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Looking for some advice on an algae issue that seems to be escalating pretty quickly. The algae I scraped off the glass was noticeably back within 24 hours, and I’m now seeing more of it on newer plant growth as well, not just older leaves. I recently installed lily pipes and an inline diffuser, so flow and CO2 distribution should theoretically be improved, but I’m wondering if I’m missing something balance-wise.

Tank is a UNS 60U with an exact water volume of 16.6 gallons.

Current lighting schedule:
• Sunrise starts at 7:30 AM and ramps for 45 minutes
• 100% intensity from 8:15 AM–4:15 PM
• Sunset from 4:15 PM–5:00 PM
• Total photoperiod: 9.5 hours
• 8 hours at full intensity

CO2:
• On at 5:30 AM
• Off at 4:00 PM
• Drop checker is nearly yellow
• Hanna CO2 test previously read around 25 ppm, though I’m not fully confident I tested at the ideal time


Thursday I did a 10 gallon water change, which should be about a 60% water change on this system.

Parameters before water change (5/21):
• pH: 7.0
• NH3/NH4: 0
• NO2: 0
• NO3: ~20 ppm
• TDS: 250

Parameters after water change / next day (5/22):
• pH: 6.8
• NH3/NH4: 0
• NO2: 0
• NO3: ~20 ppm
• TDS: 215
• GH: 7 drops
• KH: 3 drops

Before testing on 5/22, I added about 1 gallon of RO/DI water to replace evaporation, along with 1 pump of APT 3 and a small amount of shrimp mineral.

I’m trying to figure out whether this seems more likely related to:
• too much light
• unstable CO2
• excess organics
• nutrient imbalance
• tank adjustment period after changing flow/diffusion
• or something else entirely

Would especially appreciate input from anyone who has dealt with algae increasing rapidly. This is my first high tech setup and I never dealt with algae in my other planted tanks.

Hi all,

First of all thanks so much for the amazing threads and input from all the super knowledgeable and experienced scapers on here.

My question and apologies if this has been specifically discussed previously, but I'm wondering if an RO system would be a worthwhile investment for a high tech planted tank.

My town water which I currently use is not on the grid with the main city water supply that I used to access. Our town water is sourced from a creek, not a huge reservoir, and can vary from time to time, more than I would like. For example, the PH can be anywhere from 7-8, KH when measured some months ago was 4dKH, is now 6. GH 7dGH.
I know they are still within reasonable bounds though.

I could look at ways to just lower KH using HCL for an example but that doesn't fix the stability of the water supply for the other elements.

I'm also not able to obtain a water report.

I've just put in a plant order for my new scape (which I think I'll start a journal on soon) that includes plants like Syngonanthus macrocaulon which prefers lower KH.

Ro a good investment or am I over thinking it?

Lowdown on the Low Tech side:

Fancy goldfish - easy plants. No C02, no fertilization, no heater, natural sunlight.
Goldies have always been my first love, paving the way to both my pond and aquarium obsessions : ) Time to get back to my roots!

Delicate negotiations with spouse were successful, including where such a tank would be located in our small, shared house and how much money I can spend (he doesn’t care as long as he can buy some boat stuff, as well).

The chosen spot in the dining room, now officially labeled “The Fish Room”:
Before:



After:



That’s better! Room for a 6 footer, if you ask me …
I’ll leave a space behind the tank for a wide sill and fill the window with houseplants. Maybe some household pendant fixtures from the ceiling with low wattage grow bulbs over both the plants and the tank.
No background on the tank, seeing through to the greenery and the outdoors.

An AI virtual (close but I couldn’t get it to make the tank a little taller):



Highlights of the Hi Tech side:

A virtually no maintenance, self cleaning system consisting of drilled overflows to a 100g basement sump with an RDF* (rotary drum filter), a 50g barrel k1 moving bed biofilter, oversized UV, constant drip water change and robotic algae cleaners**.

