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3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Day 59

Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

that in its self would cause quite alot of flow restriction.

you could be better buying something like a 1500-2000lph pond pump and having it chained just on the chiller and have the tetratec handling the heater + atomizer it'll mean 2 inputs and outputs in the tank but if you use glass and clear pipe it'll hardly be noticable
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

I thought that the external water pump was designed to cope with potential backpressure? Isn't that the reason why they quote how many metre of head it can provide? If the waterpump can handle this backpressure, I would rather leave the system as it is at the moment. Is this not possible?
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

daniel19831123 said:
I thought that the external water pump was designed to cope with potential backpressure? Isn't that the reason why they quote how many metre of head it can provide? If the waterpump can handle this backpressure, I would rather leave the system as it is at the moment. Is this not possible?

You already know that leaving the system as it is is not possible. You are not happy with the flow, so why would you leave it as it is, just for the sake of putting in an extra pair of tubes that could be made barely visible ?
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

head kinda doesn't impact flow rate restriction. the problem you have is that every inline element on your piping will slightly reduce the internal diameter of any pipework. so if you cut a 16mm pipe and plug in say an inline heater that inline heater fits inside your pipe work. reducing your internal diameter to say 12mm. a reduction from 16 to 12mm internal is about a 50% reduction in flow rate (I say about as I haven't ran the maths but the formulas are on here somewhere). Now an inline heater will cause some but not massive amounts of flow reduction you'll have a high pressure on the input end and lower on the output end.

Now if you chain another inline element say a diffuser after the heater that diffuser is now taking a lower pressure input than your heater did as its taking water at the pressure of the output of the heater. so again you'll get a cross section reduction going to the diffuser which will increase pressure slightly and cause a false sense of flow increase within the diffuser. on the output of the diffuser though as the pipe goes wide again the pressure will drop and flowrate will decrease. etc etc etc

Your chiller causes even more flow reduction because its not a straight line water in / water out like the heater and diffuser its basically a mini fridge. so the water goes in and wiggles around the heat exchangers every bend in the internal plumbing reduces flow and so what comes out of the chiller is quite low pressure/flow.

Why is why I say its probably better to run the chiller on its own dedicated pump and have heater + diffuser on the TT

some basic maths on flow rate through a tube. it doesn't take into account pipe diameter changes through system but it gives you an idea of loss of flow rate over distance which bearing in mind that your chiller while compact will add a fair old distance to the pipe length AND it'll have tight bends inside it not shallow bends.

http://www.efunda.com/formulae/fluids/c ... iction.cfm
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

Sigh. I missed the day when all I need to do is hide the heater behind the rocks and job done. First time using a chiller and it's possing as more of a problem than help. I think I'll either separate the system or purchase a sump tank with an overflow box
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

daniel19831123 said:
Sigh. I missed the day when all I need to do is hide the heater behind the rocks and job done. First time using a chiller and it's possing as more of a problem than help. I think I'll either separate the system or purchase a sump tank with an overflow box

Daniel I think you are over complicating this. Whats the big issue about two lots of lily pipes that will a) look great b) be unobtrusive and c) give you good flow and keep the surface skimmed ? An overflow box will look incredibly ugly :(
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

Antipofish said:
daniel19831123 said:
Sigh. I missed the day when all I need to do is hide the heater behind the rocks and job done. First time using a chiller and it's possing as more of a problem than help. I think I'll either separate the system or purchase a sump tank with an overflow box

Daniel I think you are over complicating this. Whats the big issue about two lots of lily pipes that will a) look great b) be unobtrusive and c) give you good flow and keep the surface skimmed ? An overflow box will look incredibly ugly :(

I think I have to agree with you on this one. After a long time of pondering on the topic, I've decided to go with a separate system for the chiller and the CO2 diffuser with the prefilter. The whole system linked together was causing too much back pressure and everything was leaking from every joint at the slightest movement.

I've temporarily split the system into 2 using the 12mm inlet and outlet from the eheim pipe while waiting to save up to buy a new lily pipe. Due to the slow flow, high light, many of the demanding plants were showing sign of deterioration.
Pogostemon helferi melting
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another example of how unreliable CO2 indicator can be. Had 3 indicator at the top front, botom back and top back all showing lime green - yellow and yet plants failed to grow.
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My temporary attachment through modification with rubberseal
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Tank overview DAY 4 (sigh... not much growth... just melting)
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Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

lower the lighting or photo period for a while increase co2 and swamp with ferts if you don't have livestock in there yet
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

Done that. Running at 3bps now and dosing 25mls of TPN+ and lighting at 7hours a day at 150W besides that it will be 48W of T5HO. Just done it this morning and my HC started pearling! First time pearling with HC and this is without water changes :)

The nitrite is starting to build up now so no stock for the next 2 weeks. Will wait till the nitrite to clear up before I add yamato shrimp.
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

remember you'll have to lower the ferts dosing as the tank stabalises too you'll have to have a play around to find whats ideal for your tank.

