# 80g Jungle Mistakes



## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I suppose I should mention the lights are 2 Orphek OR 120 (freshwater planted spectrum) and the additional light is a fluence ray 44 (greenhouse spectrum) though there's no pictures of the ray on there at this time. I replaced the psus for the orpheks with something dimmable and they're all run by a hurricanex currently. I suppose the light period is from 3->midnight but really its got a 150 minute ramp up time right now and about an hour of low light on either end of that. The fluence is only going to about 30% brightness and that with the other 2 lights is plenty, I don't know if I'm going to just keep it on there or move it to a 55 and use a diy light or 2 on this one, or a 3rd orphek maybe? It's just because I can either properly light the front corner or the back corner of the overflow with just the 2 bars, but not both... it just physically is in the way of even lighting with a bar.

I built the sump myself out of a 40B, it's just straight up bags of pumice for media.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Not sure how interested anyone is in this other stuff but... the 3rd light (it's only been on there since saturday night...) Just supposed to be temporary.








The room is actually MUCH darker than it appears in the picture. phone autofux...

Controller and orphek psu... the fluence psu is on the floor currently unless I decide to make it permanent.









Currently it's using this... not very exciting.

















You can't see in that last pic but 50cc/min is not enough... so this will be going on there soon.








... fleabay sold me this as a 150-SSV, but clearly there is no SSV... however I decided I'd just put a better metering valve on there and call it a day?

and while I'm at it... testing some stuff








Though only the JBL can be tried on this tank as the other 2 only come in a 16mm max size and I need 21mm. But I'll be trying them on other tanks. It's got the bubble checker area outside the ceramic filled with water to pre-soak it... I've not noticed the leak around the o-rings I've seen some people mention, though obviously there isn't high pressure gas being fed into it yet either.

Oddly the check valve on the JBL didn't work when it came, but when I took it apart and put it back together it works now... not sure how the spring/plug got unseated during shipping but seems to work now? I never actually use bubble checkers anyhow but I don't want it to just flood water back to the metering valves/flow meter.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Some minor trimming / removing old growth, it was kind of hard to see in the photos but the parts of the mayaca fluviatilis that came from the LFS were atrocious and the ammania just grows stupid fast but there's not much in there that makes similarly colored leaves.

















and I changed this out...









and because I am a crazy person... The last time I made a light was around 2012. I decided to go with fancier heatsinks this time just for appearances, the last light I made was like a big ole piece of aluminum scrap with psus just sitting on top and was hideous. Though I don't know if it will really go on this tank or not. I guess they will still have to have a project box or something to hold the drivers on top but the actual ac to dc psu will be hidden.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I only got a little work on this tank done this weekend...

















but a lot of work done on...

















There's no real blue channel currently though I might split off the true blues and violets into their own channel maybe. Theres a 12 sunplus cool white channel (looks 6500kish to me but... seneye reef color temp reading is bogus), 1 channel with 6 3500k 6 5000k and 4 6500k luxeon rebels, 1 channel with 8 cyan(4 rebel no bin info/ 4exotic 495nm) 3 true blue(rebel) and 2 lime (sunplus), and 1 channel with 4 semiled hyperviolet 4 deep red / 2 far red sunplus 4 red 2 amber/orange(rebels). The red channel isn't hooked up if that wasn't obvious... waiting on some of the diodes still.

I'm not sure yet if changing the colors will be too weird without splitting out blue into a different channel.

I was just testing at 500ma to check how much voltage each string was using and see if I screwed anything up... so far so good. I made 2 of these things...
Honestly not sure I'll run anything over 500ma besides possibly the 6500k channel, we'll see I guess but it's gonna be nearing 100W each side with 500ma drivers. I suppose I could go up to 1200/1000/700/700 but it probably isn't a whole lot brighter compared to the excess heat.

The lights in the room are still on in the last pic. Also I am strongly considering ordering a sheet of lumen xt lc3 or lw3 and having pieces precut to fit these and the 2 orpheks.... but I really only need like 20$ worth of it. Would leave me with 3 2'x4' sheets and another 14"x4' piece or so. I know @gus6464 was looking at some but maybe I can find a few people who want precut pieces because I surely don't need that much and the first 10 cuts are the same price. I'm going to be the lumen xt salesman at my local apa meetings huh? :/ I suppose maybe I have a few more lights I could get pieces cut to fit...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So I haven't been using my old DSLR much because the memory card port is starting to die which makes it a pita to use. My phone was getting pretty old at this point too but I broke it for good now  testing my new phone as a camera for now... will probably be some time till I invest in a new DSLR.

























and this downy looking ludwigia white stem...









And video... you can totally make out my bucephelandra sp "staghorn" here :/ assuming youtube ever processes it past 360p...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So I did put the diy lights on this tank, at least for the moment. I need to adjust all the pwm values but I need to fix a bug in the hurricanex firmware too  and while I'm at it I will probably add more than 2 time periods and 1 ramp time setting to my own if I can.

Sunplus cool white channel? 50% of 700ma I was sitting at an angle where it was blinding me while I took this... oops. I may either build some kind of shield around the fronts to block some of the spill or build/use a canopy if I decide where these lights will stay for an extended period.









Rebel whites 6 5000k 6 3500k 4 6500k looks kind of the same here maybe but distinctly more orange than the other in person... maybe my phone was doing some white balancing of some sort? 50% of 500 ma
Maybe I should have done 1 side with each channel to show them next to each other?









Cyan "green" channel 100% of 500ma









Red/hyper violet channel 100% of 500ma









Green & Red... 100% of 500ma each









I don't have a picture with everything on at this point but I thought it looks interesting enough under some different lighting. If I'm standing or sitting close the light spill is not an issue but there's definitely parts of the room where the leds are trying to kill my eyes :/ I suppose if I don't make a canopy or hood I could try attaching some optics to the wider angle leds however I feel like the ambers which should be 120 degree are some of the worst offenders.

Honestly everything will need to be run super dim if I leave all these lights on here but the spread must be pretty good :/ even running everything at half is undoubtedly way over 100 par but I need to replace my laptop screen and check for sure.


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

4800k vs 6500k at high CRI.. Can be splitting hairs but "if" the camera used the same wb (no reason to believe they didn't) they should be able to be compared..
you can make out the lower k diodes in the light fixture.. well some.
Ther are eye differences and eye dropper differences showing slightly more blue in the 6500k photo..
It's pretty subtle and hard to say for sure..
Would show up more if exposure was lower..

As to Seneye agree, at least for you and me K temp is really inaccurate 85% of the time..
I may test that a bit more.. Seems some people are quite happy w/ it..

Other than that all I can say is ... FUN!!! 

do you have the blue on w/ the cyan/lime channel above?


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Poor dead quote button.

It probably doesn't help for comparing them that I badly blurred one of the white pics.

Yes, the 3 true blue are on the same channel with the cyan/lime. I am thinking about splitting them off into a 5th channel with the hyper violet, and powering the fans with something else... or not doing that and replacing the SCW05C-12s with SCW05C-09s maybe.

