The swede 45P beginner tank

[Jim E]

I’ve just settled my first aquascaping tank and I would like to share my journey mainly for interact with all of you and to have a journal. I’m a beginner so this feels quite scary to share so please be kind and patience I am learning!


Setup
Aquarium ADA 45P
Filter JBL E702
Light Chihiros C2
CO2 regulator Oxyturbo with 2 pressure gauges + solenoid and fine needle valve.
Diffusor Aquario NEO curved tiny
SodaStream adaptor CO2art Pro series with adjustable on/off pin valve

Fertilizer All in one Plantedbox


Filter setup
1: JBL Coarse filter
2. Coarse filter with “bumpy” side down + medium “bumpy side down”
3. Filter media I basket with Matrix “approximately 1L”
4. A bag of purigen
5. JBL Symec filter floss



Plants
Monte Carlo “4 pots invitro” foreground
Rotala H’ra “4 pots invitro” background
Ludwigia super red “1 pot” background




As base layer fertilizing substrate, I’ve used ADA power sand with Tropicas nutrition capsules spreaded out. Plant substrate is Tropicas soil and a small cap of Tropicas soil powder over it.

I cycled my tank with the “dark start method” for 4 weeks. On the 4th week plants got in. It has been running today 12/12 for 1 week and I can already see good growth of the rotalas and ludwigia. The monte carlo look’s lush and green, can’t really tell any difference yet. Since day 1 (after the dark start) I added 1,4ml of fertilizer each day.

The tank has roughly 4 kg of black lava stones which I tried to replicate mountains with a small valley. The sand path is made out of ADA la plata sand. I glued the sand path in hope of easier maintenance. Unfortunately, it crackled when I poured water into the tank, so I just added some extra sand too compensate it. I Found out that it is pretty hard to maintain a clean sand path since the Amano shrimp and the current drag the soil onto the sand all the time. Btw added six Amano shrimps yesterday.

However, yesterday I bought a test kit from JBL to test my water parameter. As it stands right now it looks as following: KH; 4 ppm, NO3; 20 ppm, NO2; 0,015 ppm, NH4; <0,05 ppm

The Chihiros light has been running on 70% with a total of 8 hours light. The plan is to increase the light with 5% each week. If algae appear I will just stand back and take it from there. The goal is getting the rotalas red as possible. Probably my nitrate is a bit high and the fertilizing method not optimal, but I’ll keep this dosing routine for now and maybe later go to a lean fertilizing method if the rotalas won’t get as red that I’m hoping for. Today I made my first 30% water change and cleaned the hoses and lily pipes who started to get some brown growth. Since the nitrates still are around 20ppm after my water change, I’m going to half the dosage of fertilizer since the soil probably still leaks a lot of nutrients.


It is hard to summarize everything so if you have any thoughts just let me know. I’ll try to answer best as I can!
Overall, I feel excited and happy for finally begun. Thank you for taking your time reading this.



I’m going to upload a picture later today. Cheers!

 

[Wolf6]

I feel 8 hours is a lot to start with, I usually start with 6, but good luck!

 

[erwin123]

Setup
Aquarium ADA 45P

3. Filter media I basket with Matrix “approximately 1L”
....

Just to confirm ADA 45p is 36.5 litres?
According to Seachem, you only need 45ml of Matrix for 36.5 litres of water. However, E702 is plenty of flow for your tank, otherwise I would suggest reducing the matrix to improve flow. In UKAPS you learn that the amount of matrix/bio-filter material is not the limiting factor - the limiting factor is usually the oxygen supply (or lack of) for the aerobic bacteria.

Seachem - Matrix

www.seachem.com

The Chihiros light has been running on 70% with a total of 8 hours light. The plan is to increase the light with 5% each week.

The goal is getting the rotalas red as possible.

I'm also on the same journey.... good luck!

Btw added six Amano shrimps yesterday.

