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Box of Dreams. Seriously, I have seen dreams about it.

Jake101

Member
Joined
28 Feb 2014
Messages
126
Location
Solna, Sweden
I have been waiting this moment for two long years. After giving up on my last larger-than-nano tank, there has not been a single week without a thought about the next one.

I started planning this project last February. First I couldn't make my mind about anything, since the number of interesting possibilities was not small. Over time I noticed that I was heading back to the roots. Being an avid corydoras enthusiast since childhood, I just couldn't bypass them. Following that thought I decided to create a shallow stream tank for corys.

So these are the hard facts:

Tank: 210 liters - 100 (l) x 60 (w) x 35 (h)
Lighting: 3 x TMC Mini LED 400 with cheap eBay dimmers.
Filter: JBL CristalProfi e1501 (let's see if there is a need for a smaller filter / stream to get a nice circulation)
Heater: Aquael Easy Heater 150 W
Substrate: Tropica Plant Growth Substrate capped with 0.4 - 0.8 mm Rådasand. I'll put a mesh net between bottom substrate and sand to avoid the worst possible mess.
Ferts: Low-tech weekly EI
No added CO2

Plants: cryptos, smaller swords etc. depending what species are available. I'll be mainly getting the plants from LFS, where the guy actually grows most of the plants himself and sells them directly pulled from the substrate with a very affordable price.

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The stand for the lights is made from an used IKEA clothes stand. The pieces are almost perfect.
I made only one cut with a saw and drilled holes for the wires. The stand seems to be a bit crooked
at the moment.

I have gotten, in the past, tired doing maintenance with on-top-of-the-tank lighting unit, so I wanted to make this one with adjustable hanging lights.

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The ugly plastic ring is a temporary solutions. More aesthetic one is on the way.

After seeing all the amazing high-tech scapes on UKAPS, I couldn't completely walk away from that either. Our apartment is small, so there is no place for another separate tank. I still need to get the plywood boards for the stand, but there is a place reserved for a 60x40x35 tank, which hopefully will be there in the coming years.

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The stand will get some panels to hide the engine room.
 
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Which Cory's are you wanting?

I do love my pygmaeus. Wonderful little things and very tactile with each other.
Subscribed.
 
Looks good are you realy tall or does that stand just look high in the pic?
 
Which Cory's are you wanting?

I was thinking Sterba's cory. On the other hand, with pygmies I could get a larger school which always looks good. LFS has a lot of different corys on their list, so in the coming days I need to dig deeper into the different possibilities.


Looks good are you realy tall or does that stand just look high in the pic?

It is rather high stand, 110 cm. The idea was to get it as high as possible while I (184 cm) can still reach all the corners of the tank without an effort. There are no chairs or sofas next to the tank, so I don't want to squat too much to look while standing next to it. Also, there is now enough space for the possible smaller tank without positioning it basically on the floor.
 
The wire holder (found that from a sale basket) is not compatible with TMC rail screw thread. So that was my cheap solution. I will replace the ugly plastic rings with aluminium squares. I am naturally open to other solutions as well.
 
About the inhabitants. One option is to get two species. For example, 20 corydoras habrosus (or some other pygmy size cory) and 15 corydoras sterbai.

Any thoughts about this approach? The numbers above are just "abouts".
 
How about Cory hastatus _!?!
Very rare around my part of the uk
 
Hastatus are easily identified by the tail marking and lack of horizontal stripe.

I have no idea what they can be confused with.

But that's because I only research the fish I like- beyond pygmy corys , I'm clueless
 
I currently have pygmy cories with sterba's, both very nice fish. The pygmy cories initially shoaled with my copper harlequins but have now settled onto the bottom, spending most of their time hidden amongst the crevices in the dragon stone. When with the sterba's they look like fry, quite a cute effect. Beautiful fish that I thoroughly recommend.

I already had the sterba's, really wanted pygmies so now I've got both: 4 sterba's and 10 pygmies, however in a normal community tank I would recommend just one species of cory/ bottom dweller for aesthetics. Then again if this is going to be cory focussed I say get as many cories as you want!
 
