Journal Currently 75 gallon walstad-like tank, soon to be UNS 120 after moving

[Pneumonicsonic]

So I’m taking my intro post and making it into the beginning of my journal, some update posts and questions to follow.

So I have had this tank now for >5 years, all while doing interventional radiology residency and us having our fourth child.

Needless to say my tank went fully feral and became its own untouched ecosystem beyond throwing some food in and topping off the water for a couple years…

I have had a few generations of white cloud mountain minnows, neocardinia, a sole remaining grandfather nerite, and several true and I believe ‘fake’ (probably cardinia?) amanos as the remaining fauna. I had a large number of crypts, buce, swords with some foreground plants and moss as you could see from the images above but the entire tank was overtaken by a single piece of hitchhiking guppy grass over the last few years.

A couple times I cut back a 5 gallon bucket worth of the stuff, and I just did that again this week when I decided to get back in the hobby actively since my kids all said they missed seeing more than the “floating green monster” and some shrimp and not all the tiny fish :/ (this likely was a great help for breeding those fish and shrimp as well), but it was unmanageable.

I don’t know if I took a picture of the tank at its worst, but I will post pictures again soon!

I removed most of the guppy grass and have some remaining crypts and the buce actually generally did well. There’s one sword hanging on but beyond that I’m in dire need of biomass so I ordered some swords, vals, bulb plants, and some other plants and bought a Fluval planted 3.0(one thing that ‘helped’ was my hyggro light died and it’s only had my trusty old 24 inch finnex planted plus for the last -12 months) and have it set to a very low brightness cycle now to help with algae.

This tank will morph as I’ll be moving in a couple months, and when I do we’re moving 13 hours away, so I’ll likely take the hardscape, filter media, soil, plants, and fauna in buckets with air stones and not move with the tank/stand and take the chance to buy a UNS 120P w/ stand and re-use the soil with likely a new/refreshed cap I think? The footprint is slightly larger so I’ll need more substrate either way.

I read a few posts on here about moves and I think that might be my best option and it seems like some including dr walstad have recommended keeping an established soil substrate when moving.

Choosing to rescape and replant right before a tear down might sound dumb, but the idea of moving that tank how it looked before was not something that filled me with joy. For a hobby I’ve loved and let fall by the wayside I decided to try to reclaim and revive this tank that’s still full of a thriving ecosystem and a eheim classic that is pumping along without a single cleaning in 5 years :S.

Hopefully I won’t be judged too harshly for my choices. Working 80-100 hour work weeks through residency and with a young family left little time for this hobby we all enjoy, but as I move into the next season of life I hope that things will improve in many ways, including for this trusty tank and whatever it will end up becoming.

This image is from March 2021

 

[Pneumonicsonic]

Quick updates:

the balance is clearly off with me removing all the guppy grass, and switching lights to fluval planted 3(running lowwwww brightness). The algae has started in earnest, and it’s out of equilibrium for sure. I’ve bought the new plants to try and fix that. But also as I mentioned above, in a few weeks I’ll be tearing down the tank for a move from VT to OH (13 hrs) and in the interim trying to keep everything alive.

The fish and shrimp all seem happy and healthy. There’s been some diatomes which is understandable as pulling guppy grass brought up a lot of soil and mulm. I added a couple extra berries, two are horned I believe, and immediately disappeared into the substrate I think? I’ve never owned a horned nerite, are they going to dig like MTS did for me back in the day? Probably won’t help with my dirt coming up for now.

No new pics yet. I’ll do a couple before the move.
I may make a separate thread regarding moving recommendations.

 

[Pneumonicsonic]

By the way, current plan is with the move to leave the 75g tank and stand behind but take everything else for a new UNS120P or U with matching stand that will be shipped to the new house. May keep the eheim canister but get a second filter, keep the Fluval planted but hang it above, and then eventually considering an open flow or horizontal co2 as well to land in a middle energy zone.

 

[Kwyet]

Our move last year was a 4 day road trip with 2 dogs and around 100 fish. The moving company crated the aquariums. The trip was a royal pain, and if I move far again I’ll probably sell/trade all the fish first. I didn’t lose many, but the 3 I did lose were favorites, and I still feel bad about them.

