Leaf It Alone (75 Gallon, High Energy)

[MartyK]

This system is my third freshwater planted aquarium in the last few years and I hope to use what I have learned and liked from the previous two systems to improve the result on this one. My second system is still running and will be the source for most of my plants and fish for this new third system, then the second system will receive a makeover as I want to fix some mistakes made with that system. I also would like to use up as much of my accumulated aquarium stuff as possible with this system so it is very do-it-yourself (DIY) heavy and I may make somewhat strange decisions in order to reuse things I already have. The accumulated stuff is from the 12+ years I had with the marine aquarium hobby ending in 2017-ish when I had a tank crash so you'll see a lot of influence from there as well - I love sumps, complicated plumbing and lighting, etc.

My goal is to create a high-energy system with a focus on large-leaf plants that require minimal plant maintenance so I'll only be using a single stem-plant species - Ludwigia repens - and everything else will be rosette or epiphyte - Anubis, Echinodorus, and Cryptocoryne. Hence the name of this sytem - Leaf It Alone!

Display: Perfecto 75 gallon with DIY acrylic overflow box, 2 holes drilled for 1" bulkheads
Filtration: Aqueon 40 gallon 'breeder' sump with 2 layers of Poret foam, 3" 30PPI and 3" 10PPI
Stand: DIY, welded steel with plywood
CO2: Unknown dual-stage regulator (purchased 2002ish!), 20 pound tank, DIY 2" horizontal reactor
Lighting: Chihiros WRGB II 60cm and 45cm, 4x DIY Bridgelux LED strips
Flow: Syncra 3.5 return pump
Water: DIY 5-stage RODI system with 42 gallon holding/mix tank and transfer pump, remineralize via Equilibrium
Substrate: Safe-T-Sorb (Montmorillonite clay) plus some decorative sand
Hardscape: Obsidian stones

Alright, let's build this thing!

Starting with some 1" 16-gauge square steel tubing and my trusty portaband saw...

Squaring everything up on my uneven garage floor with mismatched corner jigs...

Did I mention I really don't have a proper fabrication shop or equipment so I'm using whatever is handy?

My welds aren't the greatest and my fit-up likewise but I have a grinder so that won't matter much...

And thirty five days later you have something resembling an aquarium stand...

We had a couple heat waves that prevented any work for a few weeks as I only really have time on the weekends to get into the garage and 95 degrees F with 90% humidity is just not fun in welding garb.

Moving on, I added gussets which caused all sorts of bad warping of the top frame and so decided it would be best to add another layer to the top to get things more square:

A lot of welding and grinding later it was almost ready for paint except I decided some braces between the front and back would be a good idea (not pictured)...

At this point it was still very hot in the garage and I still had very little time so photos are sparse but I...

• finished welding in the cross braces
• grinding out all the new welds where needed
• applied a ton of filler and primer as best I could (very poorly, actually)
• sanded all the filler and primer
• cleaned all the weld and grinder spatter, the filler and primer dust
• painted the whole thing with a couple bottles of Rustoleum Hammered Bronze paint
• and finally cut two pieces of 5/8" plywood for the top and bottom shelf

Another gap in photos but I did another round of filling & sanding on the plywood, painted it with some nice thick enamel white paint, moved the stand and boards into position inside, and got ready to lift the display into place...

There were no photos of this either as I was on my own but imagine pulling together every bit of scrap wood you can find, two dining chairs, two bedside nightstands, and a whole lot of awkward lifting with one arm while using the other to move furniture...

Alrighty then, I think that looks acceptable!

 

[MartyK]

Next up was to head 10 minutes out of town to a nice independent landscape supply place to search for some hardscape stone and I wish I had done this for the first two tanks! There was a lot to choose from but eventually my eye landed on a huge pile of obsidian as well as a pile of jasper, both of which had boulders a few feet wide down to loose pebbles and gravel. I bought two five-gallon buckets of obsidian and one five-gallon bucket of jasper for $10 after spending about an hour and a half picking and arranging stone on the convenient concrete blocks nearby; I don't know how much this weighed but I would estimate 80 pounds of obsidian and 40 pounds of jasper. The jasper will be used when I redo my other tank, the '2nd system', once this 75 gallon system is up and running.