I think I can fix the hurricanex issue easily enough, but I need to investigate how much space it's using up and how much is available to try to add features. If I don't run into memory issues the features I am thinking of are:

Additional times beyond a day/night. morning/evening maybe?
Possibly a different ramp timer length for each, I may just leave it as a single setting. It currently does the time settings oddly to me in that you put in the start of the sunrise and the end of the sunset period, so if I added channels do I do the start of ... noonrise? heh i don't know how to name that sunrise2? and the end of ... afternoon? Or do I have it set all of them from the start of the ramp period? Or all from the end of the ramp period?
Other things that are probably not of that much interest to anyone but me, but maybe the ability to set channel groups so that settings done to any of those apply to all of them, and a manual mode that can do 1 channel at a time, instead of all at once... or maybe a manual mode for channel groups if they're enabled, though I suppose if they were linked doing 1 at a time would also work for this.

The way the bug is, as it goes through sunrise or sunset it fixes it all, but if you play with it during night or day periods the settings don't get corrected unless you reenter that specific led's(only #8-16) settings in setup which is a total pita.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I pulled out the pearl weed because it was trying to carpet and I didn't want to keep fighting it to have enough space to keep growing out the ludwigia white. Also removed the bacopa that I had in the back, it was not doing much. Did a replant on the rotala in front of the overflow (no pics... it's there just behind things for now.) Major trim on the mayaca fluviatilis and I moved it to where the pearlweed used to be. Also some other minor trimming...









no water change yet so its really cloudy...









new buce leaves are...

















Not sure what I should do with this parva I'm pretty sure this river buttercup is gonna murder it if I just let it go. flamingos probably gonna have to move elsewhere too but won't get buried quite as quickly as the parva...









Legendra meeboldii red tissue culture is kinda growing finally, most of it melted theres like 5 little plantlets that made it...









I think I'm supposed to be able to get all the leaves of this homalomena humilis colored like the edge of the pacman mouth but I've no idea what conditions I need to give it to do that. It can't possibly be split the leaves in half and let them start dying. It doesn't really look unhealthy to me though and I don't have anything else in there with leaves quite like that. It's probably about time I remove that broken buce goliath leaf/staghorn magnet :/


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So I decided I liked how the buce was doing in here and raided a low tech fish grow out tank... (yeah they're all planted because why not)










I might just take this out I mean... Am I going to even notice it's yellower?




























Uhh I think some of the val leaves are 4' long now...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So...









I was running into memory issues to implement all my features until I took drastic measures like... took out all usage of sprintf because its like 2kb if it has to load that function.

Now to get it tested...


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

fingers crossed..


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Sigh I guess I am nowhere with this and I give up.
Their instructions are basically connect to ftdi and you can flash it but I've tried EVERYTHING 3v signal, 5v signal, rts -> dtr dtr -> dtr I can never get any kind of response of any kind from the device.
It gets power and everything but I can't send to it whatsoever and the only thing I haven't tried is reloading the bootloader (over ftdi to a smd atmega328... I'd rather cut my balls off with a spoon.)


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## ChrisX (May 28, 2017)

Long ago I tried to read/update the firmware on a commercial ATMEL device and the lock bit was set, so I abandoned the project. If my memory serves me, I was able to read the firmware but not write any changes. Are you able to read the firmware from the device? There should be a serial port that they used when the originally flashed it. If you can read the firmware, you will be able to discern the status of the security "bit" and that would tell you if the project is doomed from the start.

I've been running my DIY lights with the TC421 and its solid for $30. You gain complete independent control of every channel and the wifi app makes it easy to test changes. The only issue with the TC is that it is always running a program, so if you want to test a new color, you need to create/modify the program at the current time to see the changes. (There is no immediate mode.) If you can live with that, its a great deal. You would have to spend alot more to get something only a little better.

I really like your tank.


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

If I remember from the "old" Typhon days it was pretty easy..
Though I only really needed to upload a program once.
Seem to remeber some interface chips didn't work.




> Some ancient versions of the bootloader run at 9600 baud (instead of 19200). In order to successfully upload sketches to boards with this bootloader, you'll need to change the serial.download_rate in your preferences file to 9600.


Maybe?
OLD Typhon stuff..


> The library and PDE file must be loaded into Arduino IDE version 22 or lower


http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2523549
https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/328216-reprogramming-the-typhon/

Beyond my pay grade so just throwing stuff at you..


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I didn't try specifically changing serial.download_rate (it doesn't exist in the default preferences.txt) but I did try running avrdude directly from the commandline and specifying baud 9600 and it was no different... I guess I will try looping the ftdi device to itself and seeing if the rx/tx pins are working at least? But I'm stumped... 

I don't really seem to get any response from the serial monitor, "get board info" doesn't really work... I got some information about the chip using avrdude without trying to send a .hex file, but it also never got the expected responses...


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

Like I said, above my pay grade. 
I did know that when I re-programmed my Typhon the correct FTDI chip set was listed as important..

all this "piddly stuff" annoys me.. 

Not sure why people like Aduino stuff so much.. Seems, globally, a PIA...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I think actually I have one last thing I can try before getting a different FTDI device... maybe I need to wire the cts port to rts and vice versa? or cts to dtr? Whatever I'll try both :/ sigh


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

Never mind..


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

It still doesn't work, the device has CTS and DTR pins so maybe I need a ftdi that has DTS pin available? I'd have to solder into a smd pin which is basically untenable.


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

FTDI UNO
Tx Rx
Rx Tx
DTR Reset
+5 +5
GND GND
CTS GND

did you try just tx,Rx, power, and ground?


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I'll try the old version and just those wires later after the lights turn off.

Actually I got some updates from them... they can update them from 2 of 16 machines so it's really finicky and I need the 12v power hooked up as well.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I'm still dead in the water finding a computer that can communicate with the hurricanex so that sucks. 

I took some par readings and maybe I've been pushing things a little hard for the past week... I might let it run a little longer like this and see if I run into algae problems or what though. So anyhow par at the substrate in the front half is no less than 130 during the "day", 160+ on top of the red rocks in the front right, 180+ on top of the trimmed rotala in front of the sump and 400+ at the surface under my diy lights heh. Somewhere in the 200s at the surface under the Orpheks at these settings. 

This is with all channels (and Orpheks) at 50% or below, red being the highest @ 50% however the red channel is highass par/pur with respect to lumens. Pur was never below low-mid 60s.

I know these numbers are a little intense but is it really that far off from a good t5ho fixture? So far it looks manageable but things could turn quickly. I need to take a few measurements with just the diy lights for my own curiosity but everything at 100% must be ridiculous.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So... I measured just 1 diy light at about 12" distance (that was about the most convenient place I could find to measure and with just holding the damn seneye they're probably all + - 1" or so.
White channel 1 (... wiiiide lenses this has lower par 12" under than the other white channel but higher @ 12" offset at the front substrate)
50% of 500ma








100%








heh White channel 2 (120 degree lenses) 50% of 500 ma 








100%








Cyan/green (some blue (470-480nm))
50% of 500 ma








100%








Reds/Violet
50% of 500ma








100%








50% of everything...








100%









and par at the front glass about 16" down/12" offset from center (9 from the edge of the light) with the seneye pointed towards the light (so few if any reflections off the front glass) was about 120-130 @ 100% of everything.

Might change some of the ldds out.
Anyhow the actual tank... before some trimming...









Trimmed the la mini, and am trying to propagate more hydrolea zeylanica at the front here, and I tried to move some to the back where I removed the bacopa before, I don't know how those will go the flow is mighty across the back. If they work okay I may let it break the water and try to get some flowers? New buce goliath leaves are finally looking... right? 









hah not this chunk of rhizome though  It's taken me months to grow like 6 teeny tiny leaves since melting its one big leaf with h2o2 like a fool. I've got hope still... honestly it looked like it was doing nothing but now I've got 4 .5cm leaves sprouting off it you can see some of them at the bottom of the rhizome but unfortunately my camera is definitely auto focused on that ar leaf.









