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Thread: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

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    Default starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Ok so here goes

    I broke down my 500l hi-tech planted aquarium mid May this year.

    This is it before it was broken down
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr


    So now my new aquarium has arrived and has been built and fitted by my wonderful local fish shop.
    Here's a couple of photos of the aquarium going in
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    And finally filling with ro water
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Neat install, your old tank also looked smashing (would it not fit the other side of the fireplace? Just for the purpose of balancing the decor, or whatever other excuse you could think up to keep the tank!).
    I love planted tanks and got a few on the go but never regretted the advice given by many on this forum to grow out juvies BB. In all honesty watching 10 or 12 discus growing up decently does not require any further embellishments so I am not in a hurry to start adding stuff in the tank.

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Hey Paul

    Thanks loved the old aquarium and scape, it was all a long term experiment to learn plants and softer water fish for my ultimate goal of discus fish ( ps I did try the soft sell to she who must be obeyed but did not get too far )

    As for adding plants I'm going to do the same and wait till the little ones have become larger and they're apitates have slowed down.

    The Dimensions of the aquarium are Length 1.5 meters Width .55 meter and height is .61 of a meter. (sorry for european measurements)
    (approx 5ft x1ft 10 in x 2 ft) 500 liters

    The sump is length .85 m width .40 m and height is .40 m
    (approx 3 ft 10in x 1 ft 4 in x 1 ft 4 in) 140 liters
    the sump has 4 chambers number 1 is just filter sock and return from aquarium
    2 is approx 12 liters of jbl's sintomec and micromec. I have a 44 watt uv lamp to attach to my return line and a purigen reactor on the go.

    Before the fish arrive i shall be installing a new piece of equipment to Ireland a Clarisea Sk-5000 Automatic which will tape the place of the filter socks and keep all solid waste out of the water as it goes through the return pipe from the main aquarium.

    I have horid discus water here in our town, it come from the liffy river that spends its time meandering over limestone bedrock of Wicklow and Kildare before reaching us at the tap. The tds are about 205 ppm with a ph of 7.7 out of the tap which rises to 9.1 over the next 24 hours.
    I have attemped to mitagiate this by runnimng my water through an ro system on the way to my aquarium where it is drip fed into the sump at the return chamber. currently at 5ppm tds. I shall be also remineralising with aged tap water which will also drip into the aquarium at approx 250 liters per day. This will be about the max water changes i can manage. I wont be a drip system per-se as 2 to 3 times per day ill be taking approx 80l out of the aquarium and letting the drip refill the sump back up before repeating the process.
    On my last planted aquarium i tried the 90 - 100% water changes per day as a pratice and twice over a few months my rummy noses 45 out of 50 were wiped out from the nitrates and the ph swing caused by the terrible water (for Discus) here.
    Thats why I'm buying the clarisea to remove the solid waste and take it out of the water column completly.

    What does everone think of this for a plan so far ??

    Mick

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Hi Mick, if your timeframe is to get the discus in within the next month or two in view of having them close to fully grown by Christmas 2020 that should give you plenty of time even if you start with really young ones. The similar 3 month old ones (2 and 1/2" or about 6 cm) I got over here were raised in Bologna where the water is also very hard (over 400 ppm) and alkaline but discus there grow just fine. Your pH once aged is a tad extreme, maybe some sphagnum peat in your ageing tank might just take the edge off that. Your plan to mix it with r/o sounds good, are you using a booster pump on your unit to increase efficiency and reduce waste? What are the Nitrates like in your tapwater? The consensus anyway seems to be that it is not just nitrates that adversely affect growth but also desolved organic cimpounds, bacterial counts and GOK what else so minimizing the amount of waste is definitely good. Probably homemade beef heart or similar mixes would best be avoided so maybe go more for granules and to a lesser proportion maybe some fish grated from frozen (it does not disintegrate and leftovers are easy to syphon out). Definitely a good daily cleaning routine also helps. Let's see what other advice you can get
    Last edited by Paul Sabucchi; 09-01-2018 at 02:58 PM.

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    hey Paul,
    Yea I hope to get them at the end of the month and want them at about the 2.5 inch.