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Hi all
I have no idea what they can be confused with.
They sell Corydoras pygmaeus as C. hastatus. Usually if you see "C. hastatus" for sale the fish will be C. pygmaeus. It happens in the USA as well, but not apparently in Germany or the Netherlands. There are a few threads about it on <"PlanetCatfish">.

I've got no idea how shops can get away with this, as they look quite different. You also get it with "Corydoras jullii", which is always C. trilineatus and "Apistogramma viejita II", which is a colour enhanced form of A. macmasteri.

Our local MA used to sell A. viejita for about £20 - £25 a "pair", but the fish were always macmasteri and always all males. On the pluside the fish buyer they have now is an Apistogramma keeper and the fish are all labelled with the correct name.

cheers Darrel
 
The tank is running. After washing the sand yesterday morning, I went to LFS to buy plants. Their plant selection is not magnificent, but gets you started. At this point I decided to take several different species and see how successful they will be in my tank. The plants I selected are

Bacopa monnieri
Ceratopteris thalictroides
Cryptocoryne moehlmannii
Cryptocoryne walkerii
Ctyptocoryne wendtii
Echinodorus bleherii
Echinodorus grandifolius
Elocharis acicularis
Hydrocotyle leucocephala
Hygrocotyle tripartita
Hygrophila corymbosa
Hygrophila difformis
Hygrophila siamensis
Rotala indica
Sagittaria subulata

Most of the plants are in the tank, but few spend their night in a bucket. I'll post some pics when the planting is ready.
 
Ok, first pics of the running setup.

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The intake pipe is too long, so temporarily I have a piece of a filter foam to keep it high enough.

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I am going to add some small pieces of wood / splinters to hopefully get a bit more natural feeling.

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I am pretty happy how the wood looks like. It is actually two pieces, but they fit together quite nicely and eleocharis hides the rest.

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I am going to add black background paper to both sides against the wall. I rinsed the sand like a maniac, but the water became still cloudy. The wood will probably leak some tannins etc. Anyway, I am going to change 30 % of water in the first days, so it should also help.

Only small problem is the filter. Somewhere in the intake part either some air is sucked in or the stream is not otherwise smooth. Some air builds up in the filter and then it spurts out lots of bubbles with an annoying sound from the impeller.

On the first glance the filter seems to create quite nice circulation. The stream makes plants moving all around the tank, also on the bottom, but the sand is not disturbed.
 
Air might be getting in via the filter intake?
Mine does this if the plastic pipes are not located fully. Or if I'm using co2
 
The filter problem is solved finally. The intake pipe mouth piece, which is connected to the hose, was sucking air. The reason was imperfect enough molding process, which left a tiny seam. After sandpapering the seam away the problem also vanished.

Tank is now one week old, and seems to be running ok. Lights are on 6h / day, but without a par meter I am purely guessing the lighting level for the three led tiles while trying to be careful. The cheap eBay led dimmers work just fine with 10-step adjustment range. On the other hand I don't have a clue whether each step increases the lighting level as much as the next one. Anyhow, I found an Apogee SQ-120 par sensor and decided to acquire it. I already have a pretty good quality multimeter.

Plants are doing at least ok. Cryptos are dropping some old leaves, but are also producing new ones at the same time. The amount of different plant species will decrease after seeing which ones rule the tank and which ones lose the possible competition. I have been doing about 30 percent water changes every other day and will probably continue it for a one week more before moving to a normal routine. I'll probably change 10 % daily, since then I need to keep only one canister over night in our small bathroom to get rid of extra co2.

Soon it is time to get the first algae-eater. I'll think I take the bit easier way with a common bristlenose. I have always found them quite charming creatures, even if they are not the flashiest plecos.
 
Moving to Sweden made me also to give up on some of my other hobbies, mostly because of practical reasons. The good side of this is the possibility to invest a bit more in this hobby, so I got myself an Apogee SQ-120 par sensor. I already had a decent quality multimeter. Anyway the sensor arrived today.

I was quite careful with the lighting, because estimating the combined lighting levels of three led tiles with cheap dimmers was basically pure guessing. So after measuring the levels today I confirmed that known fact that a human eye is a worth nothing in this business. I had about 15 umols on the substrate level. So now I am going to pump up the lighting levels to 30-35 umols.

The question is should I do this step by step?
 
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