My freshwater planted nano tank project

[Turn7]

Planted tanks need three things to flourish :

Filter turnover and water movement -turnover needs to be high and surface agitation good

Carbon dioxide - use either CO2 injection or the easy method -Easy Life Easycarbo addition

Lighting - good high spectrum quality lighting for 12 hrs a day min.

Get this right and, as I found - you will throwing more plants away than enjoying the views.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

My plants have arrived! Just dunked them into the tank for now; proper planting will take place at the weekend.

I've also ditched the CO2 diffuser that made the tank look like a chemistry set and replaced with an inline diffuser out of sight, which seems to dissolve the CO2 far more effectively. There is just the faintest mist of bubbles, barely visible.





The plants are:

• Three pots of Hemianthus callitrichoides 'Cuba', which I will split and will hopefully form a foreground carpet over the raised area of substrate on the left-hand side.
• Two pots of Eliocharis acicularis ("hair grass"), which I will split to form a background. I love this plant, which apparently is a UK native, and I have it in my pond - it survives being frozen, but it should also do well at tropical temperature. What a trooper of a plant!
• One pot of Eliocharis parvula, slightly shorter, to give depth to the hair-grass.
• A pot of Glossostigma, to form a contrasting foreground carpet on the right-hand side of the tank.
• A pot of Pogostemum erectus, for a bright green background plant to contrast against...
• ... a Cryptocoryne wendtii 'brown' for some colour contrast.
• An Anubias nana 'mini', which I will attach to the piece of wood, possibly with silicone.

I will run the CO2 at a fairly high level to help the plants get established for a few weeks.

I might also pull some sprigs of hornwort out of my pond, because I love how that plant looks and I think it grows just as well at tropical temperature.

Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Thursday 17th December 21:03

Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Friday 18th December 10:47

[otolith]

I have found that plants like Elodea and hornwort grow too quickly, get leggy, and are perpetually in need of trimming. You have to constantly discard the bases and replant the tips.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

otolith said:

I have found that plants like Elodea and hornwort grow too quickly, get leggy, and are perpetually in need of trimming. You have to constantly discard the bases and replant the tips.

Yes, you're right. The tips look great though.

[Nightmare]

Really looking forward to seeing how this goes.....If conditions suit that hair grass it might go a bit mental I would think (it seems to cycle in my pond - some years it's quite small and others, like this year, it tries to take over the universe)

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Everything is planted!

So fingers crossed that the Hemianthus calitrichoides and the Glossostigma get established and form decent carpets.

Quite pleased with the way the piece of wood intertwined with the plants - hopefully that effect will be enhanced as the plants get established.

I think the Pogostemon erectus (rear right, stem plant) is already melting though. It doesn't seem happy for some reason. Maybe it'll be one of those plants that melts a bit before getting established, or maybe I'll have to replace it with something else like hornwort, which is easy.

Hopefully the hair grass will get a bit thicker and taller. I'm also hoping the Cryptocoryne will become browner.

Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Sunday 20th December 17:07

[otolith]

Looking good.

Phase 1 - "why won't anything grow?"

Phase 2 - "Fetch the flamethrower, it's growing out of the lid again"

[Turn7]

Phase 3 - Im fed up with throwing good plants away every week

Phase 4 - turn it into a shrimp tank



YMMV....

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

I think I'm realising that my lighting is not as bright as I was aiming for - perhaps more on the high-ish side of medium rather than properly high lighting. But hey-ho, I'll just have to wait and see whether the HC and the Glossostigma will grow. At least the hair grass, the crypt and the anubias should be happy.

I think I'm going to build some kind of hood out of bits of wood, which I can paint on the inside with a white or silver reflective paint to direct more light downwards.

I bought some 35% ammonia solution off ebay, because I started wondering whether the surface scum might be caused by organic impurities in the er... natural ammonia solution that I have been using. Just five drops of it in the tank took the ammonia from zero to 3 mg/l - the stuff smells truly evil. And the surface scum does seem to have reduced considerably.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Some piccies... (There will soon be some fish and shrimps in this tank to justify it being in All Creatures!)

The Glossostigma is already growing and sending out runners, which I'm pinching off and replanting. It remains to be seen whether it'll stay nice and compact with the amount of light I've got...




The HC seems happy. No 'pearling' though; I was hoping for oxygen bubbles but I don't think my lighting is bright enough...




The Anubias looks nice, attached to the wood with a blob of silicone. Not doing much yet, but that's to be expected...




The cryptocoryne isn't melting (as they often do after planting). Even the Pogostemon in the background has stopped falling apart, so I'm feeling less pessimistic about that...

[Turn7]

More light and more co2 should get them pearling away....

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Turn7 said:

More light and more co2 should get them pearling away....

Indeed. My CO2 checker is green, so the CO2 concentration is right. I'm thinking I need more light, so I've ordered an Interpet 2x36cm 'bright white' LED light (possibly the same as the units that Otolith is using). By my reckoning these are about 800 lumens each (18 SMD LEDs at about 45 lumens apiece), so together with my existing light that should give me about 2000 lumens.