Anyway, 12 hours doesn’t sound too bad. If you’re taking the fish, put them in breather bags and pack them so they have air around them. We used shredded newspaper to separate them in a couple of large coolers, but kept the lid cracked for air. I put the sponges from the filters in ziplock bags with just enough water to keep them damp. We traveled with the coolers inside the vehicles for temperature control, and brought them into the hotels at night.

Once we arrived at the house, the fish went into large tubs of tap water, with sponge filters and the plants that I kept (almost all of the plants from the high-tech died, but low-tech ones did well). The next morning I started setting tanks up, starting with just 3. All of those cycled within the week, using the previous filter sponges, and then I moved the fish into those tanks while I worked on gradually setting the rest up.

Edit: also a snake, lol!

 

[Count Krunk]

75g is a great foot print. I'd hold onto it. But I'm an addict haha.

You can easily take all the animals if you want.

13 hours is nothing. Imagine the plane rides some of these things take. Or plants that go hot warehouse to hot truck to hot hub to hot truck to hot doorstep and make it just fine.

Pack up the plants like you would expect to receive them if you bought them online.

For fish, i like using 5 g buckets. Once you arrive to the new place get some air stones in the buckets and the fish will chill just fine until you can get them in the tank.

I've moved reef tanks with 5g buckets and those animals are much more sensitive than plants.

and oh, more pics!

 

[Koan]

leave the 75g tank and stand behind but take everything else

Once you're settled down, consider treating yourself to a little higher end light I've worked with that Fluval 3.0 series quite a bit, still use them on some quarantine and farm tanks .

The series has some really serious limitations. For one thing the color skews very yellow which is a bummer, doesn't show off your plants well. And its very lowest setting is still really too bright to have in a TV room, it just doesn't turn down very far.

But most of all not having true 4-channel LEDs and adjustment really limits your ability to tweak presentation. Lots of medium-cost WRGB lights have great app control now, NetLea and Micmol are two favorites here. And there's always Chihiros

For all the work we put into trying to get these plants beautiful, you want to have a light that allows you to see them in the best possible way

Also, Interventional Radiology is just the coolest ever I don't have to tell you lol. Congratulations on completing your residency!

One of my wolfhounds was born with an extraordinarily large intrahepatic portosystemic shunt, a very difficult defect to treat in dogs. The guy who brought Interventional Radiology to veterinary medicine placed a percutaneous transvenous coil embolism stent for me at 7 months, she'll be four next month and is doing great!

[Edit: fixed link]

 

[Art]

One of my wolfhounds was born with an extraordinarily large intrahepatic portosystemic shunt, a very difficult defect to treat in dogs. The guy who brought Interventional Radiology to veterinary medicine placed a percutaneous transvenous coil embolism stent for me at 7 months, she'll be four next month and is doing great!

 

[Pneumonicsonic]

Once you're settled down, consider treating yourself to a little higher end light I've worked with that Fluval 3.0 series quite a bit, still use them on some quarantine and farm tanks .

The series has some really serious limitations. For one thing the color skews very yellow which is a bummer, doesn't show off your plants well. And its very lowest setting is still really too bright to have in a TV room, it just doesn't turn down very far.

But most of all not having true 4-channel LEDs and adjustment really limits your ability to tweak presentation. Lots of medium-cost WRGB lights have great app control now, NetLea and Micmol are two favorites here. And there's always Chihiros

For all the work we put into trying to get these plants beautiful, you want to have a light that allows you to see them in the best possible way

Also, Interventional Radiology is just the coolest ever I don't have to tell you lol. Congratulations on completing your residency!

One of my wolfhounds was born with an extraordinarily large intrahepatic portosystemic shunt, a very difficult defect to treat in dogs. The guy who brought Interventional Radiology to veterinary medicine placed a percutaneous transvenous coil embolism stent for me at 7 months, she'll be four next month and is doing great!

[Edit: fixed link]

Koan that’s so amazing. Such a small world. Veterinary IR is so rare out there but so cool.

I appreciate your advice on lighting, and I honestly think I’ll be returning the Fluval if I can and getting different lights.

