Landon 30C Nano Build

Quick update:

I received the order of plants and I went a little overboard. I wanted a slight buffer so that I had more than not enough but holy cow did I order too much.

Anyhow the tank has been planted and filled for over 24 hours. I've included a pic below.

I added Seachem Stability as well as the first doses from the Seachem Flourish line. I basically have every bottle so I'm following their recommendations which worked well for me almost 10 years ago. I basically dose at half of what they recommend and I'll see how the plants do. Based on their appearance I'll add a little more of one thing or another...basically whatever it looks like they need.

I also tested again to see how the water quality was and how the Stratum and adding plants would change the parameters. I was mainly interested in PH, GH, and KH, but also wanted to see if it started leaching ammonia like I've seen reported.

PH: 7.0. That's a 0.4 drop from tap water
Ammonia: 0.25
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5ppm (my tap is 0 but the ferts probably boosted this up)
GH: 5 (I was at 9 so this was a bit more of a drop than I anticipated)
KH: 2 (it was at 6 and this was an even bigger shock. I expected maybe a drop of 2 but not 4)
TDS: 105 (I was honestly not really expecting a drop in TDS, so I'll attribute this to either a bad reading from tap water, or something else. I tested this one 3 times and came out with the same 105)

I'm planning on using my RODI unit that I was using for my reef tanks. I'll test the parameters and see what I'm at. I think out of the RO itself I get 2-3, but it's obviously 0 TDS coming out of the DI stage.

Next step is to buy a couple paintball canisters and have them filled, and then get the GLA paintball regulator. I'm not in a huge hurry for this. I figure as long as I get it at some point over the next couple weeks everything should be fine.

But here's a plant list. Some of these may wind up being transplanted into the larger tank when I get that build started:

1 - Anubias Nana Petite
1 - Anubias Nana Bonsai
3 - Dwarf Hairgrass
1 - Rotala HRA
1 - Cryptocoryne Undulates Tissue Culture
1 - Bucephalandra Kedagang pot
1 - large cup of Christmas Moss
1 - golf ball portion of Fissidens Fontanus

I could have gotten away with a golf ball portion of the Christmas moss because that was far too much. Right now it's sitting in water in a jar catching some of the spillover light from the tank.

I'm going to let this grow out for a few weeks before I trim stuff up to make it look a little neater. I honestly don't want to touch the tank and just let it cycle.

Next week I'll do a 50% water change. I know that many people do WC's daily for the first week and then every other day for the second week. Based on my own experiences, frequent water changes like that impacts how quickly a tank cycles. I will change this if ammonia skyrockets off the charts, otherwise I'm just going to let it run. There isn't livestock in the tank and there won't be until the cycle is complete. I'll continue testing every couple to every few days to monitor the progress.

Aside from that I'm pretty happy with the way this little tank turned out. I'm actually a little afraid to add CO2 because plants start growing like crazy which means a lot more maintenance unless I let the tank grow uncontrolled.

I'm definitely open to input on anything I'm planning on. I've been out of planted tanks a decade so I may be missing something or doing something wrong. Just through reading threads on here it seems a few things have changed since back then.

Just a quick update, will plan on doing another this evening.

I received the GLA paintball adapter, 2 paintball canisters, diffuser, CO2 rated tubing, check valve, and drop checker. I'm headed out tomorrow morning to get the paintball tanks refilled and will hopefully set it all up tomorrow evening when I do the first WC.

Tonight I'm going to test my parameters to see where I'm at. My last test was 3-4 days ago and aside from the initial .25ppm of ammonia that disappeared the next day, the only noticeable change was 10ppm of nitrates. I've been dosing all the ferts according to the Seachem chart, as well as Stability daily at the recommended dosage.

I had to move my HOB because the outflow was causing the Rotala to start contorting since they were getting blasted by the HOB. The good thing is the space it created is perfect to hide the small heater behind, along with the diffuser.

I've noticed that some of the DHG started yellowing, but within each clump that I planted, some of the needles are very bright green and I've also noticed some areas where it appears new growth is already springing up. It could be that it was under the soil when I first planted and is just starting to emerge, or it's brand new growth.

The other notable observation is that the glass was covered with a thin layer of biofilm that I scraped off. It was whitish.

Other than that, so far so good. The plan is to let it run another week before I even consider stocking it with a small fish or two. Eventually the plan will be to stock it with some shrimp (CRS, or Blue Dream).

