Projects & Rambles

[SkaleyAquatics]

On 3/30/2022 at 3:34 AM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

PM me the source of those crypts @Dark River Aquaticsthats an amazing hall!!

Lol no no don't PM put it out to the public cause I want to know also. 

[Dark River Aquatics]

@Beardedbillygoat1975 @SkaleyAquatics I’ll pm you both, they’re from another hobbyist and not a storefront but he told me he’s ok with sharing his contact info 🙂

[SkaleyAquatics]

On 3/30/2022 at 12:02 PM, Dark River Aquatics said:

@Beardedbillygoat1975 @SkaleyAquatics I’ll pm you both, they’re from another hobbyist and not a storefront but he told me he’s ok with sharing his contact info 🙂

Awesome! I look forward to the contact info

[Dark River Aquatics]

The Krib tank is happy happy joy joy

Mom’s side is finally healing from a weird knick she had, and she may have moved the babies - she’s been buried at the back of the tank all day and I can’t see if she has them herded back there with her or not but her colors are still pretty intense 

Did a water change tonight and the weird little shelf thing seems to be working, the buce brownie purple has a new leaf and the riccardia & susswasstertang are growing, they’re emersed about 95% of the time with a constant dribble of water over them from the air lift tube, and 1 ml of Tropica Specialized per week seems to be growing everything well, plus the hair algae storm hasn’t come back so it’s win

[Odd Duck]

Everything is looking great!

[Dark River Aquatics]

Treat time! This is the babies’ first experience with watermelon and so far they’re all over it but mom keeps hogging it 😂

And the first of the 10g’s for this new rack has water in it! Made a DIY plenum and it came out pretty well for a first attempt, wanted to use up some supplies I had on hand and it went together pretty quickly. It’s an 8”x17” piece of plastic light diffuser, five 1” lengths of 1” PVC legs superglued into place, and some plastic knitting mesh as side skirts with everything zip-tied together and a layer of fiberglass window screen wrapped over everything and also zip-tied in place

 

The substrate is Safe-T-Sorb with a layer of laterite powder, garden lime, and osmocote plus sandwiched in the middle and a sand cap over the top

The sand is Super Naturals Sunset Gold cause it’s amazing - so soft & fine, and the color is lovely. Chucked in some rocks from outside, boiled up some mixed botanicals, planted a medium sized peace lily pulled from one of my planted sumps, added a small light/heater/sponge filter, squeezed in a bunch of crud from some established sponge filters and called it a day. Tossed in a few random plants and now we let it percolate for a bit

I’ve been telling myself I’ll be patient and wait until all six tanks are set up, then do a bulk wholesale order of low tech plants to add… but I couldn’t help it and already ordered some Vallisneria Torta and Potamogeton Gayi for this tank 😅

Not sure if this will end up being the future home for my Petco rescue Betta, or for my small school of cw010 Gold Lasers so they can have a spot of their own…. I’ve never put any effort into breeding Cories and maybe it’s time to try? There’s still plenty of time to decide though and I’m looking forward to adding more plants to this little tank and making it look like a weedy creek before figuring out the residents 

[Dark River Aquatics]

Just cut up a plastic gallon jug to make splash guards for the electrical and I’m super pleased with it. The one for the wall outlet is cut to have a small tab that fits behind the outlet cover, and then the outlet cover is tightened over it to snug it into place. It lifts up for easy access to the outlets but makes me sleep easier knowing there’s a barrier against splashes, plus a little roof over the power strip (and of course drip loops in all the cords). Very pleased with the outcome for a 5min DIY

[Dark River Aquatics]

The DIYing continues and I’m having a ball doing up these 10g’s. Made more plenums with a goal of having a continuous, blended “scape” and substrate lines between the all tanks, and hopefully it will work out as planned

Repurposed an old HOB breeder box into a little planter box with a mini plenum, and what will hopefully work as a drip wall for emersed moss. It needed to be cut down and modified a bit to fit on the end of a 10g, and I made the mini plenum out of the usual items - PVC legs, plastic light diffuser, plastic knitting mesh, and fiberglass window screen. There are layers of Safe-T-Sorb, Laterite, and a small amount of Landen Soil near the top just to give the plants a kickstart. Planning on putting some Monstera Adansonii and a few other vining things in this so they’ll grow up the wall, and I suspended a basic 100w 6500k lightbulb over this area a few days ago to grow the emergent plants

 

Pretty pleased with it, it was a good way to spend an evening working on a craft project while watching a movie 🙂 now we just have to hope it’ll work as well/look as good planted as it does in my imagination!

Also found a very cool rock in the park the other day to use for this tank - hoping to have this setup finished and running by the weekend so that work on tank #3 can commence 

[Minanora]

Super cool! Are you going to take that sticker off of the side of the tank before you get too crazy? 😛

I really love this idea you have! I can hardly wait to see the progress!

