Honey, I Dirted the Tank!

[varanidguy]

5 hours ago, RovingGinger said:

I’m still too cowardly to fully dirt a tank, but I have dug up chunks of moss from my back yard and put them into aquariums. My cichlids are very appreciative of the worms that pop up! 

It's not so bad, you just can't be afraid of a mess. The only time I'd really advise strongly against it is if you're the type that likes to uproot and move plants around, like I do...then it becomes a real hassle.

[Casual aquatics]

My community tank is mixed the black diamond sand and dirt I do try to rinse a little when adding snd net the floaters depending on how much put in at a time my fish have acted weird for a little than go back to normal

[Daniel]

I think I have my first result in this project and it is that the middle tank (the dirt tank) stays a bit warmer.

This has been consistent since the first day when I calibrated all three probes in the same cup using a NIST calibrated thermometer that is certified to be accurate to +/- 0.1 °F.  All three tanks have the same 50 watt Aqueon heaters. I set all of the heaters to 80 °F on their local control knob. Since a 50 watt heater in a 40 gallon tank in a 69 °F room will never be able to bring the aquarium temperature to 80 °F all three heaters have run continuously and never turned off, not even once.

Since the same heaters are warming the same volume of water for same amount of time, why is the middle tank warmer? I suspect that it is due to the funnily named zeroth law of thermodynamics (physicists came up with this law after they had already named the first three laws and because it was more fundamental and because they are physicist, this passes for humor).

Here is are the numbers from the first few days.

What say the engineers and other heat minded folks on this forum? Zeroth law? Randomness? Crappy probe calibration? Something else?

Future posts will follow changes in plant growth and changes in water chemistry, just wanted to throw this out there before it slipped my mind.

[Streetwise]

I love watching this project!

Perhaps it is like a compost pile, where the decomposition in the organic soil is generating heat.

[Daniel]

I have just added a juvenile angelfish to each of the 3 aquariums. This is the one in the EcoComplete tank.

[Ken Burke]

@Daniel  more pictures please

[Ken Burke]

7 hours ago, Daniel said:

I think I have my first result in this project and it is that the middle tank (the dirt tank) stays a bit warmer.

This has been consistent since the first day when I calibrated all three probes in the same cup using a NIST calibrated thermometer that is certified to be accurate to +/- 0.1 °F.  All three tanks have the same 50 watt Aqueon heaters. I set all of the heaters to 80 °F on their local control knob. Since a 50 watt heater in a 40 gallon tank in a 69 °F room will never be able to bring the aquarium temperature to 80 °F all three heaters have run continuously and never turned off, not even once.

Since the same heaters are warming the same volume of water for same amount of time, why is the middle tank warmer? I suspect that it is due to the funnily named zeroth law of thermodynamics (physicists came up with this law after they had already named the first three laws and because it was more fundamental and because they are physicist, this passes for humor).

Here is are the numbers from the first few days.

  

What say the engineers and other heat minded folks on this forum? Zeroth law? Randomness? Crappy probe calibration? Something else?

Future posts will follow changes in plant growth and changes in water chemistry, just wanted to throw this out there before it slipped my mind..

A lot of things could be going on, probe, heater, and the fact that it is the middle tank.  Easy to control one at a time for most things though.  Swap the probes biggest and smallest.  If it is the probe, it should follow.  Same with the heaters.  Also double check hvac vents. Maybe swap the lights.  Unfortunately moving the middle tank is tough.

[Daniel]

I couldn't help myself, I added a second angel to each tank.

[Daniel]

37 minutes ago, Ken Burke said:

@Daniel  more pictures please

Not much has changed other than adding more fish.

Here is the nermal tank:

 

Here is the dirted tank:

Here is the EcoComplete tank.

The more interesting changes are what is happening in the water chemistry. It will take a while to condense all the testing in to a post. I will probably dump all the testing into a blog post, and then summarize it here.