Speaking of which at the same time as that one this also used to be achilles... again months to regrow like 9 midget leaves, though these ones all seem to be getting larger at once while on the half dead goliath rhizome the top has some stunted seemingly aborted leaf growth. Also trimmed the ar mini in the back~









I am not really sure what this is... roughly pearlweed sized, much slower growing, much darker green...









Propagating more tornado I guess, and making the staurogyne spathulata thicker. Also trimmed / planted the ludwigia mini red thicker... and I guess that buce flower is open, no idea what kind that is right now.

























So this thing








is a piece of this that broke off the bottom last time i replanted, except at hundreds less par :/









I hope I didn't screw this up cause it wipes out my message if I hit something wrong and get the php error... which is basically any button except quick reply.


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## Greggz (May 19, 2008)

Nice post!

And tank is looking great. Really like what you have going there.

Plants look happy and healthy, and very nicely presented.

What's your dosing in this tank?

Great work and look forward to seeing more updates.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So I'm basically dosing elbow grease... but let's see here...
It's not as exact as some of you, but about 75cc/min co2 @ ~20 psi, this makes a ph drop of roughly 1.3. There is a sump and just shrimp/snails, but seems well oxygenated to me, tons of surface movement in the tank + a sump...

I do about a 20% water change every 4-5 days (it's a shrimp tank... rainbows jump too much and uh... I'm pretty sure if I drop a swarm of cpds or tetras in there they will feast on my shrimp babies... maybe after my red tiger population has recovered. or I might add some otos and small corydoras maybe...)
I'm using tap water, with kh of roughly 4.5 and 8ish gH, I will try to take some measurements later tonight. 
Last time I checked the tank it had like 60ppm ca and my mg test is useless for freshwater... (I don't add ANY ca or mg when dosing the water column, I think I've talked about the bag of crushed coral that I used to build some height in the back right and... I want to take it out but I also don't want to redo the back right sigh, I should just get it over with.) But my column dosing is quite light like... roughly equivalent to thriveS(hrimp) but at even less than the lowest instructions with slightly more N. I *feed* the shrimp lightly, about 2 times a week, not counting crushing some snails from time to time that I just leave for them to eat. ... and then I do like some crackhead thing where I literally use single osmocote + pellets and stuff them under specific plants like I have some kind of idea what I'm doing, but it's very much a guessing game. There's only ever like maybe max 10ppm nitrate right after I water change (I don't know just how precise the API test is for this?)

So there's some staghorn on the hardscape a little bit, especially where it's hitting absurd par levels... I'm considering different mosses or things to try on some of them. Also clearly some staghorn on some of the buce that I've stuck up pretty high (and is therefore getting INTENSE par levels.) If I allow old leaves that are deteriorating to stay I think they develop staghorn (specifically in this tank) so I just plain don't let it happen as much as I am able.

When I do a water change if the staghorny wood sticks out of the water I spray it with h2o2, and treat some of the like 300 par buce with metricide (spot dosing) and dead last I may care about the little bit growing on the rocks... if it starts growing too much I may take the whole rock out and just spray it down with h2o2 just because I don't want it to spread to my plants. Growth on most everything is pretty fast so is it cheating to trim/pinch out the old growth before it starts turning crappy and replanting? There is a small amount of hair algae, really much less than I'm expecting but it's there to some degree, and I physically remove it as much as I can, and if feasible I'll even ditch the plant (or parts of it) that are attracting hair algae. The amount has been going down not up. I basically do not permit rotting food or plants to stay in the tank, I can't stress enough how much maintenance makes a difference, and the amount of filtration to livestock is perhaps absurd? Most of my other tanks, besides just small shrimp tanks, have way more livestock... this one is just like 30 neos 20ish red tigers and 7-8 caradinia babaulti. Which is basically nothing in 100+ gallons of water. I add some other small red tigers when I catch them out of their old tank, which is only still running because there's still baby red tigers hiding around in there... I had let some fish decimate their numbers at some point.

Pearling is pretty intense during the "day" but when you take pics with exposure way down and right after chopping things apart and replanting them it it sure doesn't look like the lights are as strong as they are. Like the pics of the left side of the tank all the bubbles have been bumped off by my bumbling around in there but it usually looks more like...









Oh and in other news, my ideal metering valve has stopped opening up an extra ~10 cc/min every time the co2 turns on so that's good. Not sure exactly what the issue was but I'm not complaining about not having to turn it back down everyday. I still check it constantly because it was not ideal heh but so far it hasn't budged in 4 days.

AHH and one more thing I am starting to suspect that specifically my hurricanex does not have a bootloader on it at all somehow, and they maybe only put the sketch on mine somehow. I would think that even if it didn't work I would be able to one time get a single bit back out of serial monitor rx/tx lanes from ~5 different attempted computers. I'm going to try one last thing to get it working but I won't be able to try it till sometime next week and I will be in vegas next weekend for a friends wedding. I've put entirely too much effort into modifying my hurricanex firmware to just give up now. If I can't communicate to the device at all with icsp also, then I will cry myself to sleep at night or something.


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## Greggz (May 19, 2008)

Well put.........I have found the more elbow grease you use the more leeway you have with everything else. 

Have you ever thought about upping dosing just a bit? Just wonder if older growth will be better and maybe take care of some of the algae? Just a thought.

But based on your success so far, maybe you don't want to mess around too much.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I have more than thought about it yes, and I've been ramping it up very slowly. However, the shrimp (besides the neos...) are more important to me than the plants being less than optimal. So, I'm erring on the side of putting in a lot of work, at least until they start reproducing consistently. Honestly if I didn't replant all the time, stems are breaking the surface of the water all the time, before algae starts taking hold. I can do several trims, leaving the original base to split, more than once before the original base becomes crap on almost all the stems. Though I toss the bases of the wallichi no matter what, I just like to see how it's doing... but I don't need or want more wallichi.

There's no algae on the la mini and I've never tossed the original bases I stuck in there, just replanted some cuttings in thicker, and I've never seen so much as a speck of algae on the ar mini and lilacina grown in this tank (though some lilacina leaves deteriorate and break away from the base where they're heavily shaded by rocks/wood/plants, those leaves also have no algae somehow.) That was definitely not the case when I moved the mini into the tank. I even almost killed it with h2o2 before moving it in, the old leaves had spot algae from neglect from a farm tank with way too much livestock that they came from. 

If I could cut this hydrolea zeylanica better it seems like it would never have algae either but the stem is kind of thick but weak, it's somewhat like a stick of styrofoam, if I push it directly into sand after it's cut the bottom of the stem gets damaged and melts a bit, this has sometimes resulted in a crap part of the stem that does attract algae. It floats easy as hell before it sprouts new roots, if I tie ~4 stems to a weight they will float the weight without needing any current to lift it (and they're all perfectly vertical always so that's too close together.) I've definitely caused some algae from damaging the stems when I can't get it to stay down. I'm still getting used to this stem, but when it's growing the whole stem is practically flawless. Sadly topping it only makes the original stem grow 1 new perfectly vertical stem so making more has been slow and sometimes I damage the stem piece too much and just have to toss it a few days later.

Some of the buce up high probably should just go somewhere other than inches under the lights, or I should put something right over them to block some of it maybe? Not like the wood is doing anything with that much light either. I have an awful lot of rhizome plants in here that would normally not be considered high light plants... some have developed algae for sure, especially the stuff sitting at over 200 par, and some of them are looking like they will look glorious with a few more new leaves.

