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This is amazing and at a different level.
Could you give step by step instruction on how to build the cabinet. I have really no prior experience with wood work, could this be a beginner project ?
Could you give step by step instruction on how to build the cabinet. I have really no prior experience with wood work, could this be a beginner project ?
I wanted to provide another case for Rocco's homemade reactor using the Netlea Prefilter.
Going to preface that I am a very inexperienced aquascaper, and have had to bother the living daylights out of both Rocco and Jeff, so thank you both for yalls patience. This will be a VERY ELI5 rundown.
First, I removed the prefilter's equipment and foam. Then take off the filter top.
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You will see a disk here! You want to remove it gently so it pops off, exposing nothing but the head, some ribbing, and a red seal. This red seal LOVES to slide off, so ensure you dont lose it!
We will be using a 1/4 RO tubing bulkhead. You can get these for cheap here: -> Bulkheads
They come with these white rubber gaskets! BIG WARNING AHEAD!
MAKE SURE YOU DRILL INBETWEEN THE RIBS SO THE GASKET WILL FIT! USE THE GASKET TO MARK WHERE YOU NEED TO DRILL!
Next, you will use a 5/8 bit to drill into the area you marked earlier. I used a 1/2 bit and it was insufficient, so i had to sand down ALOT to get the bulkhead to thread in.
Next step! You will screw the bulkhead into the hole, ensuring you have a gasket on BOTH SIDES! I had to use a 3/4 wrench to really thread it through and ensure a tight fit. Make sure you dont overdo it where you end up cracking the plastic.
Finally, you should be ready to go! Now for the fun part.
When you insert your RO tubing in the inside of the reactor, you want to ensure that like Rocco, the tubing is turned/curled as high as possible, so the tube will not get submerged into the water when you adjust your surface area (If you want to go through the math, check Rocco's post or Yugang's method. I used 17.7 for my ratio and calculated i needed a width of 103mm).
Regarding the math for a second. This prefilter is not perfect in width. The front of it will be around 5mm wider than at the back of it. Which means you may want to average your measurements of the two if you cannot measure the middle of the reactor. I personally do not believe a few mm off will ruin anything. A single shift during maintenance could easily do this if not braced.
Going back to the RO tubing, this is how I ensured that my CO2 was not going directly into the water. I spent around 1-2 hours trying to diagnose the insane gurgling and impeller sounds, so please do not suffer like I did.
When you are setting up, you want to definitely purge at startup, even if you are going on overflow mode like I did. Again, learn from my mistakes. Lastly, I noticed that my CO2 was blasting so much (a testament to how inefficient my in-line diffuser was), that I was auto-purging from overflow mode constantly, so if you notice your reactor keeps purging, check your CO2.
Still learning as I go, so there may be some edits here and there! Currently dialing in everything and trying to ensure I hit my optimum CO2 levels.
Also, if you have incorrectly installed the hoses, or have some excessive CO2 pressure that can cause frequent auto-purging, you may get a gurgling+bubbling+impeller sound! These are NOT supposed to be loud in any sense! If you got excessive noise, double check everything!
I'm very super impressed with the quality of your cabinet build and the organization within! And that's coming from a pretty OCD mechanical engineer lol!
Being a details guy... I'd love to know where you got those nice looking graduated dosing bottles.
@Rob23 Really well so far, after a really rough start! I'll update soon. I've spent the majority of the summer traveling/working and have been literally away from the tanks for many weeks now, but I'd like to share some updates soon.
This tank had absolutely HORRIBLE diatoms. Some of the worst I've ever had. Normally they come and go, but this time it really felt like they were going to take some plants down with them, and maybe they did.
A few weeks later:
Keeping up with this tank's fertilization has been absolutely difficult. You don't realize how easy aquasoil is until you try to run a high-tech, high-light, high-energy CO2 injected inert substrate tank like this.
THERE IS NO BUFFER. I was constantly having to up my fertilization dose to prevent them not from bottoming out every 7-10 days, but every 4-5 days. Plants were growing well, but the startup diatom algae with constant fluctuations in fertilization and frequent limited environments (macros hitting 0ppm) caused stunted growth. Except rotala blood red. It would survive a nuclear apocalypse.
Algae problems reaching a new height:
I spent so much of the time this summer out of the house and traveling. This tank receives 73% water changes each week, with high light and high ferts. One missed week results in crazy algae issues, and that's exactly what happened.
I won't give up, but I will lose some plants that just simply aren't going to recover. I siphon, scrape algae, siphon some more, and remove ALL algae covered leaves I can find. I practically leave some of the S. repens as nothing more than a bare stem, since I trim all the algae covered leaves.
