Zoom's 4ft system

Well then, there you go! I don't use that solution, like I told you, but thanks. Now we know that it works.

It is working for you, right?

 

Im assuming so.

The colour has changed to a slightly lighter green than what it was when i started. I am injecting at about 4 bps though.

 

Well, then it's working... Just don't let it go yellow.

 

Ok, I've been bugged, phoned, sms'd and even called to put some pictured up...

Here's the 2 cannisters inside the left cupboard:



Here's the CO2 set up in the right cupboard:



Notice the ADA bubble counter!



Here's a picture of my inline heater contraption....
1 = Pipe going back up to the tank
2 = 2 pipes coming from the cannisters
3 = CO2 going into contraption
4= Heater.
Note the heater lies at an upside down 45deg angle, the water comes in and is basically sprayed from the top down, and then eventually goes back up to tank.
If I was to redesign this, I would add an airline tube next to points 1 and 2, so that when the system is set up and started up, you can bleed the air out... but it isn't too much work to get it out either way.



Here's the new updated hood. (White background, 6 new T5 tubes, and 2 fans)





How the fans look from on top:



DSD ferts and Dirk's fish food:



My planting equipment:



And then a few tank shots. Notice that most of the plants have melted.

 

Insane setup, and that's dik baie ligte jissie! I love your big anubia... whatever you call it. How long has that been growing?

 

I've had my Anubia since I started keeping fish years ago. I just can't find myself to part with it.

 

How are you liking the new lighting regime @Zoom? and dont think your plants melted as much as they are in a bit of transplant shock + adjusting to the increased light by changing their growth form (expext to see some reds and oranges starting to be seen in some of your stems...). Now to wait for everything to grow,grow,grow....

 

Nice looking setup dude! I am liking the DIY inline heater option... I think I may be going to go this route soon... I hate looking at my heater in the tank. It's an eyesore of note.

I'm sure your plants will bounce back. It's never easy moving plants from low light to high light, but they always tend to come right after a while. Just keep up with your maintenance, and it will all sort itself out.

 

It's also not easy for plants to go from high light and CO2 to lower light and no CO2 but they do stand up again. Again: Love that anubia forest.

 

hey dude... i have only one question for you..

how much sleep are you getting? lol

nevertheless, sleep depravation and all, your kid is still a HUGE blessing and worth every hour that you dont get to sleep or spend on your tanks and everytime he smiles at you, you will forget all the tiredness immediately! and at 6 weeks he will be starting to give real smiles if he isnt already doing that

 

wow... and all of those lights in that tank! it must be like daylight in there!!

 

@azurekoi
The light's are insane. I just wish the plants would grow-grow-grow faster so I can see them pearling-pearling-pearling. Watching out for algae on this one, cause I'm no longer doing that afternoon siesta on this tank. The light staggering photoperiod doesn't realy lend itself to an afternoon siesta.

Yeah, I'm sure they will all bounce back, and hopefully sooner rather than later.. hating the bare look. The inline heater is something I'm still fiddling with on a daily basis. Getting the heater to stay at a decent temperature is challenging when you have those T5 lights. But this morning, (After 12 hours are darkness, i.e no light) the temp was at a stable 25degrees. With the lights on it peaks at 28degrees. So I'm comfortable with this for now.

I'm not going from high light to low. I'm going the other way around.

The problem came in that half the plants were kept bunched up in an unheated bucket of cold water for 2 days... so the crypts would obviously melt. I wasn't expecting anything less.

Sleeping isn't too much of an issue. I've always been a night owl... although over the past 3 years my bedtime has changed from 23h00/0h00 to 21h00. Now that we have Joel, I'm back at 23h00/0h00. I do the last feed to the day, so the principle is that the wife get's to bed early so she can at least sleep... but she doesn't get into bed until after me as she is always faffing with something. Then the 03h00/04h00/05h00 feed she wakes up to do, and I sleep right through it. So I'm still getting a good 6 hours sleep.
But yes, @mydummyname you are absolutely 100% correct that no matter how much sleep deprivation, or how many times you need to change his clothes, all that just melts away when you hold him... and ESPECIALLY when he smiles. We are at 7+ weeks now, so the smiles are now becoming genuine, (and not due to cramps), and he seems to be settling into some sort of routine.

