90lt Planted Tank Journal

Dennis grind down the potassium sulphate (sulphate of potash) further with a pestel and mortise (if you have one) this will help it dissolve a bit better for you if its more powdery, you will not get it to dissolve fully though no matter how much you grind it but it will certainly help (a lot)

Thanks for the tip peter and the advice of tweaking the PPS-pro solution in the other post. Out of interest (this is something that darren mentioned) should I treat with a different type of fert solution for the first week in order to give the plants a good kick up the roots to grow before using the standard PPS solution?

Regards

Denis

No just start dosing straight away, Darren was using aquasoil so we only dosed potassium for the first week or so because that stuff is over loaded with nutrients when new, there is no potassium in aquasoil so you need to dose that from the start.

You will probably go through an algae stage for a few weeks, brown diatoms at least, but just stick at it, dose everyday, if you start getting bad algae do big water changes daily if nescessary and dose the ferts back in each time.

You will get a residue/sediment in the pps pro mix when it is all mixed up this is the undissolved potassium sulphate, just shake the bottle each time before you dose the ferts and the potassium in solution will dissolve in the tankwater. All the other fertilisers will dissolve for you, shake them like crazy when you are mixing them up into the solution, I usually do this in a larger, maybe 1 or 2 liter bottle to make it easier to shake (dissolve) and I wouldn't use really cold water and that will make it easier for you as well, its easy, go for it.

good! men ! show them how to do it

Well there is no turning back now! the plants and water have been added. Had a little time this afternoon so headed out to pick up some stock for the tank. I didn't really know what would be in the shops so with the aid of the Tropica brochure I went to Petstop in Blanchardstown. Although, the tropica stock had arrived in Blanch last Friday they didn't have a very wide selection of small grass plants in fact they only had two Lilaeopsis brasiliensis and Echinodorus tenellus but they but a quick reference on their suitability I decided I would take two pots of the brasili and a pot of the tenellus. I had previously been given a wade of Hemianthus callitrichoides so that makes a total of three species being used in this setup.



Plant on the left plate is Lilaeopsis brasiliensis
Plant on the top plate is Echinodorus tenellus
and the big ball of green on the right is Hemianthus callitrichoides

The first thing I did was strip down the plants to individual stems to get the most bang for my buck. Usually there is a little of the pot material left on the plant roots but it seemed like that plants had only been in the pots for a few weeks and sufficient rooting hadn't occurred yet for this to happen, so I was dealing with bare-root stock. I tried to placed everything out in some sort of orderly fashion to make planting as easy as possible.



Planting took well over an hour as each piece of vegetation had to be inserted into the gravel using a pair of fine nose tweezers. To keep everything moist I used a fine spray gun and when everything was planted I used an airline to fill up the tank with water so as not to disturb the tiny greenery with their minute rooting systems.





Close up of the HC with the Lilaeopsis brasiliensis in the background.


I will post a picture of the tank with the water in it once it has cleared up slightly.


Now, roll on the algae battle!

Your going well with it Denis
keep up the good work

Regards
Donal

looks well so far keep it up and keep us posted with pic's as it matures should be stunning

You did a great job splitting up the plants Dennis.
It takes me days to plant small plants like that.
I am away this weekend so i will collect the potassium sulphate the following weekend if that suits. I may even get a sneak view of the tank;)

Just before I add in the next few pictures I would just like to say thank you for all your comments. I've really enjoyed putting this tank together and hopefully with a bit of luck and a lot of time it will turn out the way I see it in my head.

Now the the journal part. I was happy to find that everything turned on this morning for the first time as it was meant to. The co2 kicked in at 2 bubbles per second 20mins before the lights came on, I also added my co2 bell to give an indication of the level of co2 in the tank. Although I got the bottle of regent with the co2 bell, I'm not using it and I am going down the road of 4kh solution and the brom blue from the nutrafin low range pH test kit. At present it is showing a lovely green colour and is stable. I also dosed 2ml of the PPS-pro solution, thus, the ball is well and truly rolling now!