* https://ninjasieve.com/products/rotary-drum-filter-10000-l-h
** MOAI | Advanced Aquarium Cleaning Robot

The plan thus far:
I need to have the tank custom built. 72”L x 18”W x 24”T = 130g.
I live on Vancouver Island (4hr. + over $200 ferry travel to get off and on again), so my choices are limited without adding a lot of extra expense. There is a tank fabrication company on the island and we are in talks right now. I’ve never had a sump, so I am thoroughly researching overflow configurations and how they will work with the RDF.

The NinjaSieve RDF is already purchased. Rotary drum filters have been state-of-the-art in koi ponds for the last decade, but only recently have been available in smaller, less expensive sizes. I have only been able to find 3 instances on the entire internet (!) where one is in operation in an aquarium sump. They filter to 74 microns, and self clean using jetted water when the drum starts to clog, flushing the waste out of the system.
Clean water then goes to the moving bed barrel, which will have a valved drain on the bottom, in case any debris settles over time, then to a second 50g barrel housing the return pump and UV lamp. Total water in system = 230g (unless I decide to add a third barrel!)

There are a lot of steps to this project, which I will be accomplishing all by myself, and could very well take me all winter. Now that I’ve cleared the space and settled on a tank size, I need to buy metal jack stands and wood to shore up the floor in the crawlspace. Then I will work on collecting the pieces need for the filtration set up, while I’m waiting for the tank to be built and delivered.

Thanks for following along, comments and suggestions are always welcome. I will get to the plant and aquascaping portion of the build, eventually … I promise!

So I've had this UNS 30C going for just over a month now and I understand why they say bigger tanks are easier. This has been a bit of a struggle. It was just my 2nd aquarium and was intended to be something simple and easy to care for. Thought I'd finally create a journal for it and chronical it's journey from the little nano that tried to hopefully, a shrimp paradise.


Tank: UNS 30C with a DIY stand.
Light: ONF Flat Nano
Original Filter: Oase Filtosmart 100 Thermo
Current Filter: Oase Biocompact 25
CO2: Fzone regulator on a Paintball CO2 tank. In-tank diffuser.
Substrate: UNS Controsoil (Fine) and ADA La Plata sand
Hardscape: Lava rock and unknown driftwood (probably spiderwood)
Testing out a cheap stainless steel skimmer I purchased off AliExpress

Plants
Multiple types of Anubias and Bucephalandra
Mini Bolbitis
AR mini (just added)
Staurogyne Repens (just added)
Pogostemon Helferi "Downoi" (just added)

Fauna
Sunkist Orange Shrimp
Planned on Chili Rasbora but that didn't go so well, so this will be a dedicated shrimp tank.



The first mistake I made with this was to plant immediately, rather than do a dark start as I did with my first scape. As you can still see in the current photo, I had a lot of Buce melt as a result of the high initial ammonia. I was hoping I would see more of a rebound by now but it's been a struggle. I also had different stem plants in the background and they struggled as well, even though they were already submersed grown plants. The current background plants were just placed in the last week and I've loaded the substrate up with more root tabs. They should be more durable but I may want to add something that gets a little taller. I also plan to fill in the melted Buce and some other bare areas with some additional Buce and Anubias. I'm dealing with some algae on the wood and the Anubias Nana Pinto, but nothing too serious.

I hoped that this would be home to Sunkist Orange shrimp and Chili Rasboras. Even though it's only 7 gallons, from previous experience with the Rasboras, I thought of school of 8 to 10 would be fine. I started with 8, but within 2 days, 5 decided to leave the tank (even with a lid covering 3/4 of the top). General water parameters were good, but I admit, CO2 may have been a little high. I moved the remaining Chilis to my larger tank were they are now happy and content. Hopefully the shrimp will begin breeding soon and I'll have plenty of tiny creatures to watch.



