OnlyGenusCaps

That's an awesome looking tank, and great to see it's going to get a second life! If you are looking to get some lids, I'd suggest just going to any big box home improvement store and getting sheets of lexan (i.e. polycarbonate) and cutting them yourself. Polycarbonate is more expensive than acrylic, but acrylic has a tendency to warp as tops. When I make mine, I just cut them using a dovetail saw and then sand it down. But a good blade for plastic sheeting on a circ or table saw works well to. Looking forward to seeing what you make of it!

Probably a Potamogeton species. Not sure I can ID beyond that right now. Many of them get quite large, but small species like P. gayi can be a interesting additions to planted aquariums.

This is mostly an update to show of a fun photo. I've been a bit stalled on getting the stock in there (ordered really) as I'm not happy with how noisy the sump overflow is. This was the first time I made an overflow for one of my tanks, and if I could go back and do it again, it would be different. But I think I've figured out how to do a modified Herbie style to cut down on the noise. It's just doing it with the tank running is... Challenging. And frankly not all that advisable. Still, there are fun moments even without the final fish in there. I've added snails to help the male Endler's cycle the tank. It's pretty well cycled at this point as I have no signs of ammonia and I'm churning out nitrates. I added orange Tylomelania snails (a.k.a. "rabbit snails" although I have no idea why they are called that as they look nothing like rabbits to me). I know they are snails, but they are so slow! For anyone who hasn't had them they move along with this inchworm, lumbering gait, dragging their pointed shells behind them. The cool thing is with no fish that disturb the substrate in there I'm getting these really cool zen garden patterns in the aragonite! Here is a photo: You can see the pattern best before the lights come on when indirect sunlight is coming in at an angle. Gives me an idea for another tank (which I need like another hole in the head). Do other people's Tylomelania do this, or is this a weird thing about butting them on the aragonite? Thanks for looking!

Thank you, sir! I wonder what other pockets of merch you are hiding around the web like little easter eggs?! You are a man of mystery.

Are you gaslighting me, @Zenzo? 🤪 Seriously though, before posting that I checked your website where I see a link to ACO products and two colors of t-shirt. I checked ACO's stickers and it's not there either. Where are you hiding them?! Don't keep it a secret, man! 😁

That's a beautiful tank! Is that Aqualand in south Minneapolis?! Most center room aquariums, like hex tanks, and cylinders have a central column coming up the middle. A fake reef or log. Better ones use natural materials. The best ones I have seen seem to have nothing though. The absolute best cylinder was clear the way through and looked like a piece of palagic habitat. You could see there was good flow, but I have zero ideas how they accomplished that!

I have a new one that's pretty simple. Now that @Zenzo has joined ACO, can we get a "Murphy" sticker of Zenzo's cichlid? I love that thing! 😁

I was thinking those stairs are going to be your limiting factor. But what a great basement! The concrete floor and those posts and beam are going to look incredible there too! I'm following this for sure. However long it takes. When I was buying my house all the basements were "finished". When I told the real estate agent I needed a basement what was at least partly unfinished, she asked if I was trying to "build equity". I told her no, I need places for plants and fish. She gave me a look like I'd suddenly gone quite mad right in front of her!

Solid edit! So what you are saying is that the Weekly World News has been right all along, aliens are having babies on Earth. Just with driftwood. Sounds like they have themselves a new headline. Hold the presses! 😄 Interesting! That certainly did bleach it. Unfortunately, that's about all the deep insights I can glean from it though. As I mentioned, I don't know what to expect with bleach. I can send that information along too though. It might be useful for those who know more about such clades than I (which is a long list!).

Well... They were a smaller species than I am accustomed to. I put them into the tank when it was dark, and despite that the seven, small, male Endler's I have in there had a feeding frenzy. By morning they were all gone. So, that was a short lived experiment! But their small size, like that of brine shrimp, means I now plan to order more and setup a colony for live feeding. I've had these Endler's for years and I've never seen them so amped up. And that's saying something for Endler's! Once I get the cichlids in there, I figure these will make a splendid live food for the fry. So I'll have amphipods in there - temporarily. Might be as good as I get. I'm planning on ordering the fish soon to put in QT. I have snails in there now. But, I need to quiet the sump. So I have to drill the back while the snails are in there and re-plumb a bit. Not ideal, but necessary. That's the current delay. Thanks goodness it's acrylic or I'd absolutely have to break the whole thing down to make these changes.

Don't know. Never used that for the purpose. I have no experience to guide you on that. Sorry. Thanks! Looks like the color was stable with alcohol. Can take a while with that, which is why I like H2O2 for the job better, but probably not worth trying it at this point. I agree this is the same stuff. Fascinating! Thanks for your kind permission! I'll try to send it off this week. I'll say he's a great guy, very knowledgeable, and a good friend, but not the quickest to reply most of the time. I think we all have friends like that - and during the pandemic there have been long stretches where I have morphed into that being. 😬 Oh I hope I didn't sound too dismissive. I thought it was a great idea! I had to rack my brain to think of some of the lineages to rule them out. It was kind of fun. I suppose I could find my key to North America somewhere and dust it off to try to be more sure. But that's regionally specific and so only so helpful anyhow. This is fun. And made vastly more fun by getting to bounce ideas around with others! 😁

Really?! I kid you not, that's what I have sitting on the tank for them ready to go for tomorrow. Excellent news!