The water still hasn't cleared yet but I would think that is a result of the clay from the tropica plant substrate and the fact that some of it was moved to the surface during planting. I'm also unhappy about the amount of visible equipment in the tank but since I'm trying to do this on a shoe string I will have to wait a little while before I get the glass filter pipes and make the inline heater case. Other than that I'm pleased with how it looks and there have been no major problems (touch wood), the odd piece of HC floats to the surface but I'm not to concerned considering the amount I planted.



I do like how the hood is only supported by one upright (very minimalist).



Another view

platty252 wrote:

I am away this weekend so i will collect the potassium sulphate the following weekend if that suits. I may even get a sneak view of the tank;)

No problem Darren, give me a heads up when you are going to pick it up and I will put the kettle on.

Well I had my first sign of algae today and it just so happened to coincide with a visit from platty. I noticed it after he left (very suspicious)! What was in that bag of water you emptied into my tank Darren?

Anyways, I did a large water change and retreated with ferts. I have a feeling that this will not be the last time that I have to do water changes to help keep the algae at bay. Other than that the plants are beginning to grow, particularly the HC and it is the first time I have gotten plants to pearl with the amount of oxygen that they are giving off.







I have also been playing with different coloured background from use with two white cold cathode tubes to provide uplighting up the back pane of the tank. It adds for a nice effect but during the day the green looks awful. If I do decide to go with a background I will most likely go for white, silver or grey.




Denis

tanks_alot wrote:

Well I had my first sign of algae today and it just so happened to coincide with a visit from platty. I noticed it after he left (very suspicious)! What was in that bag of water you emptied into my tank Darren?
Denis

It was only a bag of green water. It wont do much harm:laugh:
I had assumed you had seen the algae on the rock and didn't want to rub salt into your wounds by mention it.
You spend to much time painting and not enough time looking at your tank.
Dont worry you can laugh back at me when i start my next algae/planted tank.
Thanks for the potash which i forgot to pay for. I will fix you up later.
Darren.

Man O' Man! It went from a small green area on top of a rock to a hair algae bloom of epic proportions. I preceded to make the algae bloom worse by doing a number of stupid things and not being able to recognise what the actual cause of the problem was. With some handy pointers from some people on a aquarium plant specific forum, I will have hopefully manged to reach some sort of equilibrium in the tank between the light, co2 and nutrients.




So this is what happened;

The Lilaeopsis brasiliensis was still not growing and was beginning to turn yellow and curl so I thought it was a direct result of insufficient light and nutrients, so I lowered the light box and increased the nutrient dosing.






BIG MISTAKE! The plants turned even yellower, cast their leaves and algae ran rampant in the tank. The cause for the problem was insufficient co2 even though the drop checker was green there sill wasn't sufficient co2 for the intensity of the light. I had also been dosing lean with the co2 because I didn't want my newly acquired ottos to suffer. So, it remedy the situation I have removed the eight seven ottos and have whacked the co2 so that the drop checker is reading a very bright yellow colour. Hopefully this will provide sufficient co2 for the required enzyme activity within the plant.

I also had a small condensation problem in the light box since it had been lowered to be flush with the tank. So I added a small 12V PC motherboard cooling fan to extract the air from the hood and draw in dry air from the room. The major problem with this was trying to get the fan to run very slowly and at 3V is still ran to fast and was very audible, so I placed a 50% resistor in the live wire to cut the voltage in half and the made the fan run at 1.5V. Perfect!










How the tank looks at the moment

tank and pics look great denis. is that fan hooked up to a battery?

Howdy folks, I will try and get some more pictures up over the weekend and write a more indepth diary about how things have been going to date. Most likely wont be until Sunday as I have a busy weekend ahead of me. All I can say it that it is all ahead of you Darragh! I hope you have lots of hair to pull out because you are going to need it.

The computer cooling fan is hooked up to a very cheap 12v A/C converter, it would run off a battery but it would constantly need to be replaced so its easier to run it off the mains. The lowest the A/C adapter goes to is 3 volts and this was still far to strong and the fan was obnoxiously loud so I put a 50% resistor in the live wire so theoretically it should only be allowing 1.5 volts reach the fan. This is the perfect amount of energy as the fan doesn't make any noise and keeps the condensation at bay.