A terrible photo of an potential scape for this system:

A little bit better photo of the same:

I spent the last warm sunny Friday afternoon scrubbing the rocks in a tub:

While the stone was drying, I started working on the plumbing (more detail on this later!) and also did a final fill test with well water. I won't be using the well water since it is very hard and inconsistent water parameters.

I also put in the foam for the hardscape:

The hardscape itself with some wonderful dramatic late afternoon sun:

Started filling it with RO water:

I did add some decorative sand at the front from a free bag someone gave me and it turned out to be way too fine of particles. So, I will spread it around as the bottom layer and then add some other sand on top but that is to-be-determined:

Soon the sun was down and the tank was nearly full so I started setting up the Chihiros:

For now I have the 60cm on the left side and the 45cm on the right side as the overflow sticks out about 15cm from the right side.

I also set up my old Ehem classic 600 (2217) to do some filtration and added a 100W heater and a Tunze 6025 temporarily. I should have had the Eheim running on my other system while building this one but didn't think of it then so I just swapped some of the media.

And that just about brings us to the present day! I have made quite a bit of progress on the additional DIY LED lighting so I think that will be the next update, complete with CAD design, 3D printing, and hopefully some PAR light-level readings once everything is installed.

Cheers!

 

[MartyK]

Another busy week in the books with the DIY LED lights done and working, better mounting for the two Chihiros lights, sump done and water tested, plumbing done and water tested (multiple times...), and full system started up!

We left off with the tank mostly full of water and having just set up the Chihiros albeit temporarily as the 45cm unit obviously does not have long enough legs to reach from one side to the middle of the tank lengthwise. I drafted up some ideas during the week for three different mounting brackets in order to securely mount both units while also allowing relatively easy movment and removal for maintenance.

The 60cm unit ended up with two different 'end cap' brackets which were either friction fit:

Or were friction fit AND that had captive screws that insert into the holes for the L-shaped legs that you'd normally use, you can just see the screw heads here:

The 45cm unit also received one of these blue brackets and the pair are then secured from the top by two additional screws with an extra flange nut because the screws are too long:

And finally the short side of the 45cm got a very over-engineered truss type bracket which has all the wonderful elements you could think of - friction fit, tension rods, captive screws, and two different colors because I ran out of gray plastic for the 3D printer partway through:

Skipping to those wonderful DIY LED's I keep mentioning, here's the very technical summary on those and I'll put an easier summary below too :

• Two aluminum heatsinks which are 580mm long, 40mm wide, 11mm tall, and weight about 600 grams per meter
• Each heatsink received a 560mm long Bridgelux "EB Series™ Gen 3 Thrive" LED strip in 5000K color, 98 CRI
• One two-driver PCB onto which I soldered a pair of LDD-500H and desoldered the 10K resistor so always at 100% (I just want off/on control not PWM)
• One 24V DC power supply
• So each LED strip is driven at 24V and 450mA (the "500H" is just a naming convention, not actual current) which means 11.25W per strip, 22.5W in total, before any driver or power supply losses/efficiencies
• Each strip is rated to be driven at 960mA which the datasheet says is just under 2700 lumens so I should be getting less than half that, maybe 1250 lumens each
• Total cost would likely be about 90 USD plus minor costs for wires and hardware; about 28 lumens per dollar

The easy summary is that each LED strip should be using about 12 Watts and producing 1250 lumens at 5000 Kelvin which is a nice neutral to cool white color in my opinion. In comparison, the Chihiros WRGB II 60cm claims 4500 lumens and 67 Watts while the 45cm is 3600 lumens and 49W.

Alright let's get to the important bits:

A very ugly mounting & wiring solution with the driver board:

Which all culminates in two very reasonable looking fixtures:

Another view from the top:

And a view from the front at my normal sitting height:

I mounted the DIY LED's at an angle rather than straight down and this was entirely because I could, not for any good reason, but it does cause them to stick up about 30mm more than the Chihiros. Not a huge deal but it is something I might try to improve if/when I redo the mounting brackets for those.

