Aquariums on comeback! New shrimps have bright colors and fish are occupying the water column top to bottom! water clear! No stinky bubbles!
New Tanks!
- Thread starter DeeDeeK
- Start date
Wow, sounds like you may have another article up your sleeve 
Glad your tanks are doing well and rebounding. I have some kind of, what was sold to me as frogbit but actually looks much more like mini water lettuce, if you'd like any for the cost of shipping. Foolproof plant in my experience, it's taking over the world in my 10 gallon tanks...and my shrimp love to explore in the long roots! It guzzles down nitrate like nobody's business.
Glad your tanks are doing well and rebounding. I have some kind of, what was sold to me as frogbit but actually looks much more like mini water lettuce, if you'd like any for the cost of shipping. Foolproof plant in my experience, it's taking over the world in my 10 gallon tanks...and my shrimp love to explore in the long roots! It guzzles down nitrate like nobody's business.
Yay fast-growing plants, floating and emergent espec. ! Tell me what shipping would be and if you PayPal and let's private message final arrangements.
Plants are so important in the freshwater DSB scheme I employ. They absorb all kinds of metals, including non-nutritive ones like lead, and not only eat up nitrates but many species preferentially absorb NH3, as I understand it because it crosses cell membranes very easily (NH4 is actually positively charged and repelled by cell membranes). Or perhaps it is just NHx, either 3 or 4, that is taken up easily. Nitrite is also somewhat preferentially absorbed by many species of aquatic plants. If you have good growth, you remove the nitrogenous waste that isn't liberated by denitrification simply by trimming your plants! Along with it go a bunch of toxic (as well as nutritive, nontoxic) metals.
Oh, the little aquariums! My picotopes!
Well, I must say I am learning a lot but am still sorting out useful conclusions from useless and even completely counterproductive ones. I am very excited to start the next batch of picos but must wait until I've got the first batch all cycled.
I have three, I call trapezoid, cylinder, and sphereoid. Can you guess how they got their names? Har har har! Ever the creative one am I. Anyhow, trapezoid cycled completely but has the most crap dumped in it. I even squeezed out the gunk from one of my Hagen Elites (wow do I love those li'l filters!). I wonder if it was the Elite's bacteria that got in there and got 'er done. Sphereoid stalled at zero nitrites and about 0.5ppm NHx. Cylinder at 0.25ppm NHx and nonzero nitrite (but barely, much closer to 0 than to 0.25 using the API test kit).
So, I put an Elite filter in cylinder for a while and put cylinder back under the lamp and I simply sunk sphereoid in the 10gal aquarium. The 10 gal has still been returning to equilibrium since that unfortunate misapplication of that algaecide which I realize now had been sitting around for over 20 years unused before I stupidly poured it into my little aquatic paradise. I figure that it and spereoid will find equilibrium together and sphereoid benefits from the temperature control, steady at 78F, of 10gal, and can cycle faster that way. Cylinder is, of course, an exploration of the hypothesis that some bug in the filter crud may be enough to cycle a pico.
Is it possible that the next generation may be boosted by a combination of my special sewage injections into the substrate and a generous dose of filter foam squeezin's?.
My plan is to start six picos of about 2-3 quarts' volume with 4" of that coarse-meshed sand (more than the usual 3" because it's so open I'm concerned an actually anoxic zone may not form without greater depth) and to use my sewage squirter to boost the sand in four, one to receive filter squeezin's and go under the lamp, one to get squeezin's and allow them to sink in a few days before submerging in a larger tank, one to be submerged without squeezin's, and one to go under the lamp without squeezins. Oh, and the other two will be un-supplemented with one going under the lamp and one in the tank. Oh, and there have to be two more - with squeezin's but no sewage, one to submerge and one under the lamp. Fortunately I have a five, a "five" which seems to be seven, and a ten (which doesn't seem to actually hold ten gallons), so each tank will hold a single pico and I can set them all to the same temperature.
I currently keep a log of each of my aquariums including the picos. I will try to discipline myself to be more consistent in terms of frequency of entries and detail of data.
