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Tom's Bucket O' Mud (semi self-sustaining aquarium)

198K views 339 replies 132 participants last post by  Saxtonhill 
#1 ·
Hi all,

At the risk of spamming this on every fish forum going I thought I'd a post a bit about my largely self sufficient aquarium, as this seems to get discussed on here a fair amount.

As a bit of background, I set this up because I'm frequently away from home for 5-6 weeks at a time, and wanted an aquarium I could just leave on it's own for this length of time. As such it is entirely pragmatic and practical in it's design, and is not intended as a closed system, biotope 'simulation' or whatever.

Neither is this particualary new or innovative, pretty much all the ideas were stolen from somewhere or other. However, it does all work, so might be of interest to anyone considering a similar setup.

Specs:
3'x1'x3' 10mm glass aquarium, open topped
300W heater
70W metal halide light 2 feet above water surface (8 hours/day)
Small, heavily throttled powerhead providing very slow water movement to help prevent surface biofilm

Hardscape:

John Innes compost (unmineralised) cut 50/50 with sand, with pure sand cap
Some rocks, and locally collected heather twigs

Emergent plants:
Echindorus, water pickerel
Riparian plants ('foliage' houseplants from DIY shops):
Prayer plant, parlour palm, peace lillies, unidentified lillies. Planted in shower caddies using hydroton as a substrate.
Submerged plants:
Swords, crypts, mosses, hydrocotyle, Micranthemum micranthemoides, water lillies, other low-medium light plants, various floating plants.

Fauna:

6 Parosphromenus sp. 'sentang', 7 Bororas maculata, 4 otos, cherry shrimp, assorted snails, ostracods and other inverts.

Maintenance and feeding:

I normally just top off the water lost to evaporation with dechlorinated tap water and add beech/oak/ketapang leaves for the inverts to feed on. Roughly every couple of months I'll do a small water change, and sometimes supplement the food with the odd algae wafer.

Set up:

Once everything was planted I waited about a month for the plants to adapt (the riparian plants required a few weeks to grow new root systems) and for the initial ammonia spike to pass then added about 50 shrimp, the otos and a few other inverts - lots had arrived already on the aquatic plants. Once the shrimp population was looking good (about 3 months in) I added the rasboras, then the gouramis after another month or so when I was sure the food chain was stable.

Tank is now 10 months old and doesn't require any more maintenance than topping up the water and replacing the beech, oak and ketapang leaves as they are broken down. I do do a small water change every couple of months and supplement the feeding a bit when I happen to be home, but I don't feel it's essential.

The gouramis and rasboras seem to find plenty to eat in the tank (ostracods and baby shrimp are the main food items I think), and the otos always have bellies that I would describe as moderately rounded.

Video:

http://vimeo.com/30028289

Photos:








Parosphromenus 'sintangensis' (male) :


Parosphromenus 'sintangensis' (female):


Bororas maculatus (male):


Otocinclus affinis:


Neocaridina heteropoda var. "red" (female):
 
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#211 · (Edited)
Put together a quick video yesterday showing the nightlight and the halide coming on and a few creature shots.

Recently moved the Brachygobius across from their nano as I changed my mind on their ID from soft water aggregatus to more brackish doriae/sabanus, so figured they'd enjoy the hard water. They've settled in nicely and quickly kicked usurped the 10 times larger peacock gobies from their favorite spot!

Forgive the messy emersed section and the still to be panted intake sponge, they're on the to do list.

http://vimeo.com/60408947
 
#218 ·
Well I've suspected for a while that my cherry shrimp population is pretty mongrel... have had a few really dark red, almost black looking females, and now today I spotted my first completely blue 'cherry'. Any shrimp experts fancy a guess as to what they've hybridised with?

 
#223 ·
One or two of you may recall that some time back in June last year I bought a Kessil a150 'Amazon Sun' from a guy in Australia. Well, thanks to the combined incompetence of both the Australian and British postal systems (ParcelFarce, I'm looking at you), it arrived yesterday! It's been around the world at least 4 times, and in the end we had to resort to having the guy's Mum bring it back to the UK in her luggage.