The plan next week is on Monday I'm going to crush up a couple flakes of food in the morning and let it rot inside the tank. Maybe Monday night I'll test and see if the ammonia has begun to spike, and if not I'll test again Tuesday evening. If I don't see a spike, I may go shopping for some shrimp safe fish to add.

Aside from the DHG, everything else seems to be doing well. The only plant that I haven't noticed start to perk up is the Fissidens which looks about the same as the day I added it. The Christmas moss has perked up, the anubias, crypts, and buce all seem to be stretching their roots out to attach to the rock or wood. I'm hoping the Rotala straightens up after getting blasted by the HOB outflow. I haven't checked if that has started to root yet, but I'm definitely not seeing roots begin to emerge from the sets of leaves above the soil.

Will update this with my parameters after a week of being set up without any water changes done yet.

I forgot to post last night, but I checked my water parameters and was pretty surprised by the results.

PH: 6.8
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10ppm
TDS: 112

The plan is to do a WC this evening and set up the CO2, add the heater, and crush up a flake or two of food and toss it into the tank. I'll test every day for 3 days to see if there is a spike of ammonia. If there isn't, then it's time to add a small fish or two.

If I'm getting nitrate readings of 10ppm, I suspect one of two things: 1. The tank is cycled. 2. If it's not cycled, then the ferts are causing it.

The only real way to verify without buying actual ammonia is the small bit of rotting flake food. If I don't see a spike at all, then in my book the tank is cycled and it's safe to stock with fish.

I haven't quite decided what I want to do fish wise, but whatever I add will need to be shrimp safe because I eventually want to keep some sort of shrimp. More than likely CRS.

I'll get an updated pic tomorrow after the WC has been done and the water clears up.

Up to this point I've been using tap water and will use tap water again to do the WC. As soon as I can find my RODI unit, or which box it went in during the move, I'll set it up and start using it for water changes. The first thing I'm going to do is test what the parameters are after filtering water through it and figuring out how much tap to mix in to remineralize to the parameters I'm looking for.

I'm probably going to wait to trim any plants. Honestly the only thing that will likely need to be done is cleaning up the moss, and maybe the Rotala depending on how well they grow after adding CO2.

Quick update:

Did the WC and set up the CO2 system. I'm very impressed by the quality of the GLA paintball regulator. Seems well made. The one thing I'd do if I were GLA is include specific instructions for how to use that specific regulator. The instructions are more suited for their larger regulators and someone who hasn't played around with CO2 regulators would definitely be confused.

I installed the small tetra heater and added a drop checker. Now comes the extremely fun process of tuning the bubble counter. It seemed fine last night, but when the solenoid kicked on today it didn't return to what I set it to. I imagine it'll take a couple days of tweaking the working pressure until it comes on reliably to what I set it to.

Based on my water parameters, it seems like it'll need 1 bubble per second or less to get the drop checker lime green. It was yellow about 2 hours after I made an adjustment to the working pressure, but now it's a darker shade of lime green. I'll have to bring it up a touch more to get it a bit lighter.

I did notice that my Rotala stems have begun bending sideways which I initially thought was due to being blasted by the outflow of the HOB, but after moving it they've continued growing sideways which from what I remember means the light is way too strong. I raised it about as high as it'll go on the mount and went into the Fluval app and dialed down the intensity of all channels by about 20%. I'll leave it like that for the next week to see how they do. Worst case I'll have to trim and replant.

I fed a few crushed up flakes of food after the WC. I'll test this evening, tomorrow, and Tuesday to see what happens with my parameters. If everything is good, I'll go buy some fish. I'm thinking some chili rasboras and one otocinclus. After I add fish I'll keep testing to see how my parameters keep up and if everything is good and nitrates aren't skyrocketing, perhaps I'll take a look at pygmy corys. While I try to not go overboard with stocking, I tend to stock a lot heavier than most as long as the parameters are kept in check. I'm planning on being careful since this is the only tank set up right now so any mistakes will likely be deadly.

I'll check in again about halfway through the week if I decide to get fish, or if something weird happens after feeding flake to the tank.

So far no ammonia spikes.

I tested everything last night and even my nitrates have fallen to 5ppm which I've attributed to the large WC.

KH and GH both went up a bit since I used straight tap water. I'm planning on using RO for the next water change. I'll just need to test the RO water parameters to see how much tap I'll need to mix back in. I also need to dig up my other small heater since RO water will be very cold.

