Puzzleknot - 100 Rimless
1 - 20 of 48 Posts
Joined
·
370 Posts
Month two update:
![]()
![]()
Thought I would go over the 'guts' of this set-up. Tank is 24"x48"x20", 1/2" glass, bottom drilled with a bulkhead and standpipe in each back corner. The standpipes run up into an overflow box I constructed out of 1/4" acrylic. Sort of like a Herbie, one is the primary drain and the other the overflow drain.
![]()
![]()
There is a gate valve beneath the primary and a ball valve for the overflow. These flow down into a 30 gal sump tank. First chamber is empty, sized to make it easy to net out anything that takes an accidental trip down the drain. First set of baffles sends the water down through a coarse sponge and then back up through a fine sponge. Last chamber has a few sponge filters and biomedia from the old canister, a pair of heaters and a return pump. I wanted this chamber to be as large as possible to hopefully account for the massive amounts of evaporation and eliminate the need for an ATO. So far so good, we shall see how it fares through the winter.
![]()
There is a Griggs reactor for the CO2 system made out of 2" pvc. Worked great on my Fluval 404 but not so well with the higher flow rate from the new return pump. Gets lots of bubbles in the display tank. One of these days I'll try throwing some bioballs in the reactor to see if that helps, otherwise will need to build something bigger. Autodoser rounds out the equipment list.
![]()
Crypt farm is coming along nicely. S repens didn't handle the transplanting very well. Trimmed most of it pretty hard, we'll see if it comes back in better shape. Only stem plants left are some Mermaid Weed and Hygro Siamensis. Some scattered Java fern varieties and a ton of bolbitis along the background. Surprised at how well the Erio Vietnam is doing in the shade beneath the manzanita. Small patch of mini xmass moss and a couple of buces on the wood rounds out the planting list.
![]()
Next update I will cover the new lighting that just got installed yesterday!
Thought I would go over the 'guts' of this set-up. Tank is 24"x48"x20", 1/2" glass, bottom drilled with a bulkhead and standpipe in each back corner. The standpipes run up into an overflow box I constructed out of 1/4" acrylic. Sort of like a Herbie, one is the primary drain and the other the overflow drain.
There is a gate valve beneath the primary and a ball valve for the overflow. These flow down into a 30 gal sump tank. First chamber is empty, sized to make it easy to net out anything that takes an accidental trip down the drain. First set of baffles sends the water down through a coarse sponge and then back up through a fine sponge. Last chamber has a few sponge filters and biomedia from the old canister, a pair of heaters and a return pump. I wanted this chamber to be as large as possible to hopefully account for the massive amounts of evaporation and eliminate the need for an ATO. So far so good, we shall see how it fares through the winter.
There is a Griggs reactor for the CO2 system made out of 2" pvc. Worked great on my Fluval 404 but not so well with the higher flow rate from the new return pump. Gets lots of bubbles in the display tank. One of these days I'll try throwing some bioballs in the reactor to see if that helps, otherwise will need to build something bigger. Autodoser rounds out the equipment list.
Crypt farm is coming along nicely. S repens didn't handle the transplanting very well. Trimmed most of it pretty hard, we'll see if it comes back in better shape. Only stem plants left are some Mermaid Weed and Hygro Siamensis. Some scattered Java fern varieties and a ton of bolbitis along the background. Surprised at how well the Erio Vietnam is doing in the shade beneath the manzanita. Small patch of mini xmass moss and a couple of buces on the wood rounds out the planting list.
Next update I will cover the new lighting that just got installed yesterday!
Joined
·
47 Posts
What beautiful pearl gouramis you have!! I am currently keeping a trio of female pearls in my 75g and absolutely love hand-feeding them everyday. My all-time favorite gourami and one of the best freshwater fish IMO.
The tank is looking spectacular so far. Definitely love the driftwood you've picked out.
The tank is looking spectacular so far. Definitely love the driftwood you've picked out.
