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Discussion Starter · #21 · (Edited)
2017-04

new plants, new plants! new angle! Doesn't the tank look longer with this angle?



April brought on a renewed focus on the tank. I've been spending more time with it and spending more time lurking around here. You guys inspired me to make changes. The pull of red plants has once again drawn me in. For those who don't know and haven't read the past entries, I've always had a problem growing red plants for random odd reasons. Some limited success with tissue culture alternanthera reineckii has me daring again. Plus, it was looking a little lonely in a sea of green. That dude, wheezo, sold me some pretty nice plants and packaged them awesomely. They showed up with no melt whatsoever. Thanks, @wheezo! The new additions are rotala macarandra type iv, ludwigia sp. red, and hydrocotyle japan.



The fiddling continues through the weeks and I finally put together that cerges reactor that I've been planning from since 2 years ago. The suction cups on the ista reactor inside the tank started to harden and lose effectiveness. As a result, it kept on floating up and while I tried to pull the cups off to soften them back up or replace them, one of the suction cup holding arms broke. I get it. It's tired and it told me as much. And I'm getting tired of hiding and scaping around it, so I told it as much. So here it is, its successor, born through trials by fire by the local community, through much interpretation, via much hand wringing and hair pulling!



Heh, Heh, please excuse the hyperbole. There was some hair pulling on my behalf about the parts though. That T junction involved some internal and philosophical debate and much hardware store scouring. I've come to the conclusion that retail has changed greatly. The internet marketplace has the niche market in such a monopoly that no one else can even come close. It's practically economically impossible to expect a brick and mortar store to stock the parts I needed. Anyway, there's one player in the game right now and it's USPlastics. Despite all my attempts to avoid them and their exorbitant shipping fee, I ended up only able to find all the arcane parts that I needed through them. They're not at all a bad company. Pretty good, actually, but I was just trying to be cheap with shipping. Anyway, the T is built upon a PVC junction with 1/2 NPT female connectors all around. 5/8 hose barb to 1/2 male NPT adapter one side, 1/2 male NPT to 1/2 male NPT nipple on the other, and 3/16 hose barb to 1/4 male NPT adapter into a 1/4 NPT female to 1/2 NPT male adapter on the co2 input. It is then mounted to the ubiquitous clear Pentek clear slim housing with a PVC "output" pipe inside and a male 1/2 NPT to 5/8 hose barb elbow for the output. I also toyed with various other connection ideas but decided that this route was the cleanest looking one I could assemble short of 3D printing a custom adapter myself. Here's the main Cerges Reactor thread for more information.

The retiree and its successor in comparison:

Larger size means "moar" CO2!!

Fully plumbed with a piece of 5/8" ID tube:


"Reactor, online .. Sensors, online .. Weapons, online .. All systems nominal.. <bip>"


As I half expected, I realized after the water started flowing that I had too much flow and undissolved bubbles were escaping. Probably the proper way to do this according to above Cerges Reactor thread is to plumb in a bypass, but I barely had enough space in the cabinet already and I don't need that additional mess of tubing. So, enter the cheaper method. I jammed up the bottom with poret foam that I had lying around. Other items usually used for this include pot scrubbies, bio-balls, ceramic rings -- anything to block the bubbles from jumping straight to the bottom of the downpipe and escaping. It does a pretty good job and only very minuscule bubbles get past. The other downside of this cheaper method will be more maintenance for it as no doubt, whatever escapes the main filter will end up in here. We'll see as time goes on. The upshot is more homes for beneficial bacteria!

Well! That brings us into May... 'til next time!




And now for some replies:

Sorry to threadjack... I just connected with your tank and journey. Cheers my fellow crazy water-box person.

- Jared

Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk
Of course! No need to apologize. For me, these journals are entirely for such connections. I used to think it was just a bragfest, but I understand now that it's a time and place to give a shoulder or find a shoulder to lean on, to marvel at some creations, to share in life's lessons, to have a laugh and even a cry sometimes.

If you had stuck with green low light problems you wouldn't had to have to inject Co2. That is easier said than done though.
But then think of all the CO2 fun I'd missed! Nah, I think it's when you're new, and these forums are so diverse, that you don't know which way to go. So, if I recall correctly, I saw suggestions of adding CO2, and I just flew with it. Might I remind you, that hagen ladder had this picture!!