I pulled the trigger on the Uns 120U and stand. So the footprint is bigger than the P but I think I’ll like it more, we’ll see! That will be arriving at the house in Ohio before we do.

For lights on that I really like the look of the weeks L series silver (L1200 Pro D) possibly with the shade? And mounted on the tank.
I’m also thinking I’ll do stainless steel
Lily pipes and upgrading from my eheim to a oase bio master2 therm either 600 or 850.

Which size lily pipes would work with that? I’m a little confused by that, and I had ordered 12/16 Lily pipes. The oase website had listed 16/22 valves as compatible, so maybe I need to return those pipes

 

[Koan]

Which size lily pipes would work with that? I’m a little confused by that

The Oase piping is generally 16/22.
But if you feel that those sized lily pipes are not an aesthetic match for a smaller tank, just use a reducer down to 12/16 to match the lily pipes you think are a better fit for your tank.

Works great, I have that reducer on my 45C cube now, the 16/22 lily pipes took up just too much real estate.

Also, highly recommend Tommy's silicone tubing to substitute for the tubing that comes with that filter! Easily the best sanity upgrade I've ever made, working with it is night and day improvement compared to wrestling those stiff vinyl tubes

Veterinary IR is so rare out there

No kidding! VIRIES was started just five years before her procedure. At that time if you needed IR your options were Schwarzmann in New York, University of Michigan or UC Davis. We were very fortunate to be driving distance to NYC! Lots of consultation with a human interventionist, in our case because she was at the very top end size of available stents.

Just now starting to take off in vet med. Really exciting work beginning to be done in tx of congenital urologic defects, urolithiasis and tracheal collapse, very common and difficult chronic conditions to manage.

 

[Pneumonicsonic]

I’m glad to hear that worked for your dog! I love that the minimally invasive approach of IR is bleeding over from humans to pets and growing so much!

That silicone tubing looks great. I’ll definitely plan on that. The tank won’t be small at the 120U size, so I think I’ll search for steel pipes in the right size then. Thanks!

Do you think the week L series would be strong enough? I may end up doing medium light/energy with cO2 at some point.

 

[Koan]

Do you think the week L series would be strong enough?

Week Aqua is a great light.

I think @HardeeParty here can give you real time feedback on it? He is in and out, feel free to send a PM.

Not sure about the L Series specifically, have a look around on some of these threads.

Now that really solid lights are readily available, we're finding that super high light almost always causes more problems than it solves. Getting a decent light and then using about 50% of its capacity to start out with slows down your stems and algae outbreaks. At least until the microbiome has had a chance to really stabilize at all levels of the soil and root structures.

Folks around here have grown almost every plant as low as 80mmol at the substrate. After the tank has matured you can turn the lights up for fun to tweak reds etc, but utilizing all of that light capacity out of the gate is almost always a great way to shoot yourself in the face lol.

[Edit: updated L-series link]

 

[Pneumonicsonic]

75g is a great foot print. I'd hold onto it. But I'm an addict haha.

I think my wife is still holding fast to the one tank law, and that current 75gallon has a chip below the substrate level that I sealed with a piece of acrylic, but long term and in a new house I’m concerned about continuing to use it tbh. The stand with it is a homemade stand that is well made, but to get another tank I’d be surprised if I win that battle with my wife. I may move with the stand though… we’ll see.

 

[Koan]

FYI here's some gorgeous member tanks growing at 60 to 80 par at the substrate:

Journal Post in thread '120 Dutch Ft. Yugang Reactor (Horizontal CO2 Reactor)'

May 31, 2025

Okay, so wow. She's growing fast. Maybe things are maturing now. Just several days from last picture.

What has happened recently? I know I haven't posted too much on the behind the scene changes. I was able to barrow a PAR meter and have set my tanks to 70PAR at the front glass substrate per Tom Barr's posts on FB. To quote, "this is much more forgiving." I went ahead and put all my tanks at these PAR values. So it's about 72 mid front and about 62 front corners. I also asked about the NBAT folks, Tom and a few others mention these values are probably similar to what they run. So why not...

