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False Bottom Stream Tank: was (Otos are breeding)


AdamTill
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Edit: Read to bottom for start of 75 gallon false bottom tank

So I’ve had a 29 gallon tank setup for about a year now that’s happily producing a slowly expanding colony of otocinclus and habrosus corydoras. Breeding both has been a goal for a while, so that’s been fun.

Due to the year being what it is, the tank has been pretty, ugly, and pretty ugly at times. The water is always clean, but I haven’t always kept up with the plant maintenance. The hard scape got removed to be cleaned after it got covered in algae, and once the crypts grew in I just never put it back.

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Edited by AdamTill
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So, since things have calmed down a bit and I’ll hopefully have a bit more time soon, I decided to make some changes.

First, I had a spare 29 gal that used to be the twin of this one. My wife wanted a pea puffer tank, that turned into Thunderdome, and the survivors got rehomed.

I’ve wanted to play with an undergravel setup for a while, and since I have all the bits that was one element I knew I wanted to use.

Since I’m staying with mainly crypts, I also wanted to use a nutrient rich substrate. It’s easy mode for crypts that way, and I wanted to go really rogue and try some sea soil compost that had kicked butt in the veggie garden this summer. Full admission that I know it’s way too hot to be a good choice, but I’m perverse enough to want to see how it’ll work.

Last, both I and my oto babies love sponge filters. I, however, hate to look at sponge filters. I hatched a plan that would be cunning enough to be called a fox if you were to glue a tail to it first, and set to work.

Enter the ugly pvc housing:

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The goal is to use the undergravel plate on one side to do most of the biological filtering, and have only inert Seachem Fluorite and similar over that so it doesn’t clog.

On the right side, the goal of the ugly pvc housing is to let me sink a sponge filter down into a hill. Then I keep the coarse mechanical filtration, provide lots of area for baby otos to graze, but don’t have to look at the thing. It will be easy to get plants to grow around the opening, and removing it to clean it should be simple.

The tee and elbow arrangement was chosen to allow a bit of water circulation. The water will get drawn in the elbow, and blown out the top of the tee.

I sized the pvc elbow and tee to take the sponges I use right now (3”), and joined them with zip ties because I’m too cheap to buy a section of 3” pipe to join them with. I sawed some of the lips off with a hacksaw, and used GE1 silicone to glue them to the base.

Since I don’t really need a huge opening in the elbow I cemented a slab of corroplast sheet over the opening and used a spare 3/4” pvc coupler as an intake pipe. Now I can fill substrate around it and hide most of the opening.

I debated using mesh over the opening to prevent fish getting in, but ultimately decided it was something else for the otos to kill themselves on and avoided it. My list of innocuous things that have killed otos is long and detailed, and I don’t need it to be longer.

Last in this step, I added a little short fence made of plastic to contain the substrate beside the undergravel plate. I plan on running the soil on the side opposite to it, and wanted to avoid the soil migrating under the ug plate.

 

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Once that dried, I filled over the undergravel filter plate on the right with a very coarse rock mix that sort of looks like super coarse flourite. A metric ton of it came with a used tank a few years ago, and I hate the look but it works well. Areas against the glass I filled with Flourite Dark, which I plan to use for the visible areas.

 

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Next, I filled the left side with the sea soil compost mix. I plan to bury this deep so that it hopefully doesn’t leach ammonia to the water column, but I’ll run the tank a while in advance of livestock and watch it just in case. Should be smoking hot full of nutrients, but possibly overkill, so it’s an experiment.

It’s a little over an inch deep I think at this point, and level with the plate gravel mix.

I also backfilled the gap between the soil and the divider bar with rock for an inch or so to provide more buffer against soil migration, keeping the finer flourite against the glass where visible (goal is no white rock visible).

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Edited by AdamTill
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Next, I started to build up the slope with a bit of gravel. Some of it will settle into the compost, but it’s easier to build moderate slope with rock rather than dirt. I can always add substrate supports out of plastic if needed ala The Green Machine, but the slope isn’t very steep. Just adds a bit of interest and more surface area to plant compared to a flat tank.

The ugly PVC is starting to submerge and it’s making me happy.

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Since I was getting into the upper layers and there wasn’t looking like a huge amount of cover would be over the sea soil at the front of the glass, I chickened out and dug that part out. I wanted more cover of inert material over it to avoid leaching, and had a plan for that using one of my fav planting mediums.

