Kurt Reinhart

Your tanks looks great. I would easily get lost while staring into it and observing the complexitiy and activity of fish & shrimp. Great job! Especially for someone in Idaho (just kidding). : )

Kurt

kitfoxdrvr

Guaiac Boy:

Gorgeous tank and great build thread! I would sure love to be around your trash can right after one of your trimmings. My 180 could use some of the diversity you have in your tank. Alas, Idaho is too long a drive from North Carolina.

I may have missed it, but what temp are you running? I have considered the Hydor inlines, but I need to maintain 84 degrees (discus tank) and am curious as to whether two of these units can keep that level. You are also keeping some plants that I am interested in trying, but I don't know if they can stand the heat, so to speak! Do you source your plants locally or via mail?

Thanks!
Steve

BryceM

Questin:
Yeah, the galaxy rasboras are pretty feisty for their size. The best schoolers are the rummynose. Congos are second best, followed by harlequin rasboras and finally cardinal tetras.

For some reason the corries only school occasionally and the sidthimunki loaches sort of loosely hang out together.

Puttyman:
My tank has a fair bit of equipment which is visible inside. The two Eheim canister filters each have an intake and return. Those aren't too bad, but if you look you can see them. The closed-loop system has a 1" PVC drain line which comes up over the back wall and down to a strainer near the substrate. The 3/4" PVC return line also comes up over the back wall and down the center of the tank to a spraybar which is located out of sight along the back wall. Drilling holes for those two items would have removed two large sections of visible white PVC. The trade off would be the potential for issues with the bulkheads. They can leak and doing any sort of maintenance on them would require draining the tank completely.

It might be fun to try a "reef-ready" type of system next time with internal overflows and such. Something that automatically skimmed the surface would be a big plus and it would make an automated water change system easier to do. I dunno - they have their own problems and it almost requires that you go with a sump.

kitfoxdrvr:
The tank is at about 74.5 F in the AM and about 76 or 77 by lights-out in the evening. I don't know about the Hydors for sure but I suspect that two 300W units would easily hold 84F unless your tank was in a very cold environment. I was amazed at how fast the Hydors can get this tank warmed up.

As for plants, the majority of them are from trades at local plant club meetings and from other people here at APC. A few of the slow growers like anubias and crypts are from on-line vendors.

dennis

Wow, your tank has really come along Bryce. How about a new FTS?

BryceM

Hey Dennis - long time no see. You're still alive! Still in school? Any aquariums up and running?

I just did a huge whack yesterday. In a week or so I'll get some photos done. I've got a spot up front that is starting to fill in with Elatine triandra. I don't know how I ever missed that beauty. What a nice, full, short plant. It really fills around the hardscape nicely.

voiceofid

great journal! the tank looks fantastic and it makes me almost want to throw the cichlids away on my 100g and start something like this! except my wife would probably kill me because she loves her cichlids

i would also like to point out the fact that you did the carpet, the plumbing and the wiring, i guess there are skills in all of us we may one day use

taekwondodo

I'm having issues with CO2 in my 125 and saw you are using a 3"x18" PVC tower (what is the flow direction, and what do you have inside the reactor?)

I'm just inserting the CO2 at the beginning of my closed loop (with SCWD). I have about 10' of total flex-pipe with a QO3100 and an SWCD and just bubbling the crap out of it right now to get the pH to move down a tenth of a point or so.

I do have a sump that uses a 2' wide "overflow" in the back of the tank (made a black acrylic 2'x3.5"x2" "skimmer" along the back top of the tank) - did you notice any loss of CO2 when you started skimming the top of the water?

BryceM

I designed my CO2 reactor to make use of Stokes Law. The basic idea is that a large bubble rises more quickly than a small bubble in a fluid (think hairgel). If water velocity through the reactor is too high, it will carry along large CO2 bubbles and they won't have time to dissolve completely. If you get the velocity low enough (by using a large diameter pipe), only miniscule CO2 bubbles can exit the bottom. If they do, they probably have time to dissolve before they re-enter the aquarium through the spraybar.

Water enters the top of my reactor and exits the bottom so flow is downward. CO2 is bubbled in about 1/3 of the way down. There isn't anything inside but water and CO2. When the solenoid turns on you can hear a gentle gurggling sound up at the top of the reactor. All of this churning produces lots of surface area and the CO2 dissolves quite rapidly. I also believe it's as close to 100% dissolution as is possible.

I didn't notice any issues with CO2 loss by using surface skimming, but I use a pH controller and it would be difficult to detect a small increase in CO2 consumption. The Eheim skimmer is quite small though and I doubt it makes much difference.

voiceofid:

Thanks for the kind words. One of the funnest parts of the hobby for me is the mixture of electronics, lighting, photography, biology, art, and experimentation. The sum is much greater than the parts.

taekwondodo

I get almost nothing but an almost dissolved fine mist coming out of my closed loop - I am going to be (hopefully) swapping out my 2x175MHs for 3x150DEs this weekend. While I'm doing this major retrofit, I'll put some 3" PVC in-line after the pump and see how it works...

I'll keep you updated.

Thanks.

- Jeff

BryceM

Maybe you just aren't using enough? It does take a huge quantity of CO2 to get the pH down in a tank this size. My bubble counter produces almost a steady line of large CO2 bubbles, hundreds & hundreds per minute. A 20 lb tank lasts about 5 or 6 months.