Doesn't sound great Denis any hair left!!

It would appear that achieving that \"unique balance\" is a little trickier that I had originally thought. The hair algae has continued to be a thorn in my side and requires manual removal every two days or so. Removing the algae from the tennellus and brasiliensis isn't that big of a problem but trying to remove it from the HC is a cruse due to the planlette forming nature and very shallow rooting. Thus, every-time you get near it large clumps lift from the substrate and need to be replaced. Today was a particularly bad day for algae as due to my very busy weekend I didn't get to do a water change for (shock horror) three days. The foreground had turned into one solid lump of algae. Although the HC is growing well the algae seems to be forcing it upwards in clumps. So this evening, I got angry and whipped out the \"large\" scissors and cut it all back to the substrate and this removed the majority of the algae. If this wasn't good enough, I found a very good network of small plantlettes that had grown through the substrate and where happily living below the noxious layer of green slime. Hopefully, these will take and start to form the carpet effect that I would like to achieve.

The tenellus is doing ok and has begun to spread and throw out runners. However, in the absence of the ottos (due to the high level of co2) green spot algae has started to make an appearance and is becoming prevalent on the older leaves. I might try and reduce the level of co2 so I can reintroduce a few of the larger ottos, but then the brasiliensis will decline due to a lack of co2. \"is is definitely a tricky business trying to find the balance\". Speaking of brasiliensis, its still growing very slowly but it sprouting runners daily and little leaves are appearing from the substrate more frequently.

Here are two pics of the tank as of this evening. Apologies for all the floating debris but it was just after a major pruning and algae removal mission.





Regards

Denis

That's a bummer with the algae. When i get algae problems i use an old tooth brush. Twist it to gather the algae. Only remove small amounts at a time with the HC Cuba to prevent pulling it from the substrate.

The tank is looking well and you can see were the plants have spread.

Well its creeping up on three weeks since I last posted an update regarding this tank so I thought it about time to give a brief overview of what has been going on. It been a very busy month for me so I haven't had a lot of time to work on the tank and I was away for 12 days which didn't help matters at all.

In my absence a member of my family decided to \"help\" the tank and in doing so, turned off the co2, caused a leak in the external filter plumbing and before anyone noticed the tank emptied itself onto the floor and into a room down stairs. I arrived back to a half empty tank and a giant mass of algae. However, all was back to normal after an evening of maintenance of repair. But my carpet sinks of fish tank water! plus I have to paint an entire ceiling once it dries!

The biggest adjustments I made was to remove the Lilaeopsis brasilinesis from the tank apart from a small pocket on the front left hand side and in the middle of the tank. After a number of different attempts and strategies to get the brasililesis to grow I opted for the simple loser strategy of failure and replaced it with tenellus. Not only would the brasiliesis not grow but it also suffered badly from GSA and new leaves would be covered rapidly. The tenellus is growing well and the HC is beginning to close canopy and starting to form a carpet effect excluding the front right hand side of the tank. This is more than likely a result of a lack of light in the corner or poor water circulation. Hopefully it will develop in time! I am still having a small problem with hair algae on the HC but it is beginning to reduce as the level of plant biomass in the tank increases. I also reduced the level of co2 and fert input so I could reintroduce the ottos to help with the GSA on the tenellus leaves. Hopefully in another month with more biomass in the tank I will be able to reach a decent co2, nutrient balance in the tank and things will look a lot lusher than they do at the moment.

I'm getting a delivery of a wide angle lens during the week so hopefully I will be able to take a couple of better photographs.

Regards

Denis

Picture of the tank as of today. (Sorry about the water clarity as I was removing more bralilinesis last night and it put sediment into the water column)

\"

the tank emptied itself onto the floor and into a room down stairs

.\"

Welcome to my world. You got off lightly only having to paint a ceiling. Wait until you have to replace ceilings and carpets etc.
Shame about the algae, although i'm having a belt of it myself at the moment but that's another story.
You could try adding liquid Co2 along with the gas to keep the levels up. But i'm not sure how this will effect the Otto's.
Apart from that the tank is looking well.

