Posts by CoveBeach
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244 Posts
Thanks, the rainbows have gotten rather fat, they attack the food like a Largemouth Bass. The tank at the moment is a bit tense with 3 pairs of angels with eggs at the same time. I am struggling with which pair to move to a 40 breeder.
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244 Posts
You are correct on both points, i swapped out the 50/50 blue for another 100% 10 K light. For your 125 i think you would do fine with just two strips. My tank is 30” wide so i went with 3 strips. Originally i had them setting on the tank rim but have since moved them about 16” off the water for ease of maintenance.
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244 Posts
Thanks for the kind words. I had a 220 gal display 420 system full blown reef for 15 yrs. I truly enjoyed it, however sourcing fish and corals that are not wild caught is difficult and expensive. Not to mention most animals grow too large for aquariums that fit in a house. I can point to salt tanks for teaching me a bunch of stuff that has made my planted tank stable and simple to maintain. I can credit ( in my mind at least) a few things that greatly contribute to its success. First would be: 80 deg F min temp. Second: Over sized bio filtration. Third: over sized UV filtration. Fourth : Good well aged source water that i run huge air stones in 24/7. Those are the main things. Some of the others are when the tank was young, large water changes once to twice a week depending on the amount of crud the poret foam was producing. Adding multiple air stones in between to poret foam stages. Reasonable flow rate though the filter medium. Steady water temperature for the tank and water changes. Having some sort of auto top off system. NOT relying on adding chemicals to dechlor and fix bad husbandry. And most importantly make the tank easy and simple to maintain and improve or repair.
My water changes are done by turning valves and flipping a couple switches. I do have one hose for siphoning my sump of detritus which is plumbed directly to a drain, so no buckets!
If anybody wants specifics i am happy to explain or post pics.
Keep it fun, make it easy…..not sure about cheap though.
My water changes are done by turning valves and flipping a couple switches. I do have one hose for siphoning my sump of detritus which is plumbed directly to a drain, so no buckets!
If anybody wants specifics i am happy to explain or post pics.
Keep it fun, make it easy…..not sure about cheap though.
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244 Posts
I am on city water, so i just run a pair of sediments and a pair of carbon blocks. I do have dual membranes in place but are bypassed most of the time now. Originally when the tank was young and i was doing big water changes i would manually start and stop my source filtration, however i put both the top-off and water change barrels on float switches giving me auto pilot on those jobs. All 3 drums have 1 1/2” airstones at the bottom of them that make the water really boil. This allows me to not need chemicals for water prep. Unless i would need to do a huge water change, i do not heat the water any longer. I do have a natural gas tankless water heater plumbed into my water change loop and use it mostly for prepping a new breeder tank as needed these days. I went with the gas heater in a closed loop so i could very quickly heat aged water to tank temp or above instead of trying to use tap water and chemicals. This is really helpful when changing out 110 gals at a whack.
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244 Posts
In my case due to volume, counting bubbles is impossible. Here is how i arrived at my settings. First off i am using a drop tester as a reference. The manufacturer of my CO2 system calls for 30 psi at the regulator. I am closer to 35 psi. Once that was set i picked a day that i would have time to monitor the tank til lights out. So early about an hour before lights on i took note of my PH level and then started out with about 100 bpm. I kept an eye on the PH and saw no change, so i started bumping the flow up little by little. Not very long into this process i was no longer able to count bubbles. The flow literally blows the water out of the bubble counter. I kept increasing the flow until i saw the PH begin to drop. At that point i waited about 2 hrs to look for a color change in the drop checker. If nothing changed i bumped up the flow a bit more until i saw a color change. As soon as it goes green stop increasing and let it ride for a couple hours. If it says green you are done, if not make small adjustments till it does. I generally see a 1.5 point drop in my PH from an hour before lights on til about 2 hrs into my lighting schedule. I find having a PH probe rather than test kits makes life much easier.
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244 Posts
I do, i have a somewhat local fish store that gives me store credit. Last time it covered $50 in flake food. In about 2-3 weeks or less it will be back where it was plus i will have crypts to thin then also. I have also donated to the girl down the street from me.
41 - 51 of 82 Posts