[Dark River Aquatics]

On 4/7/2022 at 11:59 AM, Minanora said:

Super cool! Are you going to take that sticker off of the side of the tank before you get too crazy? 😛

I really love this idea you have! I can hardly wait to see the progress!

Yes! Was just playing and dry fitting the rocks, scaping is so much easier when everything is dry 😄

The second tank has water in it! Need to boil up more botanicals, and it’s driving me crazy trying to wait to bulk order plants and not just fill each tank up immediately… but it has water, the hang on planter works like a charm and has some parlour palms and monstera adansonii with space for something else, and it’s a little cloudy still but is officially up and running.

 

Scaping lengthwise has been a surprising amount of fun, and for this one I tried to give it a lot of depth with a big line of sight block from the rocks & hygrophila at the back to have a lot of cover - this is probably going to house some Pygmy Sunfish when it’s more mature and I want them to have plenty of hidey spots 

Currently running a 48” Finnex 24/7 over the tanks plus the fixture overhead with a Phillips 100w 6500k bulb, and I’m hoping it will work well enough for low light setups. Have a friend coming over tomorrow with a par meter to check out the readings on all my tanks so we’ll measure these too and try to suss out whether it’ll be enough 🙂

[Minanora]

Super cool. I love it!

[Odd Duck]

Loving the looks you’re getting here!  The rock placement in tank 2 is downright masterful!  Really terrific with that zig zag path effect through the rocks!

[drewzero1]

I love the idea of a continuous scape across adjacent tanks! Usually when I've seen tanks set up endwise like this it's a bare bottom breeding setup. One of my tanks is endwise and I've been struggling to make it interesting and viewable, so I'm totally stealing ideas here!

[Dark River Aquatics]

Did a science today, measured the par in a bunch of different tanks when a friend showed up with a Seneye meter and the results were a little surprising!

The readings in my 75g (with a Chihiros WRGB2 at about 80% settings) were somewhere around 55-80 umols down near the substrate level depending on what was above/shadowing out the specific areas, with the heaviest shadowed areas in the corners reaching as low as 15-30. Then the middle to higher areas were somewhere around 215-300, with crowns near the surface receiving as much as 320-340. The surprising thing was, the cheap Amazon LED floodlight when run at the same time as the Chihiros WRGB2 cranked up the umols at substrate level from 60ish to just over 100 - those lights are crazy bang for the buck at $40 for two!

My buddy did most of the readings while I documented, and it turns out the par in the cube (with the settings of the light at roughly 50%) ranged from 30ish in the foreground above the substrate (shadowed by the rocks) to roughly 100-135 farther up where the stems are.

Another interesting result was in the 40g with the basic 100w bulb - the reading was 256 at the surface directly under the bulb, but then dropped down to 10 at substrate level also directly under it, and virtually 0 off in the corners. So while it’s slowly growing the plants in that tank, the penetration strength & spread of the bulb are garbage and the takeaway is that I should stop procrastinating and install the floodlight. It wasn’t an unexpected result for a simple bulb setup but it was interesting to see the actual readings.

The last science project of the day will be gluing together a DIY Rex Griggs co2 reactor for this 75g to increase efficiency and do away with the Sprite water effect of the inline co2 diffuser. Planning to assemble the reactor tonight and spend the day tomorrow dialing it in 

 

And finally, because why not, a glamor shot of the crown growth of Ludwigia Curtisii and the Ludwigia Glandulosa/Repens hybrid before I trimmed them earlier today. 300+ umols seems to agree with them 😄

Edited April 9, 2022 by Dark River Aquatics

[Dark River Aquatics]

Still working on continuity, and searching for different/better foreground rocks for the tank on the right… but they’re still fun to play with 🙂

The crypt collection is doin well too, only some of the new batch went into this tank but the reinforcements filled it out pretty nicely compared to what was already there, and the new ones are settling in nicely with no signs of melt

[Dark River Aquatics]

Traded a head of Brownie Ghost 11 for a head of sp Hellfire today and I’m already obsessed with it - hopefully it doesn’t dead 🫠

[Dark River Aquatics]

It’s growing!

Took some pics from above tonight, very happy with all of the special plants in here!