Finally, does it work? How much light does it really put out? Will it grow plants? Yes yes yes! I have an Apogee PAR sensor and used that to measure the light levels from just the DIY LED's on, just the Chihiros on, and both on at the same time. Short tangent on measuring PAR - Photosynthetically Active Radiation - just to mention that the sensor is already tuned/configured to just the wavelengths required for growing plants so the resulting measurement is much much more accurate than just looking at lumens and color temperature. But they're not 100% perfect sensors so I usually say there's a 10% margin of error just to cover my butt!

Anyways, no photos for this as I was juggling the sensor, the multimeter, and the light controls so here are the numbers measured at the planting substrate:

• DIY LED's measured 50 to 75 umol/m2
• Both Chihiros at 100% on each channel measured about 150 to 200 umol/m2
• All lights combined measured 250 to 300 umol/m2

I am extremely happy with these results as it means I can turn the Chihiros down quite a bit to extend their life and get the perfect color while the DIY LED's can be used to add a nice extra punch anytime I want. And I don't need to build the other half of the DIY LED's as I had originally planned for four units total!

Next up is plumbing and the sump!

 

[MartyK]

The sump is pretty straightforward because it doesn't have any baffles and only a single divider that separates the main sump area from the reservoir for auto-top-off. There are two pieces of 3" Poret foam that are the main mechanical filtration plus I plumbed in a filter sock holder where I can run a mesh or felt sock if I need extra fine filtration. Here is a photo from when I was water testing the ATO reservoir:

A closer shot of the plumbing coming in to the sump so you can see I have a main drain which is restricted with a (gray) gate valve and a backup/emergency drain which has no restrictions at all. Ignore the crazy plumbing fittings on the bottom of the backup drain, I ran out of pipe and had no straight fittings so I had to get creative in order to get that line down to the water level; actually, same issue on the main drain too as that should just be a single straight piece of pipe below the filter sock Tee piece. I spent less than 10 USD on plumbing this whole system as I reused and cut up parts from my previous reef systems instead of making four or five trips to the very expensive local hardware store. Otherwise, not much to describe from this view other than to note that all of this is all 1 inch PVC and that gate valve MUST be a gate valve rather than a ball valve if you're going to use this sort of system. More on that 'system' later.

The return line is much the same - reused from previous systems - so it has some funky fittings that I can't change but which will come in handy when I get the CO2 system set up. There is a piece of flexible silicone hose between the pump and the hard PVC plumbing which I always always always recommend because it eliminates any of the hum and vibration from the pump being transmitted into the hard pipe and into the display tank. The hose slips over a piece of hard PVC, goes into a Tee fitting with a 3/4 inch threaded port on the side which is capped off for now, then through the (white) gate valve used to adjust the flow, takes a turn horizontal through a union and then a backwards wye fitting with another 3/4 inch threaded port that is capped off. On my previous reef systems, the two 3/4 inch ports would have connected to a UV sterilizer and I'm going to do basically the same thing with this freshwater system but it will be a CO2 reactor instead. Should be very convenient!

Oh and there were leaks. Lots of slow leaks. Including two fittings I forgot to glue (!) but mostly just threaded connections that didn't have enough sealant.

Jumping back over to the drain side, here is a photo of the overflow box and plumbing exiting the display tank so you can see the main and backup drain lines. This shot was taken just after I turned the pump on so the water level is still rising in the overflow box. The main drain is the lower bulkhead on the tank with the strainer inside and it exits immediately down into a pair of 45-degree elbows and into that gray gate valve shown previously. The backup drain is the upper bulkhead which exits the back of the tank and then goes immediately down into the contraption of fittings shown earlier.

And here is a shot of the top of the display tank showing the final water level in the tank and overflow box as well as the top of the backup drain plumbing. The water level only drops about a 1/4 inch over the weir (black acrylic) which eliminates absolutely all noise you might get here. I can also very easily lower the water level in the overflow box which is very helpful if you are doing maintenance and want to increase the mixing of the water skimmed over the weir with the water in the overflow box so that it all goes through the main drain and gets filtered.

And finally here's a more recent shot with the whole system running and at a reasonable steady state in terms of water levels, with convenient labels this time! I also added a filter pad, some ceramic media, and some tank water from my other system in order to kick things into gear.

Thanks for all the likes so far! I hope I can get this thing planted and let the next round of fun begin very soon. If you're interested in reading about this sump & plumbing system please read on otherwise I'll catch you in the next post.


