Journal UNS 45T Nature Style-Inspired High Tech Build

[BranchScape]

Looks good, sorry about the jumper. They sell a 45T lid but not sure it fits the pipes but if it does that could help.

 

[deepgreen]

Made an annoying mistake that luckily only cost me a little time and convenience. It’s been about 10 yrs since I last had a CO2 injected tank, and I guess I forgot that I need to wrench tighten the regulator. I set up the CO2 about a month before I finally got planted, but noticed that the pressure was near 0 and the bottle was almost empty. Applied a little soapy water everywhere and couldn’t find any leaks, but I knew there had to have been one somewhere. I’m getting new washers today to be sure, but I’m fairly certain I just didn’t tighten the regulator connection enough.

Oh well, just refilled the 5# bottle today for $14 and asked them to fill to 800PSI.

To be honest, I intended to get the higher end FZone regulator but got this one secondhand from someone selling it along with the CO2 bottle. If I encounter more issues I’ll probably swap it out.

It may not be a leak at all. Are you certain that you got a completely filled cylinder? Sometimes, it happens that it was not properly filled. They should weigh your bottle. The pressure does not help because you always have the same pressure until the cylinder is almost empty. CO2 becomes liquid at this pressure leading to a constant pressure in the remaining gas phase.

 

[ample]

It may not be a leak at all. Are you certain that you got a completely filled cylinder? Sometimes, it happens that it was not properly filled. They should weigh your bottle. The pressure does not help because you always have the same pressure until the cylinder is almost empty. CO2 becomes liquid at this pressure leading to a constant pressure in the remaining gas phase.

I believe it was a combination of not being properly filled initially and not tightening the regulator to the cylinder fully. The first time I got the cylinder it was only at about 500PSI, but this time I asked them to fill it to 850PSI and they did. I also cranked it with a wrench this time and it seems to be holding pressure.

 

[ample]

Looks good, sorry about the jumper. They sell a 45T lid but not sure it fits the pipes but if it does that could help.

The UNS lids don’t have enough clearance for pipes, and I have some driftwood breaching the surface anyhow. I might consider a strip of thick acrylic across the long sides, almost like a euro brace, but even then I wouldn’t be able to get total coverage of the perimeter.

Hoping I’ll just have a chill group of fish and try not to gas them with CO2.

 

[ample]

Week 2 Update

Did a water change and some light maintenance.

• Very slight brown algae on the glass and some of the smaller stones
• First trim: moss is starting to get tons of new growth and bright green tips so I trimmed some of the long stringy bits to encourage compact fluffy growth. Trimmed a couple of the hydrocotyle runners. Trimmed a couple buce leaves in poor condition. So far it looks like all the buce is transitioning well and only dropping one or two leaves here and there.
• Not much mulm to siphon, so I’m pretty happy with the filter flow rate and pattern.

Livestock Added

• 1 male honey gourami
• 8 corydoras habrosus
• Handful of red cherry shrimp from my other tank
• Fish are so expensive now, holy cow. The last time I kept fish was almost 10 years ago and these exact same species were about half of what they are now. Crazy how things change.

Everyone is thriving and eating well! Still waiting on my local connection to get back to me on the group of pseudomugil luminatus and Ludwigia arcuata so that I can plant the background. A little difficult to get in touch with him but he always has such high quality stock that I’m okay waiting.

Lighting and CO2
I started the tank on 25% power for the Chihiros WRGB II 10th edition, but haven’t increased the power at all. None of the plants are particularly demanding and I don’t mind the aesthetics at all, so as of right now I don’t see a reason to increase the power. Would love to hear some thoughts though.
Now that I have fish, I’ve been trying to dial in the CO2 injection rate and photoperiod. I think I need to lower the BPS by a hair because I notice the Cories start to glass surf and surface more towards the end of the photo period when the drop checker turns light green. In the first week, the drop checker would stay greenish until the following day, but now it’s turning blue before the photo period is even over. It takes a couple of hours to go from blue to green but then teeters into the yellow green zone a couple hours before lights go off. So I think I need to start it earlier but turn it down in order to flatten out the saturation curve a bit.

 

[MrJG]

Really digging the layout! It’s nice and bright feeling but has some dark spots to give a little mystery. I like too how it has a jungly feel from the start, it’s going to be a banger once it matures.
I follow you on the co2 it gets tough to dial in when you aren’t around during the week (me) so I feel like you get one good shot to make a change to see how it hits on sat/sun.

 

[ample]

Really digging the layout! It’s nice and bright feeling but has some dark spots to give a little mystery. I like too how it has a jungly feel from the start, it’s going to be a banger once it matures.
I follow you on the co2 it gets tough to dial in when you aren’t around during the week (me) so I feel like you get one good shot to make a change to see how it hits on sat/sun.

Thanks! I’m not going for super jungly but I have two fistfuls of buce that I’m just holding in my tank until I can swap it out. It’s just shoved in the foreground and back right corner for now. I think it’s making things look a bit more chaotic than I intended.
I was going more for the classic NA style, but I don’t have enough of the trident java fern to fill out the spider wood, and I’m also waiting on some Ludwigia arcuata to make a dense bush in the back.