New pictures of plant tank

[Eva32181]

Hey everybody. I took some new pictures of my planted 55 gallon tank. Here is the link if you're interested:

http://www.angelfire.com/fl5/eva32181/

Soon to be home to apistos, if I can only figure out what kind I want, how many I want, adults or juveniles, basically I'm just confused. I hope Neil isn't getting annoyed with my emails asking questions yet! Can't wait to get some apistos fro him tho!

Eva

 

[farm41]

Looks good, you are going to get awful crowded in there with all those swords.

How much light do you have?

 

[Eva32181]

just 110 watts. I didn't want to have a super-bright fast growing tank, just a nice moderate one to keep the plants happy. When the swords do start to get too big, well, guess I'll be selling a few on aquabid, or giving them to my LFS.

Thanks

 

[farm41]

Don't just give them to the lfs, they should give store credit at the least. I do it all the time, almost every weekend I take in something for trade.

 

[Eva32181]

Bah! They don't give credit for plants. They are more SW and african cichlid oriented anyway. But, maybe I can wear 'em down a little. They do have a plant tank as one of their displays, though. Covered in brush algae. With two discus hiding in it somewhere. That they refuse to sell.

 

[farm41]

Is that your only lfs? Gainesville should have a lfs that is interested in plants.

 

[Eva32181]

No, there are five altogether. But Aquatropics is my favorite. Their plants aren't so great, though. There is a smaller store that seems to have more plants. I don't know. My plants haven't gotting big enogh to worry about selling excess. Cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, I just want to figure out what kind of apistos to put in htere. Feeling totally lost.

 

[farm41]

You have a lot of choices. What's your water like? Ph? Kh? Gh?

I've only had cacs, they are a nice apisto and you can have more that one female. I have them in a 60g, 1 male and 3 females, and may still have room for another pair.

Good luck deciding

 

[Eva32181]

pH around 6.4, GH around 4, KH around 2, temp around 80F. It's more acidic in the morning than at night. According to the pH table on Tropica, this means I have 26.5 ppm CO2.

I think I'm going to order a group of juvenile rams and cacatuoides from Neil for the 55g tank. Does this sound like a good combination?

 

[farm41]

Yea that sounds good, I would like to get some rams for my tank too.
I'd sure like to have that kind of water parameters.

Are you injecting co2?

If not, something is off on the testing.

 

[Eva32181]

D.I.Y. CO2 only. I have two soda bottles with a suga/water/yeast solution hooked up to a third soda bottle filled with plain water, which acts as a sump. From there it goes up to the tank through a check valve and is realeased by an air stone. Above I have a homemade CO2 bell (plastic water bottle cut open) which acts as a reactor. Very inexpensive, but if I don't change to CO2 solution often my pH goes up quickly. I have very hard, basic water coming out of my tap (Florida being limestone). It goes straight into the tank, all I add to condition the water is Seachem's Prime.

Rams are great fish. Very pretty. What kind of setups do you have now?

 

[farm41]

That's pretty impressive co2 levels in a 55g for only 2 bottles of diy. I couldn't get it there with mine and 4 bottles.

Now I'm using pressurized.

You say you have hard water coming out of your tap, but Kh 2 and Gh 4. How's that happen?

 

[Eva32181]

Water softener pillow. Big one. Some kind of resin, I dunno. I recahrge it by soaking it in salt water for a few hours.

I use red star active dry yeast and granulated brown sugar. Tons of it. (I work in a health food store.) I think red star is better than that regular grocery food store junk.

So why are you rebuilding your tank?

 

[farm41]

The rebuild is done, I had some fish come down with TB, so I sterilized the whole thing.

Now I have orange cacs in there and it looks like the second spawn is coming up right now, hope I get some baby's this time.

I don't know much about softening water, but, I think most use an RO unit.

Tons of sugar I know, tell me about it, I was using diy on 4 tanks and using 10 bottles, buy it in bulk. I got tired of mixing yeast and sugar and finally bought 2 5lb bottles of co2. Try it you'll like it.

 

[Eva32181]

Orange cacs are really pretty, at least the one's I've seen on this page are. So would you your apistos and plant tanks are going well together? Do you ever get any CO2 / pH fluctuations that stress the apistos?

 

[farm41]

None yet, my Ph doesn't change more than .2 at any time. I'm not sure what effect your water softener will have on your buffering capacity.

Are you getting some fluctuations?

I think having a Kh of less than 3 has a danger of a Ph crash when injecting co2. Be careful. Can you let the Kh come up a little?

 

[Eva32181]

That is a good point. I think I am going to try this: stop using the water softener pillow, but continue to inject CO2 at a rate that will give me a 6.5 reading. See what happens. Naturally my tapwater is high in GH but not KH. Everything I don't need.

 

[Eva32181]

You asked about fluctuations. Right.

When I forget to refill my CO2 (which I did last week) the pH drifts up to a max of 7.2. I think the high of 7.2 was caused by a very large water change done without getting the CO2 up to max output first. That's the trouble with diy, though. You can't set the amount of CO2 you want on a dial. You just have to eyeball it, so to speak. And put a lot of faith in the accuracy of your test kits. :wink:

 

[farm41]

If you let your Kh come up make sure you bring the Ph up too, or co2 can get to dangerous levels. I hope you have had a look at this http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/CO2/kh-ph-co2-chart.html 'The Krib' is just full of info.

When I was using diy I would make a new bottle every 7 days on the 60g tank and had 4 bottles all tee'd together. With a new batch coming on every 7 days the output would be very consistant. I used 3 on my 55g changing every 10 days, 2 on my 38g changing at 14 day intervals. Another way to keep the output steady is to put the bottles in a bucket of water with a small heater.

Are you using the standard recipe of 2 cups sugar, 1/8tsp yeast, and a pinch baking soda in a 2 liter bottle?

 

[Eva32181]

Ummmm no. I just dump a bunch of sugar in there and then a teaspoon of yeast.

This is why I have had my tank set up since christmas but have only got 14 tetras in it, and until recently a pair of rams. Not because all my fish are dying or anything, but because I wanted to play with parameters endlessly until I got it right. See how putting peat in the substrate worked, try different ways of reacting CO2 (had in the intake of my aquaclear - very friggin noisy). I wanted to be able to rearrange the plants on a daily basis without having to worry about stessing out any delicate fish.

Now I have the plants the way I want them, and I'm into the habit of twice weekly water changes (formerely planning on making this a discus tank, but now I am intimidated, plus apistos are cooler), so all I need to figure out now is what CO2 levels to maintain.

I really like your plan of staggering CO2 refills. How did you figure out when the bottles needed refilling? Before I would wait until my plants stop pearling or my reactor stopped filling. Not going to work if I'm worried about keeping apistos though. I was thinking maybe refill one bottle every seven days? Or more often? I just have to figure this out.

So you got pics of your tank online or what?