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I went to the garage and grabbed a bucket of shredded peat moss, and brought it inside to thaw. I love using this as planting media, and have done up to 9” thick in some tanks in the past.

Once it thawed out, I laid it down in the gap and spread it over the white and brown rock on the left side of the tank. It’s good and spongy, should contribute some  tannic acid, takes planting tongs well and should absorb water column nutrients as well.

I get mine from sustainable harvesting companies so win win all around.

Didnt use it on the ug side to avoid clogging water channels there.

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Only thing left to do was use the remaining Flourite Dark to fill in around the openings and to cover the existing peat and ugly rock. I made sure to use rock around the lips so dirt doesn’t leach into the openings over time, but it remains to be seen how that works.

I don’t quite have enough to make a good solid planting depth, and I’ll have to inevitably fill in dips as things waterlog and settle, but I have more coming soon.

After that, I just have to fill it up, let some filters run for a bit, and see if I get ammonia leaching.

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Edited by AdamTill
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And now for the fun part....gratuitous baby oto pictures! The goal is either to make millions and retire off the profits of “Adam’s Otos Inc”, or just enjoy the tank for a bit. Either works.

Also kudos to the Coop team for this forum software. It’s pretty kick butt, and even though I haven’t done a build log in a long time I’m enjoying using the forum a lot.

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On 12/17/2020 at 12:04 PM, Alesha said:

Incredible photo journal @AdamTill! I can't wait to see how it looks when it's up and running and I'm already wondering how that soil and peat work with the water parameters. Looking forward to additional installments!

Thanks! Should be able to start it up soon.

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Got the tank flooded today, and have already learned and relearned some lessons.

The “stand” might give people a giggle in that it’s actually an old 75 gallon stand that I converted to our cat’s litter box a year ago. It’s still plenty strong enough for a little 29 gal, and this should only be for a week or so.

I made the mistake of leaving it out one night dry and our most mischievous cat clearly went for a look. She messed up the substrate a bit, but at least didn’t use it as a new litter box as they’ve been known to do (lost my bag of sterile seed starting soil last year to a cat with a full bladder).

I also forgot that dry peat is exceptionally buoyant, and so when I flooded this one some of the peat bubbled up. I would normally have wetted it first, and I kept the cap thin because I have to move the tank at some point, but not a problem I can’t solve later.

So at any rate I’ll run it this way for a week or so and see if I get any ammonia leaching. I was pleasantly surprised at the flow created by the undergravel outlet pipe, so that in concert with a little electric pump should be plenty to make sure there are no dead spots in the tank later.

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Edited by AdamTill
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2 hours ago, Joshua14 said:

This is incredible! I'm curious about how many otto's you started with, and what do you think helped attribute to their spawning? 

Thanks! I think a combination of no predators and another easier to spawn species as a trigger was what helped most.

I’ve kept otos in species tanks before, but they’d never bred. Most of the spawning reports I’d seen showed the otos spawning after something else did (hormone trigger?), and this seemed to be the case here.

I definitely haven’t seen anyone else use water this hard though (ph 8+). One web guide even says anything above 6.5 means they’ll never breed.

I think I started with 17 otos and about 10 habrosus. No clue what the current numbers are

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Aww, they grow up so quickly!  Flushed out the babies doing maintenance today and got a picture of the most photogenic one again.

Also decided to add a couple of little flow pumps to the tank to get a bit more circulation going on.

Otos love flow and you’ll see them more if you have it, but intakes have to be protected well or you’ll chew them up.I just have a piece of sponge protecting them right now held on by a zip tie, which is ghetto but effective. Soon I’ll make up a little acrylic housing or something similar with a sponge “cartridge” to make cleaning easier.

Going to run the upper tank pump continuously and the midwater pump during the day.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Came home to another small spawn, with newly hatched babies and some eggs pressed conveniently against the glass. Will monitor them over the next few hours.

The bigger fry is about 2weeks old I think, new baby off to the right for size comparison.

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Well, a couple of water changes later plus a cycled sponge filter and my ammonia tests are still coming back BRIGHT green, so I’m calling it a fail for the compost. 

No matter, the white rocks were driving me nuts anyway.

So I’m going to break it down and make it back up again a different way.

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Aw, well, pooh! 😒 Sorry your experiment wasn't successful. But you learned important information, so it *was* successful in that sense! Let us know what you choose to try next. And keep us up to date with those Oto babies!!!

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