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The official EDGE thread

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#1 ·
I thought I would start this thread in order to share information, ideas and pictures that pertain specifically to the "FLUVAL EDGE" such as lighting, heating, filtration, stocking, etc.

Brian.




- Inspired by architectural styling, the EDGE aquarium, a 23 L (6 US Gal), 6 sided closed top glass aquarium, 3 dimensional water cube provides a unique visual effect capturing emotion and serenity within a contemporary setting.
- Provides high definition viewing from every angle
- Sealed glass top provides high definition viewing and reduces evaporation for less maintenance.
- Retractable halogen lighting system, suitable for aquatic plants and casts a unique shimmering effect.
- Removable cover for easy aquarium and filter access
- Overhead ventilation grill dissipates lamp heat and avoids moisture
- Powerful easy to use EDGE filter with 3 stage filtration to ensure clear water and a healthy environment.
- Overall dimensions: 36.5cm H x 43cm W x 35cm D
- Tank Dimensions: 22.4cm H x 43cm W x 26cm D
 
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#1,809 ·
Shift! That is a fine looking moss tree, I can't believe you went all dirt on us. Did you see a spike in your water yet? If you get a Co2 system, you can grow a lust carpet and it will look great, maybe some DHG.

Hey Ryan, I got the 25 w Hydor with the orange/red led that lights up in both my tank. It is adjustable and I think the LEDs flicker effect looks great in it. It's small too, comparable to the intake of the AC20.
 
#1,811 ·
Nice, it actually went down in price. But yeah, that the one. It's the LED flicker effect that I love so much. You can't put in the HOB but it looks great at the side near the AC20 in take.

I notice that the temperate doesn't really go up and down much, little heat is lost in the Edge. You only got a small portion of water that is expose to the surface. At least that true for my 6 gallon.
 
#1,814 ·
I should receive all my ordered goods tomorrow, so hopefully I can begin my cycle. I've set my edge up that's been sitting for well over a year. I'm at pg 106 of this thread, and have been VERY interested in the lighting topic. My 21 LED stock strip isn't wowing me at the moment. I'm not planing on high tech, and won't be dosing CO2, but will be dosing flourish and excel, if required. I'm not planning much more than several anubias, java's, and perhaps crypts.

My wife had bought 2 single LED desktop lamps that aren't used, so I set them up to see what they would do for me. Quite a difference, but the spectrums don't remotely match. I have 7600k on the Fluval light, and 2700k on the lamps. Is this an issue for plant growth? Is there any way I could swap out the single LED's for a higher temp bulb?

I'm going to keep reading through the pages and hopefully somebody has solved this dilemma, but I'm not holding my breath. I see the 42 LED bar is available as replacement, but I gather it's not going to be that different for spread.

Also, what are your thoughts on my scape idea? I'd like to have some substrate contours, not just flat, so each element pops a bit more on the vertical axis. I think the driftwood should be center-stage, but I'm not convinced.
 
#1,822 ·
Mik - your tank looks amazing!

I took some new shots of the tank after chaning it up.. so mind as well post the updates :)

So the 12G edge has been redone with about 2" of miracle grow organic potting soil caped with an inch or two of Eco-complete and a bunch more plants. Everything seems to be growing well. The inhabitants are still the 4 neons, 12 CPD's, 10 pumpkin shrimp (although i can only find 8...) and a nerite snail.

I'm much happier with the dark substrate!

12g tank


I'm really happy with how the tree is filling in.



Some CPD's



neons



Pumpkin Shrimp





The Apple/Nerite snail

 
#1,827 ·
New to Site! New to Plants! New to EDGE!

HEY ALL! I'm new to the forum, new to planted tanks, and new to the EDGE. I just picked up a used EDGE a couple weeks ago and have it set up as a dirted shrimp tank right now, and I am loving it! :bounce:

Trying the Walstad (sp?) method a bit here with some organic Miracle Grow soil and black gravel on top. Water is still a bit brown due to the dirt. No CO2, don't really plan on using it at this point. I don't have a ton of plants in it yet either. Just a couple stems of bacopa and some hygro of some kind, I think sunset. They seem to be doing okay. The hygro is starting to turn a nice pinkish color since being put in the dirt. Will keep propagating the two plants and fill them in as they grow out. Would like to maybe add some baby tears eventually. It is a start. Current lighting is just the stock halogens but would like to upgrade to the LED's that are available now. Here's a pic. It's sitting on an end table by our South facing window and this pic is during the brighter afternoon hours. Let me know what you think.
 

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#1,831 ·
Fluorescent light mod video

This was my weekend project. Did a little light mod to my EDGE. It is similar to other Fluorescent additions, such as what dkbmxr18 did. The bulb I bought from Walmart and was a cheap compact fluorescent by Aqua Clear? It was in the fish department. I used a weather proof light bulb base and attached it to an extension chord. I connected the stock light and the fluorescent both to a timer to run for about 10 hours a day. So far so good! I live in a fairly small town of about 13,000 people so most this stuff came from a farm and fleet store and Walmart. If I can do it, anyone can do this. Here is a link to a video I made to see how it all fit together. Should be pretty self explanatory.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F2l0t8KzQg&feature=youtu.be
 
#1,832 ·
Bad night at Edge Town!

I have been disappointed with one aspect of my Edge. Not enough surface area to allow for a good oxygen transfer to the water. I had replace the Edge filter with a Ehiem Ecco 2232 canister filter. I had noticed that the fish seemed to lack oxygen, mostly at night, because they were always at the surface. To solve this I place an airstone to agitate the surface. All went well until yesterday. I didn't like the moisture on the led lights because of the bubbles so, not thinking, I turned off the air pump. This morning I find two of my prided corydoras habrosus dead with two of my nicest male guppies dead. The water parameters were all good. I did a fifty percent water change and turned on the bubble machine and now the remaining fish seem OK. Thoughts?

