peet

Very short and noisey videos I will update with better ones. My angels just had a hatch and I want to get the fry before they get eaten by the Columbian tetra army

Your igwami rock work is fantastic SamH... very Amano, cant wait to see it grow in.

Tank update pics. Angels are breeding every couple of days, havent seen columbian babies again but the last brood are probably making short work of anything smaller than a neon.

So where can we get it???? I dose it daily into my tank.... Wld be nice to find a cheaper source

Hi Angus... I'm no expert, I'd be searching the Barr Report site for info and if you can't find it join up for a year and ask all the tricky sump questions. The guys on the Barr Report are big on overflows and sumps so I am sure they will be able to help. Cheers - peet

I have also got wild glosso in my tank and have found it takes quite a long time to adjust to tank light and temp i.e. Months!!!! It tends to carpet better if you trim it low.

Hi Angus - I did a bit of research and there was mixed opinion as to whether the overflow causes significant CO2 loss if there wasnt much splashing. I had my CO2 bottle for a year at $150 rent, took it in to see how much gas I had used and it came out at 1kg (7kg bottle) for the entire year!!! I figured I can double or triple my CO2 rate to compensate for the loss through the filter and still achieve required ppm. The cost of the gas itself is cheap. I managed to buy an almost new Marine Sources 2500 L/hr overflow. Its perfect for my 350 L tank, but would probably go bigger for a bigger tank. It has a bean animal overflow and is pretty quiet. Hi amtiskaw... you may to ask Tom that on the Barr Report forum (some parts of the forum are free). My guess is that the plants are more efficient than the algae at converting the nutrients so when you provide everything at excess (but still balanced) the plant will outcompete the algae. The algae supposedly grows when there is unbalance. But if you look at that forum you will see that even the pros suffer from unknown algae issues. Ive always been of the opinion that it takes time for a tank to settle down... mind you as soon as I started following the advice from these guys my algae rapidly went away (with regular doses of chemicals mind you!!!). Cheers - peet

Tank Update: Well you will see from the pics that things are really going well. I consistently get a pH of 6.3 by dosing by CO2 directly into the housing of my return pump. I cant hear it shattering the bubbles when the door is closed and although I get heaps of micro bubbles in the tank now I dont find them distracting or ugly. And today I got my t5 HO light fitting. It has 3 sets of double bulbs which can me turned off so that I only have 4 bulbs running at the moment. Unfortunately it came with 10,000K bulbs which I will need to replace with 6500K ones over the next couple of weeks. The water remains crystal clear all week going through my overflow sump filter and my columbian tetras have produced a nice batch of fry which the angels have amazingly left alone. I am dosing Excel every second day at a rate of 5ml per 200 litres, also dosing API algaefix at the same rate every second day. BGA and BBA are almost gone and am slowly removing affected older leaves. New leaves seem to be clear of it and I am hoping to get some ottos and SAE to deal to any new stuff before it grows. Glossostigma is taking off and background plants are filling out. I am really starting to enjoy the tank again. Thanks to Tom Barr and Dutchy at the Barr Report for their excellent advice.

I tried it. Setup a massive spreadsheet with weekly testing.... Did nothing to my algae. I have yet to hear about any widespread success with redfield ratio. To much testing. EI is dead easy. I never test except co2. i joined the barr report and followed their advice. Used regular excel doses and api algaecide and mine has cleared up nicely. BTW I EI dose.

I just use potting mix from bunnings. I feed premium dog pellets soaked in water for a few mins.... Worms seem to do great. I chuck out half the old mix every couple of months and mix in new potting mix to keep it fresh

After a nightmare of algae problems I finally decided to head to the best for advice.... I paid for an annual Tom Barr - Barr Report subscription and got some expert advice from both Tom and some of his admin gurus. Basically the advice was: 1.) More filtration and flow (have a powerhead running for 15mins every hour and I manually change the direction a couple of times a week to keep the flow). I am part way through building a sump (as per image) which will have a wet/dry filter + house the heaters and CO2 diffuser. The system utilises a Marine Sources HOB overflow meant for a reef but Tom and many others are now using this on their FW tanks. Flow out of the sump is via pump to 2x outlets at each end of the tank with adjustable direction to enable flow to be spread around the tank. 2.) Less light but maintain 8hrs photo period (At present I have achieved this by raising the MH lights). Long term I will look at purchasing some T5 lights. I also replaced my old 4000K bulbs with 6500K bulbs as the old ones were more than 5 years old. 3.) Increase fertilisation. At their reccomendation I am using double the normal EI dose... contrary to popular belief the algae is diminishing. I have stopped testing for PO4 and NO3. 4.) Increase CO2 - I am building a new CO2 reactor out of a coke bottle and powerhead as per the following link. I hope to get a lot more CO2 difusion + will be near the intake of the sump pump (2500 L/hr) so will be pushed all around the tank compared to the miserable flow I get out of my aquaone CF1200 at the moment. 5.) I am trying to get my stem plants growing like mad again and then I will worry about plant layout and species once algae issues are sorted. Already the presence of green spot, BGA and orange snot has diminished considerably. Will update again once the setup is completed over the next couple of weeks. 600 l x 500 h x 450 wide sump to go under cabinet. Baffles to be put in tomorrow night and then source some DIY filter media.