In a 36.5 litre tank? good luck! 🙂 (they're mostly fine, but I had the bad luck of my Amanos developing a taste for plants).

 

[Jim E]

I feel 8 hours is a lot to start with, I usually start with 6, but good luck!

The light is set to ramp up 30min up to 70% and same before it goes off i.e 30 min. If it's too much then I would like to try lowering the intensity before the total amounts of hours. Don't know yet if it's smart or not but since this is my first tank and I don't have any references, when have you normally experience results of "too many lighting hours"? 🙂

 

[Jim E]

Just to confirm ADA 45p is 36.5 litres?
According to Seachem, you only need 45ml of Matrix for 36.5 litres of water. However, E702 is plenty of flow for your tank, otherwise I would suggest reducing the matrix to improve flow. In UKAPS you learn that the amount of matrix/bio-filter material is not the limiting factor - the limiting factor is usually the oxygen supply (or lack of) for the aerobic bacteria.

Seachem - Matrix

www.seachem.com

I'm also on the same journey.... good luck!




In a 36.5 litre tank? good luck! 🙂 (they're mostly fine, but I had the bad luck of my Amanos developing a taste for plants).

Thats right somewhere there. I do have decent flow and don't think any more is necessary (in the tank) . If I interpret correctly right, you mean to much biomedia would limit oxygen levels in the filter and therefore not be able to provide enough oxygen to create bacteria colony?

Regarding the Amanos if there is too many and they start to eat the plants i will return some of them.
Good luck yourself! 🙂

 

[erwin123]

Thats right somewhere there. I do have decent flow and don't think any more is necessary (in the tank) . If I interpret correctly right, you mean to much biomedia would limit oxygen levels in the filter and therefore not be able to provide enough oxygen to create bacteria colony?

Regarding the Amanos if there is too many and they start to eat the plants i will return some of them.
Good luck yourself! 🙂

the bacteria is everywhere, not just matrix. it will be on your coarse prefilter sponge, your filter floss, and yes, on your purigen as well, in fact the purigen has pretty good surface area to grow a lot of bacteria.
all it needs is oxygen, which usually means strong water flow through the canister.
1 litre of matrix will reduce water flow.

 

[Jim E]

Okay I understand. But how can I know if I have enough flow trough the canister ?

 

[Jim E]

 

[Jim E]

Small update

Starting to see some surface film so I ordered a surface skimmer that I should receive next week. I also took the advice from @ Erwin123 and removed about 600ml of matrix to hopefully increase the flow/oxygen. The main reason I filled up with that much media were because of some green aqua videos I saw. Didn't know the ratio of matrix versus water I was supposed to have but now I do so, have decided to make a compromise and go with just a little extra.

Overall the tank looks good, can not see any visible algae yet and the plants are progressing without melting issues. I also increased the light to 75% yesterday.

 

[MichaelJ]

As base layer fertilizing substrate, I’ve used ADA power sand with Tropicas nutrition capsules spreaded out. Plant substrate is Tropicas soil and a small cap of Tropicas soil powder over it.

Starting to see some surface film so I ordered a surface skimmer that I should receive next week.

Hi @Jim E This might be the enriched substrate leaching or perhaps the capsules. A surface skimmer might be a good solution for mopping it up.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[erwin123]

Hi @Jim E This might be the enriched substrate leaching or perhaps the capsules. A surface skimmer might be a good solution for mopping it up.