I might pull the random hairgrass that's visible in some of the pics, and try it in a farm tank... it's something I can't remember the name of that I got from vin at a local apa auction, and I don't know maybe I'm damaging it? maybe I disturb it too much? but it randomly will have 1 deadass strand that collects algae and I can't quite put my finger on what's going on with that.

When I went home for lunch today a package from buceplant was on my doorstep that I ordered during their 4th of july sale, their website doesn't even show that it was shipped. Anyhow when I was planting some of it one of the high up buce pieces (where the rhizome was 6"+) is just missing, blown off its perch. I couldn't find it at all... I'm sure it will turn up at some ridiculous time.

I'm probably doing more work than I have to just as a precaution but I like messing around in there and it seems to be working. I need to take a weed whacker to the pinnatifada :/


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## Greggz (May 19, 2008)

You got to meet Vin in person.....now that is downright cool!

Well, if he is giving you any direction, I expect even greater things from you.

And maintenance and weed wacking and all the rest......well that's what nobody sees but means the most.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Sadly not much guidance, he just happened to be invited to give a talk on rotala a few months back. He was also the source of the staurogyne and the hydrolea...


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## Maryland Guppy (Dec 6, 2014)

@Wobblebonk we may have met at that GWAPA meeting.
I was the old fart, white beard, looking like Santa.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Yeah I think we sat close during his talk and your plants for the auction were very nice. I hardly spoke to anyone, and have hair like I haven't had a trim in years. Perhaps I'm going about this weed whacker thing all wrong.

Also I suppose I got plenty of guidance on rotalas but not much personalized advice...

Heh and ghazanfar bought my oversized bag of tornado... I was a little embarrassed of the quality of what I brought but there was definitely enough to get some good stems going...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So, actually I did get a "new" dslr, and by "new" I mean I visited my father and he's big into cameras. Apparently he's moved away from nikon to some crazy sony cameras and I was given his old D80 and some lenses. The macro lens was apparently top of the line in 1974 but uhhh even though they have almost the same mounting system it did not fit on the d80 something about autofocus mounting differences from old old cameras. I could actually use it on a film camera but I don't want to deal with all that. Also apparently my sd cards are all too big to use in the camera so... who even knows how well it works at this point, and I still don't really have a macro lens /they're not cheap.

I've seen all kinds of baby neos in the tank now, but too small for my phone to photograph anymore than a little tiny blue tinted smudge.

So I was trying to use the dslr and I had memory card problems so I don't have a before pic oops.
I removed all the crypt parva and moved some stuff in this temporary grow out corner, the parva had no hope of winning any carpeting battles so I moved it somewhere I have a much more established parva carpet thing going on just to grow that one faster...
Also replanted some of the river buttercup that was growing up the hill which I don't want it to do. Pretty hard to see that though.

















I've no idea what this semi onion looking thing is, or where I got it... just found it in one of my tanks one day heh. Also that hideous looking stem on the right side was lost in some other tank and I'm just trying to figure out what it is right now.









I trimmed the right side and moved some of the plants around to give the legendra meeboldii red tissue cultures more light, they probably won't stay there forever. Thinking of replacing the didiplis diandra with something that won't get so easily pushed around by the current of the water hitting the back / right side and flowing around towards the front. There's all kinds of things in the tank with reasonably similar leaves anyhow.









no comment... (no idea why I took this pic.)









Hydrolea zeylanica seems to be holding up the current across the back alright so I will just let it go and see how well it does emerging from the water, if it's okay I might put another spotlighty type light over it to try to flower the emersed growth.









Speaking of which this is maybe unattractive(I personally don't mind) but these came off the right side and if the emersed hydrolea is going okay back there I might stick them on the back under the same light and try to also flower these above the water (lobelia cardinalis.) I might just pull that thing that I'm now pretty sure is a bulbless banana plant. I just found it in another tank and wasn't sure, seems like a theme.









This is completely off on a tangent but let's make things as confusing as possible. I had a bucket of blyxa this weekend and I replanted the tank it came from, and then did this...








isn't that sponge filter sexy? :/ I just have some little rainbowfish in there right now.
anyhow, I really didn't even put a dent in this bucket heh.









And in more related (than that last thing) news, steve's leds is able to load my code and it does "work" (needs debugging badly) so that's encouraging. My tag-connect cable is supposed to arrive today... they are interested in the new features as well it seems.


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

> steve's leds is able to load my code and it does "work"


Yea they are a curious lot...
Still all this needs porting to a Pi..  or others..
https://reef-pi.github.io/
6 years watching Aduino stuff.. still not a fan.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Well I don't have one of those, but I may be getting conscripted to work on the firmware for some upcoming product...

I still want to get my firmware for the hurricanex working properly anyhow.


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

Wobblebonk said:


> I still want to get my firmware for the hurricanex working properly anyhow.



understood.. me too..


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I've finally flashed the firmware, working through bugs now. yay? I had to wire a different pin to vcc and that's kinda janky but it's working! Not sure if I've got the program space to be able to make evening and morning time periods work with cloud and lightning channels yet. Gonna be cutting it close.

So I've done some debugging, I'm spent for the night trying stuff with a rotary control heh but the stuff I want is working (I think... there's some kind of problem with my stepping through evening settings in sim mode currently but I'm not sure if that carries over into actual day -> evening transition right now.)

But morning / evening settings / ramp timers and channel groups and such all working... and most importantly it updates channel 8-16 properly all the time now!


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Closing in on the finish line...





Just added support for night period starting in the am... maybe not enough space to have everything shifted into the am with morning in the last time period of the day but then the user is just being a dummy about using the time periods. MAYBE I will set it up to allow evening to be set in the am too (evening/night apply over the transition between days...) but I'll see how much space I have after fixing some display errors that I need to correct.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Some of the mayaca tips are turning back green as I up the dosing slightly... and some are still white as crap, this plant isn't very important to me though.









rotalas and stuff...

















Apparently I've got 2 different hair grasses in here, one that throws out runners liket his...








and one that spits out nodes like this and is much taller... (there's one right in the center that got uprooted)








The one with nodes always has random blades just die on me in here and that's really annoying. I am not entirely sure how much I want either in here though for the long term... I may move them to shrimp tanks. (other less impressive shrimp tanks :/)

the new growth on this homalomena is whiter than the nana snow white... my new leaves are going to look nothing like the original melting leaves huh?
















maybe this leaveless rhizome piece is ideal (I should probably trim some of those roots though) since I never have to watch the original leaves melt on me :/ that little one up front is the same kind of homalomena as the other 2 (insignis)









Some of these buces are really coloring up... it will still be some time till they have more growth from the tank than from before 

















I need to turn down free stuff, this microsword is growing in here pretty well but I don't think I want that to stay either... and the ugliest mystery stem ever









Banana plant trying to convince me to let it stay... I'll have to wait and see how much the newest leaves color up or if this is the extent of its powers in here :/









Pink growout corner... I might have to find a permanent home for this ar in the tank it seems to do really well in here... the new flamingo growth is not bad too, the original leaves from when I got them are a little beat up though 









Not sure what I was taking a picture of here heh but that's a row of pangolino 









And I guess I was falling over? ....









Also... I can't actually get a picture of these guys with my phone just look like little smudges :/ but there's actually quite a number of new shrimp all over the place.