I can still see some of the flake in the tank rotting away which is good. I'll test ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates again tonight. Unless I get a reading drastically different than last night, I won't update the thread until I have something to report on. Basically if my parameters continue showing no changes, I'll probably go tomorrow or Thursday to buy some fish.

On a side note, when I set up the tank I had a huge amount of Christmas moss that I couldn't use in the tank. For whatever reason I'm one of those weirdos that keeps and cleans pickle jars, which actually came in handy because I filled the jar with water and tossed the Christmas moss in it. The jar is sitting on my window sill next to my desk in my home office. Believe it or not, the jar is fuller than when I first chucked the moss into it. I added a few drops of Flourish to the jar over the weekend. After doing a WC, I ended up with a few pieces of Fissidens and filled up another jar and tossed that in there. I'm just going to let them grow out. I'll likely fill up a third jar and split the moss up so that both jars have room to grow.

My local LFS said that his distributer has one UNS 120U in stock which he said was surprising since their larger tanks have been hard to find. It's quite expensive but I have about half the cash in rewards points built up on a few different cards I used for home improvement purchases, as well as furniture. I'm one of those people who just uses the cards for points and pays off purchases immediately. I think I'm going to buy the tank. My plan was to first slowly purchase the equipment and hardscape for the tank, build a stand, and then finally buy the tank but after thinking about doing all of that and potentially not being able to find the tank, I think it makes sense to buy the tank first and then I'll build a stand for it. This tank will probably take a while to get up and running since the equipment I have in mind isn't inexpensive. My guess is this will be a fall project. I'll probably also get two 10lbs CO2 tanks so that I always have one on standby similar to how I just filled up two paintball tanks for this aquarium.

Anyhow, will update anything notable that happens this week with this tank. My guess is nothing will happen parameter wise, so the next update will be fishes. I'll include a FTS as well.

Forgot to add....

The Rotala haven't straightened out at all, and in fact have actually started producing shoots off the main stems. I'm not quite sure how to proceed, but have reduced the intensity of each color channel a bit more. I honestly didn't think the Fluval nano light would be this powerful. For now I'm going to let everything be. I will need to trim up the Christmas moss, and Fissidens soon. The moss has actually grown a bit but the Fissidens hasn't and just looks ugly right now. I'll probably just thin it out a bit and hopefully a smaller mass of it starts to show new growth. It was dark green when I got it, but I've noticed really small areas of bright green growth.

Quick update:

Will add a recent FTS later this evening when the lights come on.

On Wednesday I tested my parameters around noon and was still reading zero on ammonia and nitrite, and nitrates were still at only 5ppm.

After work I went to the LFS and got a bunch of Chili Rasboras and a small chubby Otocinclus. He also had pygmy corydoras so I may go back and get some of them. The plan is to let the newly added fish settle in and allow the biological filter to build up. I tested again last night and the readings were exactly the same which was surprising. I figured nitrates would rise in response to adding fish, but nothing. I'll test again tonight and the weekly WC will happen tomorrow.

I had to go over to the LFS on Tuesday after work to pay for the UNS 120U that I had him order. While I was there I saw a pot of in vitro Pinatafida so I grabbed it to cover a couple spots that were empty.

The Rotala HRA aren't coming upright again, but the side shoots are beginning to turn the area into a bush. The one thing I hadn't expected was the leaf shape to change with new growth. The stems had bright green round leaves with red on the underside of the leaves. The new shoots have narrow leaves and they're kind of orange. While I hadn't expected this, which is definitely my fault for not looking into this variety very much, it's actually turning into what I wanted which was a bush of plants to cover up the rear back corner of the tank. They're just starting to grow high enough that they're peaking out from behind my hardscape (spider wood).

The one thing I'm amazed by is Seachem Stability. It seems like the bacteria in a bottle has finally been perfected. Using that combined with packing the tank full of plants from day one seems to have reduced the cycle to almost nothing. The day or two after setting the tank up is the only time I tested any level of ammonia, and it was pretty minimal.

The DHG seems to be slowly growing in. Much of the plants have started melting off, but there seems to be a lot of new growth as well. There are a couple bunches where it looked like they totally melted, but I'm seeing little green spikes begin to emerge from the soil. I'm hoping it fills in really nicely. I'll probably wait a couple more weeks before I give it a haircut to encourage some runners to shoot out.