At this point I realized I needed a partial reset.
I removed most of the plants, hand-trimmed the lower leaves, cut all algae-covered leaves, and replanted.
Here's an in-progress pic of the partial reset:
I had also received a stem I've never tried, Myrio 'Golden' from @Burr740 . Check out his The List postfor plants, about half of the plants in this tank are from him! So, I have Rotala Blood Red in the back left, some very sickly Pogostemon Deccanensis in the middle, and Myrio Golden in the back right.
More of the Myrio. Burr sent me an INSANE portion. So healthy, so many stems.
A week or so later:
I didn't get a picture of replanting the whole tank after the partial reset, but the plants in the tank are:
(From left to right)
Background:
Rotala Blood Red
Pogostemon deccanensis
Myriophyllum 'Golden'
Midground
Pentorum sedoides
Blyxa japonica (my beloved)
AR Mini
Rotala Bonsai
Crypt wendtii 'Bronze'
Eriocaulon 'Vietnam'
Foreground:
Staurogyne repens
Crypt parva
Staurogyne 'Purple'
A week later:
Things are really looking better. I'm dosing basically 30-10-40 each week, and backed off on the micros a bit.
However, I haven't been around for maintenance and I'm about to leave for about 14 days.
The myrio grows insanely fast. I already trimmed it once before this pic. It's a total weed, might not be a keeper for me! Just way too fast.
The Staurogyne 'Purple' is finally getting some purple color!
I'll trim the old leaves as soon as there is a full pair of new leaves grown in. I do this with nearly all plants.
Rotala Bonsai looking pretty good. Crypt parva bottom right, hopefully will create a dwarf-hairgrass-like carpet without the runners and trimming required!
I can't believe the pogostemon is recovering lol. It was basically DECIMATED from algae and overdosing micros. It's still rough, but you can see just how nice the upper new growth is.
I'm about to trim all the big old leaves off this Crypt wendtii 'bronze 'now that 2-3 new leaves have sprouted.
Some of the S repens aren't looking too good. Again, I suspect it was the overdosing micros and algae. But the new growth seems great!
Pentorum sedoides is an awesome plant in front of the Rotala Blood Red. Unforunately it looks so similar to S repens in leaf size and shape, but at least it has a slightly different color. Seems very robust, a slower grower, and Burr says it can be mowed down to the substrate without too much fuss. I dig it a lot!
Since I'm about to leave for a big trip, I do a big trim:
Still some hair algae and diatoms.
I'm going to be gone for almost 14 days, so I'm gonna set the lights to 25% and leave the CO2 and nutrients at full strength.
Day 87 update, after 2 weeks away with lights at 25% and a large dose of ferts when I left:
WOW. It looks pretty damn good! Plants need a bit of trimming and shaping, and it didn't grow very fast compared to regular rates. However, the algae is almost 100% gone. No more diatoms, and the remaining hair algae seems very isolated.
S Repens is looking great, as is the P sedoides and the R Blood Red. The S repens leaves are no longer twisted or curling... Maybe due to an increase in both Mg and a decrease in micros (CSM+B)??
The crypt bronze put out a ton of new leaves while I was away.
All of the Crypt parva has new, algae free growth. I know this little plant grows slowly, and that's what I want. I just hope it grows fast enough to avoid algae...
The Staurogyne Purple lost it's purple coloration, as expected. Low light will bring greens back to almost any plant. I do hope to get it purple again soon with higher light, now that I'm back!
Eriocaulon Vietnam on the right has tons of new healthy leaves.
AR Mini leaves are still twisted/stunted, but it didn't put many new leaves out while I was gone. I expect if the S repens leaves could be fixed with more Mg and less Micros, the AR should be fixed soon, too. I hope!
Some algae on the older leaves, but all new growth is algae free for the Pentorum Sedoides.
The pogostemon erectus needs a lot more time to fill out, get trimmed, shape up, get trimmed again, etc. until it feels presentable. The Myrio Golden really concerns me with how fast it grows. I love the look and color, but might want to swap it out.
Wish me luck to keep this algae free tank going.
One thing I really want to note/point out: LOWER LIGHT REALLY HELPED ME.
I tend to err on the side of super-high-energy tanks, but 25% strength lights (I'll get a PAR reading later) did wonders to eliminate algae while still keeping plant growth. I think I'll try running this tank at ~50% strength lighting and see how it goes.
I know a lot of competition guys run their tanks at ~90PAR at the substrate level. That's a LOT less than I've been running, so maybe that's an important thing to consider.