Soon I will make my shrimp freak out as I start messing with debugging the hurricanex and start flashing the crap out of the lights...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Sitting in the airport 😕 but this is what I'm leaving, we'll see how ridiculous it is when I return. With my luck the co2 tank will be empty tonight.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So... I suppose I just barely made it back in time.









So this is basically what happened when I was gone. Some hair algae developed, and the staghorn has largely disappeared completely while I was gone... sorry for the blurriness.
























for some reason the worst hair algae was right here in the microsword.... not sure how that happened









I've no idea what this little thing with the 1 red leaf is...








and no idea what happened to some of these staurogyne leaves...









otherwise most everything seems to be doing okay...
























other than the continued melting of original homalomena leaves? though the new growth seems to be coming along fine.









I probably won't really get to maintenance until tomorrow, I'm pooped. Though I did win enough playing poker to fund quite a lot of this stuff, hopefully other people schedule their bachelor parties during the height of the wsop so I can take money from other poor souls to fund my hobbies...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So apparently my hair (off my head...) pearls... and a small amount of actual hair algae but I haven't tossed the original busted stem yet 









I added 10 of these guys... maybe I should do more, 10 pygmy corydoras in an 80g is basically nothing. Anyone have any other "shrimp safe" suggestions? I may add some otos... maybe.

















New homalomena insignis leaves coming in okay, the other homalomena also comes in super pale and then puts on a ton of color... and maybe I should have cleaned the glass before taking the picture instead of after. Those little things are legandra meeboldi red from tissue culture coming along slowly :/









Can anyone id this tiny thing? It's a stem plant... grows super slow... that's all I know  I'm spreading it around like this to propagate more. I like it but when I say it grows slow I really mean it... unbelievably slow.









I was trying to take a picture of some of the ammania having stunted while I was gone but the stunting ones are kinda out of focus. Oh well. At least I didn't butcher the exposure this time (using a "new" camera)


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Slowly dosing more mg and macros :/


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## Greggz (May 19, 2008)

Very, very nice.

Keeps getting better and better.

Well done!


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

so you think you could put tinier moving things in that big tank???


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So you're saying I should add daphnia and rotifers?! I was thinking about some chili rasboras or something but they might be too big! heh


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So I went ahead and added 10 more... + 3 otos from another tank of mine, they sorta school together...
I didn't quarantine them because they were gonna be practically the only fish in here, (& I didn't quarantine the 2nd time either because they came from the same place,) so we'll have to see how big of a mistake that turns out to be...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Not exactly related to this tank but... I picked up this rock from the LFS, I have something like 150lbs of petrified wood but none of the pieces are as big as this. If those poker players only knew what I was spending their money on... $4/lb rocks...









In more tank related rock news... I'm thinking I should remove this piece of petrified wood, it's fairly large and not really ever gonna be visible with the plants I have in the tank so I thought I could make more room for stems...









Can anyone ID this thing in front of the rock? I surely never bought it, just found it as a little sprout in one of my tanks and moved it over to high tech land to see what's up ;/









Or I'm still looking for an id on these midget stems too...

























Stunting ludwigia white? I dunked(well left it for 30 seconds anyhow) this one in a diluted metricide solution to see how it stood up to it last time I replanted it..









cardamine lyrata vietnam...









pantanal doing okay so far... I think???









oldenlandia salzmannnii... I've never seen pics where the leaves are doing what mine are doing (the newest leaves are like a deep red/brown) that's probably not good huh? The one up front that's out of focus has it happening at the tips of 3 branches (probably it branching is stunting too? who knows)









the world's saddest clutch of red tiger eggs... at least she's got some but 3 eggs?! REALLY?!









I also cleaned out the LFS of their pygmy cory stock so I guess this tank has 24 pygmy corydoras 3 otos and ... an untold number of shrimp. There's some berried poo colored(lol zebra striped my ass... though some of the babies have striping) babaultis in here too but they're more timid than the red tigers, and way more timid than the blue diamonds.

Oh and my latest version of the hurricanex firmware is working well so far... just gotta do a coral acclimation thingymajigger feature and then I'm totally out of ideas. Assuming I don't find anymore bugs :/


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## burr740 (Feb 19, 2014)

The needle leaf first question plant is Isoetes lacustris. It probably hitchhiked or germinated from some of my stuff. 

It'll just come up randomly out of nowhere. Ive had it sprout in tanks its never been in before. Which is strange because it doesnt really spread or grow fast. You have to let it get big then divide it.

Pantanal is fine. Oldenlndia is not happy. Its probably hungry for something like Fe or a macro(s). Its not a delicate plant but its very quick to complain, also quick to get right again. Good indicator plant.

Hyptis looks nice!


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

burr740 said:


> The needle leaf first question plant is Isoetes lacustris. It probably hitchhiked or germinated from some of my stuff.
> 
> It'll just come up randomly out of nowhere. Ive had it sprout in tanks its never been in before. Which is strange because it doesnt really spread or grow fast. You have to let it get big then divide it.
> 
> ...


I'll try bumping my macros up a bit more first, I've been doing really lean dosing trying to get my red tigers to bone but I have definitely been slowly running into some deficiency issues with that on some of the plants.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Before I did anything... though I really didn't do very much tonight.

















I think glut on this was maybe a bad idea but now I know :/ though it is a small sample size still maybe I'll wait till it's actually got algae to try again...









Mayaca not so white anymore...








random stuff...
















































I wonder if I can get this to flower...








buce seems to always be flowering recently








I might replace the mini with these things (+ the ones up front?) or like rearrange a little bit up front so I can get at the mini easier to keep it small...








this is just here temporarily as I consider using it instead of didiplis...









and... one of the 2 that were doing bad is sort of green again at the very top...









tiny erio h'ra that I probably moved too soon from seed but its cup was getting way too crowded anyhow just seeing what happens.









random stuff...

















and then I removed some of the pinattifida and replanted most of the mermaid weed leaving me here... I also added 1 red solo cup of substrate to where the mermaid weed was in the back to make planting with the high flow right there a little easier.

















and then the water is a bit cloudy here from having just pulled/replanted the mermaid weed...





erm I think tomorrow I will go after the ammania and staurogyne maybe? and maybe move more of the hydrolea up front to the back...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So apparently cardamine lyrata vietnam also turns reddish/brownish under intense light. I just have it mostly languishing in a back corner right now.









heh variegated anubias nana tc from petco... I was looking for a cheap 40b stand but they were out of stock.

















Trimmed most of the tops of the staurogyne, tossed most of the bottoms of the ammania and replanted the ludwigia red thicker still...

















I still have the staurogyne not sure what to do with them, they're a little beat up though I think from being too close to some buce I was spot treating with glut when I was still fighting off some staghorn.

This babaulti actually has stripes...









Corys? I had to fish one out of the overflow(it was fine) usually just have blue diamonds dumb enough to get sucked back there :/

















Also got this other mystery stem tc from petco :/ pic came out turrible though.









and what am I supposed to do with this val leopard...








at least 2 plants have leaves like 4' long, I think these ones are too big for the 120 even not sure what to do with them :/









Also did a little replanting of the hydrolea but no pics of that oops. moved a few more to the back... and a tossed a crappy bottom piece or 2.


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## The Dude1 (Jun 17, 2016)

As I was reading this I wondered "why am I not following this more closely". Then I realized.