Crypt Jacobsenii Pink, Buce Hellfire, Buce Kedagang, Buce Marble, another random tiny buce from Jenny West that I forget the name of, and Anubias Pinto in this pic:

 

Anubias Broad White, and some random tiny purple buce:

Anubias Congensis Mini growing up and over Buce Brownie Ghost 2011:

Buce Biblis Pink:

And some wider shots 🥰

Going to add a big Xyris Red in the bare spot cleared out in front of the patch of Rotala H’ra this weekend, and there are some new stems in each of the back corners growing in - Potamogeton Gayi, and Ludwigia Senegalensis to hopefully add more orange and break up the wall of red

[Dark River Aquatics]

After much frustration and off color language, my 75g officially has a Rex Griggs co2 reactor, no more obscenely dense Hydrocotyle Verticillata taking over 1/3 of the tank, and the middle section of the background plants ripped out to make way for a combination of Crypt Balansae and Crypt Spiralis Tiger. There’s also significantly less crud in the substrate after multiple surface vacuums and overall it was just a productive day for this tank

No more sprite water! Still moving some things around, and waiting for the Tigers in the mail

The reactor was a breeze to assemble just following these instructions (but was a royal pain to plumb in with the cramped working space behind the stand)

https://rotalabutterfly.com/rex-grigg/diy-reactor.htm

The local derps have decided they do not care about the changes and are ready for dinner

[Dark River Aquatics]

Xyris sp Red 

[Tihshho]

As much as I love Buce, I have to say your Marsellia carpet has me the most jealous! It's been something I've been attempting for years with no success. I could get a carpet of Erio's or Trithuria before I could get Marsellia going like that. Tanks look great! 

[gjcarew]

I hope you know I'm living out all my collectoritis dreams vicariously through you

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@gjcarewditto! 

[Dark River Aquatics]

I really appreciate all of you that read my rambles and like them enough to keep reading 🥰 @Tihshho I’ve always had them grow like weeds, maybe it’s a function of my harder well water? In both high tech & low tech setups, Marsilea Crenata always chugs along and Marsilea Minuta is an absolute weed - maybe it likes the alkalinity? I haven’t given it much thought, although I have heard from a few people that Marsilea really likes phosphate so hopefully that helps - I hope you end up figuring it out to make it work! 

Played with some more new plants today, and will put in an enthusiastic plug for Chantz Cramer - amazing human, amazing plant grower, and if anyone wants fun/rare plants he will be starting up his website again soon! Until then he’s on YouTube, and is selling a few things via his Facebook and some of the Facebook plant auction groups

Planted out the Crypt Spiralis Tigers that he sent with the Xyris, they’re buried in the back of the bigger tank now out of camera view but they arrived in beautiful emersed condition!

Also continued playing with the little cube, and crammed a few cuttings of Buce Brownie Blue from another tank back next to the Xyris… not sure if I like them there, they’re a little big but the blue pops against the red so idk - they might stay?

Also noticed that the Rotala Mini Butterfly in there is looking increasingly sad on the old growth so I need to change up the fertilizer

 

Currently the cube is running cool in the low 70s, with only 6hr of light and it receives a very lean 1ml dose of Easy Green twice a week. The lean fertilizer has brought out a lot of color in the Rotalas and algae has been virtually a nonissue in this tank, but the Mini Butterfly is saying it’s not quite enough juice. My friend has been experimenting with a DIY All-In-One mix using dry ferts that he calls “Hulk Juice”, so I sweet talked him into giving me the recipe and will be trying it out with this tank!

 

Mixed up a bottle, it very closely mimics APT Complete with the NPK ratios and uses a combination of Miller’s Microplex and supplemental iron from DPTA, so it’s still relatively lean in terms of N & P and slightly higher in K. Going to give it a whirl for a few weeks and see if we can get the Mini Butterfly to recover, and will probably up the water changes to a few times per week and re-dose the Hulk Juice after every WC 🤞🏻
 

Lastly, one of the more recent batches of baby Green Dragons are aaalmost at a sellable size and all of the short fins will probably need to get pulled out and sold soon, both to thin the herd and to help finance the next tank project - I’ve got plans to redo one of my 40g’s and turn it into a dedicated space for the growing collection of different types of Echinodorus Opacus as well as some of the rare crypts, plus some Starlight BN’s to attempt to breed them 😄

 

Edited May 3, 2022 by Dark River Aquatics

[gjcarew]

I've always had rotala macrandra rebel from the bottom up with lean dosing. It also doesn't do great in dense plantings.

Are you dosing the 1 mL easy green with a pipette? The bottles I have are 2 mL pumps.

[Dark River Aquatics]

On 5/3/2022 at 4:45 PM, gjcarew said:

I've always had rotala macrandra rebel from the bottom up with lean dosing. It also doesn't do great in dense plantings.

Are you dosing the 1 mL easy green with a pipette? The bottles I have are 2 mL pumps.

Yep, I’ve been dosing with a pipette! Been trying to ride a fine line (that I’m not sure is entirely possible) of dosing lean enough to keep the H’ra looking nice and red, but also not cripple the Mini Butterfly. It was going ok for a time but it’s clearly pretty unhappy now so hopefully a slightly richer fertilizer input will help! If not, I may just replace it with more Bacopa Salzmanii Purple because the few stems sprinkled in there have been doing well so far 🙂