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Oldie but a newbie to the world of green

ArcticFox

Seedling
Joined
8 Dec 2016
Messages
9
Location
Bristol, UK
Been a hobbyist on and off for the last 25 years, nothing too serious just your usual general community fish....I have planned a house extension that has been designed around a 1000ltr tank with a filtration/wet room at the back of it. I am trying to bring together what has or has not worked for me over the years. Hence why I am here to get better informed and educated with people in the know as regards choosing plants but also keeping them alive! Big shout out and thanks to those who can help and offer a beginner good advice.

I have four tanks, the three small ones, as regards green, are successful with Anubias Nana Petite, but hey I am sure anyone can have success with this species (the snails keep the leaves as green as they should be). My issue is my larger tank Juwel Vision 260 it has CO2 via an inline Ista reactor. The lighting is Finnex Ray2 for 6 hours same time every day. I am looking to grow plant life on my bogwood...however I need tough plants due to stocking....so for starters I thought a scattering of anubias petite with three other different plants that would take the space in the open waters.
 
Hehe, that is how extensions should be built.
limited by where toilet doors will be and also I am looking at solutions to light loading I will have with the tank being adjacent to 4 meter full glass doors...but plan as fully automated system as possible...the only thing that wont be automated will be the mechanical filtration cleaning
 
Welcome. Building the extension to suit the aquarium now that's top aquascaping commitment.
 
I would love to be able to have a constant water change system on my big tank.
Easy peasy if you have a weir in your tank that drains away. You just continually drip water into your tank and excess flows over the weir to the drain.

More complicated, obviously, is if you don't have a weir and want to add dechlorinator.
 
...but plan as fully automated system as possible...the only thing that wont be automated will be the mechanical filtration cleaning
Quite feasible, many koi ponds and swimming pools have auto back flush. A swim spar or Jacuzzi back flushable sand filter with timer valves would work.
 
Easy peasy if you have a weir in your tank that drains away. You just continually drip water into your tank and excess flows over the weir to the drain.

More complicated, obviously, is if you don't have a weir and want to add dechlorinator.
I obviously have two options...I could batch the water, have a secondary container filling slowly, with a heater in the bottom, heater and circulation pump would come on at 25%, dosing at 95% and then at 100% it auto syphons into the main tank and over flow goes down the drain. Or I could have a constant totalised flow of treated water from a small pre treatment system, no heater required or additional 300ltr container needed, water chemistry would be more stable. I would never see the effects of a water change unlike a manual wc where the levels are reduced during the procedure.

My current thinking is to have a lateral system of pipes close to the bottom of the tank with 8mm holes between the bottom of the glass and the underside of the pipe. I would then put a layer of 10mm clay balls to cover and the put smaller substrate on top for planting and aesthetics. I would like to make at least two displays of bogwood, at the front of the bogwood display the wood would rise up out of the water. The idea being these displays would hide an overflow/skimmer pipe. this system keeps my substrate filtered and will help with removing some bio loading and the overflow skimmers will keep the surface polished to allow maximum light penetration not to mention better o2 saturation. the flows will be controlled manually via metering valves this will mean most of my filtration will be through the substrate bed, which means I get a bigger volume evenly distributed without to much current being created and just have enough overflow for perfect skimming.

My issue is the return flow......I want to keep my equipment in constant use(obviously) I know some systems have equipment removed for pictures, but I need to achieve the no equipment in the tank look however it is all still happening like some sort of magical trick, so more research is being done on that as I will also be having CO2 injection which given the split flow from up to down I would need to inject midway down/up in the tank.
 
Quite feasible, many koi ponds and swimming pools have auto back flush. A swim spar or Jacuzzi back flushable sand filter with timer valves would work.
I am water treatment engineer and to date the biggest system I have worked on pulls 200,000lph (200m3/h) of water out of a river and through various processes, back washable filters being one of them, to create 100,000lph (100m3/h) of 18.2 meg water....but given it was coming from a river there was no limit to the amount that could be taken. However I am on a water meter and yes could go down the route of disc, sand, drum, spin filters.....but would need to consider space, capital cost as well as onward flushing costs. My mechanical filtration will be 2 stage micron bags first stage to catch bricks, cars and trolleys and the second body parts and leaves and would then have a polishing pad.....in the mechanical section I hope to create huge surface area to reduce back pressure and have a short dwell time however in the media beds I will be trying to create a longer dwell time for obvious reasons. If I had to clean out the socks/bags once a week I would be ok with this as they would be easy to remove and I would have a sink right next to me where I could make as much mess as I like as will have a wet room type setup and if I had to change the polishing pad once a month I would consider this acceptable.
 
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That is interesting, I have also worked with fish and filtration all my life.
I have designed and built numerous auto back flush filtration systems, from large commercial fish farms to home based aquariums.
There are so many methods and opinions about mechanical filtration, there are certainly many methods that work.
Removing organic waste as soon as possible is the basic principle and this applies to planted tanks as much as any tank, your project sound really great, good luck. :)
 
Hi all,
however in the media beds I will be trying to create a longer dwell time for obvious reasons.
You don't need to have anaerobic denitrification with planted tanks, basically the "denitrification arc" is carried out by the plants, which deplete all forms of fixed nitrogen. You shouldn't get any build up of NO3 in the tank water, the plants should take it up.

The problem with long dwell times is that you are always balanced on the edge of the media becoming anaerobic, with potentially catastrophic results.

"Plant/microbe filtration" is much more efficient than "microbe alone filtration", which means that you can deal with bigger bio-loads (higher levels of BOD), this is partially an oxygen effect, and partially the depletion of the nitrogen by the plants. There is quite a lot of research on this in waste water treatment (particularly in the tropics) using <"vertical flow constructed wetlands">.
My current thinking is to have a lateral system of pipes close to the bottom of the tank with 8mm holes between the bottom of the glass and the underside of the pipe. I would then put a layer of 10mm clay balls to cover and the put smaller substrate on top for planting and aesthetics...........this system keeps my substrate filtered
I'm not sure that is going to work. <"I like Leca for trickle filters">, but I think the finer substrate will fall through and the Leca will all end up on top.

In comparison to the filter media I don't see any advantage to try to keep all the substrate aerated. Plant roots are leaky structures and produce zones of oxygenation in their rhizosphere. Additonally areas of substrate with lower REDOX potential will help to keep some nutrients (Fe++) plant available.

Have a look at Stephan Tanner's <"Aquarium biofiltration">, he is partially talking about matten filters, but the same applies to the substrate.

cheers Darrel
 
Hi all,
Best of luck, I think we are all interested in this project, what you eventually decide and how it works.

When you are ready PM me, I always have spare Anubias and African/Java ferns you can have if you want them (for a donation to the forum).

cheers Darrel
 
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I am unsure as to the livestock I will have in the tank.....I hoped to create a system that could be easily adapted for various stocking types and levels...but will only be used for freshwater.
 
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