Without question! Essentially I was curious what it would bleach to. It can reveal pigment information. Your description and photo on the paper towel were excellent! It seems more rigid than what I think of slime mold structures to be in most cases. I'm at a bit of a loss. I might send the photo to a colleague of mine if that's okay with you. So, I will say it does have things in common with marine byrazoa, but the freshwater lineages I am familiar with are quite different looking. That's just to say the ones I am familiar with though. It is very possible there are others out there. However, I will say that I now want to find FW bryazoa for my pseudo-saltwater tank. So, thanks for the inspiration at the very least!

Agreed! I just added amphipods to my Pseudo-Salt tank like 10 min ago. I hope they will make it. It's pretty barren in there right now.

Excellent point! I use a little teabag full of yard soil in my sumps when I start a tank. Seems to help get things started. Actually, I take it from the soil beneath the compost. Loads of decomposition happening there!

Thank you, @James Black!

What an excellent experiment!!! I also like the side-by-side photo for comparison. Do you have a thread on this experiment?

I apologize if this is not the place to ask about this, but it seems adjacent, so I'm going for it. I might have missed this, but what are the "Trader Feedback" sections all about? What are the new "ranks" in the lower left corner of people's account images, and how are "points" handed out for that? Also, what are the new badges on some accounts in the upper right of people's profile images? I'm asking to try to understand this all better. I've not been on here long, but I'm really quite impressed with the consistent updates that happen. It is clear the folks behind the scenes care a lot about this forum.

That is really interesting stuff! I don't think you have either of the standard red ("black") algae strains: staghorn or black-brush. The coraloid shape on that is absolutely fascinating though! I don't know what it is. You say it is rubbery or rigid, which means you are absolutely correct, it is not either of those alga species. I'm really curious about this, so I hope it is okay if I ask a few more questions. Is it still growing? I'd be inclined, given that you don't have fish you could harm in there just yet, to leave it for a bit and see what it does. It's got a bit of a slime mold fruiting body look to it to me. There are of course aquatic fungi, but the ones I know of don't tend to have reproductive structures like that. Not that they might not exist, I just can't think of any off the top of my head. If you take a bit of it out of the water, does it dry down and shrink much? And, if you put some in a small glass (shot glass or something similar) and add a little H2O2, what color does it turn in a few hours or over night? Again, sorry for all of the questions. I'm really quite intrigued by that organism you have there! Very observant, and a great find!

They look great, and congrats on the BAP submission! I'll have to log in and see what they went for. Nice work!

Not at all. That's an idea! I need to figure out how I'm doing my socks too. Do I just drill in bulkheads with down pipes in the first section? That could work. The hitch is that the automatic water changer (AWC) will cause the level of the tank to fluctuate by several inches. This is going to either make the socks quite noisy (something I really want to avoid) or potentially overflow them, which seems like a bad idea. I'm thinking the most straight forward thing will be to set them on a float system. That way they come into the water at the same depth all the time no matter where the AWC stops, reducing noise and preventing overflow. Not to build such a thing... Okay, that's brilliant! I would never have thought of that, and I'm sold on using them for my lids. Thank you!

That's even better - heirloom rocks! And whatever they are, they are very, very nice rocks too.