    The main purpose of the last tank was as an experiment on. My angles, cardinals and cories all managed perfectly but on only two occasions over the approx 2 years of the aquarium running i had a major dieoff of rummy noses and rams with another few scares with the fish in general although no other dieoff just 3 to 6 hours of uneasy fish. I did get the water tested at my lfs the next day and all paramaters were normal. I feeel that it may have been a large clorine dosing that damaged and killed the most sensitive fish. Those who didn't die recovered well by the following afternoon after a i assume gassing off of the cholrine.
    I think the RO water with maybe 20% aged tapwater should remedy any of these issues particularly because of the fact that all water returned will be 1l every ten mins for the ro and approx 200 mls every 10 mins for the aged tap water.
    I do have a pump runnung full time on my ro unit and I'm getting a little over 150 l per 24 hours out of a possible 200l advertised. I'm pretty sure its the tempature of the water that causs this reduction in production,

    Here's some photos of my sump,
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Any suggestions for the one and a half spare chambers ?
    I was thinking of k1 fluized media in the empty sump section 3 and not sure for the front half of the return section
    any thoughts anybody

    Mick

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    My opinion is that the biomedia you have put is probably enough (if as you do a fishless cycle it manages to transform ammonia added to reach a concentration of 4mg/l it means it is sufficient). Adding an excess of media will not purify the water any further. You could consider using the extra space for some system to remove nitrates (and possibly also other waste substances). Many here swear by Purigen, but you may also consider a plant refugium or an algae scrubber (or maybe even an anoxic filter)

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    anoxic filter mmmmmm whats that ? I'm off to google

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    No need to Google it, just look it up on your favourite Discus forum
    http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...ghlight=Anoxic
    Probably once the tank is cycled (maybe you could speed the process by adding good bacteria, something like Pure Aquarium Bomb or similar) you could try a plant refugium either with fast growing floating plants (water lettuce?) or even emersed plants planted in a basket of alfagrog. You seem to have plenty of headroom above your sump for it, all you need is a light for plant growth. Anyway no matter what you use to gobble up waste substances it is still imperative to reduce residue building up in the first place so avoid messy food, and clean the tank (and filter sock on the sump downpipe) thoroughly every day.

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    I'm running purigen reactor the last few years, once again in anticipation and for pratice for this new aquarium journey.
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr
    I have replaced the purigen with brand new stuff for the new aquarium

    I have spent the day looking at the anoxic filter thread and think it may be a step to far for little baby discus but the algea scrubber will definately be an addition to the system in the next few weeks.

    Any easy suggestions for a quick cycle, any company do better product than others ?? I've always used my other aquariums to seed next one but want to keep this one clean for the babbies. Thinking about it now its probably 25 years since i have not seeded a new aquarium

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    You could use something like this
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B07...rb_top?ie=UTF8
    for either an algae scrubber or emergent plants

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    They are class Paul!

    I think I’m going get those for the scrubber 👍.

    I’m thinking of running a refrugium as well. Any plant suggestions?? From reading pothos seems like a useful plant. Might grow some semi-submerged plants but not decided yet.

    Any suggestions, what do people think

    Mick

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Right, ammonia ordered and due to arrive Monday, I’m going to use sechem stability as it’s a lot easier to get here, having difficulty getting delivery directly to Ireland.

    Getting test kit too to keep up with the readings to see how things are cycling

    Will be setting up my tap water aging system over the next two or three days as well, air pump and heater all ready to go, just need an airstone to keep it moving.

    Mick

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    I use a wavemaker rather than an airstone to move the water while ageing. Sunsun JVP 100

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Nice !
    I have a couple of spare powerheads so one of them it is !

    I have a large heater that I’ll add. What’s the story with adding safe to the system? How long does it need to age ?? I’m going to set it up to drip to the sump like my ro water !

    I’ll do photos later to document it all

    Mick

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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Seachem Prime or Safe (that is the same thing in powder form) works immediately. It neutralises chlorine and if it was not in the form of plain hypochlorite but as chloramines it will also bind the resulting ammonia until the bacteria deal with it. Ageing the water on the other hand is more to allow gasses that were desolved in the water under pressure to disperse, this way you will avoid pH changes and microbubbles. If your tapwater contains only a reasonable amount of chlorine (but not chloramines) then ageing will also allow it to disperse without the need to use Safe. If though in the past the water company has done sudden use of a lot of chlorine I would not take a chance. Some people instead of Safe/Prime just buy sodium thiosulfate powder

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