This upgrade has been in the pipeline for over 8 months now... I finally god everything together about a month ago... but I still held back on the re-scape for one major reason. The rescape took me literally 5 late nights working on the individual aspects, and the 3 days of the long weekend to do the change over... so if you consider this is 5 working days, plus 3 weekend days, that's a little over a week that you are working extensively on a fish tank. What you don't realise is that children grow up SO FAST... and I could not bare the thought of looking back and thinking I MISSED something of Joel's growing up because I was too focussed on the tank. So I had to time it correctly, and make sure I balanced my time right.

The lights are insane. Currently I only have the 6500 in there. I want to get 2 8,000k globes, but I need to source them and source the cash for this. But currently everything is going well as it is set up.

 

the cramps tend to fade after about 3 months or so, so fingers crossed for you buddy, its not cool knowing your little boy is in pain, i take it you and the wife know that "Telament drops" is the best thing for the cramps? that is the "telament drops" and not the "telament gripe water", and you can give the telament drops as often as needed, especially just befor a feed helps a lot!

make sure you get a GOOD cellphone with Good camera (nothing beats the nokia N8 for a cellphone camera and HD video recording - besides the pureview but thats not yet available) reason for this is that you ALWAYS have your cellphone handy. you will capture all those "first times" )

when the plants start to pearl please post a nice video for us on youtube or something cant wait to see that happening!!

 

@Zoom,Can you give some quick details on the set up?
Photo period?
Dosing regime?What and how much,how often?
Amount of Co2 injected?
Water changes,how much and how often?
Filter media at the moment?

 

@Zoom, and @Seanj correct me if I am wrong here... Zoom nice setup, however, if you had to flip it over so the pipes were pumpin water and Co2 in from the bottom (since air rises) it would not get trapped in the top of that pipe?
And would it not have been better to have the Co2 at the top and have the water at the bottom forcing it more onto the heater? Just asking here?

Oh and some thing I have been toying with, does it not help having more heaters in the tank? More heaters = less work per heater = less electicity usage...
Or am I not thinking clearly!

I also only have on issue with this setup, and that is replacing the heaters.

 

@Rudi

All ur question have been answered in previous posta but in summary

Light period is 10 hours staggered
Ferts is dsd high tech dosed 3x per week
Filter media is wool, sponge, ceramic rings, seachem matrix, with additional crushed coral to buffer ph
Maintenance is 50% wc per week

 

Dsd ferts is

Day one gH+, K+, KH up, traces and NK-P
Day three and five is NK-P

If I start noticing shortages in Phosphate, I simply start replacing one, two, or all three dosaged of the NK-P with NPK.

All products are manufactured and sold by @Dirk Bellstedt

 

CO2 is currently at 3bps. Baring in mind that the rate of injection is not as important to me as the actual reading on the drop checker. I believe the drop checker is giving me a more accurate reading. If the drop checker indicates that CO2 is too low (as was the case with 2bps) I simple raise the injection rate.

 

@Lizid

If I were to flip the heater unit the risk of an air pocket over the heater would be more problematic. The important part is that you mustnt get air pockets anywhere on the heater. The only places I get an airpocket on the innitial set up was where the 3 pipes connect to the 50mm unit. Not too much of a problem, just noisy.

The reasoning behind having the CO2 part at the bottom is that the CO2 rising up through the unit would go through various currents from the canisters pumping in, and thus give me a much better dissolve rate. Logic tells me that if there wasnt full dissolving of the CO2, then I would eventually land up with an air pocket of CO2. But as this is not happening, I can deduce I am getting extremely good dissolving rate.

My maths also says that having 2 x 300w heater on for 5 mins versus 1 x 300w heater on for 10 mins uses same electricity. Granted the 2 heaters may last longer. A single 300w heater is more than ample for my tank. If you needing more than this, then I would recommend you get a proper commercially availabe inline heater. I believe there is a sponsor on MASA importing them, but when I queried, I didnt receive any response.

Oh, and replacing the heater is easy. The section that the heater is epoxied onto is a screw fitting. So all I would need to do is buy a new screw cap, new heater, drill the screw cap to suit the heater, epoxy in and viola.

 

Looking good there Zoom, and seems you are of to a good start....now it's just the waiting for all the growing in