(It's a bit wordy...)
The basic concept of this whole system, otherwise known as a 'Herbie' drain system, is that you have two drains: a main drain that is under full siphon and a backup drain which usually has no or very little water through it. The return pump and plumbing are not as critical so generally any arrangement works, just get the water from the sump into the display tank.

It is important for the main drain to be under full siphon because that means zero air is entering the pipe and zero air means no gurgling, flushing, or trickling noises. The best way to accomplish a full siphon is to restrict the main drain line with a valve that allows very small adjustments - a quality gate valve will take 5 or 10 or more full turns of the handle to go from fully open to fully closed while a ball valve usually only offers a quarter turn for this same range. The amount you need to restrict the main drain depends on a lot of factors but is mostly due to the flow rate of your return pump, size of the overflow box, and the size of the main drain plumbing. Restricting the main drain by closing the gate valve will cause the water level in the overflow box to go up. In my system, three-quarters of a turn on the gate valve will change the water level from my preferred level (1/4" drop over the weir) to the lowest level when the main drain starts sucking in air. So it is very important to use a precise valve and I also recommend putting a mark of some sort on your valve handle so you can better see how much you are adjusting and where the normal position of the handle should be - I use a colored ziptie usually but sharpie marker or string or anything will work. Restricting the main drain does reduce it's ability to pass larger debris like plant leaves, snails, fish, etc., so it is important to have some sort of prefilter or strainer.

The backup drain is simple - if the main drain gets clogged at all (snails, plant litter, etc.) then the water level in the overflow box will rise until it is higher than the backup drain pipe. You can have the backup drain plumbing enter the sump above the water level if you want an audible alert when the main drain starts to get clogged as the splashing water will be very noticeable in an otherwise silent system. The backup drain plumbing should all be the same size pipe or hose as the main drain and it should not have any restrictions such as valves. If you have to use two different sizes of pipe/hose for this system due to how the display tank is drilled then you should either downsize both to the same size or you should use the smaller size as the main drain and the larger as the backup. This is very common with some USA-manufactured tanks like from Marineland and Aqueon where the overflow has two holes drilled for one 1 inch and one 3/4 inch bulkhead - use the 3/4 inch as your main drain and 1 inch as backup!

The final aspect of any system with a sump is how much water drains back to the sump when you turn the return pump off and how much the water level in the sump drops when the pump is running which should be the same thing. This is hard to measure ahead of time so I go with a cautious see-what-happens approach which means running the minimum amount of water possible in the sump and testing repeatedly to see how much it fills up and drains down. You can reduce the pump-off water volume by raising the plumbing in the overflow box so that the main drain is higher, by having your return pump plumbing exit just below water level, and by drilling a siphon-break in the return plumbing so the hole is just below water level when the pump is running (approximately even with the top of your overflow box/weir). In this 75g system, I drilled an 1/8 inch hole at the same height in the tank as my overflow box so that 1/4 inch of water going over the weir is the only water that drains back from the display tank along with the water in the plumbing and the overflow box.

So, how do you start up and tune this sort of system?
0. a. Open the main drain gate valve 100%.
0. b. Fill the display tank manually until water fills the overflow box and goes through the main drain.
0. c. Fill the sump manually to just above the top of the return pump, or above where you think it will start sucking in air when turned on.
0. d. Fill a bucket or otherwise have water on hand to add to the sump.
1. a. Turn the return pump on.
1. b. Start closing the gate valve one half turn at a time, waiting 15-30 seconds between turns, and monitor the water level in the overflow box.
1. c. Fill the sump as needed to prevent the pump from sucking in air.
2. a. Eventually you will see the water level in the overflow box start to rise so change to one quarter turns, still 15-30 seconds between turns.
2. b. If you feel at any time like you've added a lot of water to the sump then be prepared to turn the pump off and see how much the water level goes up. I don't know how anything could overflow at this point as you should have lots of excess volume to hold water.
3. When the water level in the overflow box really starts to rise fast after a valve turn then switch to one eighth or smaller turns and, unfortunately, waiting 30 to 60 seconds between turns. Your goal is to creep up on the ideal water level, you always have the backup drain just in case, which produces very little noise of water splashing over the weir.
4. a. Finally you'll get to that steady state. Put a mark on your sump somehow so you know the water level at this state.
4. b. Prepare to test turning the pump off by making sure you can easily turn it back on, by having easy access to raise the return plumbing or stop a siphon,
4. c. The test - turn off your return pump!
5. a. The water level in the sump should rise pretty quickly but unless you have a very odd sump/pump/plumbing config, it shouldn't rise too much.
5. b. When it all settles down, make another mark on your sump so you know the water level at this state.
6. You're done! Evaluate the high & low marks on your sump if you want to add more water or make improvements on the drain-back volume.

