Journal 150g VIV Planted Discus Build Thread

[BryceM]

Perhaps, the end of the remodel project is in sight. Finally, something worthwhile to report.

Painting is virtually largely done. I even started a very slight bit of aquarium plumbing. The prep work to the drain and water supplies is basically done. I'll install the RO unit later this week. It should be just a simple matter of plugging in a few 1/4" hoses and installing the float valve in the reservoir. In the photos, you can see the door header ready to be installed tomorrow. The tile is laid out for pattern purposes. It will all be set in place tomorrow. Then grout, then replace the baseboard, fix the edge of the carpet, a bit of touchup paint, installation of the doorknob...... and then I can actually move the stand into place. Once I verify that it looks good centered in the room, the rest of the plumbing and hardware installation can go pretty quickly.

Who knows, maybe within a few weeks I'll actually put water in the thing.

 

[Art]

That is looking fantastic! I'm jealous of that RO water container. This will really give you control over your water.

 

[BryceM]

OK, the blessed day has arrived. The remodel is done!!!!!! Well, except for repairing the carpet edge, but that's pretty simple and they're coming to do that tomorrow.

I finally have the aquarium in the room.

Inside the fish room, things are coming along. I have the major components situated, the RO hooked up, and stuff roughed out for the rest of the plumbing work. I'm still waiting on a couple of plumbing parts, but they'll be here tomorrow.

Next up:
- a bit of touch-up paint
- put black backing on the aquarium
- get the inlet/outlet plumbing through the wall and into the aquarium.
- finish hooking up the in-line heaters and CO2 reactor.
- hang the lights.
- situate the cabinet in its final position. Shim along the tile if needed.
- substrate
- water!!!
- connect and configure the Neptune Apex controller
- test the plumbing, flow rates, leaks, etc.
- hardscape
- PLANTS!!!!
- a few fish
- then, in a few months, when everything is stable........ DISCUS!!!

 

[GreggZ]

This is some serious dedication to the hobby! Keep the updates coming I can't wait to see what comes next.

 

[BryceM]

Dedication? Well, maybe more like a mix of lunacy, compulsive over-engineering, and some inexplicable motivation to have a project to work on.

That said, I hope I've hauled my last bit of aquarium water in buckets today. Some of it can be done by Python, but moving my 46g quarantine tank back onto the tile required a bunch of treks across the house with a 5 gallon bucket. From now on, I can empty that tank with a Python, and refill it with a hose from my new setup.

Hopefully all of this prep work and setup will translate into something that's pretty easy to maintain. We'll see.

With the help of my cousin, I also figured out a slick way to suspend the lights directly from the ceiling. Visually, that should be pretty nice too.

 

[BryceM]

Today's progress:

I made a light "header" for the ceiling and installed it with the help of my wife and son.

Cleaned off the back glass for an adhesive black backing:

Moved it to its "forever" home and fired up the lights.

I'll move the lights up a bit, eventually, and trim off the excess wire. Can't imagine these things without the shades. A bit more plumbing to do. All the parts are here now. I have some other commitments for a few days, so this will probably be all the significant progress for a while. More news when there is some.

 

[Art]

Looking amazing, @BryceM! Thanks for posting and letting us live the project vicariously!

How are you connecting the filter to the aquarium? Looking forward to seeing how everything goes through that hole in the wall.

 

[Count Krunk]

looks great so far.

 

[BryceM]

There's water in the fish tank!

Well, a little. I got the plumbing mostly finished (still a couple leaks to address) and started setting up and configuring the Neptune Apex controller. The newer user interface seems pretty nice. The older PC based, non-Wifi, unit would have required some tinkering. As it is now, it's mostly user-friendly. I can already tell I'm going to like it.