Either way, BDBS (inert sand) is, of course, unforgiving. If I don't dose dry fert salts, the plants will have nothing to grow with. There is no rich aquasoil, no potting soil, no root tabs, and very little fish waste.
It will be extremely rewarding to grow plants like cryptocoryne that so many hobbyists call "root feeders" with nothing but inert sand and water column dosing. In the best way possible, this experience is making me realize just how much of a "cheat code" aquasoil is. And that's good! I think that's generally good for the hobby, even if it means 60% of all hobbyists start getting algae after 4-5 months because their aquasoil has run out of nutrients.
Again, wish me luck! This is somehow much harder in many ways than the massive 140gal downstairs.
This tank had absolutely HORRIBLE diatoms. Some of the worst I've ever had. Normally they come and go, but this time it really felt like they were going to take some plants down with them, and maybe they did
THERE IS NO BUFFER. I was constantly having to up my fertilization dose to prevent them not from bottoming out every 7-10 days, but every 4-5 days. Plants were growing well, but the startup diatom algae with constant fluctuations in fertilization and frequent limited environments (macros hitting 0ppm) caused stunted growth. Except rotala blood red. It would survive a nuclear apocalypse.
I've been getting a bit frustrated with the diatoms in my tank as well, and this 100% describes what is going on. Twice it has seemed my diatoms were getting a bit better, but I discovered my NO3 was 0. I upped my dosing and the diatoms came roaring back. I'm going to try not to worry too much until I can get my dosing adjusted so that the NO3 doesn't hit 0 between doses, and I can be more consistent.
Your diatoms look much different than mine. Mine is like brown dirt is growing on some of the leaves. It's not stringy or fuzzy like in some of your pics.
This is interesting to me since I am 2 weeks away from a 2 week vacation. I have someone who can come dose my tank every few days, but backing the light off and a dose once a week might be better.
My concern is that I've collected a few expensive plants like E Vichada, Blood Vomit, and Xyris. They would be difficult to get again, and I don't know how they would react to reduced light.
My PAR is about 120 at substrate under the light. I've realized one of my issues is that I've under estimated how much extra fertilizer this will require. I upped my dose yesterday. We'll see how it goes. I should also probably be doing more water changed while I have algae issues. I have a bit of Cyano as well, but it is just a couple small spots all together about the size of a quarter that seem to stay contained.
I don't want to dose my tank daily. Its too much work, but I can't help but think that if I could stick it out for a month and find a good daily dose, I could then divide the total by 3 and dose that 3 times a week or just front load.
When I saw the first pictures you showed of this, I thought "I love the look, I'm gonna have to get some of that." Then you slapped me with reality . Maybe I'll pass for now.
I was constantly having to up my fertilization dose to prevent them not from bottoming out every 7-10 days, but every 4-5 days. Plants were growing well, but the startup diatom algae with constant fluctuations in fertilization and frequent limited environments (macros hitting 0ppm) caused stunted growth.
When you were seeing macros hitting 0ppm, were you front loading all of your macros after a water change or were you splitting the dosing up throughout the week?
Has this level of macro dosing remained consistent or was it different when they were hitting 0ppm? Was it the twisted leaves/stunted growth that lead you to reduce micros? What level of micros were you dosing and what have you moved to currently? I think I read somewhere that you had been targeting 0.1ppm Fe daily.
The tank looks great, and I look forward to seeing how it continues to progress.
When you were seeing macros hitting 0ppm, were you front loading all of your macros after a water change or were you splitting the dosing up throughout the week?
Yeah, I was initially front loading macros on Saturday after WC, and would see algae by the end of the week. Started testing 0 Nitrates on Friday, then on Thursday, then <5ppm NO3 on Wednesday and I kept having to up the dose. I started this tank more like 10-1-15, and just kept having to increase as the plants grew. Especially without a soil to capture nutrients via CEC , the plants freely took everything up. I wish I just started at the current dose. I'm still learning to stop being afraid of a rich water column! Nutrients don't cause algae! etc etc.
Buckle up, this is about to be long-winded!
I have been trying to find mathematical improvements, like splitting the weekly front loading dose up into smaller amounts, while balancing the reminders/workload. I know for myself that having to manually dose more than 2x per week doesn't work because I'm lazy/distracted and I end up despising the constant need for reminders. Front-loading once a week is easy, but it doesn't respect the concentration-related enzymes that all plants develop, meaning that while it can work just fine, you would get happier plants with a more consistent ppm in your tank through the week.
So, splitting the dose into 2x per week allows me to reduce the major concentration swings, without creating too much extra workload. I can handle dosing my tank twice a week. But, splitting the dose into two 50% doses... is that the best way? What if it's better to dose 66% after the WC, and 33% during the week? Should that second dose be on Wednesday or thursday? How does water change % affect accumulation of leftover nutrients?