Anyway, I know a few people are interested in these lights so thought I'd do a quick comparison with my trusty 70w metal halide. Both lights were suspended 50cm above the water, camera was on a tripod and in manual mode, with white balance set to 4150K which best matched my perception of the room without either tank light on. I think the results give a fairly good idea of the rendition of the two units, but make sure you're viewing them in a colour managed browser (ie, not Chrome or IE) if you want an accurate view.

Impressions so far after 2 days with it.... overall I like it. It's very small and means I'll be able to retire my somewhat ugly lighting frame and get a more minimalist fitting of some sort. The colour rendition is pretty good (I tried one of those cheap ebay floodlight LEDs once and it was ghastly, this is much better and nicely contrasty without giving harsh shadows).

The one major issue I have with it is the noise of the little 40mm fan - it's louder than my quite powerful PC and you can hear it over pretty much anything else in the room. Definitely enough to be annoying in a bedroom. I've opened the can up and it looks like its a standard PC northbridge style fan, so I've ordered a supposedly quiet replacement fan and I'm hoping it'll be pretty straightforward to swap out.

So... 70w halide with (I think) a 6000k bulb in -



And the Kessil a150 (rated as 6700K) -



So, not actually much different!

Afraid I don't have a par meter to check that, but visually it looks similarly bright to my 70w halide. Photoshop reckons the cropped underwater section of the image is about 20% brighter with the Kessil, which seems believable.

 
#227 ·
Yeah the light spill is definitely less from the Kessil, with a much more defined edge. Not sure if I prefer that or not to be honest. It's a touch brighter visually, but not by much - I wouldn't imagine it'd match a 150w halide as marketed, but that's a good thing for me. I didn't want loads more light, just better aesthetics and cheaper running costs. PAR might be another matter of course.

New fan tomorrow, fingers crossed.
 
#231 ·
I did think about using tubifex or blackworms, but the latter are rarely available in the UK and the tank seemed nicely populated with microfauna before I tracked down any tubifex.

I'd suggest they're definitely worth trying,but haven't done so myself.
 
#233 ·
OK, some things I have learned about electronics (from a starting position of zilch a few days ago);

1. The fan in the Kessil is a fairly standard 40x40x20mm affair. Physically very easy to find a replacement.
2. However, it runs at 24v instead of 12v like most computer fans.
3. You can run the standard fan at half speed or a 12v fan if you wire in a LM7812 voltage regulator. This is very easy to do - ideally involves a spot of soldering or you can bodge it like me with electrical tape.
4. The half speed stock fan still pushes more air than the 12v northbridge fan I tried.
5. Doing the above will drastically reduce fan noise, and runs the unit cool enough not to cause any issue (short term at least). However, the unit does run considerably hotter so you're probably shortening the life span of the LEDs from the rated 13 years to...... who knows.
6. Running the unit without a fan at all causes it to switch off after about 10 minutes when it gets too hot. Good safety feature.
7. Accidentally crossing the red and black wires going to the fan whilst its switched on causes a burning smell and the death of a fuse on the circuit board, which renders the entire fan circuit kaput.
8. After a lot of swearing you can run a second power cable for the fan directly to that old mobile phone charger that's been sat in your drawer for about 8 years, because it just so happens to be 12v DC.

So in summary; if the terrible buzz from the Kessil fan is setting your teeth on edge, you can easily fix it by wiring in a 12v regulator as detailed here - AVForums.com - View Single Post - Behringer amps, x-over and parametric EQ units and hence running the stock fan half speed, or replacing with another fan of your choice. The downside is that the unit will be hotter, probably reducing its lifespan.

Can't help but feel Kessil should have made the case large enough to fit a 60mm fan and larger heatsink; would have made cooling much easier and quiter with only a minor increase in bulk.
 
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