I still need to tidy-up all the wiring, but from the room-side, I think this tank is going to be visually cool, assuming my aquascaping and plant-nurturing skills are up to par. I've been enormously busy lately and spending lots of time away from home, so progress has been slower than I'd like. I have a good idea now of what general layout I'm shooting for. We'll see how it goes. While I admire the many 'scapes that are set up and redone every few months, I intend for this to be more of a long-term setup. As much as I enjoy plants, I'm still a fish-guy at heart and I don't want to thrash around in a discus tank more than necessary.

The COR-20 pump looks like it will be more than adequate and water changes should be a breeze! Here's a few photos of the progress:

 

[Count Krunk]

Looks great! My only concern is flow. But I’m used to reef tanks so maybe you’ll have enough?

 

[BryceM]

The little spray bar fountain was at 40% pump capacity. Full-blast it MOVES water. It’ll slow down as the filter gunks up, but should be OK.

 

[BryceM]

So, a hiccup......

In the plumbing there were a few small leaks. Mostly fixed now. The bulkhead to the 105 gallon reservoir is a 2" threaded connector and those seem to leak a little bit no matter what. It's evaporating as quickly as it leaks, and I suspect it will "heal" up eventually.

Bigger problems.....!!!

I connected the in-line 300W Hydor heaters and set them up to run on the Apex controller. The lights on the units came on as expected, but the aquarium never warmed up. Also, the controller reported the units were only drawing 2 watts of power..... both of them. That's odd.

So, I wasn't sure if it was an Apex powerbar issue, a heater issue, or what. Having two new units that were broken before starting didn't sound very likely.

After a bit of thinking and tinkering, I was pretty frustrated. I looked around the Internet, and the engineer in me just decided to take them apart. Well, it was pretty obvious what the problem was......

The power supply ribbon to the wrapped heating elements was broken.

So, why not crack open the other one?

Wow! This thing melted all the foam around it and was totally fried.

Now, I'm well aware running these without water in them can cause issues with overheating. I can 100% guarantee that never happened. Running them horizontally can cause issues. That didn't happen either.

So what happened? I don't really know. I'm left to conclude they were shipped to me in this condition. I suppose it's possible the Neptune controller somehow fried them with overvoltage, but I think that's unlikely. The Apex power-bar obviously includes a step-down transformer/rectifier to run the 20V DC outputs, but I can't see any way the Neptune powerbar could pass through a higher voltage than it was given. I purchased the heaters from an Internet site that rhymes with Shmmmmmamazon. Maybe they're bootleg junk? Bad referbs? Perhaps I got a couple from a lot with a manufacturing QC problem.

I've run two of these 300W units on my 180g setup for more than a decade. They're still going strong..... so now what?

I'm really trying to keep heaters out of the tank. I suppose I could hide one behind the hardscape, but there's still the wire to deal with.

As far as in-line heaters go, I don't see any other options. So, I guess I'll order a couple more and try again. They do have a 30-day guarantee so I guess we'll see what happens.... I suppose.

You can guarantee I'll be watching them pretty closely.

 

[BryceM]

Arright. I looked inside the tubes that the heating element is wrapped around and I can see than multiple resistor cells have also split apart and failed. I'm virtually certain these units weren't actually new, or that they came with MAJOR manufacturing defects. No way I'm going to risk my livestock to this.

Guess I'm shopping for in-tank heaters.

At least I have a controller to babysit the things and make sure they don't misbehave.

 

[BryceM]

It'll be a few days to get the new heaters. So, in the meantime, I put some driftwood in to soak.

Look, hardscape!!!

 

[Count Krunk]

How long do you think it will take to sink?

 

[BryceM]

It usually takes a week or so to sink, or at least be close enough a few rocks holds it down.

Today I went to a friend's property and picked up some rock. I've taken a few geology classes back in the day, but I'm far from being a "rock guy". Most of the stuff I selected is clearly igneous, and should be inert. According to the geology maps, the surface rock is that area is (geologically) recent lava formations, rhyolite, basalt, and such. If I can find some acid, I'll test the stuff I'm not certain about. If not, I'll chance it and see how it goes. If it can go in the aquarium, it can also come out.

