Amano New Year Build!

I get distracted for a couple days and the fishless plant box has inhabitants!

Great choice from your father, he and I would get along

 

How long can you keep this culture going?

I have buried two halve patatoes to start my own culture, bit have to wait at least another week or so before I will have my first starter culture. Then another week before I can start harvesting from it.

 

Much better! B&A pix:



It's now been nearly 48 hours. The only concern is the wild upswing in pH. I had not done any water changes in the whole two weeks since planting. CO2 was not being produced for at least 24 hours before taking the first reading, so it cannot be that. Something was/is acidifying the water and I'll never know, but it could be organic stuff rotting in the substrate.

I did not do a water change today or yesterday, what did change was:

1) The water was HEAVILY filtered with a tonne of flow using the canister filter and the penn-plax, with the dinky hob adding its 2 cents, from the water change until now.
2) The canister filter adds at least 15L of volume to the WC so that is welcome, accounting for 50% more volume. It will be a permanent fixture until the ADA is set up.
3) I vacuumed all the blue grow stix residue I could see. Who knows what it may have been releasing.
4) I dosed a couple more capfuls of Seachem Hype Juice (tm).
5) The canister filter is continuously burping itself into the water column with a massive flood of tiny bubbles which could be contributing to gassing out any CO2 or ammonia. I am satisfied however.

The nitrite and nitrate levels have dropped in line with the amount of water I changed - Mr. and Mrs. Nitrobacter had better start pulling finger and putting out IYKWIM.

I've been dosing 3ml of my eye-ron solution every day and the rotala are looking a lot better, although I did first experience some tip die-off in the interim. The cryptos are also looking more perky with leaves that actually poke upwards for a change. I need to get my floaters planted, the barbs are snacking on the root growth.

 

Meine schnitte sind geschnitten! Also, who knew Rosie the Riveter was pansexual? Learn new things every day.



I didn't have a convenient surface to clamp a 6m length of tubing so I made do on a low wall (I vibrated a brick loose ).

I now need to make the ends nice and square and the lengths consistent.

 

This has to be the most frustrating job ever and I'm packing it in for the day. We don't have a chop saw, or a band saw, and the mitre saw we have doesn't have a blade for metal (I tried it and it cuts, but it isn't a clean cut and the blade isn't happy at all and I don't want to ruin it). None of the 230mm abrasive cutting disks I can find in the shed have a 16mm arbor hole that will fit the mitre saw and 16mm arbor metal blades are pretty unobtanium too, nor does the mitre saw have a reducing ring. It's a bloody conspiracy.

So I used the sabre saw and it cuts neatly and easily but because I'm not a robot few of the cuts were 100% straight. So any error compounds on both ends where the length of the tube when viewed from the side might end up being a parallelogram and any error doubles. Now I have to first make sure all my crossmembers have at least one perfectly square end (an annoyingly fiddly sneaky-uppy job in itself), then find the one with the largest amount of error (i.e the one that will end up being shortest when finally square and used as the reference for the others) - then marking the excess on the others using a fat marker and a set square, then grinding it off, measuring again and sneaking up, rotating by 90 degrees, rinse and repeat 24 times per set of six crossmembers (of which there are two sets), and I'm like f*ck it, mañana is another day.

I didn't have the right tool for the first part of the job and it's now biting me .

 

We don't have a lathe, but we do have a drill press and my dad suggested I make a reducing ring using a fat washer with an OD of at least 22mm (the size of the cutting disk arbor), a 16mm drill bit for the ID and then clamping it in the drill using a bolt and nut and then sneak up on the 22mm OD with a file. (I'll need to find a suitable bolt and nut first but it seems doable). I'll do some digging tonight, but first I need to see if the chuck can fit a 16mm piece.

ETA: WOOT nvm, builders stocks a 22mm x 1.5mm washer, I just need to drill out the center.

 

Thanks for the suggestion! I have not gotten around to fiddling with it yet.

 

Good moaning!

I have sheets of mulm floating about my tank this morning and getting hung up in the plants. The water otherwise is perfectly clear (if a bit tanniny as usual).

It doesn't concern me (apart from the fact that it's unsightly and requires manual removal - the fish are ignoring it), but I was wondering if it indicates that some sort of cycling threshold has been reached? Any ideas? There's too much of it to be some sort of random surface disturbance, and looking at the canister's PVC tubing, the inner surfaces are covered in mulm but have large patches where it has dislodged. So that seems to be the source but nothing would have disturbed the tubing - it looks to be some sort of water-param related event.


EDIT: Sitting watching my feesh with my morning Joe, and the cannister is perdiodically vomiting out chunks of it. Caught mulm-handed! Definitely the source, but the cause remains a mystery. Yuck, it looks like someone's been peeling their sunburn off into my aquarium, with none of the satisfaction.