Joined
·
370 Posts
#lovemypearls
Thanks! Really do love my pearls. I've got two generations going in this tank. Pearls get overlooked these days, but I would go so far as to say that a fully colored up male pearl gourami is the prettiest freshwater fish in the hobby. You should get your harem a man to show off to them!
I gotta give props to @ROWEBLAST for supplying and helping pick out and arrange the manzanita. The branches are attached to a lilac stump out of my backyard. Hard to get a good pic of it because of all the shadows, but the stump is hollow and forms a cave that all the botia hang out in.
Another shoutout to @Capsaicin_MFK. This was his tank before and has previously graced these forums pages.
Joined
·
934 Posts
I'm glad this tank was put to good use. Everything looks wonderful!
Joined
·
370 Posts
Let there be light!
![]()
I wanted some sort of pendant-style light for this tank, but the price on the few commonly available options is a bitter pill to swallow. Meet the newly released Aqua Illumination Prime HD Freshwater. Everything I was looking for in a fixture, for hundreds le$$ than the competition. Five channel programmable light schedule via wifi right out of the box, up to 80+ PAR @ 24". Nice, clean look that really opens up the surface of the tank for a whole new dimension of viewing pleasure.
![]()
One of my goals is to start experimenting with floating and emergent growth. My design concept for the overflow incorporated the idea of being able to use it to adjust the water level up and down seasonally. Didn't work out exactly as planned but I should be able to make some modifications in the future should I ever decide to try it.
Starting out with one of my favorite floaters, Brazilian pennywort.
![]()
This stuff grows like gangbusters for me. Took an ugly, stunted 4" stem I found languishing in my low-tech tank and six weeks later it is covering half of the surface.
I also discovered that the top of the stump is positioned perfectly to hold a wabi-kusa ball halfway out of the water.
![]()
Picked up a few of these from @j03yYunG . Not a great time of year to try and transition tropical aquatic plants to emergent growth, so we shall see how things go with this. There are a few strands of moss for now, some AR mini on top that I'm expecting to shrivel up, and a few small rhizomes of mini bolbitis around the sides.
Finally got around to rigging up a mount for the pH and temperature controllers. Plants and fish all seem to be doing fine. There are a few new inhabitants that should be coming in this week that I'm pretty exited about. Stay tuned!
I wanted some sort of pendant-style light for this tank, but the price on the few commonly available options is a bitter pill to swallow. Meet the newly released Aqua Illumination Prime HD Freshwater. Everything I was looking for in a fixture, for hundreds le$$ than the competition. Five channel programmable light schedule via wifi right out of the box, up to 80+ PAR @ 24". Nice, clean look that really opens up the surface of the tank for a whole new dimension of viewing pleasure.
One of my goals is to start experimenting with floating and emergent growth. My design concept for the overflow incorporated the idea of being able to use it to adjust the water level up and down seasonally. Didn't work out exactly as planned but I should be able to make some modifications in the future should I ever decide to try it.
Starting out with one of my favorite floaters, Brazilian pennywort.
This stuff grows like gangbusters for me. Took an ugly, stunted 4" stem I found languishing in my low-tech tank and six weeks later it is covering half of the surface.
I also discovered that the top of the stump is positioned perfectly to hold a wabi-kusa ball halfway out of the water.
Picked up a few of these from @j03yYunG . Not a great time of year to try and transition tropical aquatic plants to emergent growth, so we shall see how things go with this. There are a few strands of moss for now, some AR mini on top that I'm expecting to shrivel up, and a few small rhizomes of mini bolbitis around the sides.
Finally got around to rigging up a mount for the pH and temperature controllers. Plants and fish all seem to be doing fine. There are a few new inhabitants that should be coming in this week that I'm pretty exited about. Stay tuned!
Joined
·
370 Posts
Me too! They have only been up for a week so I can't really speak to their performance as of yet. I can say that I am very impressed with the easy set-up and programming functionality. Only real complaint is the instructions are a bit lacking for detail, but once I figured out a few little things it's actually pretty easy.
