Journal 75 Gallons of Bliss!

Well, hopefully it works out that way.. I am not convinced there wont be some “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat” along the way. A common saying during WW2 in Europe was that the road home went through Berlin…


The stand is built and moved in to the bedroom. I have completed Spring cleaning the bedroom and rearranging furniture in the room.


I moved my 2 tier fish tank stand across the room. This frees up space by my recliner. Puts the CO2 tank between them so I dont need to route the hose in front of the door, and gives me much nicer access to my closet.
I like the extra room by the recliner. I feel much less cramped and it gives me better viewing of the 29 gallon across the room rather than next to me.

Thats my Grandfathers Grandfather clock. He built it in 1976. He passed 12 years ago at 96. I remember him building it. My parents gifted it to me as the chiming kept my mother awake. To me the chiming is soothing and drifts me off to sleep at night..



Power strips mounted on the cabinet side out of view. The strip closest to the front will power the Inkbird, canister filter and any other in tank electrical devices added. 1 switch to flip shuts off power to all in tank conductors before sticking my hands or tools in. And the lights will stay on…

All the wires will be coiled and have tie wraps to prevent wire spaghetti on the floor. And if I spill water on the floor I wont have to worry about it getting into the power strips..


I mounted a magnet strip on both doors. Now I just need to find the rest of my Aquascaping tools and maybe I can avoid misplacing them again…



Also nice storage for magnet scrapers too…


I bought some storage bins…

And filled them, organizing fish meds in one, equipment in another, testing supplies by themself, cleaning supplies in another. I just need to make some labels for the bins..

I have never been this organized in my life…

I am hoping Petco has a half off sale on tanks for March..

I plan to update this journal as I progress with the build…

 

[Pepere]

Penn Plax under gravel filter plates. $25.00. At same time there was a Lees premium for a 75 gallon footprint, but it was around a hundred dollars more… why?

I generally dont have much use for ceramic media, butit does make a decent spacer.

I ground some holes into the front of the filter plates to let water flow under, set up the ceramic rings in a pattern of sorts.



And laid down some canvas mesh.




And I brought in a step ladder…

 

[Kwyet]

I use one of these without the risers when doing maintenance on my 68 gallon.

 

[Pepere]

I use one of these without the risers when doing maintenance on my 68 gallon.

Thanks fir the recommendation. It would be just the right height.

 

[Pepere]

If you are setting up UGF for this tank, I hope you include some details on it. I think in another thread you mentioned using STS with UGF?

Well, I am at that point…. UGF plates are installed and extensions made.





4 easy flow kits installed to the PennPlax riser stubs with diy adapters. Will install airline tubing tomorrow.



18 mesh bags filled up. I had a tank that I initially filled mostly with Safe T Sorb and capped with an inch of BDBS for aesthetics. It looked great at first, ut every time I uprooted a plant the darn STS would come up with it and I didnt like that aesthetic. I shoveled it all into a bucket and redid that tank with mesh bags of Safe T Sorb. I ended up using dried mix of Safe T Sorb and BDBS. I also added some ADA Amazonia, and sime of the nutrient tabs that came with it and some Activated Carbon. Basically each bag got a cup of used substrate mix, 3/4 cup of ADA aquasoil, and half a cup of Activated carbon.

Badicaly I had a canister of the stuff I wasnt using so I figured it would make a good home for beneficial bacteria given its surface area..,I am not using it for chemical filtration and wont be changing it…. Just using it up…. I read about the amazonians supplementing poor soil in the amazon with charcoal and broken potteryand organic matter and how over a thousand years later that soil is still more productive than areas that were not so supplemented, so, I figured why not…

Tomorrow I will add 2 inches or so of BDBS over the mesh bags.

 

[Pepere]

Custom sized lids of twinwall polycarbonate.

Need to get some handles.

 

[Pepere]

I built two small shelves. 1 for each back corner of the canopy.