The frameless "five gallon" tank I keep cycled very quickly and has the best water quality and least algae of all my aquariums, ever I think. I put about 4" coarse sand in it and fed it a couple of pinches of fish food about 3x week, plus I injected my anaerobically digested muck concoction one or two times a week. I started it about a month after the five gallon framed tank and the 10gal, and every few days put one of the Elites in it for a few hours. It cycled in under four weeks (at room temperature in an unheated San Francisco dwelling, which means around 65F to 70F) while the heated tanks still showed nitrites.
Like the picos, the frameless' nitrite level peaked and began falling prior to the ammonia level's peaking and falling. I notice that in common with trapezoid, it was exposed to one of the Elites.
So, I've tried injecting my gunk into the sand (all the way at the bottom) of the 5gal framed and the 10gal. I've been unsurprised to see the NO2 drop rapidly. I've notice that too much of it near rooted plants induces some blackening and rot typical of overwhelming levels of H2S. However it has to be a LOT of my magic sewage gunk and in a shallower (~3 inch deep) region of the sand. NHx levels continued to drop and were zero rapidly though nowhere near as rapidly as NO2 was. Now, ever since the great algaecide poisoning of twenty eleven, the NHx has been nonzero in those tanks though only once reaching nearly 0.5ppm and generally hanging out at or just below 0.25ppm. (I just keep the pH at 6.6 and moved out all the delicate fish and the shrimps to the frameless).
I got ahold of a 10x/60x/200x webcam microscope made by Intel as a toy, called the QX3, and I'm working on getting software together to use it. If I had Mac OS X, there is a great program to use it and if I had Windows XP there is also a program for it. But I use Linux and must do a successful build of the source code I found in order to produce an executable for my particular machine (emachines D620) and my particular Linux flavor which is the marvelous Jolicloud adaptation of the Ubuntu distribution.
Sadly, my skills with such marvelous and quirky computer operating systems, C programming, and suchlike lags far behind my linguistic and aquaristic skills. In short, I can't make the **** thing work! However, I can run Mac OS X and Windows XP in separate windows, like little computers within my real computer, if I only can get ahold of an XP Pro product key or purchase an OS X disk.
Important thing is, I'm gonna eventually get a look at and take digital pictures and even movies of whatever you can see in the substrate and filter material at 200x magnification.
Anyone able to tell me about where to get microscope slides, contrast stains, or getting software to work for me (or getting XP pro or Mac OS going?)? I promise I'll post what I find!
Plants are so important in the freshwater DSB scheme I employ. They absorb all kinds of metals, including non-nutritive ones like lead, and not only eat up nitrates but many species preferentially absorb NH3, as I understand it because it crosses cell membranes very easily (NH4 is actually positively charged and repelled by cell membranes). Or perhaps it is just NHx, either 3 or 4, that is taken up easily. Nitrite is also somewhat preferentially absorbed by many species of aquatic plants. If you have good growth, you remove the nitrogenous waste that isn't liberated by denitrification simply by trimming your plants! Along with it go a bunch of toxic (as well as nutritive, nontoxic) metals.
Oh, the little aquariums! My picotopes!
Well, I must say I am learning a lot but am still sorting out useful conclusions from useless and even completely counterproductive ones. I am very excited to start the next batch of picos but must wait until I've got the first batch all cycled.
I have three, I call trapezoid, cylinder, and sphereoid. Can you guess how they got their names? Har har har! Ever the creative one am I. Anyhow, trapezoid cycled completely but has the most crap dumped in it. I even squeezed out the gunk from one of my Hagen Elites (wow do I love those li'l filters!). I wonder if it was the Elite's bacteria that got in there and got 'er done. Sphereoid stalled at zero nitrites and about 0.5ppm NHx. Cylinder at 0.25ppm NHx and nonzero nitrite (but barely, much closer to 0 than to 0.25 using the API test kit).
