Pepere Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 this is the last photo I had taken of this tank before it devolved… I had removed the Val as it was overpowering the tank and the AR melted away and I chucked it. Meanwhile the Anubias and Java moss had completely hidden all the rocks and were the main focal point. today I decided to start with a blank slate. I pulled the plants and set the, m in a bucket and proceeded to remove 5 gallons of substrate. Scrubbed the rocks clean and soaked them in peroxide, sloped remaining substrate and capped it with coarscblaxk sand and started returning rocks and replantine chosen plant samples. A lot of Anubias were parked in a quarantine tank while I decide what to do with it… Here is what I am starting with… 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmo1922 Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 I love it! Is that an undergravel filter you got there?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted March 13 Author Share Posted March 13 On 3/12/2024 at 9:19 PM, cmo1922 said: Is that an undergravel filter you got there?! Yes. I originally set up this tank with ugf plates. I have converted the air riser tubes to use co op Easy Flow kits. I have an inch or so of Safe T Sorb on top of the plates capped by 2-3 inches of Black Diamond Blasting Sand. My main filtration is by a Fluval 207 with a spray bar for better mechanical filtration and water flow and to use an inline co2 diffuser. Once I went with co2 it just made sense to me to have better flow to keep the bubbles in suspension.. the ugf plates provide nice back up biofiltration via a simple battery back up air pumpin case of an extended power outage. In event of an extended power outage I can simply give the canister filter a thorough cleaning out to reduce ammonia spike from decaying dead beneficial bacteria and allow it to reseed while the ugt continues to maintain tank. It is a nice redundancy.. I also have a suction cup mounted double sponge filter in the tank. I have it therein order to have a fully cycled sponge filter on hand for back up use in a quarantine tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmo1922 Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 Thank you! I love the redundancy and planning for power outages. I have a penn plax UGF and was thinking of trying the uplift tube kit. However I already have my UGF set up. Do you think it improves the flow of the UGF? Do you need to do any significant mod to the existing UGF, or can you simply remove the existing UGF tubes and put the aquarium co op uplift tubes in their place? Can the uplift tubes attach directly to that short tube that sticks out of the substrate when you remove the longer tube to service your air stones, etc? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted March 13 Author Share Posted March 13 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted March 24 Author Share Posted March 24 Well, tank suffered from a greasy brown growth predominantly on the Cardinal Lobelia , but also was staining the rocks and on the glasswork…. This condition was predating the rescape. This weekend I gave it a going over. I gave the canister filter a good cleaning and left the media in a bucket of dechlorinated water and put the filter back in operation without any media in it and then dosed the tank with peroxide at a rate of 60 ml per 10 gallons with filter pump circulating everything well and let it run for 15 minutes. I then scrubbed the glass and glasswork and did a deep water change to dilute the peroxide. I pulled the cardinal Lobelia, Ludwigia Repens and Anubias and soaked them overnight in seltzer water and replanted the next morning. I also pulled out the rocks, sprayed them with peroxide, let set, scrubbed, rinse repeat, repeat all three times, put them back in the tank. Lets wait and see what that did to the stuff… 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whitecloud09 Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 Nice! Good looking tank there @Pepere! I will definitely folllow this, so interested in aquascapes because my tank…..isn’t one lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted March 24 Author Share Posted March 24 This one has a way to go…. I am basically starting over with a blank slate and current plants are what I saved from previous iteration. My goal is to stabilize it eliminating the algae issue before adding new plants. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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