My Farm Tank
By: StrungOut
July 9th, 2014
2:14 am
I figured I’d start a journal here now. This is post beginning, the tank was setup May 11, 2014. So starting at July 8th, 2014.
Specs
30”x30”x13” standard glass cube ?frag? tank (equivalent to around 50gallons)
Lighting: 2 30” finnex planted plus, 1 finnex original fugeray (started 1 month with the 2 planted plus only)
Filtration: SunSun I believe 303-b, uv sterilizer does not work, rated for 75 gallons I think
Co2: cheap unknown to me regulator, atomic gla largest diffuser, feeds into the filter intake
Substrate: ada Amazonia (2 9l bags), ada Africana (2 9l bags)
Water: pure ro water reconstituted w/seachem equilibrium
Fauna:
Pair japan blue endlers
Some royal blue tiger culls
Plantlist:
Some of these are single stems, looking to be propagated
Syngonanthus hybrid
Syngonanthus belem
Syngonanthus manaus
Syngonanthus madeira
Syngonanthus lago grande
Tonina fluviatillis
Tonina fluviatillis lotus blossom
Eriocaulon japan shiga
Eriocaulon aussie type II
Eriocaulon sieboldanium
Trithuria blood *****
Eriocaulon parkeri
Ludwigia tornado
Ludwigia senegalensis
Ludwigia North Carolina
Ludwigia …. pantanal
Rotala Mexicana goias
Rotala pearl type?
Rotala Mexicana green
Rotala Mexicana bangledesh
‘monte carlo’
Elatine hydropiper
Rotala macrandra green
Rotala macrandra japan red
Alternanthera reineckii variegated
Buce brownie red
Lileaposis Chinensis 'Maryland'
Some key tips on how I was successful:
I must of tried like 5 times or so and failed each time with algae or plants melting. Well, try try and try again, I gave up many times, wasted a lot of money, but passion to grow the syngonanthus plant alone kept me coming back.
First off if your gonna use ada Amazonia then you must do water changes. Water change is a must anyways, I believe in low tech and high tech, high tech being the greater amount. I did almost daily water changes in the start. Ammonia leech may or may not melt plans but it will cause algae, which nobody wants unless its that red algae.
Pack as many plants as you can in there
O2, Co2, get this right and it will solve most of your issues, I didn’t need to fertilize the first month or so on, diffusion method is vary important too. You can blast a glass diffuser and all the bubbles are going to do is rise to the surface with less diffusion rate. I’d suggest not adding fish right away so you can really mess around with the co2. Lots of flow is a good thing, keeps o2 levels up and mixes the co2 in the water level too. Proper mixing is important when doing a co2 tank.
Photoperiod, start off with 5 hrs a day, make sure you don’t get algae(it can get bad very fast), plants will do fine, then when the system is ready you can really up your lighting period
Start off with lower light, you may have a lot higher light then you expect.
Learn to trim, plant. This will keep things neater and not let your tank get too overgrown(I am guilty of this). Propagation? Trim a sideshoot and replant or however a plant produces, do it fast and you multiply that plant fast.
Post Reply
65 comments on "My Farm Tank"
July 9, 2014 at 11:29 am
Very nice! and good tips! I love the foot print of your tank, low and wide, I want something like that once I have the space.
July 9, 2014 at 12:06 pm
I'll be watching this :P
Mind showing pictures of the different Syngonanthus you have? I don't see most of those varieties being well documented online (unless I'm looking in the wrong places).
July 9, 2014 at 3:21 pm
Very nice! and good tips! I love the foot print of your tank, low and wide, I want something like that once I have the space.
I'll be watching this :P
Mind showing pictures of the different Syngonanthus you have? I don't see most of those varieties being well documented online (unless I'm looking in the wrong places).
July 9, 2014 at 3:31 pm
How I inject co2 into the tank. The sun sun is a huge filter and acts like a big reactor. The efficiency is pretty high, but I do get burpage here and there.
co2 - YouTube
good streamline of o2
pearlin - YouTube
July 10, 2014 at 1:59 am
So I got my plants in from the Ukraine today, seems I got rear-ended on the deal. I got different erios but they’re not the ones I ordered. It took a week and a half to arrive so most plants are in such bad shape I can’t really tell them apart. Some look recoverable though.
Heres what I ordered:
blyxa alternifolia
erio ratonagiriuuni
erio polaris
mayaca santarem red
mayaca sellowiniana
mayaca paraguay red
rotala araguiia
rotala maka red
erio an son river
limnophila belem
couple of pics of what I actually got. I hope to save these plants and import somewhere else.
This erio looks awesome, came with roots but nothing else going for it, I really hope it throws out a leaf
Pile of who knows...
Looks like erio goias which would suck as I already have one coming from a friend on the way
July 10, 2014 at 11:41 am
Good luck with the getting the plants healthy, I thought about ordering from Europe before, but I think I may order some plants from japan instead now.
I found someone in japan that can ship me, Eriocaulon sp. "Cu Chi Viet Nam", Eriocaulon cinereum "Japan", Eriocaulon sp. Polaris "An son River Viet Nam", Eriocaulon sp. "Ratnagiri India" (although not the really small one, this one had longer leaves), shipping was 55 and also 15 for the proper customs paperwork, but they said it is express (3-4 day world wide shipping) so I may end up ordering a few.
I like that you are trying to bring some rare plants from over seas into the hobby though, very cool
July 11, 2014 at 12:32 am
Good luck with the getting the plants healthy, I thought about ordering from Europe before, but I think I may order some plants from japan instead now.
I found someone in japan that can ship me, Eriocaulon sp. "Cu Chi Viet Nam", Eriocaulon cinereum "Japan", Eriocaulon sp. Polaris "An son River Viet Nam", Eriocaulon sp. "Ratnagiri India" (although not the really small one, this one had longer leaves), shipping was 55 and also 15 for the proper customs paperwork, but they said it is express (3-4 day world wide shipping) so I may end up ordering a few.
I like that you are trying to bring some rare plants from over seas into the hobby though, very cool
Pics from July 8th
Different pics of my tank
some erios, mini pellia, syngonanthus and others in pic
syngonanthus lago grande and hybrid
ludwigia north carolina
Lileaposis Chinensis 'Maryland', I'll never memorize this name, floating in the tank, no where put it yet
Eriocaulon sectaceum
July 12, 2014 at 7:46 pm
This is just 5 stems of syngonanthus I pulled out for a customer today
July 12, 2014 at 7:47 pm
Some nice sized stems. I didn't realize they get roots like that though.
July 12, 2014 at 8:10 pm
Yeah they grab lots of soil with, usually I swish around the roots in the water so all the soil falls down.