Does anyone use these light fittings for their planted tanks http://www.highfivelighting.co.nz/ I spoke to the manufacturer today and they advised that they can do them on 6500K bulbs and that they are aware of aqaurium users who have them over their tanks.. but could not tell me whether they were working on planted tanks? The price is pretty good at around $170 for a unit...

AAGGGGGGHHHH I'm hopless at keeping discus...I am about to lose my second discus in 6 months.... I dont know whether its the temp. I've been keeping the tank at 27 C or diet, water condition.... but this one has gone from really outgoing hungry fish to totally stopping eating and retiring to back of tank - soooo skinny now I cant even look at him. Today he is breathing heavily and resting on his side amoungst the plants. My mate gave me these two discus and he wasnt doing anything special and they seemed absolutely fine for years... 12 months with me has put an end to their happiness....... Perhaps he has a parasite... no skin problems like hole in the head or white spot and he has retained good colour, just really skinny and bony.... If anyone in TGA thinks they can bring him back from the brink feel free to pm me.. IGNORE THE ABOVE, I've had to euthanase him. I've done a bit more of an investigation and I was wrong, there definately appears to be a pussy hole on the side of his head and then it appears like a worm type animal has bored a long hole up his head, it looks like a dark leach type thing in the image below A bit of research seems to confirm hexamita (Hole in the head) which the previous one also died of.... turns out water quality, food etc can help to maintain a fish but without medication it will never get rid of the parasite, hence quite likely the parasite was being carried for years...Oh well, you live and learn...next time I'll be doing a whole lot more study up about a fish before I get them.

Tank was backing into my garage, any bigger and I couldn't have opened the car door!!!!!!!!! I can sense a 6 - 8 footer in my future though :sage: Actually oneday I hope to design a house with centrally located fishroom separating a lounge and perhaps study or bedroom with 2 or more tanks in the wall backing into the room.... no more exposed piping, lights heaters etc... airconditioned insulated room to maintain the temp. One planted, one coral and one mbuna or hardscape tank...... aahhh dreams Anyway, just did my first water change on the rescaped tank... so far so good in terms of getting rid of the algea. - Metal halide lighting time reduced to 5 hrs - Looking at some LED low wattage lighting for the remaining 5hrs - Really good wash of filter material and flush of pipes - New layout has better water flow and easier to vacuum around plants - Stem plants have more light so hopefully will grow quicker/thicker and pull out more nutrients - Will need to watch the anubias and glosso.. theyre are real dirt traps - Reduced to 1 50% waterchange per week - Reduced fish food, mainly live brine, tiger worms, white worms and well washed blood worms

Locally caught rainbow fish (East Coast Aust) Locally caught shrimp (OZ)

Heres some photos of my old tank as requested

Hi Jen, thanks for that, I've done a bit more research it Tom Barrs website confirms that COSO4 is the cheapest and most easily available form of calcium and it appears that it dissolved much more easily than CaCO2... I think the plaster of paris is 2CaSO4.H2O. Great, Bunnings stop on the way to work tomorrow.

I have just run out of my CaCO3 that I've had for years. I am pretty sure when I got it last time it was plaster of paris, but I went to Bunnings on the weekend and the bags they had there were Calcium sulphate (thyo.. something or other). Is this the right stuff.... where to do others buy their calcium??

Ok, cheers guys for the suggestions, looks like Angus' light suggestion was the main issue. I cut my light back to 5hrs per day and started getting immediate reduction in algae. I also put in a power head and got a bit more current going... slime algae started to dissapear.... BUT it dawned on me that as much as I liked that big piece of driftwood in the tank it just took up too much space, it was blocking the current, created heaps of spots I couldnt gravel vac and blocked the light from much of the stem plants at the back of the tank. These stem plants were starting to become very leggy even though the glosso at the front was growing fantastically. So I bit the bullet and rescaped the entire tank. Started on Saturday morning and stopped at 1am sunday morning to get some sleep and then finished it off on Sunday arvo. I love the new layout, just wish I had a better camera to capture it... will get a friend to photograph once stem plants grow in. The new layout lets heaps of light into the back of the tank and will be much easier to keep clean. The neons are loving having the wide open space on the right-hand side and the rams seem to really like swimming between the rocks.

Nope, no adjusters?