If i remember TPN+ lacks N+P? so you may have to substitute those in with an additional fert to compensate though I'm not sure someone on here should chime up that knows a little better though :)
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

TPN lacks N and P. TPN+ has all the nutrients. :) I was dosing 10mls for 90 litres tank so this tank would be roughly 15-20mls I would assume. Considering there is literally no kH in my water and low gH, I think I'm going to start doing EI dosing with dry salt. I've only got about 2L of TPN+ left and it will be finished in no time if I keep dosing 20++ mls a day!
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

ei would certainly work out cheaper in the long run. personally I'm lazy and buy premixed ei dry so all I have to do is add water and dump into the tanks. which is kinda cool since you can't really OD on it
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

I was dosing 13ml of TPN+ daily on my 180L when I started it a couple of weeks ago. This should add about 4.5ppm NO3 to the tank.

I'm not overly used to using TPN+ in an EI way so can't give much advice on that front except this....

To reach your target of 4.5 ppm NO3 you will need to add 13 mL Tropica Plant Nutrition + to your 180.0 L aquarium to yield
Element ppm/degree
B 0.0031
Cu 0.0046
Fe 0.05
K 0.79
Mg 0.30
Mn 0.0015
Mo 0.0015
N 1.02
NO3 4.50
P 0.08
PO4 0.23
S 0.69
Zn 0.0015

That looks to me that i'd be short of potassium if I added that amount in each day if i'd kept using it.

I found the plants were not growing as well as I thought they should and switched to my normal EI. Things rocketing along now. But it might also just have been the "bedding" in period of the plants adjusting to the new water.

I also started adding MgSO4 as my tap water is exceedingly soft.

Best Regards,
John
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

hinch said:
remember you'll have to lower the ferts dosing as the tank stabalises too you'll have to have a play around to find whats ideal for your tank.

If i remember TPN+ lacks N+P? so you may have to substitute those in with an additional fert to compensate though I'm not sure someone on here should chime up that knows a little better though :)

Hi Hinch, no its TPN that has no N+P, TPN+ has them in, hence the "+" ;)
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

I always assumed the + just meant they could charge £5 extra for it :)
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

Well just a quick update after a little over 2 weeks since the tank has been setup. The plants so far is doing ok. Some thriving and some melting.... But I suppose this is expected due to all the things that had happened over the last 2 weeks! Let me see where I start...

In the first week, the plants were melting really fast despite me cranking up the CO2 rate. Used 2 different drop checker and OMG one was bright yellow and one was blue. The moment I realised this, I went out and bought enough tubing to split the system. Now my chiller is powered by the 1700LPH pump where as my tetratec 1200 is running as usual. Needless to say the whole tank is now like a whirlpool. Still waiting for my second Lily pipe to come today to make the flow more gentle but I'll update the picture once the pipe arrive tonight.

Then within the same week, the MH light keep tripping the fuse box for unknown reason. However, once the lights are turn on it will be fine. It's the bit when it was trying to power up that seemed to tripped the fuse. Anyway, I just manually turn the lights on everyday. This was probably my biggest mistake ever... Went back to malaysia for 2 days and left the light to be turn on via timer. Came back on day to find that the light wasn't switched on and my neighbour said they smelt something burning from my living room the day I left! Looking at the bulb, I don't think it is damaged. I've got a strong suspicion that it's the ballast. Anyway, the seller is coming to pick it up tonight to have a look at it. Well you can imagine 3 days without light in a high tech tank... Most of my staurogyne melted or stunted. With the only exception being the limnophila hippuroides. It's grown through ups and down and I've now more than 20 stems in less than 2 weeks! The blyxa is bouncing back really strong too. My P. Helferi and UG took a hard hit and I'm barely left with nothing at the moment.
Limnophila hippuroides top view
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Side view
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Front view
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Staurogyne being eaten by what looks like a water caterpillar!
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Crypt undulata red regrowing new leaves
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Poor pogostemon helferi trying to sprout new shoots
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HC getting hit hard
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blyxa growing out new leaves with red hue
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Current tank view
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Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

I've also bought some fauna to go in the tank and currently still undergoing acclimatising before releasing them into the tank. The list is as follows

1. 10 x taiwan fire red shrimp
2. 100 x golden harlequin rasbora
3. 5 x pgymy puffer
4. 26 x otocinclus
5. 4 x small SAE

Will post more picture once the fish are released into the tank!
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

Hi Daniel,
What's the latest on the tank mate, starting to settle in really nice on the last pic!

Where did you get the dividers from to seperate the substrate?

Thanks
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

daniel19831123 said:
I've also bought some fauna to go in the tank and currently still undergoing acclimatising before releasing them into the tank. The list is as follows

1. 10 x taiwan fire red shrimp
2. 100 x golden harlequin rasbora
3. 5 x pgymy puffer
4. 26 x otocinclus
5. 4 x small SAE

Will post more picture once the fish are released into the tank!

You are adding all those fish in one go ? Without reading the whole thread, I should ask, is your filter capable of this ?
 
Re: 3 feet tank now planted and scaped! Update!

wow! :wideyed: 100 harlequins is a lot...you might have to add another 150 gallons of water space along with that stocking... :D also i'm not sure how you're house is but if you have windows open or some sort of healthy ventilation, you could just use a fan... i'm using a fan on this side of the strait... presumably it's the same on your side..
 
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