• Unexpected

• 
• 

Journal Post in thread 'SkaleyAquatics Re-attempted Dutch'

Mar 3, 2025

I will check par at somepoint this week and upload my findings

30" From light to substrate here are the readings at 50% and 100%. I am pretty happy with these lights for this tank. I have the light set at 70% after seeing the data and assume I'm getting ~80 in the front and mid60-70 in the back maybe into the 60s this was through plants some so take these with a grain of salt.

• SkaleyAquatics

• 
• 

 

[HardeeParty]

Do you think the week L series would be strong enough? I may end up doing medium light/energy with cO2 at some point.

I can’t sing higher praise for L series, and Week Aqua in general. My tank is UNS 90L (12” tall) dimensions with an L900 running at 50% power mounted 6” above the water level and it’s about perfect. Assuming it’s extremely stable I can run higher power but I’ve found these settings are just about perfect for me. I’ve also run a P600 on the same tank and it’s insane. I’ve never measured PAR on any of my lights.

Example from today running at 50% power, about 18” above substrate.



I can’t speak to its performance of PAR at depth other than anecdotal. I sold some plants to a guy running an L900 mounted high over a 90P (18” tall) and he’s reported ability to grow just about anything he throws in it.

His tank:

 

[Pneumonicsonic]

I can’t sing higher praise for L series, and Week Aqua in general. My tank is UNS 90L (12” tall) dimensions with an L900 running at 50% power mounted 6” above the water level and it’s about perfect. Assuming it’s extremely stable I can run higher power but I’ve found these settings are just about perfect for me. I’ve also run a P600 on the same tank and it’s insane. I’ve never measured PAR on any of my lights.

Example from today running at 50% power, about 18” above substrate.

View attachment 8601

I can’t speak to its performance of PAR at depth other than anecdotal. I sold some plants to a guy running an L900 mounted high over a 90P (18” tall) and he’s reported ability to grow just about anything he throws in it.

His tank:

View attachment 8602
View attachment 8603
View attachment 8604

Awesome thanks for the reply. I’m curious how it will do with the 120U which is 23” deep and wide… I’m nervous because although the length is the same as the standard 75 that is a lot more tank. But i figured if I’m doing the Uns 120 thing to just go for it, especially as I’m still under 1 tank law ( I may set up my old 20 gal high as a quarantine tank…. Somewhere .


The next decisions are filter ( leaning oase 850 vs 600 and/or double up with using my current eheim as well) and substrate. I’m still thinking of some amount of soil in either mesh bags or with a liner, and then with a cap of sts vs sand, I’ll potentially be using my mature soil just as a seed instead of using a lot of it. But I could see the benefits of cutting the soil with sts, but I could probably do that with my current sts cap and that would seed new soil as well right?

 

[HardeeParty]

Honestly, at that point, I’d just get the P series. You know for sure that it’ll be enough light at minimum, and you can run it at a lower power.

Especially with the whole “one tank” rule. I have that same rule.

What you do is (out of context) establish the garage as “not considered part of the house” and slowly add “specific need” tanks elsewhere. Eventually you’ll need to negotiate.

 

[Koan]

establish the garage as “not considered part of the house”

Genius.

 

[Pneumonicsonic]

Especially with the whole “one tank” rule. I have that same rule.

What you do is (out of context) establish the garage as “not considered part of the house” and slowly add “specific need” tanks elsewhere. Eventually you’ll need to negotiate.

View attachment 8616

Yes…. One tank (in the house). That’s a loophole….

Honestly, at that point, I’d just get the P series. You know for sure that it’ll be enough light at minimum, and you can run it at a lower power.

I just love the silver and the mounting arms with the rimless tank and steel Lily pipes with the L series. But the P series is nice and the price difference is not too crazy

 

[HardeeParty]

I just love the silver and the mounting arms with the rimless tank and steel Lily pipes with the L series. But the P series is nice and the price difference is not too crazy

Oh I totally get that and agree 100%. The aesthetic appeal of the L series with arms can’t be beat. It has that polished look.

 

[Count Krunk]

23" depth is going to let you make such a nice aquascape.

Don't rush that step.