So, I put an Elite filter in cylinder for a while and put cylinder back under the lamp and I simply sunk sphereoid in the 10gal aquarium. The 10 gal has still been returning to equilibrium since that unfortunate misapplication of that algaecide which I realize now had been sitting around for over 20 years unused before I stupidly poured it into my little aquatic paradise. I figure that it and spereoid will find equilibrium together and sphereoid benefits from the temperature control, steady at 78F, of 10gal, and can cycle faster that way. Cylinder is, of course, an exploration of the hypothesis that some bug in the filter crud may be enough to cycle a pico.
Is it possible that the next generation may be boosted by a combination of my special sewage injections into the substrate and a generous dose of filter foam squeezin's?.
My plan is to start six picos of about 2-3 quarts' volume with 4" of that coarse-meshed sand (more than the usual 3" because it's so open I'm concerned an actually anoxic zone may not form without greater depth) and to use my sewage squirter to boost the sand in four, one to receive filter squeezin's and go under the lamp, one to get squeezin's and allow them to sink in a few days before submerging in a larger tank, one to be submerged without squeezin's, and one to go under the lamp without squeezins. Oh, and the other two will be un-supplemented with one going under the lamp and one in the tank. Oh, and there have to be two more - with squeezin's but no sewage, one to submerge and one under the lamp. Fortunately I have a five, a "five" which seems to be seven, and a ten (which doesn't seem to actually hold ten gallons), so each tank will hold a single pico and I can set them all to the same temperature.
I currently keep a log of each of my aquariums including the picos. I will try to discipline myself to be more consistent in terms of frequency of entries and detail of data.
The frameless "five gallon" tank I keep cycled very quickly and has the best water quality and least algae of all my aquariums, ever I think. I put about 4" coarse sand in it and fed it a couple of pinches of fish food about 3x week, plus I injected my anaerobically digested muck concoction one or two times a week. I started it about a month after the five gallon framed tank and the 10gal, and every few days put one of the Elites in it for a few hours. It cycled in under four weeks (at room temperature in an unheated San Francisco dwelling, which means around 65F to 70F) while the heated tanks still showed nitrites.
Like the picos, the frameless' nitrite level peaked and began falling prior to the ammonia level's peaking and falling. I notice that in common with trapezoid, it was exposed to one of the Elites.
So, I've tried injecting my gunk into the sand (all the way at the bottom) of the 5gal framed and the 10gal. I've been unsurprised to see the NO2 drop rapidly. I've notice that too much of it near rooted plants induces some blackening and rot typical of overwhelming levels of H2S. However it has to be a LOT of my magic sewage gunk and in a shallower (~3 inch deep) region of the sand. NHx levels continued to drop and were zero rapidly though nowhere near as rapidly as NO2 was. Now, ever since the great algaecide poisoning of twenty eleven, the NHx has been nonzero in those tanks though only once reaching nearly 0.5ppm and generally hanging out at or just below 0.25ppm. (I just keep the pH at 6.6 and moved out all the delicate fish and the shrimps to the frameless).
I got ahold of a 10x/60x/200x webcam microscope made by Intel as a toy, called the QX3, and I'm working on getting software together to use it. If I had Mac OS X, there is a great program to use it and if I had Windows XP there is also a program for it. But I use Linux and must do a successful build of the source code I found in order to produce an executable for my particular machine (emachines D620) and my particular Linux flavor which is the marvelous Jolicloud adaptation of the Ubuntu distribution.
Sadly, my skills with such marvelous and quirky computer operating systems, C programming, and suchlike lags far behind my linguistic and aquaristic skills. In short, I can't make the **** thing work! However, I can run Mac OS X and Windows XP in separate windows, like little computers within my real computer, if I only can get ahold of an XP Pro product key or purchase an OS X disk.
Important thing is, I'm gonna eventually get a look at and take digital pictures and even movies of whatever you can see in the substrate and filter material at 200x magnification.
Anyone able to tell me about where to get microscope slides, contrast stains, or getting software to work for me (or getting XP pro or Mac OS going?)? I promise I'll post what I find!
Hey, did I really believe I'd coined the name "Picotope?" Shoot! I just found an aquarium kit called by that name!
