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

  1. #16
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Hey guys,

    Right heres where I am with my install and "automation" (although soft automation as there is some imput from myself)

    So, on my outside tap I have t'eed off my water....
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    So then at the far side of house the line is seperated into two, the black one goes to the tap water barrel and the white and blue line goes to my ro unit.

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    The barrell holds approx 100 liters of water with about 40l per hour going in. There is a powerhead and a 300 w heater in the barrell. Daily i shall add seachem safe to condition the water. The water leaves the barrel to approx 38l per hour directly to the aquarium. this leaves a small surpless of water that goes to the drain but this ensures that the barrel remains full and my heater does not run dry.

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr
    (small green line water in, large green line overlfow to drain.

    Then the other line goes to my ro unit with tds meter
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    These both go through a pipe in my wall to the aquarium.
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    then to the last section in my 4 section sump.
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    This pipe also which is in section 2 also serves as the overflow to the drain outside my house.

    My return pipe to my aquarium sits approx 1.5 " below the surface of the water in the main display tank. When I turn off my return approx 60l of water gets back siphoned out of my aquarium
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr
    This adds to the 40l of water that that overflows my sump meaning 90l of water leaves the aquarium at the flick of a switch 3 times a day. changing in total 300 liters of water per day with approx 350l returning to the system on a drip basis.

    There are two more pieces of equipment to add to the system before introduction of fish.

    I've also just started my fishless cycle with seachem stability and my ammonia is arriving tomorrow or monday to start dosing that.

    so thoughts please
    Mick
    PS Paul this is a great idea for sodium thaisulphate, did not know of its existance before your post. Its for photography devolopment and as cheap !!

  2. #17
    Homesteader Paul Sabucchi's Avatar
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Should you want to use it, 60g of crystals in 1 liter of water. Of that you use 2 drops x 5 liters water to de-chlorinate.

  3. #18
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Well ........
    When I did an honest assessment my overflow method of removing water from the system it was not what I calculated! so I have re-evulated and changed up the water replacment method.
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    In the photo above, the pipe comes from the small pump on the right hand side and on the top left of the photo goes out of my overflow. The pump will switch on on a timer approx 5 - 8 times a day for 5 mins or so taking approx 300 l of water out of the system. I will have to figure the exact details of this but will update the thread when I figure out the exact numbers.

    Mick

  4. #19
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Right,

    I got my Purigen reactor dialed in perfectly. All media is fluidised nicely with all but the smallest pieces making its way through the three sponges coarse, fine and one sowed into a section of tights with tiny holes. The water then makes its way out of the outflow pipe with a non return valve this is then covered in a pair of tights tights cable tied to the end of the outlet / return hose to catch the bits that do make it out.
    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

    I also have my pothos cuttings with their toes sitting in the water waiting to grow some roots to help with my nitrates when they start.

    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    I have ordered some of the bits and pieces for my algae scrubber, I intend to follow the video that Joey (king of diy) put out a couple of years ago and I'll continue documenting here.

    I really hope this will work for the baby discus.
    Mick
    Last edited by MickO'S; 09-09-2018 at 12:54 PM.

  5. #20
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    When building the scrubber the tricky bit is roughening up enough the plastic mesh thingy to allow the algae to adhere to it. You sure are engineering a complicated setup with all the bells and whistles. For now I just rely on massive daily water changes, one big water change is a lot more effective than many small ones. I will follow closely the progress as at some point in the distant future when we return to the UK I will limit myself to only one or two tanks, but absolutely MASSIVE (ideally 12' + in length) so it will require a fair bit of automation.

  6. #21
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Paul a 12 ft aquarium would be amazing ! You will have to buy or build the new house around the tank not the other way around

    Maybe a few lessons will be learned along the way with automation of this by many, Hopefully they will mostly be positive lessons and not to many disasters but from reading through all the threads here on the entire forum there are lots more disasters than successes.
    I'm looking forward to the journey though.

    On my last large aquarium I changed from rift lake African cichlids to soft water fish to do a 3 year experiment in preparation for discus, the only thing I changed was platinum angels instead of discus. All other perams were the same, I followed the advice of this forum on my water change regime and twice over the the space of 3 months all the most sensitive fish were wiped out (rams and rummynoses). I was sad to see these fish go and the helplessness of not being able fix it as it was a tap water problem so further water changes would have compounded the problem so was helpless to change the outcome and had to watch as the fish struggled and died. This is a different proposition with Discus, I cant allow that particular problem do the same to them so that is why I have created the system I have to create the most consistent system with I hope no spikes in parameters of any kind.

    I'm interested in how this will turn out.

    Mick
    Last edited by MickO'S; 09-09-2018 at 12:55 PM.

  7. #22
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Hey,

    I’m going to add 4 colour strains of discus to my aquarium with from Tony Tan or Stendker.
    Anybody any positive or negative experience with one supplier over the other or are they similar and comparable?

    I’m either going to get 4 sets of 3 or 4 so either 12 or 16 discus in total.
    What do people think on numbers of discus for my system??

