dwarf Blue Gourami (who I really do like) have a habit of pruning the leaves off some of my plants and have uprooted all my Dwarf baby tears. Thinking about getting rid of them (or possibly setting up a 10g if I can talk my wife into another tank).

Next I think it's time for Discuss! I'm excited but I want to make sure I'm not crowding anyone. Currently I've got the two Gourami, 12 Rummy Nose Tetras, 2 German Blue Rams, 4 Bronze Cories,and 1 Siamese algae eater (had a buddy but it vanished?!?). Should I cut down on my fish load or just stock some Discuss? If so how many? If I need to cut down the population how low should I go?

Pics soon, gotta do a water change first.
 
#42 ·
Been a while. Sorry.

But I'm back and going to make an effort to post weekly. A lot has happened since my last post. I picked up 8 different discus from Discus Madness in New Jersey. Everyone arrived alive and relatively happy. I was a little nervous about the whole idea of shipping fish during the winter but it turned out great. I guess LFS's do it every week.

I've planted a couple of big Amazon Flame swords in the back right and tried some Anarchis on the left. Unfortunately the Anarchis didn't do real well and kind of melted. I should mention that during this time my CO2 was down for a week and a half while I waited for a new CO2 regulator. For some reason my first regulator seemed to crap out after the tank emptied for the first time. Regardless, I picked up a new Premium AQUATEK CO2 Regulator with Integrated COOL TOUCH Solenoid and it seems to working great. I even replanted the Anarchis that broke off and they seem to be coming back.

I wasn't having a lot of luck with my Dwarf Hair grass bed. It's growing fine and spreading, a little, but not at the rate I had hoped. So I picked up another Current Satellite plus 48" and two single ramp timers (cheaper than buying one dual ramp). One remote works on both and the amount of light is amazing. Also, with the ramp timers I can tun on the lights with one button so no more twisting light timers for moon lights. But I digress, I'm hoping the extra light should kick the hair grass into high gear (any suggestions welcome).

I'm still dosing the tank daily with the full line of Seachem products and PH and Nitrates are more stable than ever. I did get a little green slime algae in my refugium which I thought the otto cats (3 of them) and the Siamese Algae eater would take care of. "Algae eater" is in it's name for crying out loud.

Also, my German Blue Rams have turned brilliant colors and become a little pushy of late. I'm thinking they might be getting ready to breed so I might transfer them to the refugium for a while. But I'm not sure when I should? Any one have suggestions?


Again, sorry I haven't posted in a while and I'll make an effort to update more often.
 

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