Projects & Rambles

[Minanora]

I look forward to the updates to come for the 40 redo. Interesting hulk juice, I also look forward to seeing how that changes things!

 

[Dark River Aquatics]

@Minanora I will definitely document the process! Trying to pace myself with it, and apply some of the things I’ve learned about how plenums/anoxic filtration behaves in a high tech setup. It’s almost too effective and consumes a ton of nitrate & phosphate, so I’m going to (attempt) to tailor this tank around slower growing root feeding plants - the goal is to use a plenum and very rich/deep substrate, co2 injection, and only moderate light with hopefully minimal fertilizer dosing and see what happens. I’m hoping that if I assemble the substrate correctly and let the Safe-T-Sorb soak up the right nutrients prior to using it, then I’ll be able to get away with a fairly low maintenance, low stocked tank but we’ll see how it actually plays out in practice!

So…. Is there such a thing as rehab, or peer support group for people with a problem compulsively buying plants?!

I did a thing, and have already paid for a second thing that’ll get shipped this weekend…

Right in front of the rock is a tiny Buce Brownie Helena 2013 added a few days ago and already doing a new leaf 🙌🏻 
 

Also have a Buce Brownie Ghost 2010 getting shipped this weekend, it will be emersed grown but I was sent this picture of how it should look converted to submersed growth - it’s supposed to have a rounder, slightly larger leaf shape compared to Ghost 2011 and I’m excited 🥳

[Minanora]

Hi, my name is Mina and I buy too many plants. I'm on vacation thinking about buying plants... I have a problem. Er, problems. 🤣

Your collection of buce is lovely. I want to buy some more....🤦‍♀️🤣 Eventually.

[Tihshho]

Gorgeous new plants! Funny enough my new display tank is encorporating Buce, and I'm using your thread for inspiration. Thanks for documenting all of this!

[Dark River Aquatics]

Long story short I got squirrelly over the last few days and ripped a bunch of stuff out of my 75g, got sick of all of the stem trimming 😪

The background is going to be all tall things like crypts (spiralis, spiralis tiger, and retrospiralis), along with cyperus helferi, Crinum calamastratum, and the monster aponogeton purple. The left side is going to get some fresh aqua soil mounded up into more of a hill, with thickets of medium sized crypts / blyxa japonica again / plus maybe a few other things. It was just getting so overgrown that it felt good to do an overhaul with things that will require less maintenance

Although, I did find an older pic from January when the tank was still stuffed full of like a hundred+ species before it was totally overgrown and now I do sort of miss the jungle… but it’ll grow back

Also! The Brownie Ghost 2010 has arrived, as well as a Godzilla original from Jenny West 😄

Pulled the Xyris out because the Hulk Juice has definitely increased the growth rate of the stems and I’m straight up not gonna keep them tame enough to keep the Xyris receiving enough light, so they got replaced by the Ghost 10 for now and moved. The ghost is emersed grown so the partial shade will hopefully keep it happier while it converts 🤞🏻

Chantz sent me a bunch of emersed grown stem cuttings to experiment with as potential replacements for the rotala mini butterfly; it’s still cranky and I’m not sure that I want to disrupt the whole tank just to make one plant happy, so I think replacing it is the move. He sent some different types of bacopa - more salzmanii, a variegated one, and a few that I think he collected - plus some aciotis acuminifolia, gratiola ramosa, and a couple that I have no idea what they are. They’re all in the now-empty space in the 75g for now, so we’ll see how they do and whether or not I kill them before deciding what to use in the cube 😂

Lastly……. I maybe kinda sorta did a thing….. preordered a Crypt sp Black Borneo that will be imported in June and I’m excited to hopefully not kill it. These are the pics that were sent of what it will look like and I’m so excited!

[Minanora]

I needed this update. I can't even see my tanks .... I won't see them until Saturday. That will be two weeks without my intervention.

 

I love your photography! Things are looking amazing! I can hardly wait to see that crypt go in.

[Dark River Aquatics]

Bye bye mini butterfly! Did a snip snip and finally threw in the towel 😜

 

The Hulk Juice is definitely yielding better/faster overall growth; been procrastinating the trim all week and the stems have been going off

Everything’s all trimmed and replanted now though! Still adoring the Jacobsenii Pink + Marsilea combination too

And! Long story short I did a thing and have another Chihiros light and a co2 regulator in the mail…. This weekend might be the weekend that I finally start redoing the 40g upstairs, or at least finish tearing down the old setup and get it ready for the rebuild.