 

[Daniel]

On 11/5/2020 at 10:51 PM, MeggersNCat said:

My dream aquarium product is a heater or heater controller where I can simulate day and night. Just like lights that can create a sun rise and sun set why not have a heater or heater controller that will do that? So that mid day the tank will be at it's warmest and at night it's at it's coldest but still stays within a preset range. 

In the What is Your Dream Aquarium Product That Doesn't Exist Thread @MeggersNCat was musing about how to simulate the natural environment like the diurnal and seasonal changes in temperature and light.

I know the Fluval 3.0 Scheduling thread that @Streetwise started helps with programming various schedules to simulate the rising and setting of the sun in order to set a static length of day and night. But I want to take this beyond the daily all the way to the seasonal and have a dynamic day and night schedule that follows what is happening in nature right now.

To do that would require each day be a little shorter than the day before for the next 6 weeks up until the Winter Solstice. And then after the Winter Solstice each succeeding day would be a little longer than the day before. This is what plants experience in nature and it is often what triggers flowering or senescence.

Shazaam! Yesterday I found the code that allows me to access the seasonal table in my Apex controller and I implemented it. Because the controller also measures power usage by outlet I was able to use amperage over time as proxy record to confirm when the lights turned off last night and when the lights turned on this morning. The lights turned off just before 5:50 pm local time yesterday and turned on again this morning just before 6:10 am local time. Perfect!

I believe the seasonal table is based on a 15 °N latitude location and though I am at a 35 °N latitude location this should still be enough to produce a noticeable progression of the day length from day to day.  At least I didn't have to type anything. 🙂

As the schedule automatically ticks forward minute by minute over the next 6 weeks moving from the current 12 hour day to an 11 hour day in late December this will approximate the changes outside in nature which was my ultimate goal.

I would never have had the patience to do this if I had to laboriously code this schedule by hand. But now that I have figured out how to do this automatically I look forward to seeing what changes if any this produces in the life cycle of the plants in these 3 aquariums.

 

 

 

[Streetwise]

Awesome @Daniel! You can integrate the lunar schedule on an outlet too:

Set OFF
If Moon 000/000 Then ON

I have it with the Lunar Simulation Module, but any lights with the right color would work.

[Daniel]

There is one other early result that I don't know what to make of it. There are a couple of stray seedlings and 1 stray bulb sprouting in the dirted tank.

Here is the bulb. I am not sure what this is or where it came from.

Here is one of the seedlings.

If they are popping up out the soil, then they are likely terrestrial. Or they could have come in with aquatic plants. I haven't yet noticed anything similar in the Nermal tank or the EcoComplete tank.

[Daniel]

After a week of the pH in all 3 tanks hovering in the 7.5 to 7.6 range, starting 2 days ago I began to see jumps in pH in the afternoon. This morning I added about 2 gallons of RODI water to each tank to make up for evaporation.

Today's jump was even more dramatic. I have a guess as to what is happening. What is your guess?

[Streetwise]

Photosynthesis is what I would say on the daily level, but I’m not sure about the big change. Is it a phase of cycling, or an effect of the RO?

Edited November 11, 2020 by Streetwise

[Daniel]

22 hours ago, Streetwise said:

Photosynthesis is what I would say on the daily level, but I’m not sure about the big change. Is it a phase of cycling, or an effect of the RO?

I think @Streetwise nailed it. It has the fingerprints of photosynthesis. I was just asked about this in another thread so I have labelled when the lights go on and off.

When the lights come on the plants consume all the CO2 which causes the pH to rise. When lights go off the plants give off CO2, which causes the pH to drop.

[Streetwise]

Here is my pH vs Temp in my un-heated 7.5, with little micro peaks because of my three daily photoperiods. I’m curious if your Temp also follows the pH.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Streetwise
Replaced mobile screen-shot with computer one

[Daniel]

@Streetwise While looking at your post above, I realized I could tell the story of what too much light looks like in numbers and pictures.