Anyhow, I'm back online a bit more and much less in the midst of the multiple crises which had been distracting me. Still no good pics with the QX3. Doesn't matter.
My picosystems (I'll borrow an older name I might actually have made up) are up and living like a charms. I'd injected too much gunk and finally had to start over as the NH3/4 was seemingly endlessly at 0.5 ppm. Feh! I don't care to try to accelerate the process any further. It's a waste of time and energy when I can just set up an aquarium, through in a pinch of food and ignore it for six weeks, then test until I'm happy and through a bunch of living things in, add light and circulation, and watch as the underlying principle of the universe does it's thing a disparate elements join into a complex system beyond my comprehension called an ecosystem.
The average aquarium has more complexity than the space shuttle, unless you count the living organisms aboard a shuttle in which case they are then at least within the same order of magnitude of complexity. May be I'm not the religious sort at all times but there's something somehow divine to me in a system which magically creates itself out of simpler ingredients.
So, I have a 1 quart aquarium. a 2 quart, and two 3 quarts aquariums. Two are awaiting a few more plants and a stone or two I'm tying a bunch of moss to for landscaping, they have very vigorous Endler's Livebearer males, and no filtration other than sandbeds, no heaters, and light from desklamps. They are, in this proud parent's eyes, beautiful.
My plan is to sell some for folks interested in living water features for their Feng Shui, for front-desk curios in image-conscious businesses, and most importantly, to be given freely to hospices, so the peace an aquarium may bring will ease someone's passing.
In my months and months of illness, the aquarium has been my refuge from pain and woe and the attention and care I've lavished on them has been attention not paid to pain and sorrow and has put my in the practice of taking care of living things. Being a living thing myself, my improved skill at attending to the needs of a living thing has definitely paid off!
Perhaps my focus on universal principles and healing are a little odd in a thread about new aquariums but they are my latest thoughts on my newest aquariums and I have come to see the aquarium as a potential for Practice, such as is Bonsai or keeping a Chinese Teagarden. There may be implications in any area of thought one applies to a Practice and benefits as well, so aquarium keeping is something of depth and without bounds that I know of any more. Or, perhaps being deathly ill a while with no company but tropical fish, snails, and worms has given me a peculiar new twist.
Anyhow, I'm back online a bit more and much less in the midst of the multiple crises which had been distracting me. Still no good pics with the QX3. Doesn't matter.
My picosystems (I'll borrow an older name I might actually have made up) are up and living like a charms. I'd injected too much gunk and finally had to start over as the NH3/4 was seemingly endlessly at 0.5 ppm. Feh! I don't care to try to accelerate the process any further. It's a waste of time and energy when I can just set up an aquarium, through in a pinch of food and ignore it for six weeks, then test until I'm happy and through a bunch of living things in, add light and circulation, and watch as the underlying principle of the universe does it's thing a disparate elements join into a complex system beyond my comprehension called an ecosystem.
The average aquarium has more complexity than the space shuttle, unless you count the living organisms aboard a shuttle in which case they are then at least within the same order of magnitude of complexity. May be I'm not the religious sort at all times but there's something somehow divine to me in a system which magically creates itself out of simpler ingredients.
So, I have a 1 quart aquarium. a 2 quart, and two 3 quarts aquariums. Two are awaiting a few more plants and a stone or two I'm tying a bunch of moss to for landscaping, they have very vigorous Endler's Livebearer males, and no filtration other than sandbeds, no heaters, and light from desklamps. They are, in this proud parent's eyes, beautiful.
My plan is to sell some for folks interested in living water features for their Feng Shui, for front-desk curios in image-conscious businesses, and most importantly, to be given freely to hospices, so the peace an aquarium may bring will ease someone's passing.
In my months and months of illness, the aquarium has been my refuge from pain and woe and the attention and care I've lavished on them has been attention not paid to pain and sorrow and has put my in the practice of taking care of living things. Being a living thing myself, my improved skill at attending to the needs of a living thing has definitely paid off!