Tomorrow when I do my WC I'm planning on trimming back the Fissidens and the Christmas Moss to clean it up a bit. I got a little carried away when I added it and it's just way too much. The Fissidens is started to get wrapped around other plants around the tank so I need to clean that up for sure.

I'll be back this evening with an FTS and a report on parameters. I'm not expecting anything crazy honestly.

minorhero said:

One of the complaints people have about fluval stratum is that it doesn't add much ammonia to a tank. Combined with a lot of plants its not surprising you have very little ammonia. Keep a close eye on it now that you have livestock (test at least once a day, or better yet, twice a day). Now that you have fish in there that are pooping, that poop will decay (takes a few days) and will begin producing ammonia. Hopefully you won't go into cycle, but if you do, you might need to start doing daily water changes to keep everything healthy.

Click to expand...

Absolutely. I usually test daily until the tank the tank is cycled. While it seems cycled, it could very well start. I haven't used the bacteria in a bottle before because when they were first coming onto the market 20 years ago, they honestly didn't do anything lol. It was basically spending $12-15 or whatever they cost back then for a bottle of snake oil. I've been pleasantly surprised with how much they've improved.

I've been also adding the recommended dosage of Stability since adding the fish. But the plan is definitely daily WC's if the parameters begin heading in the wrong direction. I may stop adding the Stability today and see what happens. It's been two full days so far that I've added it so it'll be interesting to see if anything has changed.

Once a tank is cycled, I almost never test nitrite and ammonia again unless changing something. I monitor nitrates and TDS but mainly as an indication of how much water I'm going to need to be replacing at each WC.

The one thing I can definitely say is that packing the tank with plants from day one is the way to go. My last planted tank 10 years ago I added plants slowly and had issues from the get go and kept chasing parameters all over the place until the tank settled in a few months later. So far it's been the opposite with this tank. It seems like a mature tank already which is mind boggling to me.

ETA: the one thing I'm not going to miss from my reef keeping is the ridiculous amounts of testing I had to do lol. It was just a lot of work that I certainly don't miss.

Had a few minutes to run some tests and take a FTS.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5ppm

I'm still blown away by how low the nitrates are. I suspect that the plants are sucking it up faster than it can build up. I have seen a lot of growth in at least the Rotala HRA and Christmas Moss, so that could possibly be what's causing that.

I'll test again tomorrow right before the WC to see if anything has changed.

The fish seem to be doing extremely well also and are showing no signs of stress. If nothing changes by Tuesday/Wednesday next week I'll likely go scoop up some of the pygmy corydoras and that will be it fish wise for this tank. Perhaps in 2-4 weeks if parameters are still looking great, I'll begin searching for some shrimp. I haven't figured out whether I want CRS or Blue Dreams because they both look amazing. I'd love to get both but sticking with one probably makes a lot more sense.

Aside from the surface scum that we all seem to be plagued with from time to time, here is the FTS. The Rotala are starting to appear from behind the hardscape. I'm hoping it'll color up more and cover up that back corner. The other rear corner on the right side was pretty empty so I put a couple of the Pinnatifida I picked up earlier in the week back there on the rock, one just left of center in the front, and one up about center on the wood since those areas were bare.

There's an extraordinary amount of CO2 micro bubbles in the tank and believe it or not I'm doing less than a bubble per second. The CO2 kicks on at noon, then the lights begin to ramp from 1-2pm and are on full blast from 2pm until 10pm when they ramp down for an hour until the blue light is all that remains for another hour until it's complete darkness. The CO kicks off at 11pm.

Tomorrow the plan is to trim up the mosses to make them a bit neater and cleaner looking.

Just a quick update:

Three things to report on:

1. The Fissidens is finally showing new bright green growth. That was one of the only plants that hadn't shown any new growth aside from the DHG.
2. DHG is slowly starting to sprout up around the bunches I planted. A lot of the original bunches have yellowed and melted, but I'm seeing new leaves appearing in very close proximity to the original bunch planting sites.
3. My Rotala are growing very weird. They're growing, just not upright. I've included a pic below. I think one thing I'll try when I do a WC this Saturday is cutting the new growth, tossing the emerged stems, and replanting the new growth. Perhaps they'll start growing upright from there. I've never experienced this before with Rotala, at least with my experience with other Rotala family members. Initially I thought the flow from the HOB was causing this, but I moved the HOB to the other side so these stems aren't getting anywhere near the flow they were getting before. If anyone has an idea on why it's growing this way I'd definitely appreciate it.