If you assume that T5 fluorescents are around 70 lumens per Watt, my 2000 lumens would be equivalent to about 28W of T5 fluorescent, so about 4.5W per US gallon compared to the 2.7W per USG I've got at the moment. Generally anything over 3W per USG is considered high lighting, although it's usually reckoned that nano tanks need more.

I treated myself to next-day delivery, so I should get the new light on Monday. I will also start designing and constructing a hood, which will be necessary now that I'll have a second light fitting to accommodate.

I am seeing brown algae growing now, so I need to start controlling the nutrient levels a bit better. At the moment the nitrate is sky-high (about 160 mg/l) because I've been dosing with ammonia every day to keep my bacteria well fed, but I haven't been doing water changes. I reckon this is the reason for the algae, so it's time for a big water change.

As I hinted earlier in the thread, I did indeed hand in my notice at work and have now finished, so I have nothing else to do for the foreseeable future - this project should therefore get a bit more attention. I'll be spending a month or two pondering my career options, and might end up blowing my savings on further flight training, get a commercial licence and instrument rating, and see if I could get some kind of flying job. But in the meantime, my nano tank is my focus!


Edited to add: I did a big water change this morning which has brought the nitrate down to about 40 mg/l - still on the high side but better. The KH seems to have stabilised at about 3 degrees - slightly lower than my target of 4-5, but I think another water change in a few days time will help. Strangely the GH is pretty high - at least 10 degrees, possibly higher - so I'm going to try a water softener 'pillow' in the filter. If it works, I'll consider getting some Potassium chloride as a recharging agent for it instead of using Sodium chloride - having potassium ions in the water will be much better than sodium ions.

When I did the water change, I realised that I might previously have been screwing up the KH by boiling some of the tapwater to bring the temperature up. So this time I boiled some of the rainwater instead, so as not to denature the bicarbonates in the tapwater.

I've realised that I may have been overdoing the ammonia drops, and this might be contributing to algae growth. So I'm going to reduce that from 3 drops twice a day to one drop 3 times a day and see how that goes. I think I'll be adding fish within a week or so, so obviously the ammonia dosing will cease then.

Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Sunday 27th December 13:51

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

I bought a water softener pillow and put it into the filter. Within 12 hours it had reduced the GH from at least 180 ppm (the highest my test strips can measure) down to approximately zero! As expected, it has no effect on KH: it only swaps the calcium and magnesium ions for sodium ions without affecting the carbonate and bicarbonate ions.

I clearly don't want zero GH, so I won't be using it in the filter in future, but will use it to pre-treat the new water during water changes, and then dose with a small amount of unsoftened tapwater to give me a target GH of about 5 degrees (90 ppm). I can't reduce the overall amount of tapwater any further to reduce the GH without ending up with a KH that's too low.

The instructions say to recharge the pillow using salt (sodium chloride), but I intend to try recharging it with potassium chloride instead. I think this should work, and will result in the pillow releasing potassium ions instead of sodium, which should benefit both fish and plants.

I temporarily rigged up the new light, and it certainly makes a difference. Within half an hour I was seeing occasional tiny bubbles rising from the HC and Glossostigma, which is a good sign of much stronger photosynthesis. No actual 'pearling' as such, but I'm much happier with the light level now.

I'm part way through building a hood. So pictures of more shonky woodwork to follow! I do enjoy making things out of wood, but I don't pretend to be good at it.

Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Tuesday 29th December 09:11

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

WARNING: This post may contain images of shonky carpentry. Look away if the sight of badly-fitting woodwork offends you.

[otolith]

Looking good!

[Turn7]

Still needs Shrimps!

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Turn7 said:

Still needs Shrimps!

Indeed! I'm very close to getting the fish and shrimps now. I'm thinking 8 chilli rasboras, 8 blue shrimps and 3 otocinclus.

I'm going to try ordering all the fish online - since I'm a gentleman of leisure now, being at home to receive them won't be a problem. There's a shop called Kesgrave Tropicals that sells through eBay, and they get good reviews so I'll give them a whirl.

Ammonia and nitrite are both zero now, apart from the few hours after I've put a drop of 35% ammonia in. Nitrate still a little high at 40mg/l - but another big water change should sort that out.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Well, I've got some creatures in the tank already!

I picked a few sprigs of hornwort from the pond. This might not have been my best idea, because I've now got snails.

And, er, what appears to be a damselfly nymph!!




So what do you reckon will happen to a damselfly nymph living at tropical temperature? Will it grow into some kind of super-damselfly? Could I end up with a new comic book superhero - Damselman - whose development was transformed when he found himself moved into a tropical fish tank?

[otolith]

They survive in shallow ponds in summer without growing into helicopters, I think you'll be OK.

Is he large enough to kill your rasboras?

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Nah, he's pretty puny. Good point though, I'll need to keep an eye on him! With any luck he'll eat snail eggs, so he's welcome to stay for now. Ultimately I'll have to fish him out, acclimatise him back to cold water and shove him back in the pond, because the aquarium lacks any stems for him to climb out of the water when he wants to transform to adult.

Here's two new adults from the pond earlier this year, complete with skin case:

Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Wednesday 30th December 16:09