1. I am envious of you engineering ability both hardware and software. 

2. Your plant growth and colors are incredible. Excellent supporting evidence that given proper construction and programming LED's are more than capable of matching T5HO fixtures.
Your bucephelandra is so lush and vibrant! How old are they? Is there any way you could give more specs on your build? LED wattage, power supply, and are you using only 500mh drivers?? I know there are tons of threads on these, but it has not completely clicked for me. I'm slowly building 2 48" fixtures which will eventually light my 8' 265 gallon. There is so much discussion about COB leds, 1w, 3w, 5w, 3 up Tristars, etc. Now I see these Bridgelux and Parmax boards https://www.stevesleds.com/Full-Spectrum-Array-FSA-80-up-LED-200W_p_368.html
It's very daunting... I'm sitting here waiting for noon so I can accurately set the Finnex CC time. It only allows 3 hour increments. BUT... I did hook up and figure out a TC421... so i got that going for me.. which is nice

Anyway... and plans for a schooling or mid level fish.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I'm using a single 350W 48v psu that I am running at around 56v. This is overkill for my current ldds, they are both running off the same PSU right now, using 700ma drivers for the 6500k channels, and 500ma for all the others. This is just over 80W each like this, though if I bump it up to 1200(6500k)/1000(mixed whites)/700(cyan/lime/blue)/700(reds/violet) it will go up significantly in wattage as the voltages as well as currents of each string goes up. I am pretty sure it will be in the 140W per light range like this, I was thinking of doing this and using just these lights on a 120 but they might just stay here. I may switch to a 200W 48v psu though (to power both @ around 80w each). I think I am going to bump the 6500k channel up (it's super wide lenses/not great penetration but good spread) to 1000 or 1200ma regardless.

I'm using uhh "3W" leds, not 3up tristars only because it was more expensive and I couldn't get any with the wide angle horticulture leds (I was going more for spread than penetration on a lot of this... trying to emulate t5/flourescents to some extent). Almost all of the leds I'm using are luxeon rebel or sunplus with the exception of semiled hyper violets and some ledgroupbuy "exotic" brand cyans. I did not diy this to save money really, though I suppose I sort of saved money vs like 2 atlantik v4s or something crazy like that. I wanted adjustable with the ability to bump greens and reds to my own tastes...

You could do a lot with the parmax if you want all roughly 120 degree lenses and to save yourself some work for a little more money, don't forget it still needs pretty good thermal management(heatsink/fans). Though I think there's some limitations they have like some diodes have to go in certain positions maybe?

I think leds are plenty capable of matching t5ho, it's just the price is almost all up front so if you were to compare vs years of bulbs and ballasts and electricity comparisons it is a lot more even or maybe a possible winner but it takes years to see that, many just can't drop a small fortune on lights up front. Also you can just swap out bulbs in a 4 bulb fixture or whatever and tune to your liking, to have the options in an led to match any set of bulbs well is prohibitively expensive for most people, so if you have a good understanding of the look you want with less maybe overall tunability options you could save some money maybe but that's not exactly easy. I'm kind of a crazy person I guess... sbreeflights are probably good enough I wanted more ability to play with colors.

Most of the buces are from low tech tanks, and have only grown a few leaves within this tank so far.

Most commercial units for leds are made to be cheap really, not to be good :/ freshwater plant people don't want to spend money on lights like reef/hort people.

Also, swarms of fish are awesome.


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## Lingwendil (Nov 16, 2012)

Nice setup! Color looks great all around!

I love the little cory school, looks really neat.

I really like the Luxeon Sunplus series, the spread is actually a really nice feature, and in my opinion a nice feature for getting nice even coverage. The lessened overall intensity is practically a non-issue, considering how powerful they are to begin with. I have the parts to build another for one of my nano tanks, just can't decide on the heatsink/enclosure I want to use. I'm leaning towards the MakersLED slim since I wont be running enough heat to need a fan anyway...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I also like the sunplus but there's a very limited selection of colors with them only like the main ones (royal blue/white/deep red/far red / and like lime?)...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Not much to report except I am trying something a little different in here...









Less of a jet across the back now, but I upped the flow overall from the pump. I'll need to see if/how much I need to adjust co2.

and I guess I should probably replant these lower soon.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So I hacked away at the bacopa...









as to what the heck is up with the blob of moss I'm just trying to get it to attach to the wood and then I'll toss most of it... hoping to leave something like the moss seen here









Oldendia salzmannii seems all better for the moment









one big happy family?








What is so great about that sand anyhow heh

I think the downoi tc is coming along okay?









piptospatha ridleyi









I'm leaning towards just removing the val, I don't think I have any ability to stop it from getting huge...


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

Lingwendil said:


> I really like the Luxeon Sunplus series, the spread is actually a really nice feature, and in my opinion a nice feature for getting nice even coverage. The lessened overall intensity is practically a non-issue, considering how powerful they are to begin with...



It's all your fault..
Decided to pick up a batch of 6500k sunplus from Steves today.


40b just had another cheap diode (almost out of the "bridgelux" ones) die and it's been almost 3 years since I tweaked the config adding the eekbay rebels.. 





Time for an upgrade.. !!


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Well I like the sunpluses so far anyhow.

I tore out the val... something like 30 nodes of leopard val. This uprooted basically that whole back corner had to replant the mermaid weed and ludwigia. Also hah did you know there was p. gayi back there? You can see some of it floating...








Val got relegated to beamswork land for the moment, though I didn't get a picture of it actually planted in there.









Homalomena insignis is coming along...









I cut apart some of the more scraggly looking downoi tissue culture pieces and planted them individually :/









I hacked back a little bit of the river buttercup that was spreading where I didn't want it to and I put in more erio h'ra since the first one hasn't melted (the cup I was sprouting them in is over crowded as I said before...) but no real pics of this.

Anyhow having replanted the back basically leaves me here.










































Saw some berried red tigers with more than 3 eggs so that's good but no pic...

Also testing new hurricanex firmware, so far so good... almost ready. Honestly testing with a rotary knob is a pita.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I took out the anubias nana petite because... maybe it had a purpose once, but then I moved in 354180358158 buces and there's still micro, snow white, variegated nana petite, and pangolino.








I cut it up and will put it in my puffer tank as that's fairly hard water. But I won't get to that till tomorrow probably, more on that later.









replanted the cardamine lyrata back on top of itself in that back corner...









trimmed and planted the ar that was sticking out the water lower


















Not the best pic but variegated nana petite and homalomena sekadau south....









heh tiny erios, pantanals, buces and uh an awful looking piece of downoi because it's under an ar leaf.









Buces and nana snow white








this was supposed to be more of that but uh mermaid weed?









Buce goliath... this one is doing well, those are about 3.5" long

















and then there's this one  there's leaves coming off the bottom too but more like .5" leaves.









Pulled more river buttercup runners because they go everywhere...

So the tubing coming from the drain is really rigid and for my own convenience I have the sump kind of pushed towards the front (40b is about 18" deep vs 24 for the 80.) Anyhow when I was staring at the tank (I wasn't touching anthing) the tubing had just been pulling against the rim all the time through some acrylic filter sock holders and I heard a fairly loud crack. The 40b cracked and is very slowly dripping now. Luckily petco is running a dollar per gallon thing (well 50% off for that size). So in a little bit I'm going to drain it and replace it with another 40b... and since I can't wait for the silicone to cure I'm just gonna hold the baffles in place with rocks or something this time. It will have to be less convenient for maintenance, but more directly under the drain this time.


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## ChrisX (May 28, 2017)

Are these pics with the Orphek or your diy lights?