This concludes my wordy words.

 

[MartyK]

Not much of an update this weekend as the tank is still cycling however I did have to trim my other tank so I brought over a handful of ludwigia repens and water sprite tops, a pair of crypts (wendtii?) that had been in heavy shade from sword plants, and some floaters too. The water sprite and floaters will not be staying long-term but both are wonderful fast growers that I like to have during cycling & initial planting. The ludwigia will hopefully be my only stem plant, I have about six more crypts of this size, one crypt tiger that's mostly recovered from my stupidity, and two very large amazon swords. Oh and a ton of anubias.

I need to figure out what I want to do with that ugly white PVC on the return line, both lines on the Eheim canister filter, and that Tunze powerhead should probably be removed...

But I like the colors so far!

 

[MartyK]

Still cycling this week. I do have a nice variety of algae forming including diatoms on the sand and exposed plumbing, green dust algae on the glass, and a few strands of green hair algae on the rocks, all of which I normally associate with a healthy tank start-up. A few of the crypt leaves have begun melting but most are okay so this gives me hope the future transplants won't also fully melt to nothing. The ludwigia has perked up, water sprite grown 50%, and the floaters have doubled in mass so things are adjusting nicely.

One small change this week was the addition of some polycarbonate tops for the display and the sump using the 6mm twin-wall stuff. A few cutouts for the return lines into the display and likewise in the sump for the return pump plumbing, pump and heater cords, and the drain lines. I still need to measure how much of a reduction in light it causes but that didn't fit the schedule this (American holiday!) week so sometime in the future.

One other change - the tank/thread is now titled "Leaf It Alone" since first-person from the aquarium's perspective was just weird... And I very much look forward to when I can stop tinkering with it!

 

[MartyK]

It has been a busy couple weeks but I finally found some pool filter sand to finish the front of the tank and then transferred all of the plants and fish from my other system to this system late last week. I had far more crypts than I expected as they had grown together with the two amazon swords and there was a surprise large anubias as well that now has center-left stage all to itself. I borrowed a DSLR camera to capture this initial planting - before the crypts all melt - but I have no frickin' idea how to use the thing beyond looking up what settings to use and taking shots until I get a non-blurry one. Lack of a tripod seems to be the main issue so I'll have to borrow one next chance I get.

The plant list:

• 2 large Amazon swords
• 8ish large Cryptocoryne wendtii green? Guess we'll find out...
• 6 small Cryptocoryne wendtii green
• 1 small Cryptocoryne spiralis 'tiger'
• 2 large Anubias barteri
• 5ish medium clumps of Anubias nana
• 7ish small/medium clumps of Anubias nana 'petite'
• Misc. duckweed and java moss as hitchhikers because it's impossible to get rid of at this point
• 2 small bunches of Alternanthera I purchased last week

The fish list:

• 3 American flagfish, Jordanella floridae, I believe 1 male and 2 female
• 2 Otocinclus sp.
• 5 Neon tetras, down from 16 initially as I have terrible luck from local sources no matter quarantine procedure
• 15 Black neon tetras

So, here's a shot from yesterday with my normal old cellphone camera:

And here's the new hotness, the DSLR I don't quite know how to use:

The distinct lack of algae anywhere except dust & green spot on the left-hand glass and some hair algae on the ludwigia is due entirely to the flagfish and otos. The otos have done a pass on every flat surface and now retired to a dark corner, definitely fat and presumably happy. The flagfish have likewise attacked the hair algae and also sifted through most of the sand bed which I didn't know they did? There must have been enough biofilm or algae for it to be tasty as that's about all they did the first two days in the tank. Except the one smaller female flagfish who decided to check out the overflow box a few times.

