New year, new tank - Dry start small signature 45x45x30

[callmephathead]

Hi,

I woke up this morning with a little bit of a problem:

a) I am finally able to take some time off work now that Xmas and new year are over, but sadly not enough to travel away from home.
b) I have decided to stay away from new year's resolutions and therefore I have no wish to hit the gym or do any more sport than I currently do.
c) The weather is too bad to spend much time outside.
d) The TV is too bad to spend much time in front of it.

So I am faced with free time and not much to do with it...and this morning it suddenly meant that I had to take my small tank apart, clean it and try something different...something to do and look at over the next few months...

By 2pm, all plants, shrimps and snails had gone to a friend, and all the old substrate was busy feeding my lawn at the bottom of the garden. I cleaned the tank with bleach and vinegar, put it all back in place, and only then started to look at what I should do with the tank...

I saw a few articles about the dry start method and pretty quickly thought I should give it a try...Went to Aquajardin, bought a small piece of bog wood, a bag of ADA amazonia and 2 pots of HC 1-2-Grow (they were both mentioned together in a few articles), and then stopped at Tesco to pick up a roll of cling film.

So I have now placed 2 to 3 inches of ADA soil in the tank, placed the rocks I had with the wood without too much thinking (I know I will annoy some with that...), added water to just about cover the lowest point of the substrate, cut the HC in a total of 16 pieces and slightly pressed them down on the substrate. I then covered the whole tank with cling film, switched the light on, took a picture and started to write this journal...

I am not sure what I'll do with the tank next. At the moment I have HC at the front only but I may end up having HC all around or some other carpet plants at the back. I will add some flaming moss and Christmas moss on the wood and stones and I am also thinking to have an Anubia growing slightly out of the water at the top of the wood once the tank will be filled...

Final comment for today, I have managed to source free CO2 for a while, so I have decided to force a bit of CO2 under the cling film every hour or so for one minute at the time hoping to force the plant to grow a little faster...it's probably a very stupid idea but I am hoping it may work??

Any comments welcome and I shall post some pictures soon

Thanks for reading

 

[callmephathead]

Here we are, pics of the whole thing thrown together...Once again, any comments are welcome.
Thanks

 

[aliclarke86]

No need to add co2 there is more than enough out of water.

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[jon32]

Nice little project. Those tanks are really nice. Will look nice when it carpets and you add the moss etc. I guess if the co2 is free it can't hurt but there is more than enough co2 already present in the air, what you need for quick growth with dsm is plenty of light.

 

[callmephathead]

OK, may cut the CO2 anyway then...
Lighting is not an issue, got more than I need with a TMC grobeam 1500...

 

[jon32]

Yeah that's good co2 is already in abundance so give it full on photon light blast (been reading ceg's posts) is no problem with dsm, the problem with too much light and not enough co2 only begins after the flood..as I'm sure you're all too aware all the best and good luck
Jon

 

[callmephathead]

Thanks...
The only problem I can see is that the air temperature inside the tank is just above 20 degrees ( I read it should be 24-26), and I can't really raise it above that...I have tried to place a heater near the tank but it doesn't seem to make any difference... I guess I could have placed a heating mat under the tank as they do with vivariums but not sure I want to spend that money and can't really do it now that the tank is loaded with substrate anyway...

 

[jon32]

Hi mate. The temperature will be fine. When I had my dsm running last winter I also was worried about the low temp so tried a mat heater but turned it off due to it getting to warm. I found it made no difference or certainly didn't stop the plants from growing either way.

 

[callmephathead]

Hi mate. The temperature will be fine. When I had my dsm running last winter I also was worried about the low temp so tried a mat heater but turned it off due to it getting to warm. I found it made no difference or certainly didn't stop the plants from growing either way.

Thanks, that's great!
Did you have a problem with mould? I don't have one and hope I won't have one! but it seems to be the main reason for DSM to fail, so I wonder if you had experience on how to deal with it?

 

[jon32]

Yeah some of the amazonia started to look like it had white mould forming so I removed what I could and switched the heat mat off. I read that some guys in tropical climates had a lot of trouble with mould, so after seeing what I thought was the onset of it - I made my mind up to go without the heater. Turned out great in the end.

 

[callmephathead]

Day 2,
Still too early to see any changes but I have established the following routine:
- Lights - on at 7.00am till 9pm - I have used t a Seneye to find the following readings at substrate level with the cling film on PAR 17, LUX 655, K5425 DegK (readings without cling film were 39, 1090 and 6500 respectively) BUT I have learned not to trust the readings from a Seneye
- CO2 - Although I gather it is not necessary (maybe even useless), I will keep the CO2 on with 12 bursts of 1 minute (one per hour) from 8am. It may be a waste of CO2 but it can't hurt and since I get the CO2 FOC I may just as well carry on.
- Temperature - between 20 and 22 degrees Celsius, can't raise the temperature anymore due to ambient temperature.
- Water/Spraying - water must have drained slowly from the highest point of the substrate and therefore the lowest substrate was slightly under water (between 1 and 2 mm). I open the tank, sprayed the whole thing generously and used kitchen towel to drain the excess water away and maintain it below substrate.
Thanks

 

[aliclarke86]

Sound like you have it under control mate

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[callmephathead]

Sound like you have it under control mate

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I hope so
To be fair growing HC has been very hit and miss for me in previous tanks, some have done really well while others have melted away in less time than it took to plant it!!
I keep my fingers crossed for now...