Look at that difference in 40 days! Imagine what that does to an impressionable mind!

 

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Discussion Starter · #22 · (Edited)
2017-05



May sees the java fern going through more massive trimmings. I'm slowly backing it away with various other stems and am still appreciating it's smaller look. Also gave everything else a good trim while I was at it. I guess I'm finally resisting my pack rat mentality and actually throwing away stuff. I yearned for the day that I had trimming problems in the past and couldn't fathom that someone was willing to hack off 1/3rd or more of their plant content, but I think I'm finally here and can understand the need for it. (In the meantime, I'll knock on some wood so that I don't get returned to the former days) Smaller and lower bunches of plants seem to make the tank longer and more varied. From a distance, if you squint really hard, some semblance of a busy scape is starting to form ;) . The rotala macrandra has been swapped in position in the corner with the alternanthera reineckii -- first to give it more light, and second because the replumbed setup with the new reactor has greatly increased flow and was just blowing those thin macrandra stems all over the place. Java fern windelov is shaping up nicely and performing a better foreground duty than I originally intended. If anyone cares to recall, it was a BBA nest previously before it got some time out in a low tech tank. The new hydrocotyle is just nicely sprawling along, but more surprisingly, my dwarf hairgrass is finally growing somewhat. Maybe it's rewarding me for this stronger light cycle so I'll stick with it for a little. I'm still messing with GSA due to the extra lighting -- always too much light, right? Extra phosphates against GSA like everyone said seem to be helping too, but I think the bigger issue is that ambient light is giving me a much longer lighting period than I've set. I stubbornly refuse (read, am too lazy) to set up a nice black background to block the light coming in, but am equally curious to see and practice how well I can address this via various other means. I feel the extra growth of the DHG and the proper reddening of the red plants is worth my GSA troubles for now. I think I'm hooked on strong light again. I make excuses to keep my light levels high. Something along the lines of, "Well, I just put in this new reactor that's pushing in more CO2, so err, it should be okay!" Will it? Guess we'll see in a month! This super fueled plant growth, this massive pearling.. it's such an addiction.

Next update: 2017-07


 

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Discussion Starter · #24 ·
The macrandra looks like it might be deficient in calcium and nitrates. What is your Gh and nitrates?
Hey Hilde,

Thanks for the advice. I haven't tested water in forever. So much that the GH test is expired. Nitrates is indeed hovering only at 10. Guess I'll have to push that dosage up. Must be the increased lights using it faster than I thought.
 

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Hey Hilde,

Thanks for the advice. I haven't tested water in forever. So much that the GH test is expired. Nitrates is indeed hovering only at 10. Guess I'll have to push that dosage up. Must be the increased lights using it faster than I thought.
You can always have it tested at a pet store.

I am experimenting with Calcium Nitrate for my plants seem to need a lot of calcium. Possible because my tap water is very soft. Calcium Nitrate contains Calcium 24.425%, Nitrogen 17.072% and Oxygen 58.503%. Thus hoping it will help red plants that need Co2 injected to adjust to Excel.
 

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Discussion Starter · #27 · (Edited)
2017-07



Two months of growth... it's a jungle again! As I look back to the beginning, I remember that I wished I had these kinds of problems. The me who was struggling to keep those few allegedly "easy" stems alive just yearned for this day. Well, I guess I've finally arrived. I think that I get so thrilled that its happening that I just like to let it go wild. While it pleases the "I just want to be able to keep it alive" version of me, I suppose I'm somewhat transitioning and now I'm getting the hankering to make the tank a little more easy on the eyes. Sometime, a while back, I read The 12 stages of the aquatic aquascaper, and I can't help to smile inwardly that I'm finally mentally moving on from plain collectoritis. Of course, when someone like burr740 over there is at stage "13", how can you not want to at least try something?!

Wanting to do something with the scape and actually doing it is very hard for a non artist like me. So I just pore through plant journals like crazy and mentally make notes. I draw diagrams and start planning. I think the biggest hurdle I had to overcome was being willing to throw away stuff. It's like an episode of hoarders. The other problem of just letting a tank grow wild is, as I'll find out later, that it suffocates some of the other not so fast growers by robbing them of light. So, with great mental fortitude, I grit my teeth and start hacking away...



Bye bye, java fern!
 

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Discussion Starter · #31 ·
Nice journal!

