• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Just Fun ...

Re: Slow Cave [First photos]

Thanks guys, hopefully there won't be any big issues during the first weeks.
Things slowly kicking in here and there, started adding high amounts of CO2 to keep the emersed leaves surviving until the plants grow enough to be cut and replanted.

6544615233_74ff07e998_z.jpg


Cheers,
Mike
 
Re: Slow Cave [First photos]

This graph kinda blew my mind:

PARvsDistVariousBulbs2.jpg

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/light ... pc-25.html

I know that a water filled tank/tinted water etc. alters the results but ignoring that 2 t5 HO on top of my 30cm tank is still huge amounts of light so I bent one of the reflectors to cover one of the bulbs and I'm running just one from now on. I cross my fingers in hope I'll get rid of surface scum, 36h after the change and turning the skimmer off it hasn't appeared.

Not to much to see right now so I won't post any photos this week, maybe next one, until then just wanna tell you that I've finally ordered an external heater from Germany and hopefully the atomizer will arrive in the same time so I'll be able to enjoy an ugly hardware free scape. :)

Regarding the light I'm using 1 x JBL Solar Tropic (4000K), until the Giesmann Powerchrome Midday (6000K) arrives, with a lighting period of 2h-3h-2h-3h-2h (same as the other tank, 3h is the break), CO2 coming 1hour before the lights and turns off 30min before the break, about 2-3bps.

Se ya soon,
Mike
 
Re: Slow Cave [Quick Update]

@mitchelllawson As soon as my stems in the back of the cave grow again, I believe at the end of the next week, I'll do then a bit of a larger review of the things happened in the first weeks of this setup's life :)

@George Though one mate :lol:

Let's see ... I'm not a scientist nor one that's heavy testing water parameters so everything came out of my observations during the past year, so ...

Primary reason: fish, even if my tanks tend to be heavily planted they seem to not like the high lighting I use so I use large breaks into the photo-period for their sake. They seem to like it so I'm stuck on it.

Secondary reason: plants ... of course ... Why's that?

Well, at first I wasn't using any CO2 addition so I thought large breaks provide the tank a little bit of CO2 buildup and lower the organic matter the plants produce during the extended photo-periods, more or less it worked, I sorted the BBA issues I had but the growth wasn't really the one I was looking for so I started adding bits of liquid carbon and the things were back on track. This is the short story of "The Little one".

Back to this tank, same story but with a twist, I'm using high amounts of CO2, low KH and the PH used to drop rather low, when using Amazonia it was lower than 5 once so the bacterial activity during the photo-period is rather low if any, as soon as the CO2 is stopped the PH slowly rises again and bacteria is back on business but the organic matter is too high to be handle in the little time it had until the CO2 pops back in this resulted in BBA, surface scum and all sorts of algae ... so breaking the photo-period and CO2 addition extends the bacteria working schedule, lowering the light, lowers also their burden, in theory though, so I'll keep you updated how it works. :)

Hope I was clear enough mate and glad you are following my little journal.

Cheers,
Mike
 
Re: Slow Cave [Quick Update]

I know text updates are not appealing, nobody reads these days :lol:
I haven't planned for a photo but here it is, stems not grown in the back but when they will I'll do another one, next time using the strobe to light the back to gain a smooth gradient.

6658653751_c64a16001d_z.jpg
 
Re: Slow Cave [New photo]

Thanks for the photoperiod explanation, Mike.

The 'scape is coming along nicely.

I've said it before but I really like your style. So much so that you've inspired me to follow along similar suit in my latest 'scape. By that I mean a more complex mix of textures by using lots of species mixed up. It's different to my usual style but I like it. I will share some images soon for you to comment!
 
Re: Slow Cave [New photo]

Yes, coming along nicely but still far far away :). Really appreciate your comment, thank you mate, glad you are giving colored plants a change, there are so many good looking plants people almost forgot about them, like rotala, ludwiga, nessea, ammania, etc. ... really amazing plants, some hard to keep also. :)

What happened to your camera btw? I see that you are only taking photos with your iPhone.

Count on my amateur eye for a comment. :thumbup:

Cheers,
 
Re: Slow Cave [New photo]

clonitza said:
What happened to your camera btw? I see that you are only taking photos with your iPhone.
iPhone for Facebook and Twitter, generally. It's 100x quicker that using the DSLR, then uploading them etc. iPhone is snap and share instantly.

Unfortunately I don't have the spare time I used to have and my priorities have changed a little - mainly wanting to spend more time with my wife and kids. So my 'proper' photography is more limited to commissioned work that's not published on forums, social networking sites etc.

Besides, with the standard of many of UKAPS members aquascaping and photography these days, I doubt anyone is missing my work, which is a good thing! I'd rather write the odd post here and there, and keep an eye on things in the background.
 