I had been running two 36" Finnex Stingrays on each tank which is probably the correct number of lights. Then I unexpectedly ended up with a few more lights so I put a third Finnex Stingray on each. I thought it would be too much light.

It was!

First the numbers.

Now the pictures.

EcoComplete aquarium on November 6th:

EcoComplete aquarium on November 9th:

EcoComplete aquarium on November 11th:

The story is precisely the same on the other 2 aquariums Nerm, and Dirt.

If I were advising another aquarist, I would tell them to reduce the amount of light. 🙂

[Ken Dyer]

Really enjoying your content and journey Daniel both here and the 1930s project. 

[Streetwise]

Daniel, I am trying to figure out the offset time between pH and Temp, comparing peaks and troughs. What do you think yours is? I know it is apples to oranges, with no heater for me, smaller size, and older, so perhaps I will ask again if you ever drop probes in your 1930s tank. My light is 7" above, so it may not have the same heat impact.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Streetwise

[Daniel]

9 hours ago, Streetwise said:

Daniel, I am trying to figure out the offset time between pH and Temp. It seem like about 9-11  hours for my monitored tank depending on which peaks and troughs I look at. What do you think yours is? I know it is apples to oranges, with no heater for me, smaller size, and older, so perhaps I will ask again if you ever drop probes in your 1930s tank. My light is 7" above, so it may not have the same heat impact.

Yes, sorry I got distracted by the runaway plant growth graph. I have a thing for shiny objects.

At least in the 3 dirt project tanks the general trend was the pH went down at night for reasons we both agree are likely related to photosynthesis and CO2.

My heaters are intentionally undersized and without additional lights the poor little 50 watt heater can only manage to get the 40 gallon aquarium heated to about 5° F over the 70° F we keep our home at.

The net result is there is not any offset at all for me. As soon as the lights go on the temperature goes up. As soon as the lights go off, the temperature goes down with pH and temperature tracking with each other closely. It seems to similar to the fact that ice cream sales and drownings are closely correlated. Does eating ice cream cause drowning? It more likely that summertime is the cause as warm weather can lead to both swimming and eating ice cream.

I did drop probes in the past into the 1930s aquarium and I will look for that data. Currently the 1930s aquarium is about 40 feet away from the Apex control board and I cannot put probes into it without pulling them from the dirt project tanks.

I am putting the 1930s aquarium pH temp data on my to do list now.

[Daniel]

@Streetwise I found some data that is apples to apples. This data is from the 1930s aquarium. As you know this tank is a bare box of water with no heater, filters or lights other than sunlight (and lights in the house). The pH wasn't calibrated (but probably close to accurate) so don't read anything into the absolute numbers, but that doesn't matter, it is the trend we are looking for. What do you make of this data?

[Daniel]

And @Streetwise another graph from a few days before.

[Daniel]

@Streetwise and here is dissolved oxygen vs. pH for the same time period:

I didn't put temp on this one because you can see it above in the 2 Sep through 9 Sep graph. It looks temp, pH and dissolved oxygen track in complete lockstep on the 1930's bare box of water in the sunlight.

[Streetwise]

Thank you. I think I might be guessing too much about any correlation in my data. I could also be throwing it off anytime I open my window and change the air temperature. Maybe now would be a good time for me to move the probes to a different tank, like the one at my folks' house. I might end up tracking their use of the wood stove.

[Daniel]

@Streetwise You got me thinking about the heat aspect.

One of things I noticed on the dissolved oxygen vs. pH vs. temperature graphs is that there is much more dissolved oxygen as the temperature rises and less dissolved oxygen as the temperature falls.

This is the total opposite of what one would naively expect as cold water holds more oxygen than warmer water.

Again, we have yet another fingerprint of photosynthesis and plant growth. I'd had not ever thought of looking at that way before we started having this discussion.

Another day on the Forum and another thing I have learned.🙂