Cheers,
Michael

If Tropica aquasoil is supposed to have all the nutrients a plant needs (not to mention that water column dosing using an all-in-one is supposed to provide all the nutrients a plant needs as well), it seems to be overkill to be adding root tabs to a new setup with fresh aquasoil, especially if it increases the risk of Ammonia leakage which is discussed in a recent thread - if it is Ammonia-related, then a skimmer won't help:

Tropica root tabs and surface film

 

[MichaelJ]

If Tropica aquasoil is supposed to have all the nutrients a plant needs (not to mention that water column dosing using an all-in-one is supposed to provide all the nutrients a plant needs as well), it seems to be overkill to be adding root tabs to a new setup with fresh aquasoil, especially if it increases the risk of Ammonia leakage which is discussed in a recent thread - if it is Ammonia-related, then a skimmer won't help:

Hi @erwin123 I agree. Its overkill to further enrich enriched substrate with root tabs (I don't think it will hurt though...just be a waste of money)... and while the skimmer will help skim off the surface film it obviously wont remove any ammonia leaching from the substrate.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[erwin123]

Hi @erwin123 I agree. Its overkill to further enrich enriched substrate with root tabs (I don't think it will hurt though...just be a waste of money)...
Cheers,
Michael

There is a risk that it might hurt as illustrated in the link to the ongoing forum thread...

 

[Jim E]

Since I did a dark start method for 4 weeks, I thought the soil would lech a lot of nutrition and for compensating that loss, I added the Tropica capsulses.
Tested my water and these are the results: NO3: 20ppm, NO2: <0,01ppm, NH4: <0,05ppm

 

[Jim E]

Installed the ISTA mini skimmer yesterday and it works real good. All the surface film was gone under a minute. Before when I didn't use the skimmer the drop checker was dark green in the morning now it's blue. Good or bad ? I start my co2 1,5h before the light goes on and it get lime green after 3-4hours. Would it be better if the drop checker is green when the light turns on? or won't the delay matter?

Happy holiday's to all of you!

 

[bazz]

Before when I didn't use the skimmer the drop checker was dark green in the morning now it's blue. Good or bad ? I start my co2 1,5h before the light goes on and it get lime green after 3-4hours. Would it be better if the drop checker is green when the light turns on? or won't the delay matter?

Hi,
A, the film was probably hindering the off gassing of co2 and
B, the act of the skimmer is probably now assisting in the off gassing of co2,
so you will most likely need to increase your co2 for both of the above reasons.
The minor problem with using a drop checker as the only source for measuring co2 is that they usually have a 1-2 hour time lag so theoretically it doesn't need to be lime green when the photoperiod starts.
A more accurate method is to do a PH profile.
Cheers!

 

[Hufsa]

Nice setup neighbor, how is this coming along? 😊

 

[Jim E]

Two weeks ago, I trimmed the Monte carlo for the first time. It has formed a lush "thick" green carpet. I have not experienced melting’s of any plants and no visible algae, except on the big rocks which I encounter 3 weeks ago. Overall, it seems stable. One issue that I have had is with the surface skimmer, seems like the floating part don't adapt to the water level very well and air gets trapped. The solution I found is reducing the output slightly.

There was some fiddling too trim the carpet because of the big stones on the left and right. They take up a lot of space so if I would done something different it would be getting smaller stones for facilitate maintenance. Also maintaining the sand path is frustrating since aqua soil always find its way there. That for sure is something I won't do again. For now, I'll leave it since I still enjoy the tank even though it's polluted with aqua soil on top of the sand.

For the plants, the ludwigia super red is slightly too big for my liking and grows invasively compared to the Rotala H'ra. Would been better if it was placed further back so I decided to remove it completely.



Also, I don’t like the height of the substrate level in the front glass. I wish that it would been lower but to get the big rock on the right side secure it was necessary.

Regarding fertilizer, I switched too all-in-one lean from Plantedbox so hopefully I'll get some red stems out of it. The growth is fast as you can see from the pictures, first was taken Jan 8, and last pic today, Jan 14.



I noted some white spots on the H’ra leaf’s, is there anyone that could point out what deficiency it might be?

 

[Jim E]

here's another pic of the white spots, close up

 

[Hufsa]

Thats very interesting, if you dont get any answers here your best bet is probably a thread in the plant help section, be sure to include the info from the guidelines. Im sure someone knows, but im stumped