What is amazing to me is that you stayed with the same tank all these years.
Hi ChrisX,

Yea! I dunno, I guess I get sentimental with stuff. I'd like to think that there's still descendants of the first beneficial bacteria that populated this tank in 2007! To my chagrin, though, there's definitely remainders of that blue gravel in my tank to this day. I'm slowly picking them out every now and then. If the Doctor can punch through azbantium over billions of years, I figure I could at least pick out my stupid blue gravel!

Oh, that is beautiful. I thought the java fern was lovely- Where did you put it? or did you just take it out to have more room while you did trimming.
Ahh, the java fern, the ever troubling conundrum with it. It's annoying what little scaping ideas I have, but it probably was one my first true plants. Ever since I've picked up a bottle of this excel back in the day,
,
it's been a goal to have a great big java fern. I'll have more updates. We shall see what becomes of it...


What a great story! :) Tank looks awesome, too.
Fun to read and great pictures, thank you!
Thanks and you're welcome!
 

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Discussion Starter · #33 ·
2017-07 Java Fern Rides Again!




Here is the tank, 5 days later from the picture in the last posting. As always, I'm behind in my posting. Of course, I couldn't part with the java fern, but I did find a niche for it. It will still perform the duties of hiding my big ugly sponge prefilter, but in a much more limited way. Missing stems were trimmed, restored, and remaining ones got a good trimming to get a tighter look.

Doesn't look like much, but I feel the silhouette looks okay ..



---------------------------


Always wanted Cardinals, never around when I have the cash!

Agreed! You would think for such a quintessential planted tank aquarium fish that it'd be more ready available. And THEN, whenever I try to add some, the collective population knows, and roughly whatever number I add, tend to die off from some sort of disease or something. I have decided to not add anything and just let the remaining ones dwindle.
 

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Discussion Starter · #34 · (Edited)
2017-07



Rotala Macrandra Type IV is getting a little scraggly, so it was cut back. I don't think the AR likes where it's at.

2017-08



August was mostly spent just trying to fine tune the new look. Did some re-org on the right side. Moved the AR back to the middle row. The pains of having a narrow light strip. I'm seriously thinking about adding a fixture to help with the light spread. Trimmed cardinal plant to tighten the look a little.



New plants!! Got some mermaid weed and hygrophila araguaia from @burr740. Very healthy. Trying to make the tank a little less scraggly and more filled in. Mermaid weed takes middle back and hygrophilia araguaia takes right corner duties over the cardinal plant. Also trying to extend hydrocotyle tripartita over to the right side starting with a little patch. East shall meet west!



Mermaid weed is getting weedy! One week's growth from last pic.



I love silhouette pics. I actually try to trim for it too!



Messing around with different lighting colors. Cheating to get my plants red! Mermaid weed grew tall enough to be cut and it's now filling in the middle even better. Managed to make two rows of it. Hydrocotyle patch on right is filling up and going westbound. Moved cardinal plant from front right towards the back as filler instead.



Going nuts with all colors!
 

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Discussion Starter · #35 · (Edited)
2017-09



Post-trim update. The hydrocotyle has met! Hmm, I guess you can't see it with this pic angle too well. Ahh, you'll just have to believe me :) Otherwise, things were getting a little wild again so I tried to work on it instead before it got completely nuts like my other trim cycles. I think those AR stems are shot -- but I guess I'll let it ride to see what happens. I thought the rotala macrandra was gone but a conversation with sohankpatel made me hang on with them a little longer. He pointed out that his woes went away after he added more light. I couldn't see how I could put in more light with my GSA issues, but then I doublechecked my last batch of ferts and realized that I miscalculated and my phosphates were indeed low. GSA is now more in check now after that mistake was corrected. @sohankpatel, thanks! I've also started to begrudgingly accept that I need to cut bottoms and replant if I want any semblance of a tidy trim. Obviously, it also gets rid of older growth that's starting to get covered with GSA. I suppose the extra work is worth it. I could be wrong, but I think the hygrophilia araguaia is having some trouble. I get random leaves being dropped off from the stem. The leaves themselves look like they're in good condition, but it's the connection point that loses it. Weird. Almost like stem melt. Will have to keep an eye on it. Cardinal plants are restored to their smaller form because they were just too distracting otherwise.
 

