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120 Gallon Journal - 8/5/11

22K views 78 replies 19 participants last post by  BoxxerBoyDrew 
#1 · (Edited)
Well to begin with, I moved from my beloved city (NYC) to Petersburg Virginia! I left my wonderful job with the FDNY to be with my family and basically have a better life more suited for me (slower paced and less expensive homes lol). So I had to break down this tank and start new. I'm glad I did because I realized a few mistakes I had been making and then learned from them. I feel better about the tank and how things are turning out for me. I learned patience and research are very integral in this hobby. I noticed making a habit of the good things aren't as hard I thought they were. I even have a "journal" or Record book of all the ferts, water changes and parameters for the week! I'm usually not that organized lol. I have a small room in the back of the house to keep all my things including the tank. I cant seem to find my CF card which had the original photos of the beginning of this tank ( I did mention I am not very organized right?) so we're going to have to jump right into this one.

So here she is:

Moving day


The new home. Yes, that's a window but its only view is of the dining room lol.







Some better shots of how it is now. It's actually gotten a lot more clearer.














All in all, the tank is doing fine. I had a bacterial bloom that lasted about 2 weeks maybe less. I just kept up with my normal routine with it.

Plants list:

Blyxa J.
Giant HairGrass
Purple Bamboo
Rotala Macandra
HC (I'm going to be ordering a lot from a member here, who I keep forgetting to email back, Sorry!)

Equipment and Ferts:

Giesemann AquaFlora x2 and Midday Sun x2 T5HO x8 hours.
Co2 via GLA 10 lb double manifold into 2 Inline Atomic Diffusers.
Two Eheim 2217s with full media and 100ml of Purigen in each.
ADA Aquasoil 2 with PowerSand Special.
RootMedic Root Tabs in the rear of the tank.
Dosing RootMedics Macro/Mirco solution.
Micro 12 pumps on Sun-Tues-Thurs-Sat. Macro is Mon-Wed-Fri-Sun.

Current inhabitants of the tank are a few dozen Pond Snails and about 50-100 Ramshorn Snails.

I still have a GH of 8-9 and KH of 2-3. I'm thinking if I can acclimate CRS/CBS or RCS very carefully I might be able to start a colony, but I don't know if that water might be hard enough to cause molting problems. I'll try anyway.

I need to get the HC ordered so I can get that carpet going. I was thinking about holding off on shrimp till the HC can get a good grip. ODing with Co2 should help this process.

I don't like the GHG. I would like to get E. Vivipara back there instead. This is just way too stiff! Blyxa is growing very very well. Purple Bamboo not so well. R. Macandra is doing ok.

Hope you enjoy and stick with me on this 2nd or 3rd journey lol. :cool:
 
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#27 ·
Yea I know how bad that can get with AS. Thats one other reason why I want to get out as much water as possible. Less sploshing and splashing of the water. Then I can fill it up super super slow. That's the only thing hate about AS. I'm wondering how this new aqua soil is going to be.
 
#28 ·
Well I am done! Moved the tank still scaled but without water. Unfortunately the person that was going to help me do it as soon as I finished emptying the tank, couldn't do it so I had to wait 3 hours for help moving this beast. Some of the plants took a hit even though I covered them with moist paper towel.

Tank is at the new apartment up against a very old brick wall (sealed) on top of a beautiful finished concrete floor.

Tank is cloudy as you can see in the photos.

I am in the works as far as getting my self a really nice stand with a small work table and extra storage and also the LED fixture I have been planning. I have allocated all the cash for it, I am how ever pretty nervous about pulling the trigger on that project. I keep reading more and more info on the DIY LED and it just all seems to be gibberish to me!

Anyway, time for a couple of bad iPhone shots. I will pull out the beautiful 7D this week coming. Till then, here yah go.

I used a pond pump to remove the water, which was pretty fast!





Here is the tank being filled, if you fill it super slow there is almost no clouding. Except when I turned on the damn filters! It ruined everything! lol. I'm doing a 75% water change on friday.



My faucet doesn't have any threading on it so what I did was put a 5 gallon bucket in the sink filled it up and put that pond pump again and kept the water flowing.



Please don't mind the mess, I stopped helping my girl re-arrange and un-pack so that I could tend to my real baby! haha she was pissed but she loves me.



and here she is in all her cloudy glory:



I have to clean up the wiring a little bit more and find some sort of storage in the meantime till my stand is built.

Funny story, a guy that works at a near by coffee shop owned by girls boss happens to be one of those phenomenal handymen. Well on his spare time he decided, because he was bored, to build a 15 (+/-) foot boat. By himself. He's around 30. It looks amazing, about 80% done! This kid is good. I hope he can help me out with this stand. He's got skills lol.

N e way, it's late and I doubt anyone is even online so I'll find a reason to bump this thread tomorrow during normal business hours.

Hector.
 
