3 Feet Dragon Rock Scape Planted. Pic heavy

[daniel19831123]

I've just relocated to Singapore and my hand was itching to get back into the planted tank business already. This transition has been hectic and so far nothing but trying to settle down into my previous routine seemed to be met with challenges, one after another. anyway, cut the story short, I managed to pay off the bill, get a place to stay and now afford a nice little fish tank for my living room.

After a long wait, my tank finally arrived. The first impression of the seller was good. Jolly looking guy around my age who is keen to share his passion for planted tank with me. The tank was setup in it's rightful place in my living room and everything was checked to make it's in good working order.

The item purchase so far was as follow
1. ADA mimic tank 90x45x45.
2. ADA mimic stand
3. Overtank luminaire 2ft with 150W MH + 2x 24W T5 Solite Type 3 + hanging kit.
4. Stainless Steel pipe bent to mimic ADA style again.
5. Aqua Concept Soil 3 x 9L bag
6. 3L Co2 alloy bottle with Co2 tubing
7. 1/4 HP Hailea Chiller

[daniel19831123]

Tank, light stand, ADA substrate, ANS I-Flo lily pipe for 17mm tube arrived last night.

The substrate includes
ADA Power Sand M (2L) x 2
ADA Aquasoil New Amazonia (9L) x 3
Bacter 100 (100g) x 1
Tourmaline BC (100g) x 1
Clear Super (50g) x 1
Penac W (200g) x 1
Penac P (200g) x 1

I'm fairly happy with the overall. The light stand is still not exactly what I wanted but I think this will do for now.
My final fish tank


ADA substrate

My little babe

Customised stainless steel stand

Side view

[daniel19831123]

The halide lamp First time ever using halide lamp. It's only a 150W + 2 x 24W T5HO. Currently it's at 30cm height. I can move the light stand higher if I want to but I'll need to drill holes onto the pipe.

My feeble attempt to try to organise my cabinet. a 3 feet cabinet is not enough to fit everything I need in it! Half my gadget are still in the store room! And the chiller had to sit on the side due to the heat it will produce... Sigh now I'm starting to miss the weather in the UK. At least a heater is not as bulky as a chiller.

[daniel19831123]

Finally got all the tubing ready and all the parts connected to start cycling the tank. In the mean time, I have staurogyne and crypt wenditii brown and crypt parva growing in full sun emersed on the window sill awaiting harvest in a few weeks time (hopefully!)

Well the connection and testing the tank was more of a nightmare than fun. Leakage everywhere! The prefilter chamber was leaking as if there was no seal so it's got to be removed until I apply some silicone around the leaking joint.

The 16/22 clear hose is too loose to have a firm grip on the lily pipes and as a result, lots of tiny bubbles get sucks into the system and churned out of the other end as gush of bubbles to no end!

The bubbles that seeps through the tube and the pipe

Leaky outflow pipe. Does anyone know what I can do to secure the leak? I was thinking of using jubilee clip intially but I'm concern that the clip might crack the lily pipe! Was thinking of using a ring of silicone on the hose end and let it set. Then push the lily pipe through it. Anyone has an easier suggestion?

The whole system is connected through a tetratec 1200 and the flowrate was further augmented using a hailea external pump rated at 1700L/hour. I know it's a bit overkill but the chiller need to work with at least 1000lph.

Picture of the chiller.... The ambient water temperature was 30 degree! This is going to cost a bomb to chill to 24 degree. Decided to keep it at 26 degree instead...

The 2 inches cut from the cabinet floor as I previously mentioned.

lit by 2x 24W at 1 feet above the tank.

Lit by 2x24W with 150W MH. Hmm not very much difference besides the shimmering effect...

The rock that I was going to use for aquascape. Is this dragon stone? The seller haven't a clue...

[daniel19831123]

ok so I went out and carry a 15kg worth of what I thought is Dragon stone back with me on a 30 minutes journey on the bus! It took me an hour to hand pick those out of a pile of rubble.

Chucked the whole thing into the tank and tested the water after to see if it affects the water chemistry. So far these are the stone that I've picked and they've been placed in the aquarium with no particular arrangement. Pardon the mess in the tank as it's still going through fishless cycling at the moment

A closer shot

I tested the water after the stone has been in there for 24 hours as I was curious and the result :
pH 7.0, kH 0, gH 3
I couldn't believe my own eyes..... guessed i'll need to bedosing calcium here...
I also tested the tap water and the ph was 7.6! The rest of the parameter was the same Considering there is no active Ingredient In my tank to lower the ph, can anyone shed some light as to why the ph is lower in my tank? I thought normally the tap water ph is always on the lower side? Now all I need is a Tds meter to complete my test.

