The transfer of fish and plants from the 25 gallon aquarium over to the 75 gallon aquarium is definitely soon. I’m actually rather nervous about that, if only it were possible to simply lift up the smaller aquarium and dump the fish into the bigger one, heh, but no… I’ll have to catch them.
I’ve not really been posting a lot about the experience of setting up the new aquarium, mostly because I’ve been busy doing it.
In November I was able to finally get the aquarium itself. I had a ‘$15 off your $100 purchase’ coupon from Franklin Hardware & Pet, but I forgot to present it at the time of purchase (I was too excited and also concerned about getting that big glass box home). I went back to see if they’d redo the transaction, but they wouldn’t. I don’t really shop there anymore because of that. I can completely understand refusing it if it was days or even a single day later, but it was more like 15 minutes later. If I hadn’t already taken that giant glass box into the house I’d have returned it… but since I needed help vehicle wise, bleh… it’s only $15, but that store lost a customer because of it. I’m still irritated by that and prefer to drive two hours each way to go to That Fish Place/That Pet Place instead.
In mid-December That Pet Place in Lancaster had a ‘30% off one aquatic item’ sale, score! I used that sale to purchase my 48″ quad bulb (two rows, each of two lights) light fixture. It’s a Current USA Orbit, so snazzy. The money saved on the purchase of the Orbit light fixture basically paid for the 5 bags of Eco-Complete substrate I also bought that day. In retrospect I wish I’d have bought another two bags, because, well, I ended up having to go back again.
In mid-January I received a sales flyer from TPP with another ‘30% off one aquatic item’ coupon. I was originally going to simply re-use my Eheim Ecco and Aquaclear 70, but 30% off an Eheim Pro II was too good to pass up. So, another trip to Lancaster for the Pro II (it really isn’t the holy grail that the Eheim pimps would want you to believe, but it is very nice, it’s worth the 30% off price, not so sure it’s worth $250). I also picked up an Aquaclear surface skimmer.
When I tried to move the AC70 over to the 75 gallon aquarium I realized that it didn’t fit, the extra wide frame of the AGA brand 75 won’t allow for it, agh! I rushed to the Carlisle Petsmart, printout for pricematch in hand, and bought the AC 110. LOUD, oh dear, it’s annoying. I came to believe that there was cavitation due to lack of inflow when using the surface skimmer, so I returned to the AC110 filter a week later. It should have become quiet within a week, but even if it did the surface agitation was ludicrously intense. That’s good for a fish tank, bad for a planted aquarium with CO2 injection.
The plan has now changed to using the Eheim Pro II 2028 as primary filtration and having the Ecco 2234 as secondary.
I’d been reading a lot on plantedtank.net and decided that I’d be changing some things when it comes to Co2 Injection. I built a PVC CO2 reactor based on the “Rex Reactor” design, but I used actual barb connections for the Co2 port and also added a second barb (plugged at the moment) for future fertilizer autodosing. I’m pretty happy with it, if only from the standpoint that it doesn’t leak water. It’s not actually hooked up yet. I have a strong feeling/hope that it’ll greatly outperform my little pollen glass diffuser.
There are some things that seem to vary a lot between different aquatic forums, one is of course co2 injection methods (diffuser or reactor) and another is using UV sterilization. I don’t have a sterilizer on the 25 gallon, but seeing that they were on sale with Big Al’s Online, I dropped a bit of cash on a 25 watt Current USA Gamma. A lot, perhaps even most, seem to drastically undersize their UVS, perhaps sizing only to kill floating algae, versus using it to full potential. That’s the annoying little thing about UVS, the flow rate to kill parasites is quite very low. I needed the 25w sterilizer to match the flow on my sort of puny Ecco. I figured that if I was going to buy one, I ought to get one powerful enough to do everything. I’ve not yet, thankfully, had any sort of parasite problems with my fish, but a little extra in terms of precautions isn’t bad. I plan to run it during the night period, switching it off during the day, that’ll help limit any chelation bond damage for fertilizer administered during the day period.
I also decided to ditch the submersible Stealth heater and opt for the external/inline Hydor Eth. The submersible is still going to be good to have as an emergency backup, especially important during these days of 16° F weather. I put that inline right at the end of the tubing run to the outflow of the Pro II. I figured that way it’s out of the way, and I won’t risk bumping the heater setting dial. It seems to work very well, I like that water is heated before returning to the aquarium, helps counteract any heat lost in the filtration process. It’s that heater that prompted me to use my credit card, d’oh… but difficult to pass up sale prices, it seemed justified.
I also noticed that Doctor’s Foster & Smith had Reverse Osmosis systems on sale, which is where the real credit card usage came in. I didn’t need one, really, but I’ve been sort of toying with the idea of converting the 25 gallon into a nano reef, moving it down to the lounge/bedroom. I’d need RO/DI water for mixing with the salt mix, especially since there’s still 0.5 ppm phosphate in our tap water. I’m justifying the purchase with that future possibility, plus if I bypass the DI resin I’d be able to drink the water (still haven’t, because it probably don’t actually taste good, too pure for flavor). The water once it has passed through the DI resin is really ‘aggressive’ …it’s near instant skin pruning, as if having sat in the bath for quite a long while.
It’ll be nice though, since the 75 gallon is open-top, losing much more water to evaporation than an aquarium with a canopy, I’ll be able to topoff with mineral-free water, not increasing the hardness I set and maintain after every water change. It probably wouldn’t make any sort of significant difference, but either way, I feel better about it. Using the RO/DI water for water changes would be overkill in a major way, since our water, except for the phosphate, is ultra soft and otherwise not too horrible to begin with.