After a pressure wash:

After lugging it down the stairs. Doesn't look like much, but that's at least 200-300 pounds of rock.

 

[Count Krunk]

Awesome! I have wood and rocks from my property to go on my tank.

Worst case, pull em out right? Nbd in the long run.

 

[BryceM]

I'm starting to get a plant list together.....

Crypt balansae
Crinum Calamistratum
Lagenandra meeboldii red
Crypt wendti - different varities
Echinodorus species (discus tank and all)
Crypt retrospiralis
Anubius congensis or lanceolata
Anubius coffefolia
Hygrophila sp
Bolbitus sp
Cyperus helferi
Blyxa aubertii (if it will take the heat)
Maybe a few bucephelandras for interest.
Musing about foreground plants - probably it would be best to just leave some exposed substrate as I would like to keep a school of cories.

For fish:
8-10 discus. Wild-caught, maybe, or a tank-raised variety that is a color-morph that exists in nature.
20-30 rummynose (hands-down, the best tetra of all time)
6 or so corries, loxozonus maybe
a few discrosum filamentosus
congo tetras, perhaps
glass catfish, maybe. an old favorite, and immensely peaceful.
SAE's maybe, but this will 100% necessitate a top of some sort
Kuhli loaches, maybe, if I can find some.

Probably I'll add an airstone so I can aerate at night. It helps break up the surface scuzz that always seems to form eventually.

At this point:
- let the driftwood soak for a week
- install the heaters and air stone
- position the hardscape
- initial planting
- start at 76 degrees and ramp up to 80 or so. Hopefully this will avoid melting the huge number of crypts I'll transfer over from my 180g.
- dial-in the lights and ferts. I'm planning on a medium-tech type approach. Enough light that growth is healthy, but not so much that I'm always chasing algae.
- Add a few fish
- Make sure everything is stable and healthy
- Increase the temp up to 84 or 85
- Source the discus and get them on the way

See any holes in this plan? Let me know! These higher temps are new territory for me.

Here's the final plumbing and electrical layout. You can see the pH probe, canister filter circuit, bypass circuit, pump controller, big CO2 reactor (with clear PVC), and Apex units.

I put a few rocks on the driftwood to hold it down so it can get waterlogged.

 

[GreggZ]

I love where this is going. A big tank with Discus and plants.

This is going to get good!

 

[BryceM]

Two 300W heaters installed, finally. They're warming perfectly, as expected.

Air stone installed, to run at night. Really helps break up the surface protein scum.

I poked the CO2 tubing into the reactor. I was a little apprehensive about that, not having a perfect way to connect it, but a solution presented itself while perusing my local hardware store. Drill a hole, stuff a rubber gasket in it, and poke the tubing through that. Works perfectly. I don't have the regulator/solenoid connected yet..... no reason until the plants go in.

This is my first go at the hardscape. I don't know if it comes through well in the photo, but the rocks look absolutely tremendous in person. Pretty darn awesome for finding them lying around in the desert. The Manzanita wood is stuff I had lying around. I bought a bunch about 15 years ago..... so, why not put it to good use? The branches are bit skinny, in my view, but I think it will add some visual interest. As for arranging it perfectly.... not really my thing. I prefer a jungle, natural sort of look so we'll see what happens.

I'll need to get real serious now about sourcing some plants. Most slow-growers are harder to find and more expensive than stemmies, and it's going to take a ton of them. Oh well. That's the whole idea. We'll be out of town for a while in the next bit, so I'll probably order them to arrive when I get back. For now, I'll dump in the sponge-junk out of one of my other canister filters to jump start the bacteria. Also, once I get the pH/KH/CO2 figured out (really easy with a controller!), I'll get some fish coming. Probably the rummies will go in first. Not sure if I want to add a school of cardinals too. I have 20 hanging out in the 46g bowfront.