Son of Kahuna (56K!)

[Phil Edwards]

Wow Steve, that's a fantastic tank. I've really enjoyed seeing the different phases Kahuna and the Son of Kahuna have gone through over the years. It looks like you've hit on a good combination with this setup.

Regards,
Phil

[scolley]

Bob - Thanks. It's great to hear from you. That's a very kind offer. But - here's a plant bigotry confession - I usually am not too fond of like java ferns. And I've had some huge ones. Do they grow in warm water? In the summer my tank spikes at 86 almost daily, and it is never less than 82 degrees.

Your new hobby sounds interesting. And it's good to see you here. And you know - of course - there's some quality scotch waiting at my house for whenever you make it by.

And I can understand taking a break from the hobby, especially when other things are going on. That's certainly the case for meet too. I kind of have had the perfect storm on things converging:

1) Tired of the notoriety I used to have here. Maybe enough time has passed that most people don't remember me now. That would be refreshing.
2) Tired of the hobby - needed something new to catch my attention.
3) A growing interest in discus - which is why I have a discus tank with plants, and not the other way around.
4) A difficult patch of time in my personal life, though thankfully that is mostly behind me. Been a tough year or two though.

They have all combined to really cut back on my planted tank time, and time on plantedtank.net.

Phil - thank you very much! Coming from you that means a lot. I don't think I'm gonna get very far in an AGA contest with this tank - not that I ever did. But entering was fun. This tank is just not competitive at all. Though I am working on the aquascape this year. But I am working inside some constraints.

1) It's got to remain low maintenance.
2) The plants have to deal with low light and high temps. That eliminates a whole lot of plants.
3) The plants can't require that I swap out the sand for substrate.
4) The plants have to thrive on minimal ferts (that loops us back to requirement number one above).

So I've not given up. But I'm happy to take my time to slowly, slowly, slowly try small changes.

Thanks for the kind feedback!

[Betowess]

Hey Steve, Great to hear from you too. I'm almost positive the needle and narrow leaf will take the heat, as its Java. The narrow leaf gets pretty tall (I think that is its common name), but the needle leaf stays in a nice shortish clump, maybe 5 inches tall and has a delightful little sway in the current ... I bet it would work great, and I have some to share, so PM me if interested. BTW, I may be coming up to Litchfield this summer - for my wife's family reunion, so that would be way cool to hook up if the dates work out. Stay tuned. cheers, bob

[monkeyruler90]

how are the fishes doing steve?

[Orlando]

Originally Posted by scolley

I haven't posted pics in forever it seems. So here's a few from the tank yesterday. It has looked worse lately, through a number of mishaps. First I changed my two filters at the same time. Wow! How stupid. That massively reduced my biofilter, and algae was the result. Still getting over that little bit of stupidity. And then I put in some new discus called 3R2's. But I didn't medicate them while they were in quarrentine, and they got sick in the big tank. So I had to medicate the big tank and THAT hurt my biofilter too, with another minor algae outbreak.

But all that was two or three weeks ago, and this is the tank today.
















In the low pots above you can see two of the Tropica plants I received a little while ago. They both came in their terrestrial form and it has taken a while for them to change over. The one in the middle still shows dark green through the green leaves on top. That's the aglae that took hold on it's leaves before it started putting out it's aquatic leaf forms. And I got a third - HC like - plant, but it did not root well, and kept getting pulled up by my corys and loaches. Fortunately I have all three growing out in a terrarium - in the "Barr" method - for extra stock.


And these little guys are in my quarantine now, waiting to go into the tank in a month or so.

Unbelievable color! Very nice.

How are the new plants from Tropica doing in there new home?

Regards, Orlando

[scolley]

Thanks Orlando. As always, there's trouble in paradise...

I've been tinkering - slowly - with ferts, over the last couple of months. Pin holes in lot's of leaves. It's the same old song though. Improve that with more potassium, and then something else is limiting. And then someone says... "IE is the solution to that", but I'm not going into that here. I'm looking for balance, not excess. 'Nuff said.

So things were really good and I went and boosted my CO2 to 30 ppm. What? Heresy! Not keeping CO2 to 30 ppm? Yes, with less than 2 WPG there wasn't the growth to justify it. After 24 hours the increase in algae was unmistakable. Not to mention the addition of my arch nemesis - thread algae! But I let it keep going for about 10 days to be sure. No doubt about it. So I've cut way back on the CO2, have massively trimmed the plants back to ugly low levels to recover. It'll look fine in 3-4 weeks.

But as much as I am blaming the CO2, it was not the only factor. A few weeks before that a couple of the darned 3R2's were exhibiting signs of hex - a disease discus are susceptible to. They had signs of it shortly after I moved them to the big tank, and now a couple of them where exhibiting it again. But I could not move them to a quarrentine tank because that tank had those other red fish (actually called 3R's - as opposed to the sick 3R2's). So I had to dose the whole tank. And while people will tell you that Jungle Lab's Parasite Clear (a mixed med) doesn't hurt plants - it will pull a whammy on your biofilter! The plants got hit with algae because of that little medical boondoggle. And then it was while they were recovering that I decided to "help" them with a little more CO2. Live an learn I suppose.