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

Looks like both on the tank.. 
An Orphek sandwich..


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So upon further review I think actually the baffles are just slightly wider than the internal dimensions of the 40b, and the weight of the water straightened this one out perfectly :/









Now the planted chamber is much wider but I've just been lazy with it so far. 










And since the baffles are barely secured except by the water pushing them outwards sometimes they let water through the sides and I need to add more substrate to the planted section because the pump chamber got shrunken by several inches from the water... I've rigged up something to keep it about 6" wide and hopefully distribute the weight a bit. Or I'm just gonna crack this one in a few months too who knows :/

Jeff is right it's both...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So it was kind of cloudy for a day after replacing the sump, I put some polyfill in the first chamber and it's pretty much clear now.

One of the chunks of nana snow white has floated off to... I have no idea I'm sure it will turn up in a trim at some point.









I think the first erio has gotten just slightly larger? slightly out of focus though, and for some reason there was something delicious on it to this oto, you can see 2 more on the left... 3 months from now they might be of a reasonable size. So far I think I've put 6 in here. 








I actually split up and replanted most of the tiny mystery stem but for whatever reason I suck at getting an in focus picture of it.

The tips of this pantanal curled doh


















Moved some more of the hydrolea to the back... not sure why I never take pics of this but I'm thinning out the bit up front. This isn't really a pic of the hydrolea but maybe I should propagate more of this bacopa in here.









Homalomena humilis new leaves are reddish now... the old leaves darken up over time but both of their newest leaves have a mild orange color to them that none of the previous leaves developed with.









Rotalas seemed to be doing well in here so I'm trying some others :/ though there's only a transitioning tc and 1 stem of some others right now and I don't really think I want to have a big chunk of wallichi.









the evening lights are kinda very red.... soeverything is slightly more red than is natural


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Had to use my dark glasses, super Technicolor here  George Lucas would be proud.
I like your collectoritis, no little stem goes unused.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

OVT said:


> Had to use my dark glasses, super Technicolor here  George Lucas would be proud.
> I like your collectoritis, no little stem goes unused.


Heh I can't help myself... bare sand?! pfft. I'll never be a proper aquascaper 

It should be noted that just the red channels on the diy lights (just 1/2 on when measuring) was







@ about 12" vs










and I actually have far reds in there which the seneye doesn't pick up like at all... also highly attenuated by water and who knows if it's at all useful, but probably still a decent amount in there @12"

At the point the last pics were taken it was like red 20% cyan 10% whites around 5% or thereabouts.


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Im afraid to ask what it looks with RGB at 100%. Does the house catches fire when you bump whites to 75?
The spectrum looks pretty green to me, but the tank is looking sharp. I got to get new lights for our Christmas tree, you tank gives it inferiority complex.

Out of substrate? I see you got a second story going. I gotta use that approach - multi-story condos for plants.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

OVT said:


> Im afraid to ask what it looks with RGB at 100%. Does the house catches fire when you bump whites to 75?
> The spectrum looks pretty green to me, but the tank is looking sharp. I got to get new lights for our Christmas tree, you tank gives it inferiority complex.
> 
> Out of substrate? I see you got a second story going. I gotta use that approach - multi-story condos for plants.


These are old but this is just the red channel








and no whites (there's amber and lime though)









just whites...









seneye is not good at color temp imo... and their spectral graph is a rough approximation to put it mildly, it doesn't see the hyper violets or below well and doesn't see far reds like at all afaict. It's also pretty much incapable of seeing the cyan hole in most whites in the graph etc. But a proper spectrometer is quite expensive...


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## Mnitzh (Jul 27, 2018)

I was looking at those sunplus leds but I wasn't sure if they were quite right for the tank or not 
I'm waiting to fire things up and see how it looks before deciding what to add.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I think I am going to try to use a par38 bulb or something to try to flower these...









Uh ar purple, pangolino and things... + withering homalomena leaf.









Tossed some old ludwigia bottom portions... and the snow white turned up.









random stuff









































Trimmed the mayaca and replanted some of the mini rotala tops around the overflow (Still making more... I started with 1 stem)
Ranuculus stem holder? I just want to see if they will sprout roots like that heh.


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## Maryland Guppy (Dec 6, 2014)

@Wobblebonk how much do you have to stay up on the ranunculus?

I get runners like mad, could be several feet in a day?
Some get a 4" diameter and almost a foot tall.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Maryland Guppy said:


> @Wobblebonk how much do you have to stay up on the ranunculus?
> 
> I get runners like mad, could be several feet in a day?
> Some get a 4" diameter and almost a foot tall.


I remove runners constantly heh trying to see how they do in a low tech tank right now. I also pluck some of the taller leaves out at the base. 

I had basically the same experience as you with star grass, it was straight cancer in my high tech tanks just wound up everywhere... After a trim I'd miss a small stem or 2 and it would float off somewhere and spread like crazy.


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## Maryland Guppy (Dec 6, 2014)

Star grass is not a fun one, agreed!

d.diandra is another one, seeds the tank for you whether you want it or not.
But it's a lot nicer plant to look at, beautiful colored tops with little orange seed pods at the nodes.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

the lighting is kind of ridiculous right now and I need to replant a stem or two in this pic but...








I am going to replace the bulbs that's just what came with the light or I had laying around other bulbs are in the mail...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So... it turns out not only is the erio h'ra not dying its growth far outpaced the emersed grown stuff... so I put that whole cup in here

































the one's that are like double the size are the ones I put in the tank first. Actually there's quite a bit more behind the helferi that's also doing okay so far it seems.

Soon I will need to make some decisions about what comes out but... it may take some time and who knows if the other erios will grow as well (probably not), but I'm thinking of moving the ranunculus to a tank where it can compete with just some swords for tender shrimp ministrations :/ and doing an erio carpet with 4 different erios and ... i got a free bag of mixed erio seeds so who knows I guess I'll start those from seed now. Nothing else really has that kind of leaf shape and it's a nice green but with how much nonsense I have going on up front it's a pain to manage. I figure I can easily reestablish it quickly if I want to when there's less of a constant growout thing going on up at the front here.

Though I also sigh went and got this nonsense and could maybe just get this up and running to grow the erios out in... no sump this time :/








I think I'd rather manage the ranuculus in this and the erios in the bigger tank... though honestly so far it seems to be doing just fine low tech, maybe given time it will be quite tall in there. 

I want to replace the ar mini with the variegated but where the mini is might be too shaded for the variegated to do well there, if I remove the moss blobs and the remaining hydrolea up front it should be a lot less shaded.

And the whole left side is still something of a continuing experiment... needs a major trim but maybe tomorrow gotta get to some other tanks.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

before...









random stuff... 
















not sure if I want to let this hairgrass carpet or not... will take some time anyhow. heh that's petco macrandra on the right.








moved most of the hydrolea to the back, tossed some bottoms from pieces that had been previously topped, but really the stems just gotta get used to the flow before they can stick up straight is what I'm finding... when I first move them back they all just get blown against the hardscape/other stems.








one day this dark achilles and goliath will have large leaves again...  the other goliath has put out another 4 - 5" leaf (it's the plant on the right side of the last picture)








stuff?

































gotta get to this tomorrow maybe....


















pretty sure now the weirdness going on with the staurogyne was from trying to spot dose glut on the buces near it when I still had staghorn in here, it is no longer happening on the new growth either up top or in the sump, but I didn't get a good pic of this.

