New Tanks!

[TabisFish]

Wow that's really confusing. My lights are ... 23" above the substrate (its a 37 gal) .. so lets see if im getting this. I'm still not getting this i guess. And I'm deciding between two light fixtures at the moment. First being two single t5 fixtures which is like 17 watts a bulb so 34w.
the second being a t8 fixture. http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053
two bulbs each 20watts each so 40watts total. So how do I figure out which would be better?

 

[platytudes]

Tabis - I would definitely do T5s if you have the opportunity, they provide much more crisp light more efficiently. T8s are more budget friendly since you don't need to buy aquarium specific bulbs, you can find bulbs at any hardware or large department store.

Sorry I didn't ever get back to you, DD - I forgot about this thread since I didn't subscribe to it. I'm so glad your picotopes are doing well! I bet you could easily sell these if you had a betta in them, that's what people expect to find. I guess since they can breathe air directly and are somewhat sedentary (compared to say, a zebra danio of similar size) they do make decent bowl inhabitants, I would say that livebearer fry could work just as well also. Shrimp are probably the best suited, and with cherry shrimp being cheap as anything nowadays since the new fancier colors have emerged...well

I love what you're doing, it's so honest, but truthfully if I were trying to sell these I would go for something gimicky. Glow in the dark gravel and ghost shrimp or something, with maybe some pellia or other slow growing mossy plant. Hopefully in your much more progressive part of the world though, you can find a niche market for the way more aesthetically pleasing compositions!

 

[TabisFish]

I'm thinking that's what I'll do. It's an under-cabinet work light, so i figure, hey $10 a piece... for a t5 fixture... OKAY! So i plan on taking it apart and mounting it in my light strip :nilly:

 

[DeeDeeK]

Thanks for feedback re. pictanks and update re. lighting.

I'll stick with endlers and cpds (yup, CPDs like my little tanks so long as the temp is reasonably stable tho' their habitat is shallow shallow water prone to temperature swings from day to night). For a 1 gallon plus, a betta might be nice but I'd have to find naturally colored stones and sand to complement the betta's color. No gimicks for me, I'm not trying to be that sort of a success. I am what you might call an aesthete and I've long ago found my personal aesthetic tastes and can emphasize them or argue them forever and not change a thing in anyone else's mind.

However, I found mine only because of what I saw in the tastes and choices of other people, so I see it as important to reproduce what one finds delight in so that other poor lost souls have a chance to find delight, too, should theirs resonate with mine. I am a writer and you should hear me rant about the baby-s__t most creative writing courses teach us to produce. Low common denominator. I feel the urge to rant! Better move on to new subject.

There is no arguing taste, as the Romans said.

My tiny tanks are "landscaped" after themes from teagardens mainly but with a bit of gauche American modern art and some Japanese landscape motifs thrown it. The purpose is to help people be calmer and more peaceful, so a betta could be great, but gaudy colors would work subtly against my aim. Also, I aim to sell to the Feng Shui crowd, and an earthier approach is more conducive to peaceful and healthy flow of Chi, if that's what you believe in. At any rate the Feng Shui aesthetic is a bit sedate and for a hyper talkative, easily agitate person like myself, that is a good thing. Every grain of sand helps the beach to make.

As for lights, I'm sure 34 watts of t5 suspended close to the top of a 23" tall tank will be perfectly adequate for med/high light conditions. I'm in favor of leaving room for more since I like nice bright conditions. Remember, and I swear by this, color rendering is very important! Many "daylight" bulbs have a distinct excess of green! More green than needed will downplay the more reddish and orangeish colors as well as the bluey ones, tho' "daylight" often have plenty of blue. Color temperature in fluorescents is a very poor predictor of their color rendering (how colors will look to you under them).

I've mixed yellower/browner bulbs with the allegedly "daylight" bulbs and found great plant growth and nicer colors. I wish I could remember the brands right now. Anyhow,
GE "cool white" while not made for plant growth, give excellent results despite everything about them that makes one think they wouldn't.

Point is, you got an aquarium to look at, I suspect. I did. Try to get a gander at the bulbs you're interested in action

As for T5 and T8 I agree the efficiency and crispness but I'd say the crispness issue is one of taste but if you prefer fuzzier, a smear of vaseline on the reflectors will make the light a bit schmeery.

Please excuse any implied assertion of my personal taste, I'm merely positing suggestions and tips! Best of luck.

 

[platytudes]

Vaseline on the reflectors? Never thought of that! In tanks without plants (such as my goldfish tank), if I hoped for a more diffuse light, I have used strips of window tint placed on the inside of the glass, where the bulb rests. This can be purchased very cheaply at any place that sells automotive supplies - the windshield strip tint is only $3.50 or so for a long (but narrow) roll. Necessity truly is the mother of invention!

I am very fussy about color rendering too, glad not to be the only one I hate an overabundance of green/yellow, I do believe the "color enhancing phosphors" in the aquarium bulbs help tremendously. Hardware store, full spectrum bulbs can be fine, but look much better if combined with at least one color enhancing tube.