I generally don't like seeing equipment in the tank, so I started with a canister filter. Even adjusting valves to reduce flow, it was still too much and may even have been a contributing factor in the Chilis jumping out. Just this past weekend when replanting the background, I switched over to this tiny Oase Biocompact filter. It's only got a little course sponge wrapping a carbon sponge so the jury is still out on if it will provide enough filtration, but I imagine it will be fine with only plants and shrimp. I also added the in-tank heater (house can be a little cool in the winter) and switched from the inline CO2 diffuser to an in-tank diffuser. The skimmer is an experiment. I bought it on AliExpress to see how well it worked. My impression so far: Positive = I like the look and size, it seems to do a good job skimming, at least on this small tank. Negative = High pitched whine while running. I wouldn't run it all the time due to the sound, but if controlled to only run occasionally, it may work out well as long as it holds up.

I'll post updates as I add more plants and things mature.

Happy Friday, friends!
This is my first ever tank. It’s just an imagitarium 13.3 shallow tank. It has a fluval hob filter and currently a chihiros vivid2. I also have a skimmer on it. Originally it just had a betta in it and lots of low effor plants. It’s been one of my favorite tanks and it has changed soooo much since I first got it in January. I’m working on transitioning it to a more high tech setup and having an issue with c02 circulation. I read that putting it under the filter can help, I also positioned my skimmer so that the outflow could push around the bubbles but none of that is happening. I was hoping to avoid switching the filter on it if possible.

Video here!

If you've been in the aquarium hobby for a while, I'm sure you've created or picked up so valuable hacks that fall into the tips, tricks and time-savers categories. So, in an effort to compile and share them, let's post them here.

This site is about sharing knowledge and experiences so don't be shy, no hack is too small or silly.

Please post yours.

For 95% of people in this hobby, running an aquarium appears to be guess work, casual observations and not a lot of data driven applications.
That's where scapecrunch is amazing and so many like minded people here.

I love the tech side of it too which I'm only just starting to get into to help me progress the hobby further.
I was thinking about this as I was in our big box hardware store today just to pick up a minor plumbing item and ended up walking out the door with 90% of the material required for a Yugang reactor lol. Don't ask me how that happened! That will be another thread in the future I'm sure.

For now, my point is that when I get around to implementing the reactor, I don't want to rely only on CO2 kits to let me know what is happening.
I've seen some of you showing the PH charts which I think would be super helpful. Atleast to me as that is how my brain works best.

Which brings me to the equipment discussion. I was thinking about a PH probe (but not really as much to control CO2, just as a fail safe for that). More to log the PH data. Most stand alone PH controllers like Milwaukee do not log the data far as I can see.

Also, will be looking at fert dosing. For this I was considering something like the chihiros system.

I have a decent regulator to start with. Well I think it is lol. Also a flow meter (which i still haven't tested yet) so that side should be ok.

I also don't want to spend a fortune on an aquarium computer if I don't really need it. Most are starting at around $1,500 AUD here.

Do I just find a stand alone PH probe that will do what I want and the doser and call it a day?

What monitoring/automation systems do you use?

Hello fellow planters - im reaching out here because I can't seem to get a response from colin. For context- 75 gallon Aqueon with an fx2 filter and the 24 inch NA advanced co2 reactor. Would it make more sense to run this horizontally? I can't really seem to get a good grasp on how to be successful with setting this up vertically. Those with experience with this reactor, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Some of the other terrestrial projects I’m working on. Slowly building towards the halo project, an ebb and flow Florida wetland biotope utilizing a bell siphon for tidal management. These are almost all in my office. The bog biotopes are experiments for emersed growing species that are sensitive to shipping in fully submersed form (Sclerolepis unifloria, for example).

Just spent a little while browsing through this thread list. Was hoping to figure out a solution for fertilizing all of my tanks without spending so much money. I currently have 8 tanks at varying levels of complexity and am also brainstorming a bowl and at least 4 other tanks. So- lots of fertilizer. But man!! I feel like apt3 will not last me long. Especially if I’m front dosing (I think that’s what Rocco called it) like was recommended in my journal post.
After reading through some of these posts I wonder if I have the comprehension skills to be able to do some of these things I see resources for! I’m so glad to have found this site. Def wish the app worked for me though.