#30 ·
Wow the blyxa really took a bad hit, so did the Rotala Macandra. The leaves are very bad. Transparent almost.

The Bamboo has been doing this for a while tho. The leaves have been disintegrating for the past 3 weeks. It's been growing tall but its pretty bare. Its about 26 inches tall and I would say the leaves are gone from 20 inches down. It's also branching out and throwing out very long roots mid way! Once the plant grows out past the water level does it need to be sprayed with water at all??

I'm pumping Macro/Micros@24 pumps each everyday except friday and its been the same thing.

Is there something else I need to dose? I have root tabs as well.

I found some BBA on some of the branches. I read that might have something to do with co2 fluctuations which I know I had this month, with me leaving every weekend. Sometimes they would turn it on and sometimes they would forget or it would be left running for 24 hours. When I moved I lost the timer, I never got around to replacing it.

I will be purchasing a couple of timers for the tank this weekend. Hopefully the plants can make a good comeback from this.

Thanks for any replies.


PS: I notice I don't get too many comments, do people not like the tank??
 
#31 ·
I love the driftwood and the placement of it. Eagerly waiting for the finished look with fish and or shrimp. I like your TV stand :D. I was thinking of pulling the return line from my filter the next time i do a water change and just let it pump the water out. Just hook it to the hose for the python and hang it out the window like normal, lol.
 
#32 ·
Thanks Swoof, I am excited to add some fish and shrimp to the tank but the plants aren't looking so good so I have to be on top of high levels of co2 to help them bounce back. Is the macro/micro dosing enough? Is there something else I need to be adding as far as ferts?
 
#33 ·
I have to be truthfull that i didn't read through any of the thread yet, lol. If you don't have livestock in there you might as well leave the CO2 running 24/7 if you have a big enough CO2 tank. It will cause less fluctuations, as long as the lights are on a timer should be ok with just the plants. You might be able to reduce the bubble count of your CO2 also. I've not really used CO2 much so i don't know, i've only used the upaqua style CO2 setup.
 
#34 ·
Thanks Swoof, I am going to leave the co2 running full time now at a slower BPS, still at a rate I cant count but it'll be a bit slower. I have a 5 lb and a 10lb so I should be ok for a while.

I don't get any pearling unfortunately, except the HC on the branches 3 quarters of the way up. I cant even tell if the HC is actually even growing.
 
#36 ·
Bummer, I'd say I've lost about 60% of my Blyxa ... It was so lush before. I cut down the Bamboo and replanted them. So no I have 6 Stems. Once they get healthier looking I'll sell them since they don't really go well in this tank. I want to order a small Koralia to help with better surface movement since I now I have the Co2 24/7. The bigger Koralia is being use to help push the co2 to the dead spots of the tank, which I think there are a few.
 
#37 ·
Jut ordered two bags of ADA Aquasoil NEW! Lets see how that goes. I need to cover up the Powersand thats showing up on the top of the substrate. Too many to push down since everything was all mixed up pretty badly.

Also getting some awesome advice on the LED fixture for the tank. I will be ordering parts this coming week.

Across the street from my building there is a huge ware house thats over 100 years old, anyway, I bought five 8 foot wooden beams. For 30 bucks. They are 4x5s, something like that, so these are going to be used for the frame for the new stand I am going to build for this tank. They also had some nice 2x6 planks that I will buy tuesday to use as the floor and the side and back wall of the tank. It's going to be really nice. It's a very dark wood. Reminds me of the wood on an old Pirate ship lol.

I ordered more Blyxa to replace the ones lost.


Ugh, it was so lush you couldn't even see the bottom portion of the tree!

 
#39 ·
Oh thats wouldve been awesome but no worries I got a pretty good deal from AntBug. I'm excited about the stand, I pick up the beams tomorrow. I want to find some corner braces that would fit it, but I want them to be old and solid, gaudy pieces you know? Really make it look like this stand was built a long, long time ago!

We'll see lol.
 
#40 ·
Can Snails be gassed with Co2? I have it cranking pretty high for the past 3 days. I have noticed any of the snails dying at all. They aren't hanging out at the top or any where specific and they are still tearing up the little algae I do have.
 
#43 ·
Hmmm, Nothing wrong with overbuilt. Matter of fact I think its going to look kick ass!

Yea Orchid, its going to be pretty heavy but the floor is all concrete. I'm excited, I pick it up tomorrow.

N e one wanna answer the Co2/Snail question?
 
#47 ·
HAHAHA! I wont! We are here for at the least one year. I was smart enough to buy a few houses out here in Virginia and I had the tenants sign 2 year leases so I cant move in yet for a little while lol.
 
#49 ·
The Rotala Macandra is totally bare except for the top 2 inches where there is new growth and boy is it RED!
 
#53 ·
Well I didn't buy them all at once! Every two years I bought one for investment purposes while I worked in NYC. I'm totally not rich or anything like that lol I wish!
 
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