I run the controls through my iPad. Currently I have it set up for a gradual ramp from 8AM to noon, peak at about 80% until two, with a ramp down to 8PM. I keep the cool whites running low from 8-midnight for late night viewing, with a 1% blue and 1% cool white moonlight. You can even set up time periods for random "weather events" to occur with variable frequency and intensity settings for each period. I can't tell if the overall lighting dims during these "events" or if it is just random lightning flashes. Still, having preset periods for random effects is way better than the options on previous lights I have had which only had manual button controls.
Joined
·
283 Posts
I will be doing a Tank next year that is euro-braced and the top opening is 56” x 26” so something like that would work great and is more affordable than the Radion’s I am considering.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Joined
·
370 Posts
Spent the last few days doing some fine-tuning. Mixed up a new batch of ferts for the auto-doser. I had previously done N-P-K in separate containers so I could adjust them individually. Realized that I needed to recalculate doses for the larger water volume since I had it all set up for a 75 gallon. Seems I always run into solubility issues when mixing up my ferts (as in, they don't completely dissolve in solution) so I ended up combining the N-P-K into one big bottle, doubled the water to get everything to dissolve and doubled the dose size to keep levels correct. I'm set up with standard EI macros for now. Micros may still be off but I'll let the old batch run out before mixing up a new one.
Also got a new probe for the pH controller. Probably should have done that two years ago since I bought it used and it didn't come in storage solution which I hear is bad but it always seemed to calibrate properly and didn't wander too much. The new one seems very slow to react but I hopefully have it calibrated now. Also put a drop-checker in to have a second point of reference. Still need to check a degassed sample of tank water to determine my final settings. I was getting some unexpected readings last night, but the drop checker looked good and the controller was reading as expected this morning.
Still need to reevaluate my rex grigg CO2 reactor. The 1 1/2" pipe was great hooked up to a Fluval 404, but not so much with a 1,000 gph pump. Picked up some parts to try adding a valve on the outflow to increase backpressure in the reactor chamber. If that doesn't work I will either have to build a bypass or an entirely new, larger reactor.
Also got a new probe for the pH controller. Probably should have done that two years ago since I bought it used and it didn't come in storage solution which I hear is bad but it always seemed to calibrate properly and didn't wander too much. The new one seems very slow to react but I hopefully have it calibrated now. Also put a drop-checker in to have a second point of reference. Still need to check a degassed sample of tank water to determine my final settings. I was getting some unexpected readings last night, but the drop checker looked good and the controller was reading as expected this morning.
Still need to reevaluate my rex grigg CO2 reactor. The 1 1/2" pipe was great hooked up to a Fluval 404, but not so much with a 1,000 gph pump. Picked up some parts to try adding a valve on the outflow to increase backpressure in the reactor chamber. If that doesn't work I will either have to build a bypass or an entirely new, larger reactor.
Joined
·
566 Posts
Nice tank. I so wish I had a big enough tank for a pearl gourmai.
Joined
·
698 Posts
Great looking tank. It appears like you have some threadfins and the obvious pearl gouramis. Do you also have RCS and if yes, how are they doing?
Joined
·
370 Posts
Thanks! How big is your tank? I started with a pair in a 20 gallon, which was admittedly too small. I'd say a 29+ would be fine, though.
Thanks! I do have a good population of cherry shrimp right now. Last winter I broke down my shrimp tank and put the remaining dozen or so cherries in the old 75. I didn't really expect them to survive with the loaches and gouramis, but when I took down the 75 this summer there were easily hundreds of cherry shrimp. I separated out the best looking ones for the new 100 gal and sold most of the culls. Not sure how many I have now, but I regularly see babies and some of the old females are looking really nice.
I had a few culls left in a 10 gal that I decided to use as a quarantine tank for some new arrivals last week. Unfortunately I discovered that some of the new fish are straight-up shrimp murder machines. Not sure what to do about that just yet. They will have to stay in the quarantine until I figure something out...
Joined
·
566 Posts
I have a 24.1cube. I have a honey gourmai in there now
Joined
·
698 Posts
Thanks for the response and great to hear. Still not sure what I'm going to add (if anything) but it sounds like the pearl gourami are both probably good choices.
1 - 20 of 48 Posts