***Fair warning: this is a long update with not a great deal of physical progress*** I've begun the process of outfitting my Deep Reef tank. There are so many things to do, and the scale for this size of tank means I am not sure I am going about this in the right order. But, because I like to think about filtration (some might say too much), I'm starting there. The first thing I needed to do was to figure out just how much water I am dealing with. So here is a quick run down of the tank (this process works for any tank of course): Acrylic thickness - 0.75” Internal length - 70.5” Internal width - 28.25” Internal depth - 28.75” Calculated volume max ~ 247.875406 gal Depth of weirs - 1.5” Internal tank depth less weir depth - 27.25 Max water drain when pump stopped - 13 gal Functioning tank volume ~ 234.942776 gal Flow rate x 6/hr ~ 1,4010 gph (23.5 gpm) With all that known, I could set about figuring out the sump size. I have a tendency to err on the side of more sump than needed. This is especially true for messy fish and where I have no plants in the display. Both will be the case here. Perhaps more importantly than the size of this sump, is the design. I've been having wonderful conversations behind the scenes here with a couple of very thoughtful and knowledgeable folks (you know who you are) about filtration. What has come out of those conversations is the design I will present here which I call a "Sock Last" arrangement. I've kind of decided filter socks are amazing! But they are placed in the wrong location, leading to the major complaint about them that they are a lot of maintenance because they clog quickly. I've found this to be true on the sump I have from a kit which is the "Sock First" arrangement where the water from the overflow goes directly into the sock. With that design you funnel everything coming out of the tank through your finest filtration. That is a recipe for quickly clogging the filtration and high maintenance. I liked @Cory's setup with the multiple vertically oriented layers of diminishing porosity of foam. But, just I couldn't give up my socks. They are so easy to change out, and they filter to the micron level. So here is the basic schematic of what I have come up with for my design: The flow is designed off the principle there should be a "dirty" side of the sump and a "clean" side that is where you draw from to return to the tank. This design puts a lot of focus on the order of mechanical filtration. Tank 1 is the "Refugium Separator" which serves two purposes. The first is to have it act as a settling sump where the largest waste can settle out and rest on the bottom. To facilitate this the water will enter below the functioning water level of this tank (which also serves to cut down on noise) and then flow upward through physical baffles. As the current slows the large material can settle, with the cleaner water moving upward and out to the next tank. This tank will also act as a refugium because there are no plants in the display tank. This should allow for some nitrate capture and hopefully prevent spikes of unwanted nitrogenous wastes (I've got an experiment planned to determine which plants I would like to use for this purpose - I'll do another thread on that when the time comes). The physical baffles will hold the plants in place, and their mass will act as a secondary baffle for the separator function. I'm hoping I get a synergy out of these two functions. This tank will need to be regularly maintained by removing excess plant biomass and sucking out the sludge with a shop vac. This is the dirty side. Tank 2 is the "Moving Bed BioReactor" or "MBBR" section. These tend to be incredibly efficient and self cleaning bioreactors (and all of our "biofiltration" devices really are bioreactors that oxidize N wastes to less toxic forms). Here the water will come in directly from the overflow into the churning mass of media. There might still be some particulate matter in here, but the grinding of the media should help keep the particle size down. To get the water into the next tank, it will have to pass through a barrier to prevent media loss and then a layer of foam which act as mechanical filtration and can be changed out. I believe I'll need this layer to catch any biofilm sloughed off from the biomedia as time goes on. Otherwise this section should be largely maintenance free. The air for the MBBR will come through a PVC line in the wall behind the stand. Tank 3 is the "Reservoir Return" tank. Here I need a tank large enough to hold the water that will drain from the display when the pumps are turned off. The water will come into this tank after the foam filtration and then pass through the socks as a final mechanical, polishing filtration. Hopefully this will mean the socks function as a micron filter should and be less of a hassle. After the socks there will be a heater and return pumps. The socks should keep the rest of this section fairly maintenance free. This is the clean side. I'll also have room to include a hydroponic bell siphon to have an automatic water change system for this beast of a tank. That will live in this section as well. Lastly, I am working (with help) to see if I can build a proper foam fractionation system for my aquarium. They are called "protein skimmers" the saltwater side of the hobby, and are used at large scale quite successfully in ponds and some aquaponics setups. I'd like to get it working on an aquarium scale. We'll see. But at least there is room for me to play with that project here. So that is the schematic and rational. Here is a photo of the tanks I've found to try to accomplish this: I'd wanted to make this entirely out of easy to find totes and bins so others could easily adopt this system if it works out well, but because of the size of the final tank that I needed, I did end up having to go a little specialized for that one. I'll have to build the floor for the stand, and raise tanks 1 & 2 to get the height I'll need for the gravity feed on those, but these are the basics. On the left there are two, 13 gal, hydroponic grow-buckets. I wanted something black so I could contain the light for the refugium in that first section. I'm not sure I'll need both, and I'd prefer not to have to plumb them together, but the turnover in each bucket is going to be faster than a minute and I need to make sure the current is slow enough for the separator function to work. So that's a bit of a question mark still. The MBBR is just a Rubbermaid Brute tote. I've used them in the past and they are cheap and effective. This is the 20 gal version. The lid is drilled from it having been used on another project as a water tank, so I'll have to replace that bit. The Reservoir Return tank is a 42 gal RV water tank blank (i.e. no holes). Because I am using it on its side, creating a lid for it is going to be a challenge. I'd love to get input on that. From the photos, I hadn't anticipated such deep channels on that side. Oh well. But, I do want a lid. I always use tight fitting lids to reduce evaporation on my sumps. It can get out of control in the winter here otherwise. The purple circle is just the bunged up hole from production. Just thought I'd explain what that was. Anyhow, that's the update for now. Like I said not a lot of physical progress on building the air system or the stand covering. If you've read this far, I'm impressed! Thanks for looking!

Welcome! There seems to be a bit of a budding MN contingent on here. I'm in MN as are a few others around here. I love those rocks in the cichlid tank. What are they? Did you get them locally?

This is going down the exhausting road of people expecting others to have ready references at their fingertips for the slightest comments made on a casual interaction. It's clear you have your beliefs. I'll leave you to them.