Re: Slow Cave [New photo]

Just for you, Mike. It seemed pointless creating a new thread for one photo. I hope you don't mind me hijacking your journal but it's kind of relevant because your style has inspired this.

It's only been running for 4 weeks. Some plants only 2 weeks old.

You can see the change in direction for me. Lots more textures intermingled.

6659290805_c17659bd06_o.jpg
neons by George Farmer, on Flickr
 
Re: Slow Cave [New photo]

There's no hijacking mate, it's a great inspiration for me too. I was talking with a friend a while back and we agreed that the next big thing in aquascaping is mixing plants like in nature, for far too many years people are using the front house lawn in their aquascapes. :)
Great mix of plants there, don't forget to keep staurogyne in check as it develops long roots at every node more or less like blyxa but they are harder to pull.

I know the time issue, such a pity the day is not 36 hours long ... :)

Cheers,
Mike
 
Re: Slow Cave [New photo]

Thanks Tom, it's really hard to keep plants from growing one on top of the other, I think I'm transforming in the scissorman. :)

Last one for today:
6660980697_b3836e7972_z.jpg
Really hard to take a good photo with the black background so some editing was required to get rid of the shadows. :)

Cheers,
Mike
 
Re: Slow Cave [New photo]

Looks great wish my plants would start to grow haha.
 
Re: Slow Cave [New photo]

Hi, tanks looking great, the cave is lovely and I will be watching this one closely, I my even try it myself :). Well keep up the good work and keep the pictures coming.
 
Re: Slow Cave [Text update]

Yet another text update but I think it's important to add this kind of posts also for anyone interested.

The last two weeks I think I kinda messed this tank, I was aiming to keep only the flow provided by Ecco Pro 300 with lily pipes which didn't work so well, not being a large tank but a long one comparing to the width and height, the flow only reached only a small portion of the back of the tank living the left side and front uncovered, that means half of the tank with poor flow and CO2 distribution, and guess what? BBA and diatoms blooms all over the tank, mainly on rocks, which are so hard to clean especially the ones I can't pull out :lol:

As a side note, due to the poor flow most of the plants turned red, stopped growing and I was wondering well do I have enough nitrates? So I constantly was adding TPN+ to the tank until I decided well how about adding the re-circulation pump inside again to see what happens. It did happen that plants turned green after 24 hours and started growing again.

But it wasn't the only change I had to do, I've also switched back to the 8h lighting period 1x24w t5, CO2 2.5h hours before the light resulting in a nice lime green to yellow drop checker.

The moral of this story is get your water distribution and CO2 sorted if things go horribly, I'm saying this like I didn't know it already. :)

Now I have to wait another week or so, spot dosing the remaining BBA.

I'm the proud owner of a Hydor external heater, kinda hard to place it inside the cabinet but the switch I think was really worth the extra bucks invested, instant heating!. :) I also started using Giesemann Midday 6000K, kinda reminds me of Osram 965 6500K but the brightness is much better and I also think it has much less yellow in the spectrum and a little more blue than the other, this means a nice white background and really good plant color rendering, so, I guess that looking just at color temperature when choosing the light is a little bit wrong.

Spectrum comparison:

200tpj5.jpg

Osram 965

mi0ymd.jpg

Giesemann Midday

See ya next week folks,
Mike
 
Re: Slow Cave [Text update]

George Farmer said:
George Farmer said:
Nice update mate. Some important lessons shared there for sure.

The new tubes sound great. Interesting to see that perhaps some aquarium-branded fluorescents are actually worth paying a lot more for. One of my favourites is the Hagen Life-Glo T5.

if I have to use flo tubes I'm pretty hooked on the aqua-glo ones tbh pinkish light given off but really makes fish colour stand out and plant greens bright. having said that once I finalise my designs I'll be converting to some home brew LED strips soon more bang per watt which I like.

the tank its self above though looks superb kinda wishing I went for rocks in my tank now instead of wood
 
Re: Slow Cave [Text update]

Thanks guys! :)

Well, when it comes to light I'm kinda picky, for me the price doesn't really matter as I'm not investing in many bulbs.
One is more than enough for this scape at least in this early stage, might get the transition into 2 later on after it hits maturity but this is going to take at least 4 months.

I had the oportunity to test many, I still kinda like the cheap Osram 865 for green scapes so I go for them whenever I can. For this scape as it has browns, oranges, reds etc. I needed one with a peak in the warm side of spectrum but not too warm to make the background yellowish so I guess Giesemann Midday was a good choice, 16£ for two years, not that expensive really and the brightness pays off, much better than any I have right now to compare to: Osram 865,880,965, JBL Natur 9000k & Tropic 4500k.

Never had the opportunity to pick Life Glo until now but I did used some Hagen T8s years ago and they are really nice might test it in the future when I'll have some nice colored fish. :)

Cheers,
 
Back
Top