Also, the blue led's on the Fluval light fixture stopped working after four months. All I can say is that Hagen (Fluval) is super easy to work with! They replaced my lights without any problem. Great customer service!
 

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#1,836 ·
I have been disappointed with one aspect of my Edge. Not enough surface area to allow for a good oxygen transfer to the water. I had replace the Edge filter with a Ehiem Ecco 2232 canister filter. I had noticed that the fish seemed to lack oxygen, mostly at night, because they were always at the surface. To solve this I place an airstone to agitate the surface. All went well until yesterday. I didn't like the moisture on the led lights because of the bubbles so, not thinking, I turned off the air pump. This morning I find two of my prided corydoras habrosus dead with two of my nicest male guppies dead. The water parameters were all good. I did a fifty percent water change and turned on the bubble machine and now the remaining fish seem OK. Thoughts?

Also, the blue led's on the Fluval light fixture stopped working after four months. All I can say is that Hagen (Fluval) is super easy to work with! They replaced my lights without any problem. Great customer service!
HI Mate,

Check out my Journal on my Edge build. I changed the filter into a canister filter and was concerned about O2 levels in the water as well. So I used the HOB as a water cascading unit : http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=195794
 
#1,844 ·
I mounted canister filter hose intakes and returns to the bottom of the hang-on-back, effectively piggybacking onto it. However, I have quite a large canister filter, (Fluval 305), and I'm concerned that the low oxygen levels have been detrimental to my system. I've had unexplained losses which may be as a result of pathogens benefitting from low O2. I believe it has increased my water temperature as well, (unless that is due instead to my light mods), and it's usually around 80-85 degrees which doesn't help O2 levels either. I upgraded to a 500 series larger impeller for the hang-on-back filter, which seems a little noiser but doesn't seem to have made a huge difference in the current, (too many plants in the way perhaps).
 
#1,833 ·
Apologies if this is the wrong place for this question but I'm looking at getting the Edge 12 Gallon and I want to see if you guys think this table would support the weight:

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80176279/

It's made of pine. I have the TV unit of the same style and it's pretty sturdy. I thought if the table seemed a little weak for the 12 Gallon (~125lbs), I could put a backer of thin plywood to add support.

Thoughts?
 
#1,834 ·
We a 12G Tank with 12G of actual water in it will weigh 100lbs in water alone. the tank itself and accessories, you'll be looking at another 40lbs. You'll substitute some of the 12G with subtrate, which will weigh about 20lbs for that size edge, mind you that displaces some water. I would expect that whatever decorations you place in the tank would offset the water weight similarly on average, unless you go ALL rock. So I think 160lbs is a good potential prediction of total weight.

The Ikea shelf says 33lbs/shelf on their site. If we use the middle 2 sections, which yields 4 compartments and the top shelf, I would assume that you could do 4x33lbs=132lbs, plus the top shelf which should do twice the weight of 33lbs in that section (66+132=198lbs).

I would say based on that info that you "should" be safe. I would minimize load on other areas of the unit and avoid using the middle compartments for anything other than light supplies like fish food, ferts etc.

Hope this helps.

Ryan
 
#1,835 ·
Hi,

I thought I'd share my new Edge that is currently cycling with some plants. I was completely underwhelmed with the stock LED lighting, so I read every page of this thread and decided to build a DIY lightbar with "superbrighleds" using an idea that another member had for the fixture. I went to home depot and bought an aluminum L channel.


Then mitre cut the aluminum with a dremel and a cutoff disc. (I remembered reading that the hood was actually not square and wider at one end. I accounted for this and made the narrower end the front, so the mitre cuts ended up being slightly wider than 90 degrees from each other. Then I used JB weld to join the 3 parts.


I bought 3/4" aluminum square bar too and cut that into three to make a lighting support/heatsink for the LED's, and JB welded those 3 pieces together and affixed the LED's with their adhesive backing. I drilled a hole to feed the LED leads into the square bar.



Then I sanded, spray painted it black and clear-coated the outer L shaped fixture.


Then, it was just a matter of welding the lightbar into the L channel fixture.


I had planned on having the Light strip hug all sides of the stock hood, but I found the light coverage is much better at the front by pulling it out a bit, and I don't hate the look, so it's staying as is now. Here's my freshly planted tank with the added DIY lightbar.


 
#1,845 ·
Hi,

I thought I'd share my new Edge that is currently cycling with some plants. I was completely underwhelmed with the stock LED lighting, so I read every page of this thread and decided to build a DIY lightbar with "superbrighleds" using an idea that another member had for the fixture. I went to home depot and bought an aluminum L channel.
Great light mod. I've been working on doing a similar thing. Does the JB weld sufficiently hold the mitered aluminum angles together though?

I'm also curious, why did you use both the angle and square sections? Could you not have mounted the LED's directly onto the angles? Or used C channels even? That's what I'm using and I've painted them already but haven't mounted the chips and wires.
 
#1,839 ·
Planted Edge with CPDs and Sundadanio Axelrodi

Just stocked my (cycled) 6g Fluval edge with 5 Celestial Pearl Danios, and 5 Sundadanio Axelrodi 'blue's as well as 3 Red Cherry Shrimp and a random snail that appeared while I was cycling.

So far so good with water parameters, but it's early days. Has anyone had any experience stocking the Fluval Edge with tiny fish like these? I would like to wait and see how the tank settles, then add a few more Sundadanios to bring it up to 7 or 8 (they seem a little skitty with only 5) but I'm worried it might be a bit too much for the biological filter. Also - are Hikari micropellets fine for these fish, or should I be looking at something more involved like baby brine shrimp or frozen things?

Any advice is much appreciated! Pic attached.
 

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