Perhaps my focus on universal principles and healing are a little odd in a thread about new aquariums but they are my latest thoughts on my newest aquariums and I have come to see the aquarium as a potential for Practice, such as is Bonsai or keeping a Chinese Teagarden. There may be implications in any area of thought one applies to a Practice and benefits as well, so aquarium keeping is something of depth and without bounds that I know of any more. Or, perhaps being deathly ill a while with no company but tropical fish, snails, and worms has given me a peculiar new twist.
How are those work lamps working for you? I'm looking into a dual t5 fixture from homedepot for $30. I'm still wondering how it will do for my plants. What do you think?
I am very happy with those workshop lamps! I discovered I am very happy with a wider "parabolic" reflector for a lamp higher up and a relatively narrower "parab." reflector when clipping one on each end of the aquarium and pointing them so's they cross beams. I like using a 4100k and a 5000k. They hold cfl spiral "bulbs," nuttin' fancy like a t5.
My finding has been to use whatever tubes which give your plants and fish colors to your preference, to a brightness of your preference, is the best way to go. I just think about the idea of 3w/gallon, from a t5 from with the source being about 20 inches above the substrate being about what is called a "high light" setup, at the upper end of that imaginary range. My fave tank is 5 gallons, with a 23w cfl spiral at about 17 inches above the sub. but there's a pane of glass between that cuts the intensity by something like 15% or 20% I think (it's dingy and glass reflects a lot and absorbs a lot).
After a year of niggling away, I've decided setting up in a flexible manner so adjustments can be made to suit one's taste and achieve the growth one desires as all that counts. If it looks good and grows like you want, it's good. Period.
And don't forget color temperature does not equate to spectrum! Color temperature is based on what temperature black-body emitter the spectrum of the light source in question most closely corresponds to, but this can mean widely varying distributions of intensity across the spectrum can be assigned the same "temperature." I like most "bright white" flourescents with ~4100k color temp. but NOT all. Most fluorescents have too much green and too little red for my tastes. Makes everything look sterile and guppies become boring. Look for a fluorescent that appears brownish compared to the others, which will look greenish by contrast. Check out how nice plants an fish with reds in them look under the browner appearing one!
As they say, there's no accounting for taste so if you don't like my input, don't sweat it. Gustibus nondisputum! (personasl taste cannot be argued) nor something like that.
My finding has been to use whatever tubes which give your plants and fish colors to your preference, to a brightness of your preference, is the best way to go. I just think about the idea of 3w/gallon, from a t5 from with the source being about 20 inches above the substrate being about what is called a "high light" setup, at the upper end of that imaginary range. My fave tank is 5 gallons, with a 23w cfl spiral at about 17 inches above the sub. but there's a pane of glass between that cuts the intensity by something like 15% or 20% I think (it's dingy and glass reflects a lot and absorbs a lot).
After a year of niggling away, I've decided setting up in a flexible manner so adjustments can be made to suit one's taste and achieve the growth one desires as all that counts. If it looks good and grows like you want, it's good. Period.
And don't forget color temperature does not equate to spectrum! Color temperature is based on what temperature black-body emitter the spectrum of the light source in question most closely corresponds to, but this can mean widely varying distributions of intensity across the spectrum can be assigned the same "temperature." I like most "bright white" flourescents with ~4100k color temp. but NOT all. Most fluorescents have too much green and too little red for my tastes. Makes everything look sterile and guppies become boring. Look for a fluorescent that appears brownish compared to the others, which will look greenish by contrast. Check out how nice plants an fish with reds in them look under the browner appearing one!
As they say, there's no accounting for taste so if you don't like my input, don't sweat it. Gustibus nondisputum! (personasl taste cannot be argued) nor something like that.
I started a long and annoying thread titled "Toward a standard understanding of aquarium lighting. I am including an excerpt from my first post.
I make up a unit of measurement based on one watt of fluorescent lighting with no reflector or a flat reflector above it. with a flat reflector the intensity would be about double than without and of course different types of fluorescent bulbs can vary in efficiency by quite a bit, as can the same type but with different phosphors, so just assume T5, whatever phosphor you choose, and a reflector are what is meant in this following chart. I will bet my own money (up to 25cents since I'm poor) this chart will work out.