I decided to make my own spreadsheet calculator to visually graph/track uptake, accumulation, and the difference when dosing multiple times a week on different days. Rotala Butterfly can't do partial doses on different days when it's a 7-day week, so I had to do it myself!
Example 1: If we consider dosing 30ppm NO3 per week, with the first dose at 20ppm after the WC on Saturday, and the second dose at 10ppm on Wednesday, with 2ppm daily uptake, this is what it looks like:
The max difference (meaning, the highest concentration to the lowest concentration) with this setup is an 8ppm swing.
If I were to have the same setup with splitting the dose 50% on Saturday and Wednesday, the swing is 13ppm. Still totally acceptable, but larger than if I did the "thirds" split above: Example 2:
Remember that this is with a 70% WC.
Look how the graph changes!
Example 3: Now, if I front load the entire 30ppm with no booster dose:
The max difference is similar to splitting the dose 50% between Saturday and Wednesday, but it has a MUCH higher total accumulation peak.
All of these work just fine for providing the necessary nutrients to my tank, but the top example (2/3rd + 1/3rd splitting, two doses per week) has the smallest difference, the smallest max, and still only requires 2 doses per week. So that's what I've started doing!
I create two little plastic container (like to-go sauce containers with lids), one with the big dose, one with the smaller booster dose. I dose the big one on Saturday after WC, and the smaller one on Wednesday.
Was it the twisted leaves/stunted growth that lead you to reduce micros? What level of micros were you dosing and what have you moved to currently? I think I read somewhere that you had been targeting 0.1ppm Fe daily.
I was dosing at least 0.1ppm Fe of CSM+B per day, experimenting with pushing more, because I was hyperfocused on the iron part. EI testing shows that iron can safely reach 1-5ppm per week. At 0.1ppm per day, the total weekly accumulation without uptake was 0.7ppm Fe. While that's really not that much Fe in the water, don't forget that includes ALL the other potentially toxic micros in the CSM+B mix, too.
Micros can usually just tell when certain plants get a little pale. Stunting can be low micros too.
Generally ime, stunting with poor color (pale) is usually low macros.
Stunting with good color is usually low micros. Stunting with intensely deep color is usually too much micros.
And that's really what felt was happening. Look at the AR in this tank, and in my big tank. Super deep colors with severely stunted leaves:
The post that finally connected the dots for me was this one here (expand the comment there).
1. Is micro toxicity a thing? Are there certain nutrients that we can lard on without a problem and others that we have to watch out for? "Toxicity" term is debatable, but I along with some other experienced members of the forum (burr740, saxa tilly) have observed problems of using too many traces, particularly the CSM+B blend. Most common problem is stunted, shriveled tips in plants like Alternanthera Reineckii, Ludwigia Glandulosa, and some rotala/lythraceae.
3. How do you identify micro toxicities or deficiencies? It's tough, because the symptoms can look the same. And CO2 issues also manifest themselves as stunted, curled tips. Always check and double-check CO2 first, along with light levels. Symptoms will usually be curled, burned, stunted tips in plants like Alternanthera Reineckii. If you have this, plus no other real algae issues like BBA, OK growth in other plants, good pH drop and flow, and using CSM+B or EDTA chelators at EI or higher levels, it's beneficial to try another trace mix or lower the CSM+B dosing. Burr740 and I were doing CSM+B at around 0.015 ppm Fe three times a week - with some DPTA iron added in. Very low compared to EI. Until a few years ago, the EI guidance was up to 0.5 ppm Fe 2-3 times a week, and some people were dosing that much CSM+B. Now the EI recommendations are at the 0.2 ppm Fe level. Inert substrates and softer water (GH) make it more likely to see issues.
5. Is CSM+B a good or bad micro mix? How does it compare to other micro mixes? Many people, including me, have used it and grown great plants with nice tanks. But, I have overused it and saw stunting in Alternanthera Reineckii and Ludwigia Glandulosa in particular. Most plants like vals, crypts, other ludwigias had no issues with higher CSM+B levels. If you do use it, be wary of pH, and you will need less of it than another trace mix that uses SO4-based compounds. 0.015 ppm Fe 3x per week will probably be enough with inert substrate, and consider adding extra iron in an equal amount.
This finally clicked for me, and I immediately backed off my CSM+B dose. I'm dosing closer to 0.05ppm Fe/day now to keep the non-iron micros low. At this point I'm about to make the switch to a @Burr740 DIY micros kit, and start rolling/making my own! Ones that have more consistent Fe than CSM+B, but with less of the potential micro toxicity.