    Mick

  8. #23
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Have you seen any Stendker fish that your retailer gets? I have seen some not very pretty Stendker fish sent to Italy, pigeonbloods with lots of peppering and quite black blue diamonds (just ugly blue diamonds, not dark knights). Probably they must send here mostly "C" grade fish so I hope the ones sent to your retailer are better. I agree with you that some type of fish are more demanding than others, there is definitely an issue with intensively farmed Rams. I have found raising my discus pretty straightforward and from what I have seen there are plenty of first time discus keepers here who have had good results and 0 problems, mainly because they have done their homework: got good fish from a reputable source, not mixed them with any other fish of dodgy origin, kept them in an uncluttered and constantly cleaned tank, given them plenty of clean water and good food. The "help my fish are knocking on St Peters Doors" posta tend to be mostly from people who have set up their first discus tank doing just about everything Al tells not to do in the really useful talk put on YouTube by Joey. Once you start trying to bend Fishkeeping to suit our aesthetic preferences rather than the fish's requirements is when things start to go sideways. I am lucky my tapwater is quite good, comes straight down from the mountains nearby with about 100 ppm TDS, KH 2-3, pH 7.5 stable. I actually keep all sorts, bar the more demanding, 2 big tankfulls of mbuna, 1 big planted low tech tank full of Southamerican carachins, loricarids and dwarf cichlids, a nano planted southeast Asian (Trichogaster chuna, Taeterundina ocellicauda, Oryzias woworae, Boraras maculatus), the discus and other 5 assorted tanks with no major issues for years. I tend to keep what thrives in this water and give them plenty of it. I only use my r/o filter to make water to replace what is evaporated by the cooling fans. When we return to the UK I will have to have a good look at what quality water we get (not quite sure if returning to Staffordshire/Cheshire or going to North Wales) and take it from there
    As for big tanks it is probably going to be a self build along the lines of how my friend in Florida has done a number of times
    https://youtu.be/yPt3XlIXjCk
    Last edited by Paul Sabucchi; 09-10-2018 at 07:22 AM.

  9. #24
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020



    Hopefully this wont turn into "knocking on St Peters door" thread. That's a great analogy . I understand that it may as my methods have been untried and untested but are born out of experience of what has not worked for me and trying not to allow the same problems to reoccur.................. but we'll see !!

    I know I can get really healthy stock from my lfs, its a great shop and they work hard to supply the best. I know the resident discus expert will do the very best he can to give me clean healthy stock. All that said who knows what get thrown that is initially undetectable or slips through so a little luck is always needed.

    I must be honest about the look of the small fish in the shop, I have looked at them and they look nice but I have not studied them. Thanks to your responses Paul I'm going to start studying the fish individually rather than looking at the general group.

    Italy looks like such a wonderful place, I bet leaving will be very difficult. I've spent a bit of time in Stafford and Wales bioth are such beautiful places that can be made all the better by a monster 12' discus aquarium

    again, thanks for all the advice

    Mick

  10. #25
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    So ........... the fishless cycle has begun.

    I started off with seachem stability on Thursday expecting my ammonia to arrive Saturday. I dosed the stability as per instructions on the bottle but the ammonia did not arrive until today (Tuesday) so 5 days of a delay in starting with the feeding of the new bacteria. Hopefully this wont delay things too much and that there is some bacteria already starting to take.

    I bought a glass dropper to dose the ammonia as I have read it will melt plastic.
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    I added 6 droppers of the ammonia below, I saw a youtube video that indicated approx 1 dropper per 20 gallons so I went with that.
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    After leaving the aquarium pump to do the ammonia mixing for me for an hour I started the test for ammonia to see my concentration level in the aquarium.
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    This is the result after the 5 mins sitting resting and development.
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    To me this is reading between 2 and 4 ppm so thats a good start for today.

    Tomorrow I'll check ammonia and nitrite to see if there is any bacteria at all at work in the system yet............ the next waiting game begins.

    Mick

  11. #26
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Looks like you are properly set up now it is a bit like in the army: hurry up and wait. Patience is the name of the game. We are thinking of moving back in about 15 years or so (have to wait for most of our rescue animals to pop their clogs first), we have more family in the UK than over here and hopefully everyday things are still a little more straightforward in the UK. Pity because it sure is nice around here, this is were we had breakfast this morning (as most mornings)
    Attached Images Attached Images

  12. #27
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    Your house is the same as ours Paul, it runs to the beat of the animals. You live in an amazing place but being close to family is more important than any place.

    Ok so started adding seachem stability about ten days ago now and ammonia on Tuesday.

    Tuesday
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Thursday
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    Saturday
    Untitled by Michael O’Sullivan, on Flickr

    This is going to be a long wait !!!!
    No changes in the week, I'm heading away for the week so maybe when I get back there will be some nitrite readings, but who knows !!

    The waiting game has well and truly begun
    Mick

  13. #28
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    If you think it is taking a long time to see nitrites, it is going to take a lot longer to see nitrates! If nothing has happened when you get back you can try to chuck something else in -or just wait!

  14. #29
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    A bit off topic, but is it only me or the NO3 testing is kinda PITA?
    Like, we have to shake the bottle rigorously for 5 mins,
    drop 10 in, cap on and shake rigorously... and for some reasons, it seems to leak every time.
    (I think it generates gas or something) etc etc...

    and 10ppm and 20ppm color difference.... ugh....
    Water change is not just a chore, it's my life now...

  15. #30
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    Default Re: starting bare bottom with juveniles hoping for hi-tech planted by Christmas 2020

    As mentioned previously the NO3 API test does have an issue, the reagent tends to crystalize and precipitate in the bottle, possibly something to do with the fact that some form of zinc is required for the chemical reaction? Some people just leave the bottle fixed to the airpump with an elastic band, vibrations will do the job for you. Anyway no need to test nitrates untill nitrites have peaked. During cycling and the first few months you will be testing a lot, so the API test makes sense. Once things are ticking along you will be testing only once in a blue moon so once you run out buy a Sera test instead, separate zinc filings (+ 3 bottles of different liquids)
    Last edited by Paul Sabucchi; 09-17-2018 at 06:02 AM.

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