Each shelf will hold an adjustable dual outlet airpump. The UGF plates have 4 air risers that I am running Aquarium Co Op Easy Flow kits adapted to the UGF. 1 airline per outlet.

Once up and running I plan to see how quickly one can fill a quart container to see what sort of flow I can get from the UGF.

No need for check valves, and short runs of airlines…

4 watts will keep my biofiltration going in a power outage. 50 watt hours per day…

 

[Phish Tank]

I ground some holes into the front of the filter plates to let water flow under, set up the ceramic rings in a pattern of sorts.

And laid down some canvas mesh.

Thanks for all these details!

So the ceramic spacers and mesh are to extend the Ugf to cover the front of the tank? Interesting. I'm using UGF , but only on the middle half of my 55. The two sides are inert gravel, my thinking is that i keep my sword plants on the sides, so I can add root tabs there if needed.

Interesting mesh bags of safetsorb and other bits, how fine is the mesh? And.... did you precharge it with nutrients or carbonate hardness, or are you going to let the UGF trickle do that over time?

 

[Pepere]

Interesting mesh bags of safetsorb and other bits, how fine is the mesh? And.... did you precharge it with nutrients or carbonate hardness, or are you going to let the UGF trickle do that over time?

The mesh is 1 mm holes. big enough that roots readily enter in to them, but small enough to hold most of the Safe T Sorb and ADA Amazonia inside the bag.

I tore down a tank that previously was mostly Safe T Sorb with a 1 inch cap of BDBS . Every time I uprooted a stem, Safe T Sorb would come up with it. I got fed up with it so cleaned out the tank and went the mesh bag route.

I am reusing that Safe T Sorb, BDBS mix. Each bag got a heaping cup of used substrate mix, 1/2 cup of aquasoil, and 1/4 cup activated Charcoal and mixed. This gave about 1 in h thick.

As it is used I suspect it is still filled up with carbonates and nutrients.

I plan on dark starting the tank for a month or so before planting. I will keep an eye on kh, and phosphate levels as well as Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate…

 

[Pepere]

Well, I finished plumbing in the Canister filter and horizontal reactor.







And I filled the tank up with water. 2 hours now, no leaks…. I was so excited to get this tank up and running I never stopped to fill it for a leak test before working at setting it up.

@Unexpected asked me the other night if I had leak tested it…. And of course I have been worrying about that since he asked me. Before he asked I was blissfully not even considering it…

Besides no leaking, I have checked tank and stand level state before and after filling…. No change. So, holding up to the strain without deformation to stand or causing floor to sag…




For the time being I just have a cheap 4 foot led shop light in there giving me enough light to see and work…

I just gave the substrate a stir to release air bubbles and scrub bubbles offf the glass so water is quite cloudy.

For now I am just running the Under Gravel Filter air pumps. Tomorrow or Sunday, I will clean out a canister filter into this tank and run just the UGF to give the substrate a good seeding of bacteria. I will stir up the substrate every few hours to help distribute it.

After that, I will clean out another canister filter into this the tank and then run the Oase Biomaster 350 to seed that filter.

Anyone hazard a guess as to how many gallons per hour flow through my air driven UGF?

 

[Koan]

Absolutely gorgeous!

4 watts will keep my biofiltration going in a power outage. 50 watt hours per day…

Is this the primary driver for using UGF in this way, to make the tank as resilient as possible to power outages?

Custom sized lids of twinwall polycarbonate.

From the picture it looks as though these will block quite a bit of your PAR?

 

[Pepere]

s this the primary driver for using UGF in this way, to make the tank as resilient as possible to power outages?

Well, that and making it resilient to my shutting off the canister filter and forgetting to turn it back on too…

And it also brings a continual flow of water column ferts over my base of High Cation Exchange Capacity substrate.

Custom sized lids of twinwall polycarbonate.

From the picture it looks as though these will block quite a bit of your PAR?