 

[DeeDeeK]

I'm kickin' mydamnself! I keep forgetting to check the brand (it's a no-name sorta brand) of the CFL I get at the hardware store. "Bright White," it calls itself, 4100K color temperature. I'm sure the color rendering is inaccurate relative to our sun's 5500k-6700K (depending on time of day and latitude, season, etc.) black-body spectrum but I like it and the guppy-stud I bred looks gorgeous. He's getting a lot of action, that's for sure! My plants grow under it wonderfully and look rich and green and still, my axelrod's rasboras iridescent blue stripes are plenty blue. Mr. Guppy is rich in orange and purple (weird combo, huh?) and is stunning.

The bulb bills itself as perfect for the busy office! Funny, huh? I'll have to send Mr. Guppy some forms in triplicate for him to fill out. I'll tell you how it goes!

You know, there are some very mildly tinted "gels," sheets of heat resistant plastic, which are made for tinting light in theater productions or for film/video lighting. They'll stand up to any lighting the aquarist might throw at them, I am quite sure. They're made for high wattage halogens and similarly scorching output, just need some airspace for circulation usually. I'm a performer and ex-film person and used those suckers many times without thinking how good they might be for correcting the color rendering in an aquarium situation!

They way they work is they might, for example, allow 80% if non-red light through and about 100% of red (some are very specific about frequency and some more general, they selection is very broad) so you might combine a couple without decreasing the total "wpg" by very much and find yourself with a much handsomer display. I'm sorta making this up as a simplistic example but there are actually good sources of info out there.

Here is a decent website selling theater and cinegels, read THEIR information - you could make a gorgeous aquarium out of your merely beautiful aquarium! Check this out:http://www.stagespot.com/gel.html

 

[platytudes]

Wow, that link is really interesting. I am picturing some "modern art" aquariums you could make with those solid color ones!

Sounds like you need to try some of those and make an article about it, maybe for CA again Combine it with your "Toward a standard understanding..." article about lighting, and I think you really have something there.

 

[DeeDeeK]

You know what? I think I'm gonna order some gels or see if I can borrow a few snippets from my theater friends - in between productions don'cha-know.

I've been re thinking the whole lighting deal and figure a compendium of figures and methods and facts and physics for the dedicated techie do-it-yerselfer would be nice but actually I'm more of the aesthetic/chef mentality. I like to know what's going on but if I have general approaches supplemented by an approximate understanding of the underlying principles useful enough to allow me to improvise until I arrive at something I'm happy with, that's good enough.

Chefs are not biochemists usually, unless you mean APPLIED biochemistry, dig?

A bit more time to digest and experiment, get my digital camera back from that guy who borrowed it about one entire geological era ago,perhaps back in the cretaceous era even, and then time to write a new article and start a new thread.

Anybody have a spectrometer for rent?

 

[DeeDeeK]

Back to my "new" tanks. I couldn't get anything but algae to grow and then tried not using Neutral Regulator and Discus Buffer to set pH to 6.8 as my LFS owner had recommended. Now I just use any old basic water conditioner to remove chloramine and chlorine and a bit of API pH down (it's strong H2SO4 -sulfuric acid) a little at a time to put pH where I want it. Too much at once results in stressed shrimp but a wee bit, I add about 0.25 ml at a time, no more than 0.75 ml in a day, seems fine. My shrimp died slowly with NR and DB but I probably was using too much. With tanks 10 gallons and under, with water changes usually no more than 0.5 gallons at a time, it is hard to measure that stuff dry. I like using a 1ml insulin syringe I can buy for 50 cents at the drug store (I cut off the end scissors so's there's no needle), which is marked in .01 ml units and I measure out aquasafe or whatever exactly to the amount of water I'm changing. Anyhow, all my little scraps of surviving cuttings started growing like mad, especially once I found out my pipes add lots of copper and some lead so I began using activated carbon (which concession I hate to make but those darned pipes! And I've been drinking that crud for a year now without testing it first!)

My shrimps have produced shrimplets, my Endlers are endless, I bred some cool guppies and am now working on a "signature" guppy/endler hybrid to stock these little aquariums I'm marketing to the Feng Shui crowd here in San Francisco.

The photo is kinda lame and the fishes decided to all pose up front and look as crowded as possible (camera hogs!) and for some reason the browser for this site won't see the most recent photos I've taken, of the two 5 gallon tanks totally crammed with plants, the cuttings of which are beginning to populate the 10 gallon in the photo. Sigh. I wanna show off and can't!

 

[platytudes]

Your tank looks very nice! Combining two different kinds of lighting, as you've done, often produces a very pleasing effect I've noticed Plants seem to like it too. The redder/pinker bulb really seems to bring out the colors on the fish and the yellower/greener bulb seems to give plants what they need to thrive.

I'm thinking about trying GE LED bulbs on my 10 gallon...I got an awesome coupon, $3 off one bulb, so might give it a go. The problem is I don't have any tanks like yours with the incandescent base pointed downwards (or even at an angle like that) but sideways, so I'm not sure it's going to work. I have clamp lights aplenty, so maybe that will have to do!

I can't wait to hear more about your ™ line of Endlers Have you thought of a name for the strain yet?

Adrian HD on Aquabid has some lovely Endlers, I have been tempted to get "swamp guppies" from him before, Micropoecilia picta. Really quite beautiful fish...very underrated.