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Fully Automated 400l Heavily Planted Tank

jagillham

jagillham

Member
Joined
6 May 2015
Messages
343
Location
Kent (UK)
So here is my work in progress....

The tank will be automatically handling the dosing EI Ferts daily and running my 50% water change weekly. All I want to be doing is trimming the plants and feeding the fish.

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Details to follow about the systems. :)
 
One of my big aims is to declutter the tank as much as possible, so most of the kit will be in the sump or out of sight as much as possible.

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On the left infront of the weirbox is the stand pipe with strainer on top. No matter how long the valve is open, the tank can only drain halfway down. Top right of the weirbox is the filter outlet into the tank just below the water surface.

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This is the sump some time ago before all the baffles went in. In the middle of the sump is the overflow direct to the drains, so it cannot overflow.

The pipes coming down are as follows.

-Far left towards the camera, the standpipe from the tank
-Far left at the back, the main outlet from the tank
-In the middle, the outlet overflow
-Far right, the filter return into the tank

At the moment I open the valve on the standpipe, which floods the sump and in turn into the drains. Once done, I close the valve and the tap water feeds into the main tank (pictures of this to follow).

Next to sort out is the automatic dosing for EI Ferts, automate the water change / adding prime. :)
 
The Jebao Auto Dosing Pump DP-3 arrived - £53 delivered from HK / eBay. Very pleased as arrived in 3 days!

Easy to set up once I found English instructions online.

Hopefully I've done it right, and will auto dose the EI ferts. Did not find a way of programming each channel to do "once every 2 days on alternate days", so have had to go for dosing channel one at 00:01hrs and channel two at 23:59hrs every 2 days.

I'll use the third channel for adding prime for the automatic water changes when I set that up.

It's a bit rough at the moment, I need a shelf or two really. Also I want to weight the lines to make sure they stay at the bottom of the containers.

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It has been some time since my last post, and I'd not really noticed the tank had changed all that much until I looked back at this thread!

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So 5 months on, what has changed...?

- The Hygro Polysperma (large bush at the back right) has gone. The plant was growing too fast and taking over the tank. As I was not pruning it enough the bulk of the plant got higher and higher when trimmed leaving a rather tangled mess of bare stems at the base.

- The Blyxa Japonica (grass like plant on the right) has spread out well sending lots of runners all over the tank. I've had to take these up and put them back with the main plants to keep it looking 'bushy'.

- The Staurogyne Repens (small plants around the green rock) has pretty much died off.

- The Amazon Sword (tall broad leaved plants left and centre) has grown very well, plus a new large one I purchased

I have found a lot of the plants were growing quite 'lanky'. Tall and thin, rather than nice bushy growth like I see in others tanks. The low level plants also seem to have struggled. My opinion is that the flow around the tank is good, the EI is going in daily and the CO2 dropper is always green - so I am looking to introduce more light. Strangely there seemed to be a lack of articles online where I could find out what others were doing. It would be really handy if I could find some posts / pages where people say 'this is my 4ftx 2ft x 2ft planted tank and I use X T5 bulbs'...

I currently have 2x 54w T5 bulbs with reflectors behind the glass sliders. I have brought another double 54w T5 unit, and will try 4x 54w T5 to see how things go (watch this space). If it is too much light I can always run one extra bulb only, or maybe have the full 4 bulbs only running for a middle of the day burst of light.

I am still looking towards that jungle look, with a decent background of plants. This is a shot from UKAPS member @ghostsword from another thread which is a bit of inspiration for where I want to go with this...

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Hiya,

your grassy plant looks to be H tennelus 'broad leaf' rather than blyxa.

Your light appears to be ok. I wonder whether CO2 levels have dropped off?
 
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I would suspect adding more flow and gas would result in more growth, adding more light might help in conjunction with more gas but doubling the light sounds a bit risky if you don't want an algea attack!
As a rule of thumb ... 2 x T5s the lenth of the tank works very well for tanks up to 20" deep (my personal experience) so you might benefit from one more tube but I would really try to up the gas a lillte first.
Have you tried to measure the PH drop while the gas is on?
How do you disolve the CO2?
 
rebel said:
your grassy plant looks to be H tennelus 'broad leaf' rather than blyxa.
Click to expand...

Well that would explain it not looking as I thought! Here is a closer picture, do you think the same still?

20151028_184128_zpslbv1vfr5.jpg



foxfish said:
Have you tried to measure the PH drop while the gas is on?
How do you disolve the CO2?
Click to expand...

CO2 is via the diffuser - it's up towards the top of the tank at the moment. I've some more tubing on order so I can place it lower. I do have a plans for an reactor with a 20" water filter housing for an 'in-line' solution, but that may have to wait for the moment.
 
Yes. Blyxa doesn't put out runners anyway. It's a stem plant.

If you think it's light deficiency, it's easy to solve. Just aim a desk lamp to half of the tank and observe.
 
Do you mean in the sump rather than the tank itself?


It is underneath the return pipe in the tank currently. Could maybe get it under the powerhead with some work.
 
Interesting idea. Did you have any issues with the CO2 getting trapped in the highest point of the pipe (ie - where it goes over the tank edge) causing a reduction in flow / airlock?
 
No never, if you have a half decent pump I cant see how that could possibly happen.
If you wanted to take it one step further, you could fit a needle wheel pump & then you don't even need a diffuser.
It is possible to get a build up of gas in the end of a spray bar but even that is not an issue.
I do notice however that you are using right angle bends on your system, those will cause a lot of restriction & loss of flow!
 
@foxfish - Just realised it was your tutorial I was planning on following on the CO2 Reactor. I have a 20" water filter casing now, but can't see to find a bottle that is long and thin enough to work inside. Any suggestions?
 
Well I have seen one guy use acrylic tube with several inserts to taper the top but that is quite a lot of work and expense... perhaps a 40mm acrylic tube with a simple cap and a suitable hole will work.
So you don't fancy moving your diffuser in front of your pump?
 
I could do, just as the housing was £25 thought I best use that. Plus in theory with the reactor I'd get a better rate of dissolving.
 
Starting to rearrange the tank to push the larger plants right back to give the illusion of more space. Although the tank is 50cm wide, it hasn't always felt that way.

I think (what I now know to be) H tennelus 'broad leaf' will go eventually, or atleast be scaled back a lot.

Obviously I've kicked up a lot of muck, so will have to wait for it to settle to see the true effect.

Anybody else find when everything is kicked up the fish colours really pop out?

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Looking at the height in which its growing and the shape of the leaves, I think its Saggitaria subulata instead.
 
Dust has settled and extra light in. I'm going to try 3x 54w T5HO to start.

Not sure if you can tell in these photos, but top one is 2 bulbs, and bottom is 3. It does look bright in 'real life'.

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Edit: If anything the first one looks brighter! I guess the camera is compensating for the extra light vs the black room! You'll just have to trust me it looks brighter :)
 
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