[daniel19831123]

The tank is now up and running using fishless cycling method but surprisingly my nitrite measured 0 after 2 weeks! I still haven't got a kit to measure ammonia so I'll continue with the cycling for another 2 weeks before adding any live stock to the tank.

So here it goes. After purchasing the stone and sand previously, I went out and got 2 strips of 2 inches wide acrylic sheet. However, due to the ever excitement of the event, I forgot to lay it out in the process of laying the substrate and the result was somewhat unsatisfactory (I went ahead with all the ADA substrate and after pouring the power sand that I realised the acrylic sheet was missing from action!).
Penac W and P on the base


Then the tourmaline

Then power sand

Then the last minute salvaging process trying to separate the sand from the substrate!

The final result was ok but could have been better if the divider was there in the beginning. And it's hard to separate the substrate without showing too much of the divider! So I decided the overpour the boundary to create a more natural look.

Then I took hours to place the rock. This is when my partner decided to interfere with my process. mind you my partner is an artist and a fashion designer. The process of debating where the rock should be place went on for longer than I can recall. I was saying that it looks more natural this way but he was saying it's boring and wanted a flamboyant angle of rock placement.... Irrespective of the stability of the structure! Well in the end, I won the debate and was allow to place the rock as I see please. This is the final hardscape

[daniel19831123]

Re: New 3 feet ADA mimic tank setup. (Pic heavy)

by daniel19831123 » Sun Jan 29, 2012 4:07 pm
Plants arrived this evening from aquaspotworld and the quality was good in comparison to what the LFS was selling. I was more than happy to pay the premium for these plants. Still a distance to go before catching up with tropica and aquerfleur IMHO. Unfortunately out of the list of plants that i've ordered, they've ran out of Ludwigia inclinata var verticillata Pantanal. But i guessed that will have to do now as I'm having too many plants to plant!

The plant list is as follows
1. Utricularia Graminifolia
2. Staurogyne
3. Limnophila Hippuroides
4. HC
5. Crypt. Undulata Red
6. Crypt parva
7. Hydrocotyle verticillata
8. Blyxa Japonica

3 pots of HC split up

6 pot of pogostemon helferi in a plastic bag. Doesn't look a lot really

Open up the bag. Now it looks a bit better

When you split it up... Tada

3 pots of blyxa japonica

3 massive pot of crypt. undulata red

When you split one of the pot up, this is what you get

This isn't even the biggest pot. The smallest pot gave me 6 big plants and the biggest pot gave me 20 big plants with countless of plantlets!
One pot of limnophila hippuroides. 10 stems wrapped in rockwool.

Now this is aa headache... I wanted hydrocotyle verticillata and was under the impression that it's a small foreground plant.... this is what I got.

This monster measured about 6 inches tall!
3 packet of loose UG

3 pots of loose staurogyne


all plants were cleaned and trimmed and planted at random. No preplanning or what so ever. This is the final scape from the front.

From the top


After finishing with the planting, I started filling the water up and to my horror, my tank look like a swamp! Never happened to me before when I was using ADA amazonia.... Is it because of the other additive? Is it because I move the power sand after it was placed down to allow the divider to be placed? Is it a faulty product? Well it's too late to ponder on the thousands of possibility so I'll have to let it be...






Well I've filled it up and see what happened overnight. will be running high CO2 for the next few weeks with the 150W MH at 30cm height. Hopefully things will be alright... I will also be changing the water every 2-3 days to avoid algae growth. Sounds like its going to be hard work for a few weeks...Sigh.

[daniel19831123]

I did spent a lot of time cleaning the rock too. but the more I clean the rock the more it crumbles! I got afraid in in the end so I ended up using a soft brush to brush away all the mud. The tank this morning was crystal clear (thank god for that). Why used purigen when there is a whole box full of filter wool waiting to be used? Anyway this is the tank after 24 hours of running the tank through filterwool polish.


The current setup is shown below and I'm failing to reach 1000l/hour. Would appreciate if there is any other method of increasing the flowrate without disrupting too much of the connection.