Insofar as it is a double glazing, yes, reflectivity losses may be a little higher. But the polycarbonate in itself allows more light transference than glass.

From the photos we are seeing it at an angle so the vertical plastic separators are more visually prominent than they are if you are looking through it at right angle to the surface.

Also, since the polycarbonite itself has more resistance to heat loss and it is twin wall doubling insulation and kept in a canopy, conceivably there will be less condensation on the lid which in itself reduces PAR transmission…

When I drain the tank after cycling i will play around with the Photone app both through the twin wall and a sheet of glass and report back.

 

[Phish Tank]

Anyone hazard a guess as to how many gallons per hour flow through my air driven UGF?

No guess here, but i am really curious what your flow rate is.

 

[Pepere]

No guess here, but i am really curious what your flow rate is.

Well, since no one else took the challenge to guess the flow rate, or inquire…

I have two Uniclife adjustable output dual output ports air pumps. Each air pump puts out 64 gallons per hour of air at 0.016 mpa and consumes 4 watts in the process. Each Easy Flow tube has a dedicated air port on a pump with no check valve as air pumps are on shelves in the canopy and each total airline length is under 3 feet with no air valves to cause a flow restriction. I have a single straight airline coupler in line right above the twinwall lids. This allows me to service the air collars every other week or so by using a 20cc syringe to forcefully suck and blast water through the air collars to flush them to maintain flow.

At full power I am passing a bit over 200 gallons per hour through the UGF plates and consuming 8 watts

If I turn the air pumps as low as they go I am drawing about 2 watts as verified with a kill a watt meter and my flow is a little under 100 gallons per hour while consuming 4 watts.

I was quite honestly surprised and impressed with the flow these produce all by themselves…

 

[Kwyet]

That’s awesome!

 

[Phish Tank]

200 per hour!!! That is amazing. I would have guessed much lower

 

[Pepere]

That is amazing. I would have guessed much lower

I raised the outlets of the tubes above water and placed aquart yogurt container under each outlet timing how long it took to fill using the stopwatch function on my phone. I repeated for each outlet. There was variance of up to 5 seconds between lift tubes. I averaged the time and came out to filling a quart in 17.6 seconds.

There are 3600 seconds in an hr. That worked out to 204 quarts per hour per lift tubes above on average. 4 tubes equals a gallon every 17.6 seconds more or less…

Lowering the tube so that roughly 2/3 of the opening is immersed and 1/3 above water allows easier exit for the air bubbles and reduces the head loss from gravity pulling down on the water and will increase your flow, but you cant test the flow that way by measuring the time to fill a quart…

I knew the Easy Flow tubes were good, but I didnt know they were that good…

 

[Pepere]

I primed the Oase Biomaster 350. No leaks from it, the plumbing or the Horizontal reactor.

 

[PeerUnk]

Maybe I overlooked something, but you are using an air driven UGF and CO2 injection (via the horizontal reactor)?
If so, I’m very curious how effective/efficient the CO2 injection is. In my experience aeration is very good in driving elevated CO2 out of the water… or the UGF will be used only at night?

 

[Pepere]

Maybe I overlooked something, but you are using an air driven UGF and CO2 injection (via the horizontal reactor)?
If so, I’m very curious how effective/efficient the CO2 injection is. In my experience aeration is very good in driving elevated CO2 out of the water… or the UGF will be used only at night?

I am not terribly concerned, I run this way on my 29 gallon tanks albeit with an inline diffuser rather than a horizontal reactor. If co2 levels are less than I want I can shut down the canister, pull out the reactor, cut it open, slip in 2 couplers and a longer section of pipe to in rease absorber surface area.

As it is, my surface agitation doesnt look too extreme to me.



The tops of the curved Easy flow lifters are about 1/3 out if the water which allows the air bubbles an easier exit from the tube.

 

[Pepere]

Playing with lights and settings while waiting for tank to cycle…




Filter squeezings coating the BDBS …