Thanks Darren, Sorry I didnt reply to your PM but I've just got back from Mayo which is a bit of a dead zone when it comes to the internet. As for adding liquid Co2, I'm sure that the method I'm using at the moment is getting enough co2 into the tank but I've just had to limit it due to the presence of the ottos. I also think that I have been adding too much ferts and as mentioned on UKAPS I might not have a sufficient amount of PO4 in the mix as I'm developing some GSA.

Its all a learning curve but as the biomass increases in the tank I seem to be getting less and less hair algae. Fingers crossed that it goes away! You about next Saturday, I have to visit whackers on the long mile road and I can drop off the soil if you are about.

The green spot algae can be a nuisance. Add the phosphate separately to see how you get on with it. Save you having to do another fertz mix.
By the time the HC covers the bottom you will probably find the algae has gone from view.
I'm not sure if i will be around on Sat. I will know closer to then and give you a bell to let you know.

Howdy, another quick update regarding the tank. Its all beginning to run smoothly, this I think is a direct result of greatly reducing the amount of fertz that I have been adding to that tank. At present the only thing I am adding is Tropica Plant Nutrition at 1ml a day. It seems to be doing the trick as the plants are growing and the algae has gone. Co2 is running at about 1-2 bubbles a second and all inhabitants are healthy. The HC has all but carpeted the bottom of the tank and the tennelus is growing rampantly.


I also added a few shrimp

4 x Sun-Kissed shrimp and 5 x Ghost Shrimp (there is a Japanese name but I can remember it). The ghost shrimp are breeding and there are two females holding eggs in their undercarriage. When I stopped the filter today to take photographs I noticed 100's of small white creatures moving around the tank. I will post a snap later. I though however that juvenile shrimp need salt water to survive? I don't hold any hope of them surviving as the 12 times water turn over in the tank should suck up all those little shrimplets in no time at all.









Regards

Denis

Looking good Denis, nearly there, great effort for your first serious attempt!

Thanks very much for the goods the other week Denis, picked them up off Darren, owe you a pint for that mate, very much appreciated.

I like it Denis. I like it a lot.
The chances are these are baby shrimp (called zoes at this stage) you see in the tank. They need to be put into salt water (34ppm salinity)after 3-4 days after been born. They are photo-tropic and need light 24/7. The longest i have seen them alive in fresh water was 2 weeks.
They are fed phytoplankton for a few days and then crushed flake will do. After a couple of weeks they can be acclimitised back to fresh water. Adults cant be placed in salt water or they will die.
I know you probably wont do this but i just taught i would trow that bit of info in incase anyone else was interested.
Oh! the name you were looking for was candina japonica ( ghost shrimp/ amano shrimp).

Thanks for the info Darren, I have been toying with the idea of taking a couple of the \"Zoes\" (as you called them) out of the water column with a pipette and placing them in a five liter tank that I have spare. The next question is are they truly \"tropical\" or can I just keep them in a tank without a heater. I am always interested in trying to raise new aquatic animals and this would be my first invertebrate! When you say you need to make up a 34ppm salinity solution can I used ordinarily non-ionoized sea salt or will I have to buy a bucket of the \"special salt\" from the LFS?

Also where would I get my hands on phytoplankton.

Out of curiosity! what is the salinity in PPM of normal sea water. I know of an abundant supply not to far from my house and I'm sure it would be full of phytoplankton!

Thanks again for the info and the comments!

Denis

You could try them at room temp but 22-24c would be the norm for raising them.
You could use non-ionized salt but i think salt designed for sea salt mix for marine aquariums is generally used.
It should have read 34ppt salinity not ppm. sorry about that. Anything from 27-34ppt (1.020-1.025sg) is reported to work fine. You could just use the sea water from across your road. Should work fine.
For feeding you can buy bottles of phytoplankton or feed them on powdered yeast.
I dont know the salinity of the Irish sea. Different sea's/oceans can have different salinity and even in each it can have a higher or lower density of salt. I think it averages between 28-37ppt salinity.