Side note, if anyone wants some leftover trimmings of Rotala H’ra, the slightly sad but recoverable bush of Rotala Mini Butterfly, and some cuttings of Pogo Sampsonii please feel free to shoot me a pm - pay the $10 shipping and it’s yours for free 😄

[Odd Duck]

Your tanks make me wish I was better with stems.  😆 I’ll stick with the few that do well enough for me so that I can sell to my lfs.

[Dark River Aquatics]

Demolition day for this tank

Edited May 22, 2022 by Dark River Aquatics

[Dark River Aquatics]

I am unwilling to admit that getting them was a mistake, BUT…. I may have just discovered a threshold to the idea of “you can never have too many crypts” by adding another large patch of jacobsenii pink, and nurii pink lines 😬

[Dark River Aquatics]

So I’m cleaning underneath/behind the stand of this 40g because after a couple of years it’s all dusty and cobwebby and gross… and there’s a canister under here that runs the above-tank sump over my Rio Paraguay parent colony tank right next to it, with a sponge guard on the intake and I always pull the caves full of eggs out to a grow out tank…. And somehow, some way, against all odds there’s a juvenile Rio just chillin in the intake hose of this filter, just vibing… just, what? How? I mean I know how just…. Wow 🥴

[Dark River Aquatics]

It’s suuuuuper pale, but not in terrible shape all things considered - current status is “rescued” and it will now reside in my 75g because dang, talk about a confined life, so here’s an upgrade

[Dark River Aquatics]

Distracting myself with endless side projects but the supply pile for this 40g redo is growing - co2 regulator, 5lb tank, Rex Griggs reactor, 90cm Chihiros WRGB2 with mirrored shades, 4 bags of Landen Soil, a growing pile of hardscape, and several other odds & ends are waiting to be used in addition to already having the tank/lid/heater/cycled canister filters for it plus a lot of plants ready to be moved 💪🏻

 

For the endless side projects, the regulator I got for the 40g has two outputs so the logical move is to redo my 3g cube as a proper high tech mini scape. A Chihiros C2 White and more hardscaping supplies are in the mail and the tank still itself needs a bit more cleaning, but it’s almost ready to go. I’m going to take a whack at gluing together tiny bits of rock for a structural, hardscape heavy look this time

And! I crossed Wabenmusters off the bucket list today with a group of 6 juveniles 🥳

Theyre in fish jail in my Green Dragon tank waiting for their new home to season a bit - the two bottom tanks in the cinderblock rack will be 20 talls, one with my existing group of Rio Paraguays and the other with the new group of Wabens. Very excited to have more honeycombs 😄 (and not looking forward to needing more grow out tanks but that’s a problem for future me)

 

Lastly, I took a pic of a random stem of Buce Brownie Blue that I threw into the Green Dragon tank a little while ago and it has no business looking this good under a basic Beamswork light but here we are

 

Edit instead of making another post - the light has arrived for the nano 😍

Edited May 28, 2022 by Dark River Aquatics

[Minanora]

I love the update! So amazing! Your projects are so wonderful.

[Dark River Aquatics]

Work has been slowing me down but the Wabens are in their tank, they’re skittish and still small but they’re eating well and seem to be settling in

 

Haven’t made a lot of headway with the nano cube, and still haven’t found enough hardscape to use in my 40g but exercising patience with both tanks is probably not a bad thing

Still playing with the hardscape and everything other than the structure on the right is just in there to help figure out placement, including the substrate… first time using dragon stone, and first time gluing together that much of an intricate structural scape so it’s been fun but still feels a little clumsy. Good practice though I guess!