If you hang your lights so they're 28" above the substrate multiply wattage by 0.56, then divide by number of gallons to give you the wpg equivalent of t5s mounted close to the surface of an average 55gallon tank, which is generally 21" high, assuming a few inches for substrate and an inch or two clearance for the lamps.
I get the figures using the inverse square rule which I can't remember clearly enough to explain as I write but you can wikipedia it and learn the difference between flux, intensity, brightness, and other confusing properties of light and of reflective surfaces. I think it's in the thread on understanding light.
Hang the lights 30" above the substrate, and give it 6+ watts T5 lighting per gallon and you'll get about the 3wpg described as "high light." 3-5 watts T5 from 30" = "medium" and 2 watts or less for "Low light." The possible advantage of more light but from further away is that as the light spreads, the drop in intensity over distance diminishes, so you over-light the upper water less and under light the lower reaches less as well. Even more light but from yet further away gives you much even-er light over the 10-30 inches depth most tanks fall between.
Of course, I am not accounting for water's light absorbing properties but one of these days I'm sure I'll be perfect and know everything and have all the answers for anybody who cares too ask:headbang2: Ha ha ha ha!
Also, I completely ignore the likelihood of parabolic and other curved reflectors. Like I said, one of these days....:hitting:
So:
The intensity of 1 watt light per gallon of tank capacity at the bottom, from 21" height = 1wpg-unit.
To find the intensity of your tank floor's light, adjust as follows, for height, assuming a light of the same strength as above
8" height, multiply a standard 1wpg-unit by 6.89
10 1/2" height, multiply a standard 1wpg-unit by 4
12" height, multiply by 3.09
14" height, 2.25
16" height, 1.72
18", 1.36
20", 1.1
22", 0.91
24", 0.76
26", 0.65
28", 0.56
30", 0.49
I make up a unit of measurement based on one watt of fluorescent lighting with no reflector or a flat reflector above it. with a flat reflector the intensity would be about double than without and of course different types of fluorescent bulbs can vary in efficiency by quite a bit, as can the same type but with different phosphors, so just assume T5, whatever phosphor you choose, and a reflector are what is meant in this following chart. I will bet my own money (up to 25cents since I'm poor) this chart will work out.
If you hang your lights so they're 28" above the substrate multiply wattage by 0.56, then divide by number of gallons to give you the wpg equivalent of t5s mounted close to the surface of an average 55gallon tank, which is generally 21" high, assuming a few inches for substrate and an inch or two clearance for the lamps.
I get the figures using the inverse square rule which I can't remember clearly enough to explain as I write but you can wikipedia it and learn the difference between flux, intensity, brightness, and other confusing properties of light and of reflective surfaces. I think it's in the thread on understanding light.
Hang the lights 30" above the substrate, and give it 6+ watts T5 lighting per gallon and you'll get about the 3wpg described as "high light." 3-5 watts T5 from 30" = "medium" and 2 watts or less for "Low light." The possible advantage of more light but from further away is that as the light spreads, the drop in intensity over distance diminishes, so you over-light the upper water less and under light the lower reaches less as well. Even more light but from yet further away gives you much even-er light over the 10-30 inches depth most tanks fall between.
Of course, I am not accounting for water's light absorbing properties but one of these days I'm sure I'll be perfect and know everything and have all the answers for anybody who cares too ask:headbang2: Ha ha ha ha!
Also, I completely ignore the likelihood of parabolic and other curved reflectors. Like I said, one of these days....:hitting:
So:
The intensity of 1 watt light per gallon of tank capacity at the bottom, from 21" height = 1wpg-unit.
To find the intensity of your tank floor's light, adjust as follows, for height, assuming a light of the same strength as above
8" height, multiply a standard 1wpg-unit by 6.89
10 1/2" height, multiply a standard 1wpg-unit by 4
12" height, multiply by 3.09
14" height, 2.25
16" height, 1.72
18", 1.36
20", 1.1
22", 0.91
24", 0.76
26", 0.65
28", 0.56
30", 0.49
