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‘Lazarus’...80x40x40, back on track!

Wookii said:
What bulb are you referring to here Andrew?
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Sorry I should have been more specific, I was referring to the ADA NA MH bulb. They also have the green one which is really nice for all green tanks. Mark Evans used the green bulb in quite a few of his scapes.
I’m interested in the Skylight LED. Is it similar to Kessil? Cuz the Kessil shimmer is just too much, I’ve had 2 of their lights :)
 
CooKieS said:
Hi,
I never said the vivid 2 was an bad light. ;)

As for the shimmer effect, the skylight is as good as any bulbs I’ve seen yet.

should try the new skylight hyperspot soon which seems very promising too. :)
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Are these lights RGB LED's, or do they use white LED's too?
 
Andrew T said:
Sorry I should have been more specific, I was referring to the ADA NA MH bulb. They also have the green one which is really nice for all green tanks. Mark Evans used the green bulb in quite a few of his scapes.
I’m interested in the Skylight LED. Is it similar to Kessil? Cuz the Kessil shimmer is just too much, I’ve had 2 of their lights :)
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it has shimmer but not as dramatic as the kessil, it depends of your surface agitation. I quite like the effect on my ceiling, in the tank it’s more subtle but definitely feels more ‘alive’ than others rgb led I’ve tried yet. ;)


Wookii said:
Are these lights RGB LED's, or do they use white LED's too?
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hi man, you can find all the specs here:
http://skylight.blue/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SKYLIGHT_AQI_INTENSE-United-Kingdom.pdf

The new hyperspot will be one step further and should be released before end of the year
 
CooKieS said:
hi man, you can find all the specs here:
http://skylight.blue/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SKYLIGHT_AQI_INTENSE-United-Kingdom.pdf
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Thanks mate - it mentions RGB in the document, but not whether any white LED’s are included also? What controls do they offer for ramping up/down?


CooKieS said:
The new hyperspot will be one step further and should be released before end of the year
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I take it these are the Hyperspot:

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I’ll be very interested if these are true RGB chips - I’ve been waiting for AI to come up with an RGB version of the Prime, so I can get some shimmer back.
 
Wookii said:
Thanks mate - it mentions RGB in the document, but not whether any white LED’s are included also? What controls do they offer for ramping up/down?
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they’re white led too, for control their is an small inline controller to use it as an dimmer and you can tweak the kelvin from 5000k to 15000k too. In addition I use the ‘led controller s2 pro’ (same one that works with twinstar and chihiros) to control light duration/sunset/sunrise. That is with the skylight intense/normal aqi...don’t know what will be with the hyperspot for now. ;)

in the meantime, worst start of an tank since I started this hobby, 10 first days were pristine and then everything started to go wrong, I wonder if it’s related to all the wood that is releasing dirt+ my lazy water change routine +bad tweaking of co2...here is the result ;

201206063711459453.jpg

201206063712172396.jpg


the Clithon and neritina helps but not fast enough, got 5 japonica (1 jumped first night) and the other 4 are small and hiding, just working at night.

i wonder what fish could help with that stuff? Been thinking of getting 10 otocinclus but they are fragile and not so useful against algae in my experience. SAE would be nice but they grow too big for this tank and will have to get rid of them after some times. I’ve seen some stiphodon semoni at my lfs, they do Work nice against algae but again, specific fishes with specific needs and they love to dig in the soil which is annoying in aquascaping...

I’m stucked for the moment, have tweaked my co2 (jet pipe instead of lily that was degassing to much co2) since
 
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Geoffrey Rea said:
Sorry to hear this @CooKieS but pretty sure you’ll bring it back round.

What do you think was different this time?
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well everything...new tank, new filter, new media, new soil , new light, new co2 system plus me being actually quite bored. That surely doesn’t help very much to start properly a new tank :)
 
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Some healthy buces...

...will start to dismantle this tank soon I guess.
 
Such a shame...maybe it’s a combination of too much light with not enough co2 and poor circulation...
Since it’s a new light fixture its easy to misjudge how much light you’re actually putting out ;
Try to save it....unfortunately the fish you need to clean up all that mess is called elbow grease :).
You can make it happen! Good luck and keep us updated!
 
CooKieS said:
201208055912816871.jpg


Some healthy buces...

...will start to dismantle this tank soon I guess.
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Sorry to hear you're having problems mate, and sorry to hear you've lost a bit of 'mojo' - it happens to us all at some point.

Whilst it might not make you feel any better right now, it is reassuring to the rest of us amateurs who try to make sure we do everything by the book, and still suffer algae appearing, that the pro's and more experienced members on here suffer with the issue occasionally as well. I'm glad you are willing to show the problems along with the successes, they are equally as important to read - @Tim Harrison went through the same issue on a number of scapes recently too.