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@ipkiss Glad to help, macrandra is pretty tricky, and you will see it stunt for no apparent reason every once in a while. Nobody in my local planted tank club has been able to explain it either. Good news is that it rebounds pretty quickly and looks great. The tank looks healthy and I like that plant on the left, the one with broader leaves.
 

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Discussion Starter · #38 ·
@ipkiss Glad to help, macrandra is pretty tricky, and you will see it stunt for no apparent reason every once in a while. Nobody in my local planted tank club has been able to explain it either. Good news is that it rebounds pretty quickly and looks great. The tank looks healthy and I like that plant on the left, the one with broader leaves.
You mean the java fern? :grin2:

Oh, the one directly left of the macrandra. That's supposed to be a crypt flamingo in transition from low to high tech. I'm eagerly awaiting pinker leaves, but in this phase, it's not bad either.
 

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Discussion Starter · #39 ·
And so it's been 3 months since I last updated. Unlike previous times, despite my lack of postings, I was still engaged with the tank and did not let it slide from care. I think 2017 had been a decent year for it. Not the best year for other things in life, but for this tank, it wasn't bad.

First up, a fall equinox shot.

2017-09b



As mentioned a few years back, there's a window of 10 minutes where I can get variants of this shot. The sunrise comes through the right windows from across the room and hits the tank just right. Even then, I did not get the best possible one this year. There's always so many variables that throw the shot off -- especially as I'm not the best photographer and am always out of practice.
 

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Discussion Starter · #40 ·
2017-10

I'm sure some of you guys can identify with me when I say that even when away from our tanks, we're just spinning our brains, never satisfied, wondering how to fix that next thing that could be a little better. Well, if you recall a few posts back, I was trying to get a handle on that rotala macrandra. The prescription was more light, but my green spot algae was too rampant at the time. After I finally figured out that I incompetently miscalculated my phosphate dose, I was granted the pass by my tank to increase the light! The other annoying thing about my existing situation was that that narrow ecoxotic unit just wasn't giving a good enough spread. I was tired of scaping my red plants into that narrow band in the middle. AND, they weren't really getting that red. So with glee, after so many years of spending time in low light purgatory to finally get my algae under control, I was once again in the market for a light!

There's so much fun in searching for high tech toys. But there's also that sobering moment where you realize that you probably shouldn't spend $300 on the next level lighting because...well, priorities. Anyway, seeing that Beamswork units have been getting so much love lately, I decided to jump onto that bandwagon. Super bright, economical, and not built too shabby. Best bang for the buck. What's not to love?

I fleabay a 24" Beamswork F-Spec from the favorite vendor that's selling the most of them and was happy as a kid on Christmas. Christmas 2 months early for meee! With great glee, I unbox, mount, and turn it on. Choir music rings in my ears like a cheesy TV scene. What brightness! It's .. blinding! An already pearling tank starts fizzing like fresh soda as the photosynthesizing take a big spike.

Awesome. Extra light spread and intensity. An order of RED plants please.

Well, that initial glow fades as I start thinking about the situation more. Time to apply this light in a meaningful way. I did not live through an algae war just to trigger another one. As I had spent tons of time on the Beamswork thread, I had the foresight to order a TC-420 controller with the intention of programming in proper lighting cycles. Clearly, I did not research enough, because my post purchase research confronted me with this:



If you look closely at that picture, there's only two control wires (the white ones) for this light unit. Some more desperate research and consultation with our resident LED expert @jeffkrol reveals that I'm stumped for what I want to do. There's only two channels of control! Blue moonlight LEDs and everything else! This may be enough for some, but for me, I've been spoiled with the independent RGBW control that I had over my ecoxotic and the slew of colors that I can throw at my tank. The disappointment dawns upon me and I spend the next two days wondering how I can rig this. I desperately study the board and look into cutting the circuits to isolate the different color LEDs and then redrawing them the way I want with a circuit pen. Did you know there's such thing as a circuit pen?! I digress. Common sense hits me and I cut my losses. I realized I was falling a little too deep into this rabbit hole. Another good reason to not continue this route was that it would've exacerbated the ever worsening wiring situation underneath the tank. Sadly, I return the unit. Hopefully, it will bring someone else happiness. Stuck with a TC-420 tho. Maybe another project will come along for it. It IS a pretty nifty controller.
 
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