Anyways, here's a final 'macro' shot of the male flagfish and his dinner for the evening:

Cheers everyone!

 

[MartyK]

It's been a month and although the tank looks almost exactly the same, a lot of things have changed.

The Alternanthera sp. I planted before the last update is now completely gone. I guess there are still a few bare stems floating around but there are no roots or leaves to indicate they'll regrow at all. Similarly, the ludwigia repens has been growing but also losing leaves in a fairly random pattern and I think I can blame the poor performance of all the stem plants on the guy in the last picture above, plus his female friend. The flagfish have been going nuts eating algae which is great but they're also not gentle about it. I did lose the smaller of the three flagfish a week after I moved everything in and I think this was actually a juvenile male rather than a female. He was eating just fine with the other two but did have to be rescued from the overflow a couple times before I found him deceased at the base of the sword plants one morning. This is the only fish lost in the move and following month so I don't think I can be too upset as everything looks to be doing very well.

I did do water tests and a 36 gallon water change right after this just in case but I did not find anything off. I use 100% RODI water that is remineralized with sodium carbonate ('soda ash') and Seachem Equilibrium to 1 degree each of kH and gH. I'll be switching to to DIY salts once the Equilibrium is gone and thanks to everyone who works on and recommends the IFC Fert Calculator as that makes things very simple to understand. For normal dosing, I am finishing up a bottle each of UNS All-in-one and 2HR Aquarist APT 1 which I'm sure is not a great idea but I'll again be switching to DIY ferts once these are done. So, the water chemistry has been remarkably consistent despite my haphazard dosing regime and schedule:

Temp - 76 F​

pH - 6.4 to 6.6​

kH - 0 to 1 degrees (1 drop may show a color change but it's hard to tell, 2 drops is clearly at end point)​

gH - 0 to 1 degrees (same as above)​

Ammonia and Nitrite - 0ppm​

Nitrate - 10 to 20 ppm​

I don't have tests for potassium, calcium, magnesium, etc.​

For more accurate hardness measurements and based on university chem classes that were more than a decade ago... I assume I can dilute the sample water 1:1 with RODI so that each drop shows 0.5 degrees hardness? Or 3:1 dilution for 0.25 degree resolution? I'll do some research on this.

Since we're on the topic of water, here's a wonderful mess for your eyes: this is my water change station that is in the closet and spot where the stacked clothes washer & dryer used to be. The water hookup is just behind the bucket in the top right, the cobbled-together and 17-year-old RODI system on the left, and the 42 gallon RV water tank, plumbing, and pump at the bottom and right. You can barely see some of the 50 feet of flexible pond tubing that I use to drain and fill the 75 gallon system in the far bottom right of the picture as well. Fortunately, all of this DOES get hidden behind the curtain and inside the closet when not in use so it doesn't always look like a 'mad scientist contraption.'

The tank was looking a little empty at the start of this year though so I was able to get a fish order delivered just before the massive cold snap in the USA. From Aquatic Arts, I got in 10 more black neon tetras, 36 more neon tetras, and 6 more otocinclus with only 1 DOA amongst all of them - a very small black neon. These fish are all tank-bred and had been quarantined so I did not QT them once received, they all went directly into the tank. It's now been 10 days since they all went in and I have not had any fish deaths so I am extremely happy with how this all worked out. Highly recommend Aquatic Arts, this is my second or third livestock order from them and their fish have an extremely high survival rate compared to my local independent and chain stores.

Speaking of extremely happy, my older black neon tetras have clearly been appreciating the new tank with the warmer and softer water as last weekend I noticed a couple little flickers of movement in the sump between the filter pads:

There are four of these little black neon tetras in total and today they measure about 6 to 8 mm, hard to measure with the water depth and through the glass. I am due another water change today but I won't be siphoning out the sump this time and I'll just take directly from the display tank in order to not disturb these fish. I've thought about getting a breeder box or net in the sump so they're contained but I also don't really want to mess with them at all seeing as they've made it this far on their own. Either way, they'll need to at least double in size before I consider adding them to the display tank.

I'll get an updated full tank shot when the lights come on later today but I did return the borrowed DSLR so cellphone pictures is all I can promise!

 

[MartyK]

Probably should have cleaned the glass too but oh well.