So the tank's not at it's best at the moment. Give it a few weeks.

As for the fish...

Two or three of the original orange 3R2's stopped eating Tetra Color Bits. Which is kind of rough since they are so small that they need several solid feedings a day. And most of the feedings are the bits (TCB) in an auto feeder. So every morning and evenings when the tank gets blood worms, they would be starving. So two or three of them are starting to get stunted. The other two are doing great. But the other three are a problem.

And then there's the four 3Rs! They look red in the picture. Right? Well I've moved three of them into the main tank, and they could not be more orange. That tells me that the 10,000K halogens over the 180 are not kind to reds. Washes them out. Bummer.

Anyway, I left one "red" 3R in the quarentine tank, because it was not yet eating TCB as well as I wanted. And I moved the three problem 3R2's into the quarantine tank with it. Now all four of them are on a TCB only diet, and they have about 10 days to learn to chow down on the stuff. After that they are being culled as fish too stupid to eat for their own good.

And in their place, I've got some Snow White discus on order. IMO, it's gonna provide great color contrast. And there's no way those 10,000K halogens can wash out white. What's it gonna make them? White?

PS - I got one of your double drop checkers Orlando. Really a spectacular little piece of equipment!

PPS - the tropic stem plant was doing spectacular until I added the additional CO2. Was many, many stems almost to the top of the tank - 24" high. But the thread algae got to it and I cut back almost 80% of it. Bummer. And the little ground cover plant is growing well, but slowly, and it too get hit with GDA pretty hard - lots like an anubias that's not doing well. The curse of slow growers in a tank with too much NH3.

[Orlando]

Holly molly Steve! You have quite the project on your hands there!
I hope your fish learn to get there grub problem under control
Im hoping for the best for those fish and the Kahuna.

Those DC's are a nice little tool to have around

Regards, Orlando

[Martin]

Hi Steve.

hope your fish make it alright.. and the plants of course.
10000K is way too high for anything plant wise :-) and rendering of nice discus colours.

if you up CO2 and the plants have the bare minimum of ferts they'll punish you by letting the algae have a feast. but of course you know this !

[scolley]

Yea, I knew it about the CO2. But I wanted to bump it for a while just to ensure that I was not allowing it to be the limiting factor. It wasn't.

As for the lights... I've been running these 10,000K for a year and a half. And the plants DO grow. In fact, I've got it from an employee at one of the premier aquatic plant vendors to the USA market, that they use nothing but 10,000K lamps in their facility. So I'm not sure what the results are from any controlled tests of 10,000Ks against traditional plant lamps, but they DO grow plants.

I use them because them make the blue discus look great. But they do wash out the plants. And now I see that they wash out the red discus too. And I've had them for a year and a half, normally they would be considered end-of-life, but I use such a short photo period I can probably get another six months out of them with no issue. But I do need to start looking for more lamps - something with nice red and blue peaks.

I started a thread here on that subject and got some response. But I was disappointed. I was hoping to get a bit more info on good red/blue MH lamps.

[smoq]

Your tank is amazing.I am lost with the amount of equipment you have, but when I saw the router hidden inside the stand I sai to myself "No way". If somebody on this forum ask what is high-tech tank, just give them link to this thread

[Phil Edwards]

Steve,

Have you considered keeping a batch of floaters in a separate tank to use as part of a nutrient/algae regimen? I did that with my old discus tank and it helped out a lot. When I started seeing evidence of nutrient imbalance I'd toss the floaters in there and they helped buffer things while I did the whole water change/light/CO2 management thing.

[scolley]

Originally Posted by Phil Edwards

Have you considered keeping a batch of floaters in a separate tank to use as part of a nutrient/algae regimen? I did that with my old discus tank and it helped out a lot.

What's a floater? I got some Frogbit (Limnobium laevigatum) recently to provide a bit more ability to soak up excess nutrients, and provide a bit of overhead cover for the fish.

Is that what you are talking about Phil?



Thanks marcinsmok! But it's not a router, just a wifi access point, used a wifi client, so I don't have to run an patch cable into my stand - to connect the web server on my AquaController to my network. It get's even wackier when I pull up the controllers webpage on my iPhone, and manage and monitor my tank on my phone. It's goofy. But convenient.

[m.lemay]

Hey Steve, The tank is looking good.

Some things never change. Algae just never really goes away, does it? I haven't been here in a while and the first thing I noticed is the word algae is everywhere.

[scolley]

Originally Posted by m.lemay

Some things never change. Algae just never really goes away, does it?

Hey Marcel! Yea, it doesn't for me anyway...

If figure there are a few constants for me. I'll always be short. Women will never beat a fast path to my door (Not that that matters anymore), and my tanks will always have some form of algae.

Could be worse.

[salth20]

scolley,
Are you aware that one of the pics on page 1 is being used as customer testimonial at rfi? http://www.rfidiscus.com/dalis.html
I'm looking for a few new fish, and have been browsing the various dealers. Is this your testimonial, and do you recommend rfidiscus?
The tank still looks great. I'm in awe each time I come back and read the updates. You are a leader in HTFB's. Or is it HTPT's? :-)