I have a PO4 nightmare, everytime I check the water it is off the scale of my Hagen PO4 test kit and I cant work out why... but my tank is covered in BBA, spyro and orange snot algaes 1.) I am doing 2x 30-50% water changes per week to try and dilute PO4. I have checked our tapwater and it has no detectable PO4 using the same test kit as above so does not appear to be the source. 2) I have checked the flake food I was using (Aquaone Discus Bits and Tetramin tropical crisps), both seem to be high in PO4 when checked with the test kit so have been feeding very sparingly last 2 weeks using mainly live foods such as brine shrimp (fresh and thoroughly washed frozen), yet doesnt seem to have made any difference. 3.) Heavily planted with MH lights, pressurised CO2 and EI dosing, but have stopped dosing PO4 as already very high. Also stopped dosing CaCO3, baking soda and MgSO4 this week as salts can apparently be high in PO4... again no difference to tank water 4.) substrate is Daltons with good cap of daltons propagaton sand (well washed) 5.) Tank has 19 neons, 1 medium discus, 4x Rams, 5x black neons and 1x small Plecco... I wouldnt have thought this was over stocked, but am considereding getting rid of the rams to try and reduce waste load 5.) My current thinking is that perhaps the large piece of drift wood that I took from the Wairoa River may be leaching PO4..... is that a possibility. I will need to take a small piece of the wood that hasnt been sitting in the tank and check what it does in my PO4 test. Has anybody got any other suggestions???????

Thought I'd post my failed diy inline heater and CO2 reactor project. The idea was to get the ugly heaters and CO2 reactor out of the tank and underneath where no one can see them. I constructed the reactors out of 100mm pvc and used uniseals to create the inlet and outlet fittings. Water was pumped into the first orange reactor from the bottom (image 1), travelling vertically past the two 300 watt heaters (heaters and lid shown image 2) and then into the co2 reactor where it was directed downwards to the bottom of the reactor and out to the cannister filter. A limewood airstone was put in the grey reactor slightly above the outlet (thin airline in image 3) the idea being that the downwards movement of the water suspends the upward movement of the bubbles allowing longer reaction time and therefore better absoption of the CO2 by the water. Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Heater Problem: Well plumbingwise the system seemed to work pretty good. I was a little bit nervous about leakage around the heaters as the fit with the uniseals was not very tight, but it worked and had I carried on with the system I would have come up with a way of wrapping the heaters with some kind of tape to increase their diameter. I plugged it all in and set it off BUT after 24hrs my tank was down to 22C down from 27C.. I started to worry about my Discus!! Due to the opaque pvc I was unable to see when my heaters were turning on and off, but everytime I did pull them out they were off and the water inside the reactor appeared to be very warm. I can only think that the flow through the reactor was too slow allowing the water inside the reactor to rapidly heat turning off the heater whilst the water in the tank remained cool. options to fix this might be to turn the heaters up to the highest they can go and then see whether the heaters will stay on for longer... or to increase the flow. Anyone else have any theories why this idea didnt work?? CO2 Reactor Problem: I pulled the heater reactor off the system and left the grey CO2 reactor, putting the heaters back into the tank. My ph vs kH tests show that my Co2 is 15 ppm max and the system has been runnign for about 3 weeks now. It would be lovely to have a clear perspex tube so I could see inside the reactor... but the cost would be to high. It sounds like the CO2 builds up inside the reactor during the day creating a void near the top as you can hear the water dropping down inside the reactor from the top... seems to be absorbed/escaped by morning as noise is gone.... How could I improve my absorption rate... planted tanks generally want something around the 30ppm??? Perhaps the reactor is too wide slowing the water flow too much and allowing bubbles to travel too quickly to the surface. The shop bought intank reactors are much narrower...... I am having a few algae issue (BBA, orange snot and spyro) and this is probably due to high light and ferts but co2 still being relatively low..... Your comments would be most appreciated

Hi Guys, I am suffering a massive bout of BBA at the moment despite pumping pressurised CO2 into my system. Perhaps my CO2 reactor isnt working efficiently enough.... I have been dosing EI but I think that the fairly cheap discus pieces food (manufacturer unamed) must be very high in PO4 as each time I test it is off the scale of my test kit even though I stopped dosing the PO4 component of my EI ferts!!!!!!! The BBA seems to love these conditions and have colonised any exposed driftwood or gravel it can find... can you tell us how you dosed the excel e.g. straight into the water column, or syringed on to the BBA, dose rates, is it a one off dose or do you have to keep it going.... I am also getting orange snot algea and stringy green algae.

I've been getting the really small tiger worms from my organic worm farm... discus love them and hasnt seemed to be any problems so far... I always wash them first in fresh water.... Anybody else using worms from their worm farms

Ha ha .. I thought I was the only one... whats scary is how often I come close to overtopping the tank.. need to create some kind of warning alarm when it gets close to the top... or auto shutoff