I was able to put in a diverter tee, or whatever you’d call it, down in the laundry room. This allows me to turn off or on the water flow to the RO unit, while not impacting water flow to the washing machine. I still need to mount that system on the wall, but for the time being it’s no issue for it to sit on the dryer.
This month’s trip to TPP was to get two more bags of Eco-Complete, and then also get an automatic shut off/float valve for the RO unit. I had been planning on using the two bags of gravel currently in the 25 gallon aquarium, but the logistics of doing that weren’t too great, plus half that gravel is plain epoxy gravel… seemed like saving that $40 wouldn’t be such a great thing after all. I’d hate to decide down the line that I hated having the regular gravel mixed in. I do have a little, about five pounds, maybe ten, of regular gravel in there, which I did regret putting in just about immediately. That was the gravel from the old dwarf puffer tank. The new gravel was able to completely hide/cover it up. In the greater scheme, a max of 10 pounds of regular gravel (black of course) mixed into 140 pounds of Eco-Complete isn’t so bad. The regular gravel will gradually come to the surface though, as it’s generally a bit larger… damn that whole bimodal thing. Realistically though, I plan to use some sort of carpet plant, limiting visibility of gravel anyway, heh.
Unfortunately it turns out that the Coralife automatic shut off valve / float valve is completely defective. There are holes in the bottom of the asov, it leaks 100% of the time. It also doesn’t ever actually shut off the flow of water like it’s supposed to when the float valve closes… just spurts and drips water from the asov even more. It was $20, gas to return it is $10… I’m not in any sort of hurry to return it, in fact it might just be better to eat the cost and simply buy a working asov, as they’re about $13. I can’t really think of anything else that I need, maybe a couple of plants and fish, but I don’t like buying fish so far away, they’re pretty stressed by the time I get home, remembering the Cardinal Tetra experience, agh what an expensive disaster!
I don’t know if I ever did write about it, but the Carlisle Petsmart, when it opened, had Cardinals, covered under their normal replacement policy. I was so shocked by that, I had to triple check with other employees there. Anyway, most all of them survived just fine. Even though those sorts of stores have a bad rep, some of them have quality fish. I’ve yet to actually meet an employee that knew more than what was on the sales sticker though. I have to assume that the Cardinals didn’t work out for the store in the long term though… you absolutely need to know what you’re doing with them even if they’re completely healthy to start with; that Petsmart doesn’t sell them anymore.
The fantastic shopping center under construction off of exit 17 (? I think…) has a “Coming Soon” Petsmart, I really hope they’ll have Cardinals, at least in the beginning, heh. I’ll buy the whole tank full! I just never want to get stuck where I end up having a pair of $25 each Cardinals like I did with That Pet Place… since all the others died.
I did, once I bought the Eheim Pro II 2028, start the aquarium cycling with a shrimp (the human food kind, headless and uncooked). That whole “has to be uncooked” business some people go on about is nonsense, within a day it was pink like you’d expect, the 75° water cooked it, shock. Cycling a “high-tech” planted tank is a bit unnecessary, but considering I’d be moving an entire tank full of fish in right away, I figured I ought to get it as ready as possible. The bacteria colony from that one shrimp is in no way capable of handing the bioload, but that combined with moving the Ecco filter and the ‘high performance’ nature of the plant growth (the high performance bit is kind of tongue in cheek, btw). I shouldn’t have a problem.
So, anyway, 4×65 watts lighting (two 6700/10,000K and two actinic/10,000K bulbs), pressurized CO2 injection through reactor inline on the Ecco’s outflow, 25 watt UVS also inline with the Ecco (UVS first to avoid bubbles in the water). The Hydor Eth inline heater is, as mentioned, connected to the outflow of the 2028. The Ecco will have the surface skimmer attached to its intake, since the Ecco is relatively low flow, especially compared to the former AC110, I don’t believe there will be any problem. I hope not, the water surface gets kind of gross from dust and what not.
I did find a spectacular piece of driftwood on Ebay, it’s a bit smaller than I’d expected (of course measurements were provided, my correlation of the visual size and physical size wasn’t quite right). I’m still very happy with it, the African Mopani wood is so much more attractive than the more standard Malaysian stuff, that the older driftwood looks kind of boring. I’ll probably be buying another piece of Mopani, probably a couple smaller pieces.
I’m relatively happy with how everything has been progressing. It has taken over six months already, counting time from beginning of stand construction to now, but I’ve been working very diligently to do everything as close to how I really want it as possible. With the first aquarium I ended up wasting a good bit of money on things that weren’t that great or that I didn’t need. While I did make a couple mistakes this time too, the number of mistakes has been greatly reduced. One thing is purchasing the AC surface skimmer, and then buying the Fluval one… they’re identical except the adapter hardware, and I wanted that nice little elbow that comes with the Fluval one. I doubt that I could still return the AC version, it’s been too long, so wasted $8, heh, guess that isn’t so bad, really.
I’m still not sure if I’ll do it, but I’ve been considering getting a triple peristaltic pump, the reefdoser, to administer fertilizers automatically. I know there are ways of doing it cheaper, but that reefdoser pump is, in my opinion, the best way. It’s like so much of this stuff, once you’ve gone to a certain point, it only seems logical to keep going.
Once I get the US Plastics order that has my little barb adapters for 1/8″ ID tubing I’ll be able to actually connect the CO2 reactor, and get everything else fully set up. Then it’s just when I choose to move the fish… eep.