Edit2:


If I had to guess, the biofilm that had previously been gorging itself on the nitrate express is dying off - only 5ppm. This makes me happy - I can feed my fish more! Yaaay!

 

If it is truly mulm I would not worry to much. I know it might be unsightly and not nice to look at, but it has a heap of benefits.

Look at this, they explain it better than I can.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mulm&sca_esv=74f7731948ddd43d&sxsrf=AHTn8zrta1VbpmB9HLTlA8WCO4rnIw2T8g:1739515873081&ei=4eeuZ_XSBJuBhbIPhqXw2QQ&ved=0ahUKEwi1x8jNycKLAxWbQEEAHYYSPEsQ4dUDCBI&uact=5&oq=mulm&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiBG11bG0yDRAuGIAEGMcBGAoYrwEyCxAuGIAEGMcBGK8BMgsQLhiABBjHARivATIHEAAYgAQYCjIHEAAYgAQYCjIHEAAYgAQYCjINEC4YgAQYxwEYChivATIFEAAYgAQyBxAuGIAEGAoyBRAAGIAEMhwQLhiABBjHARgKGK8BGJcFGNwEGN4EGOAE2AEBSIcWUABYpRNwAXgBkAEDmAG7BKABzhKqAQcyLTcuNS0xuAEDyAEA-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_qz7oGBggBEAEYAZIHBTEuMC41oAfGZg&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

My plecos love that stuff.

 

In that case it isn't mulm then, but biofilm (I was under the impression that slimy bacterial coating on every surface is called mulm). It's clear and looks distinctly like sheets of epidermis.

I think, looking at the nitrate reading and the state of the rotala green, I need to invest in some proper ferts. The rotala pink are growing like weeds (I've already had to trim and replant) but the green is looking a bit pale. It's two weeks till payday so I'm going to experiment with the grow stix again, especially now that I can test the water params.

I'm also tempted to get more fish! I will go out on a limb and consider my planter cycled!

 

I am also still learning and had a slightly different idea of mulm. I guess they can show up in different form. I saw what you have before but normally adding a pleco took care of that. Like all other things in an aquarium, this might just be a another phase the tank should go through on its way to being a better ecosystem. i am trying to find more info on that but from experience, really bad things don't normally show up visibly in your tank. It's normally the things you can't see that becomes silent killers.

 

Okay found a few redit post with similar stuff. Its seems a biofilm in a "thicker" version common in newly established planted tanks that is still trying to stabilise. Can be caused by plans melting, and the use of root tabs. Recommendation is to add shrimp to get rid of that.

 

For something that was just supposed to be a temporary setup, it has become a very charming aquarium with plenty to keep me engaged and I will be sad when the day comes that I break it down. I have no melting plants - not even the crypts. Even that shirty substrate seems to have settled down and I can plant things without it turning into a disaster. The tank looks happy and that makes me happy. The only small letdown is the constant leaching of tannins from the substrate so the water is only gin-clear after a water change. But that's a hindsight thing and I can deal. I read that it's good for the fish anyway.

The fish seem very happy and are constantly busy - the barbs are super chill and the neons even school with them, it's very cool to see. Mr. Scurvy Spine is getting fatter and is a lot more active too. And they're getting second breakfast!

 

That temp tank is such a cool setup! Can't wait to see what you're gonna do with the ADA.

Well done!

 

Thought you might like this, DIY fertiliser calculator that shows you how to clone mainstream fertilisers

https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/ifc-aquarium-fertilizer-calculator.63045/

 

Here's a great local write-up and calculator to do DIY fertilizing.

https://www.apsa.co.za/xenforo/threads/ei-for-dummies.6142/

@wearsbunnyslippers are you still using this method and are there any changes we need to make?

 

Howdy boys n girls,

Been a while since I updated. I borrowed a chop saw from work and managed to get nicely square and even sections of steel. My attempts at welding a frame have, however, failed.

I have a square frame (I mean it looks square), but it isn't square enough for my liking. Warping ensures that the top is never level I ground out the welds and retried at four times before giving up. Bottom line is you need metal corner clamps or a jig, I have four BIG welding magnets but they are just not good enough to hold sections square while the welds cool down. Even the old man had a go and his efforts were no better than mine.

So failing that, and not having a pet welding expert hiding in my closet, it's time for plan B:

https://www.builders.co.za/Plumbing...White-600-x-560-x-720-mm/p/000000000000609091

600mm kitchen base unit with door, which I have just assembled. The depth is 560, which is fine because it gives me a space at the back to route tubing. The height of 720mm is a bit problematic however because my UNIT of a CO2 cylinder doesn't quite fit if stood upright. Options atm are to either stand it at an angle, or cut a hole in the cabinet base so it can stand on the floor (I bought 20cm adjustable furniture feetses so there will be enough space). Ideas, please!



If you're curious (or dubious) about the sturdiness of the cabinet, have no fear - while it seems pretty sturdy after assembly I am still going to reinforce the hell out of it.