Just ran some tests and I'm showing no ammonia, no nitrites, and my nitrates are a shade between 0 and 5ppm. If I had to guess I'd says 2 or 3ppm.

The plants have started putting on significant new growth so I'm assuming that the nitrates are getting sucked up faster than the fish and dosing nitrogen is replacing it. I'm using the Seachem ferts and have only been dosing nitrogen at .8 ml twice a week. I'm going to up this to 3 times per week and see if there's any significant change in parameters next week. I'll likely only be testing nitrates from here on out unless something seems off that I can't otherwise explain.

I did figure out what's going on with my Rotala....my lighting is way too powerful. I reduced it be roughly 30-35% across the board, except for the blue channel since that was already pretty low (10%). So now all my channels are at roughly 50% and have been all day. I know it's not a very long period of time but it looks like the Rotala has begun showing signs of straightening back up. I probably won't know for sure for at least several more days. I'm probably going to hold off on trimming them until next Saturday rather than this coming Saturday mainly to see what effects lowering the light intensity has.

Otherwise everything is looking great.

It looks like the lower light intensity is doing the trick. Probably still too early to tell, but the fact that the Rotala are starting to face upwards again is a telling sign.

They're also starting to show some reds. WC will be in store for tomorrow as well as starting the build of the stand for the 120U.

I'm wondering if trimming off the new growth from the original stems, and tossing those original stems and replanting the new growth is the way to go? There isn't a whole lot of room back there and all the original stems are completely bend horizontally. You can't really see them since they're hidden by the hardscape. I'll leave it another week before I trim anything, or do anything to them.

The Pinnatifida is growing like crazy. The plants you see in the reflection are half of what was in one TC cup.

The DHG isn't growing as fast as I'd like, but it's growing. As you can tell I'm sometimes inpatient lol. Which is strange having come from reef keeping with corals growing at a snail's pace.

Ran some tests tonight after work.

PH: 6.4
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: Between 0 and 5ppm. I'd say 2-3ppm
GH: 7
KH: 3
TDS: 135
Phosphate: 0ppm

The reason I tested tonight is because I lost my Otocinclus this morning. He was fine last night, and this morning I noticed that the little dude was on the substrate at the front of the tank. Initially I didn't pay attention to it and about an hour later it was still there. I took a really close look and he seemed to be fine. No noticeable sores, discoloration, eyes were still clear and he had a normal belly...not distended and not caved in. I haven't really done anything to the tank lately so I'm not quite sure why he died.

Everyone else is fine so it's one of those mysteries you endure with Oto's.

I upped my dosing of nitrogen and still can't get my nitrates to rise. I may switch over to the EI method since I received the dry fert kit earlier this week. The Seachem ferts are a pain to dose every day, and at a certain point you're short an element and you start guessing how much to dose. EI seems way easier so I'll probably make the switch next week. Sucks to have spent $100 on all these dang Seachem ferts, but that's what I used 10 years ago and they seemed to work well.

Including an FTS. Everything is growing well except for the dwarf hair grass. It's hilarious seeing how the Rotala is slithering it's way around the tank. If you look closely at the center of the pic, one stem worked it's way through the wood and is sprouting shoots lol. I increased the light intensity up 10% on all channels except blue and cool white. But everything needs a good trimming this weekend. The Pinnatifida is just growing like a weed. It's really shocking since it came from a tissue culture cup. The plan is to trim everything I can back a bit to expose more of the hardscape. I may even give the dwarf hair grass a hair cut and see if that stimulates any growth. I guess this is the plant that shocked me the most with how slowly it's growing. I thought it would spread like a weed fairly quickly. Perhaps my parameters are a lot different from the place I bought it from.

Excuse the biofilm on the glass. I usually don't like scraping it until I do a WC which won't be until Saturday.

I'd love to get some shrimp, but admittedly the only shrimp I've really cared for were saltwater. If anyone has advice on which shrimp would thrive in my water conditions, I'd appreciate it. The shrimp I seem to gravitate towards are crystal reds and blue dream (I think that's what they're called...the really bright blue). Once I get my RODI mounted, cartridges replaced, and the hookup completed I'm going to start doing WC's using RODI and using something to remineralize rather than mixing it with tap water. I tested my tap water and detected phosphates so I'm going to avoid using it if at all possible.