The outbreak looks like a combination of diatoms and fungus. Manual removal and water changes would clear it up I should think (I know you already know that) - Oto's that you mention will clear up the brown diatoms in very short order, and more shrimp are probably the answer for the rest of it.

I know you've mentioned the water changes being a logistical issue in @Geoffrey Rea's thread, and I feel that - I hate water changes. That, combined with algae issues is what push me out of the hobby 20 years ago. I swore this time around I wouldn't set up a tank unless I could also incorporate automated water changes. If your tank is placed near mains water and waste pipes, it's well worth investigating,

I hope you manage to turn it around, as I'm sure it'll be a great scape once it's got through these set-up issues.
 
Kezzab said:
I feel your pain. Although, bad as it sounds its reassuring to see it can go wrong for everyone 😉

Good luck!
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Hahaha of course it can mate, I’m just an eternal noob trying to scape, let’s face it, I’m just OK for putting rocks and roots together but can’t follow any proper maintenance and I sucks at ferts understanding or even fishkeeping. Against nature we should stay humble, and in this case, my lazyness has kicked me in the butt.

Of course situation could be reversed with big water changes and proper maintenance, tweaking flow etc...let’s see!
 
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CooKieS said:
I’m just an eternal noob trying to scape
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Nope, you’ve placed mate, you’re already up there. Vastly underselling yourself and your previous works have inspired a lot of people in the hobby to try that much harder from seeing your skills, so be a little kinder to yourself 😉

CooKieS said:
Against nature we should stay humble, and in this case, my lazyness has kicked me in the butt.
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Art imitates life, life imitates art. If you aren’t feeling it, the scape usually gives you good feedback on how you’re doing even if we don’t want to admit that to ourselves, it’s a mirror. If you look at your tank and it’s bombed because the desire to care for it isn’t there, that’s just truth speaking to you in stereo about how you feel about that single setup right now, not an assessment of your overall toolbox of skills. It’s only one scape out of many.

CooKieS said:
I Don’t care for the hobby as much as I used too, plus the fact that all the iaplc photoshopped story has defo got me away from this contest for 2021
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Reckon that guy has left a lot of people feeling raw about it all, dare say it’s undermined your mojo for 2021 and done a lot of damage elsewhere. Don’t let it ruin your overall enjoyment of the hobby though Thierry, it’s just comps (you said that to me once), there’s the sharing of our hobby on here that’s equally valuable, both for you and to the UKAPS community.

Take a pause and refresh mate, pretty sure aquascaping will inspire you to come back swinging soon enough 🙂
 
Have to agree with the others you defently inspire and are great help for everyone on the forum so make sure you stick around

Everyone gets disheartened sometimes like i did then i sold everything then spent a fortune coming back, you will get your aquascaping mojo back.

Dean

Sent from my SM-G970F using Tapatalk
 
Its going to sound crazy, but I opted not to get a hyperspot recently, because many of the showtanks I saw using that light had a lot of algae issues. Many were scapes from 'pro' scapers that received the light as a preview. Not claiming causality, just correlation :) But the correlation was such, that I didnt get it in the end, at least not this version of the product. I love the looks, the shimmer, and everything else, and light alone cant cause algae, but I'm paranoid.
 
Wolf6 said:
Its going to sound crazy, but I opted not to get a hyperspot recently, because many of the showtanks I saw using that light had a lot of algae issues. Many were scapes from 'pro' scapers that received the light as a preview. Not claiming causality, just correlation :) But the correlation was such, that I didnt get it in the end, at least not this version of the product. I love the looks, the shimmer, and everything else, and light alone cant cause algae, but I'm paranoid.
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Not sure you can ever blame the light fitting for that, just the user not realising how much light and PAR they are putting out. It's deceptive with spot type lights like that, its easy to subconsciously assume they couldn't possibly put out as much light as a full tank width LED luminaire, but as I found out with the AI Prime I have, it puts out far more light with much greater intensity directly under the spot that any of the other lights I have, and though I haven't measured it with my Lux meter, at full output probably rivals the Vivid II.

I've also found that the combination chip RGB LED's don't look visually as bright as the older style lights using white LED's, but when you measure them they are putting out more Lux, and probably even more PAR. Net result - you can never trust your eyes for setting light intensity on a new light. In the absence of a proper PAR meter, which most of us don't have access to - I think it's still better to measure the output at the tank surface with a Lux meter as a proxy, for the old light, and adjust the new light to a similar output level in the first instance.

I imagine that's more likely the issue for those scapes using the Hotspot lights and their resulting algae.
 
That does sound like the most plausible explanation, which is why I'll wait till more folks have used them and some recommendations about settings/schemes go round. I do want to get it someday, just not yet :)
 
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