Found the two mini HOBs on Amazon, frosted the back glass with a stick-on film, ordered all the necessary things to remineralize RO water for this setup, and trying to figure out a plant list. Ramosior Florida is a definite and Xyris Red, Blyxa Japonica, Riccardia, and HC are on the “probably” list, with a few on the “possible” list like Erio Quing, Blood Vomit, and Erio Rat. Planning to run it at 0kh, remineralized with caso4 & mgso4 only and keep it soft & acidic with a lot of Ca & Mg for the Ramosior and then the other plants will depend on the final scape

[Odd Duck]

On 6/8/2022 at 9:33 PM, Dark River Aquatics said:

Work has been slowing me down but the Wabens are in their tank, they’re skittish and still small but they’re eating well and seem to be settling in

 

Haven’t made a lot of headway with the nano cube, and still haven’t found enough hardscape to use in my 40g but exercising patience with both tanks is probably not a bad thing

Still playing with the hardscape and everything other than the structure on the right is just in there to help figure out placement, including the substrate… first time using dragon stone, and first time gluing together that much of an intricate structural scape so it’s been fun but still feels a little clumsy. Good practice though I guess!

Found the two mini HOBs on Amazon, frosted the back glass with a stick-on film, ordered all the necessary things to remineralize RO water for this setup, and trying to figure out a plant list. Ramosior Florida is a definite and Xyris Red, Blyxa Japonica, Riccardia, and HC are on the “probably” list, with a few on the “possible” list like Erio Quing, Blood Vomit, and Erio Rat. Planning to run it at 0kh, remineralized with caso4 & mgso4 only and keep it soft & acidic with a lot of Ca & Mg for the Ramosior and then the other plants will depend on the final scape

Looking really good!  I like what you’re doing with the rocks around the branches and vice versa.  Plecos are beautiful!

[Minanora]

I love that coconut house. It's got a lot of character. Lol.

Looking good! Excited to see the cube with plants!

The plant list is very interesting so far.

[Dark River Aquatics]

After a full weekend of tank tear downs, moving things around, and setting things back up…. 40g redo is finally happening 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Dark River Aquaticsdoing a UGF with this build, if I remember it's landon soil, think I saw Seiryu stone, what else do you have planned?

I am needing to get going on CO2 setups but I am going to wait until we move to Seattle. 

Did you get that crypt sp black?

[Dark River Aquatics]

@Beardedbillygoat1975 right on all counts! UGF plates with some light diffuser & window screen on top, and not using the lift tubes this time - other experiments have shown that just adding the void space alone gets the job done, and the tubes are ugly & hard to hide. Substrate will be Safe-T-Sorb again, I’ve had some charging in a bucket with caso4 / mgso4 / dry fertilizers, so that’ll be the base with a layer of laterite and I got a container of Brightwell Aquatics Laterin VF to try. All capped off with a thick layer of Landen Soil, plus probably some cosmetic sand in front. I also have black blasting sand, and Flourite black sand to use so those may be above the Landen Soil. Then these alder beaches & root ball, and seiryu for the hardscape! The goal is do most of the scaping in the front portion to (hopefully) give it a sense of scale and depth, and then the midground & background will be dedicated to plant mass

Getting started on the plenum layer now!

The sp Black Borneos have landed in the states as of a few weeks ago, but apparently experienced some melt in transit - they’re recuperating now before getting shipped out again, and this is the pic Jenny West posted of them regrowing

It’ll end up in this tank somewhere, the goal is to have this tank be incredibly lightly stocked with fish and use it as another home for the rare plants… the 75g is not enough space for everything at this point 😝

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Very fun! I’m fascinated with the plenum without the stacks. It make sense that water would still flow through there just even slower. More chance for anoxic conditions I suppose if you’re so inclined. Oops don’t want to start that debate. Anyway can’t wait to see your progress and when those black crypts come through looking forward to seeing how they come out.

[Dark River Aquatics]

On 6/12/2022 at 6:53 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

Very fun! I’m fascinated with the plenum without the stacks. It make sense that water would still flow through there just even slower. More chance for anoxic conditions I suppose if you’re so inclined. Oops don’t want to start that debate. Anyway can’t wait to see your progress and when those black crypts come through looking forward to seeing how they come out.

This is now my… I think 7th tank with a plenum? If I’m counting right? Incoming rant, sorry in advance cause my back hurts from lugging bags of substrate around so I’m taking a break here we go…

So in the first two setups, the green dragon 40g and then my planted 75g, I used the lift tubes - in the 40g with only easy plants, a big bioload, etc it’s awesome and functions super well for a breeding tank. In the 75g with high energy input, lots of demanding plants, etc the substrate bacteria actually compete with the plants for both N & P and I have to dose around 35-40ppm of kno3 alone per week to keep it from bottoming out. After two weeks of daily auto & manual dosing kno3 up to about 70-80ppm in that timeframe the API test kit registers a faint orange before the 2wk 60% water change. It’s insane!