I will update here of course. I initially thought it was a calcium/magnesium issue, because that's what it almost looks like, until I read this:
2. What is the difference between the various chelators? Do those differences really matter? Does the buildup of chelators cause harm? Is there a problem with using multiple chelators in the same tank? Chelators become unstable at various pH levels, and these are believed to be part of the problem. Unstable chelators can possibly bind or interfere with calcium uptake or maybe other nutrients. The symptom usually looks like calcium deficiency though. EDTA becomes unstable (detaches from iron?) at lower pH than DPTA, and EDTA is what is used with CSM+B. So CSM+B can be a problem when pH is routinely over 7.0, for example. I think pH 6.5 and under is the EDTA recommendation - feel free to look the specific values up. I'm just going from memory here.
Like damn, could this be more exact to my current issue?! It DOES look like a Ca or Mg stunting issue, but I know for a fact I'm adding 25-30ppm Ca and 6-10ppm Mg every week, so it can't be those.
To summarize, I truly think I may have been really over-doing the daily dosing of micros in an attempt to increase my ppm Iron. Especially in the aquasoil tank where the soil contains so much Fe that it is literally magnetic and can be removed/picked up with a strong magnet, this really wasn't necessary. In this thread's sand-only tank, I expect to potentially see Fe deficiency after a few weeks at really low micros, but if it straightens out the dark, stunted and curly leaves on my AR, at least I'll know that really was the culprit and I can start making my own micros solution to dose daily via the chihiros autodoser!
Thank you for the detailed reply. I'm curious as to how you went about calculating the weekly max/min values in the spreadsheet. Care to share the calculations? I'm interested in seeing if/how this change in your micro dosing impacts the AR stunting.
Thank you for the detailed reply. I'm curious as to how you went about calculating the weekly max/min values in the spreadsheet. Care to share the calculations? I'm interested in seeing if/how this change in your micro dosing impacts the AR stunting.
Each week the tank will receive a total NPK of 30-9-39, along with a ~74% water change. I'm backing off on daily CSM+B Micros dosing, and will dose ~0.02ppm Fe worth for a little while, because I think I've been way overdoing it and I want to see if it will help prevent stunting and curling of leaves.
Why those 30-9-39 Macro ppm's? Mainly because they're easy to remember! 30+9=39, and all are easily divisible by 3 which is important to me for my split-dosing idea.
If I were to front load all the NPK in one dose after WC, it would look like this over time:
The max is ~32ppm+, with a max difference of 15ppm across the week. It works, but isn't the best. Let's split it into two doses per week!
Here's what it would look like to do two 50% doses:
Note that the weekly max ppm is the same, but the max difference is quite high.
Dividing the doses into a 66% dose after WC, with a 33% "booster" dose halfway through the week, we get a graph like this:
More stable nutrients even with "2.5ppm" consumed per day. Lower max difference across the week of 7.5, with a maximum concentration of ~24ppm. Less needed in the water column, and even more stable!
The max difference through the week is 1.6x higher for two 50% doses, than splitting the doses into 66% and 33% respectively.
Basically:
-I'm going to try adding a weekly total of 30-9-39 to the tank.
-Adding them all up front is fine, but has the highest spike and highest average concentration.
-Splitting the dose into 50% twice a week is better, with a lowered spike and lower average concentration.
-Splitting the dose into an initial 66% dose after WC, with a 33% second dose midweek, provides the most stable concentration over time and also the lowest concentration in the water possible.
If you're wondering why not just do 3 doses per week, or even daily? Because I'm lazy. Anything more than 2 doses per week I simply won't do and will resent. Splitting it 66/33 just makes sense for me.
First off very well explained and laid out experience. Well done
Bravo also for recognizing you are not dosing enough when using an inert substrate. I am sure it can be quite the learning experience from using aqua soil. I am doing the reverse of trying aqua soil when I am more experienced with inert substrate. Honestly I am afraid to lower my dosing in aqua soil tanks and just run them at the same levels as the inert substrate.
I have tried this plant a few times and have failed each time with it. It is such a beautiful color and shape it just has not worked out for me. I am happy to see that you are seeing success with it.
Splitting the dose into an initial 66% dose after WC, with a 33% second dose midweek, provides the most stable concentration over time and also the lowest concentration in the water possible.
I will have to run the acclimation spreadsheet to see how stable my concentration is. As I dose 3 times a week with totals being 50%-25%-25%. I have never seen issues with bottoming out but I also have never tested nutrient levels in my tanks. For the most part I only see algae from neglect or GDA on glass especially.
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. Maybe I'll pass for now.