Intake --> CO2 UP inline diffuser --> Prefilter chamber with filter wool --> Tetra tec 1200 with original filter material

-->Chiller Hailea --> Hailea external pump rated at 1700lph -->Lily pipe outflow

The whole thing has a combined rated flow rate of nearly 3000lph and I'm not getting even 1000l. I think there would still be enough slow in the tank for nutrient distribution but I'm worried that my chiller will die out sooner. Having said that it's kicking in every 2 hours for about 15 minutes and then kicks out. That seemed to be the right amount of time from my own understanding. Would appreciate if someone could clarify this.

I initially got this idea from a youtube video I saw where a guy had an external canister filter which was underperforming and then he attached a submersible water pump at the outlet and the system output increase tremendously. I'm just a little shocked when my system doesn't turn out as it was suppose to be. Apparently the pump at the outlet generate a negative pressure to allow the primary filter to pump easily and thus increasing it's efficacy. I'm pretty sure even if I removed the hailea pump, my water rate would plummet making it using with the chiller a definite no no. This is such a headache. I really wanted minimal pipe connection on this setup and it's proven very difficult. The back pressure on the system is so high that priming the tetratec during water changes is impossible. I have to feet water directly into the tube to allow the whole system to be prime...

This is the video that I was referring to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNUSSQyro4A

[Neondagger]

nice tank. What you intend to put inside?

[BFG]

Hmm, you wanted a high flow rate but are using equipment that practically slow down the flow rate. You need to remove the lily pipe output thingy. The lily pipe function is to provide a wider flowrate that eventually turn into itself, just like a smoker blowing a ring of circular smoke, it will eventually slow down a few inches away from the mouth of the lily pipe.Using a co2 diffuser before a canister filter is a no-no in my opinion. Air pocket might form in the canister filter and disrupt your flowrate, might stop the canister filter altogether. Using 2 different pump will not equate to a total amount of flowrate, this is not a 1 + 1= 2 kind of a situation but whichever is slower will determine the flowrate. You need to re-look at your equipment usage.



Hope this helps!

[daniel19831123]

Thanks for the advice. I will look into that in my next water change. I will be buying some yamato shrimp for a start in about 2-3 weeks time. And then some fire red shrimp a week after that. Follow with a school of either rummy nose or harlequin (Maybe around 50). still not decided on that. Will also get a shoal of mini cory (about 20 or so) such as hastatus, hasbrosus or pygmy. Is this too much bioload?

[ryanchong]

Hi bro

Nice set up. Can I check how much u paid for the sand n additives for the substrate? Where did u shop to get the deal? Thinking of setting a tank like yours.

[magpie]

Very detailed planning and nice selection of rocks and plants. Cheers.

[Garry]

Nice work you have put in...
Cheers.

[daniel19831123]

Hi bro

Nice set up. Can I check how much u paid for the sand n additives for the substrate? Where did u shop to get the deal? Thinking of setting a tank like yours.

thanks. I got the rock from Fishybusiness via roger. You can call him for a quote. I got a lot of stuff from him so I got a little discount on it. The sand and rock was purchased from seaview. The guy in there didn't know it was called dragon rock but he called it the beehive rock.

[daniel19831123]

Day 4 and everything started melting due to the lack of CO2... Took a while before I can get my flow rate right and Co2 level stable. I have since then split up my CO2 and my chiller to a dedicated system run by the 1700LPH pump. The previous setup was only giving me about 500lph when it's slightly clogged.
Pogostemon helferi rotting


CO2 indicator was greenish yellow on 2 separate location

Current tank view day 4

Temporary inlet and outlet from my eheim 12mm tubing while I save up for 17mm lily pipe

[Cloud-Strife]

Your tank cabinet is nice. I guess ADA mimic again. Is it custom made or purchased from LFS ?

[daniel19831123]

Thank is made by Aquatic style Leslie.

[sateman]

Beautiful setup..i especially like the limnophila hippuroides. Can't wait for your plants to bloom. Pls keep on posting. You are a pro bro. Will be camping here!! hehe!

[daniel19831123]

Pro? lol. I'm far from it. So far I've only managed to keep the plants alive in my old high tech tank. This is my first proper attempt with scaping. The last scape has always been focusing on growing healthy plants. I'm more of a farmer than a scaper.

The nitrite today is increasing. I'm guessing the denitrification process has started. I'll keep that in check and will add an army of fire red shrimp in 2 weeks.