Then I started experimenting with using everything except for the lift tubes in the 14g cube - same exact setup but didn’t charge the STS (intentionally, just to see what happened), and had to do daily 60% water changes for roughly the first 3 months to remineralize the water because the kh would hit 0 and the ph would crash - then a WC would bring the ph back up to just over 7, kh roughly 6ish. So the substrate was very obviously interacting with the water in a noticeable, fairly fast acting way even without the lift tubes - and now that the STS in that tank is charged, I’ve found that the void space with no lift tubes seems to be much more stable substrate for high energy systems. In low tech, moderately planted, higher bioload tanks the lift tubes + the whole shebang is amazing IMO. I don’t want to install an auto water change system in this house due to difficulty with the concrete walls in the basement, and don’t want to be a slave to weekly WCs across all my tanks so for my specific needs the plenum & anoxic system is perfect!

Plus in high tech tanks, STS has been an amazing substrate and sooo much cheaper than using 100% aqua soil - and on top of that, water diffusing down into a substrate with super high CEC value combined with liquid ferts means the substrate’s never going to get drained of nutrients. The initial learning curve was interesting and there were some road bumps bottoming out kh, N, and P but now that I know how it all behaves I’m converted. Low cost, super efficient biological action, what’s not to love IMO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Edited June 12, 2022 by Dark River Aquatics

[Dark River Aquatics]

Making progress - probably going to stop soon and sleep on it, then revisit with fresh eyes tomorrow. Managed to turn the one giant piece of alder into three “trees” which I’m happy about, part of procrastinating it this long was wondering if I had enough hardscape material but I think it’ll work. Not super happy about a lot of the stone placements yet, some are just there to support the wood while the superglue dries but yeah. Needs work

 

Edited June 13, 2022 by Dark River Aquatics

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I remember when The Barr Report website was in full swing and all the talk was STS. Then the kitty litter came on the scene and now some folks are going back to STS. In the end as long as you can find (especially for a big tank) something cheap and easy to use with a high CEC I mean yeah go for it!

Ive used the Brightwell laterite for awhile. My setups lately x 2 have been some lava rock, UGF plates, landscaping cloth, then laterite, then a bit of plant dynamite home made root tabs, then cover with some substrate from another tank, then a mix of aquasoil, gravel and coarse sand. The 15 g tower has been going through an algae situation but my 29 g panda mansion is doing fantastic. Have you found scale as an important factor? 

[Dark River Aquatics]

@Beardedbillygoat1975 do you mean scale in terms of the tank size, water volume, substrate depth, etc? If so, and hopefully I’m understanding correctly, the smallest tanks I’ve done plenums in so far have been 10g’s and they’re still too new to see long term results from them yet. In the 14g, the substrate is still fairly deep even though it’s a smaller tank - maybe 1.5” at the shallowest at the very front of the tank, and then probably 6-7” depth at the very back - so judging based on the ratios of substrate to water volume, I think it’s probably overkill, but it’s working nicely so far. That tank is actually the most stable one I have right now in terms of healthy plant growth and lack of algae, although I think the heavy water changes early on combined with very lean nutrient dosing and very light stocking/minimal feedings are important factors to consider. So… idk, scale is maybe a factor? I don’t know if I have enough experiential evidence to say one way or another yet.

I think a lot of it is also the amount of energy going into the system, the bacteria will of course only multiply out to the amount of chemicals available to consume - so my somewhat anecdotal 2 cents is that substrate depth is important in facilitating the correct type of anoxic conditions and providing space/surface area for bacteria to colonize, but then the tank volume/amount of substrate may not be as important to biological action as the amount of available “food” and the speed at which that “food” is delivered to the bacteria while still maintaining anoxia. I’m sure that the available surface area/space becomes a limiting factor at some point but I’d imagine that the amount of “food” chemicals, grain size of the substrate / water circulation through the anoxic areas is also an important point to consider - even if there are waste chemicals in the water column, delivering them down into the anoxic areas at a rate that the bacteria can consume more than the tank is producing is probably one of the most important factors in achieving balance.
 

Hopefully I articulated that well, and I’m certainly no expert - all of this is somewhat educated guesswork and I’m just over here messing around and finding out in my own pea-brained way 😄