I suppose I took out a bunch of pinnatifada also... I haven't set up this 33 I will probably wait to remove the ranuculus till I set that tank up, though I'm sure I could just float them in another tank for a while. Actually off camera to the left of this tank is a bucket full of ludwigias... from another tank heh. Was going to keep some going in the sump.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So I trimmed some of the mini rotala in front of the overflow and planted more. Trimmed the rotalla on the back right and replanted some of the ar on the right, trimmed the didiplis and no pics but :O trying some nonsense that... probably won't work long term but...






angel was getting mauled by his brothers and sisters who paired up (i grew them out as babies...) so I want to see if he and these buggers will ignore each other or what. So far so good... may have helped that I threw an army of snails at them to keep them occupied but. I'll have to watch this tank closely but I have others ready in case any start getting too frisky.

Also... some of the trimmings from the 80gal, I fully expect some of it to not be able to handle low techery very well... the swords were rescued from the horrors of bristlenose plecos (it took me entirely too long to figure out wtf was decimating the leaves)

low tech ranuculus leaves seem to be much smaller to me, these ones have been here probably a week now?


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

uhoh, temporary holding place for the variegated ar... whole front's gonna look totally different, and hopefully less random for my own sanity.
























uhhh I ran out of patience trying to photograph these things. they looked much nicer with a nice light on the tank, but they were not having any of me photographing them in the light.








this was a pretty awful job of spreading these seeds, but they're so tiny. So I guess when I finish redoing the front a lot of these are going in the 80g. They all look pretty much the same at this size.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Uh so this took a while, still a work in progress, gonna do another block of erio babies and then reorganize the downoi up front. Still a small growout area by the hyptis.


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## burr740 (Feb 19, 2014)

Such a diverse collection of species in one tank and they all look happy, That is no small feat!!

I mean you have buces and anubias thriving with no algae, pink flamingos staying pink, macranda types fat and healthy, ludwigia white and tornado growing nice, variegated ARs..somewhat flat, and everything else - in sand substrate.

Im not sure most will appreciate how tough that is to pull off. You are definitely doing something right!!


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Clearly the secret is to put a different light on the tank for each individual species of plant, and then have completely different sets of lights on/intensities/cameras&settings in every set of pictures... 

I wouldn't say the buce is completely algae free, there's a little hair algae on the roots at times and some amount of hair algae in the tank in general... mostly on the smaller pinnatifida runners for some reason, but I'm still reluctant to completely remove the pinnatifada. I definitely had a stage in the tank where there was a good amount of staghorn on the buces, but I think I have eliminated it, or at least it's not visible anywhere anymore.

I wish that I could impart some wisdom or something but I don't have any, just that there's a tremendous amount of trimming/replanting/general maintenance involved in this mess. Also I am pretty sure my ppm co2 is at least in the 40s, when there was a drop checker it was solid yellow during the "on" period, ph drop is 1.3-1.4, kh in the 4.1-4.4 range. I've never seen the fish gasping or anything like that, there's a ton of surface agitation and the sump drain also creates a tremendous surface area. This tank is probably a little easier than my other tanks, I chose this size to be able to reach everything easily, it's not very deep. The fish load/invert load is also fairly low, so there's less poop to worry about in general. But basically as far as I'm concerned high co2, high maintenance covers up a lot of my inadequacies. 

I intend to slowly bump up the light and ferts further. Some of the plants want more ferts as it is (I think?).


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## Greggz (May 19, 2008)

Wobblebonk said:


> But basically as far as I'm concerned high co2, high maintenance covers up a lot of my inadequacies.
> 
> I intend to slowly bump up the light and ferts further. Some of the plants want more ferts as it is (I think?).


Great words of wisdom there.

It's well worth it to take the time to get CO2 right (higher than most provide), and really keep up on maintenance. And that includes water changes, keeping filters clean, loads of regular trimming, removing debris, substrate vacs, etc. 

An uber clean tank getting rich CO2 has much more leeway with ferts and lighting. At least that has been my experience.

Great job and really enjoying following your tank.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So continuing with replanting the front...
















tiny erios...









It's hard to see but I found one remaining piece of regular anubias nana, (actually it was relatively large...) I removed it and placed some of the nana 'golden' in its place... and stuck another piece on the wood elsewhere...








more reorganizing from here over to come...








stunted amania top in the middle 

















there's one particularly crappy ludwigia red stem in the back, i tossed it after taking this pic :/


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So uh I did some trimming and such... now you can actually see the stunted ammania heh









This one was before I got to trimming the right side









This is after... I removed the bottom portions of several of the ar purple stems, trimmed the rotalas along the back and trimmed the cardamine lyrata.









apparently when my phone is overheating it starts photographing scan lines... but dark achilles sort of making a comeback...









random stuff?


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

heh this is what I did at lunch. not sure how easy it is to see vs the previous pics but i trimmed the gratiola viscidula and planted it slightly thicker... and the same with the bacopa, originally that rock was there to weigh down the wood but I kind of like it there anyhow.

















probably not that easy to see but the 3 larger crypt flamingos have put out runners... heh and my 3rd hyptis stem on the left. 








pretty sure that tiny plant with red leaves must be echinodorus aflame and it's not gonna have room to grow out there but... it can stay for now. also the bottoms of all the macrandra looks like that because it was a tissue culture. definitely some algae coming off this pantanal after it's been topped a couple times but I'm not ready to replant the current stems coming off it yet.









I need to make a decision on what to do with the lobelia cardinalis growing emersed at the front but I've been holding off finding it a permanent home because I'm also using the pots to hold some little bits of variegated anubias tissue culture, theyre too small to put in the tank without gluing down or something they would just get lost.


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## The Dude1 (Jun 17, 2016)

Just incredible. When I'm pitching my wife the idea of buying more bucephelandra I show her your tank. She loves all the colors. I dont mention that alot of that color comes from the difficult stem plants you keep of which I have no interest in attempting again LOL.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Uhh compared to even 4 days ago I think the erio has grown quite a bit... See a few posts back. This is waaaay faster than it was doing emersed. No apparent melt either. 









No sign of flowers yet :/









That one rgb bulb makes for a crazy secret garden but probably gonna replace it with another soraa bulb... 

























Usually the effect is not so intense but the other lights are dimmed and these are not.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Buce?


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I'm pretty sure phishless would not be a fan of hyptis, those roots were something else...

anyhow I stopped the pump for a sec, i think this downoi tissue culture is gonna make it this time, though I'm pretty sure last time it was just doa. There's some smaller legandra meeboldi red coming along just above the downoi.








More legandra meeboldi... these all came from the same tissue culture, this one is clearly the furthest along. Also a red buce leaf / erios and such.









with the pump back on it's very hard to take pictures through the top :/


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## nbgolds (Aug 21, 2018)

Amazing tank, and beautiful pictures. I briefly looked through the thread, and didn't see this...what did you pay for the two Orphek OR 120's? Just curious about what that kind of lighting would cost. Once again, amazing tank.
Nate


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I bought them before they were up on their website for $150 each (they had some sale or something goin on on facebook at this time, I don't use facebook but just happened to get the sale price.)
I think they are 160 each now, and I replaced the power supplies with a dimmable meanwell. I wanted more customization (in dimming) than I could get from the bars but didn't want to spend the 800+ for their atlantik v4 && wifi thing (I'd have wound up with 2 of them I'm sure so 1600 heh), but the diy lights are anywhere from 1.5x to 2.5x an orphek bar in wattage (each) depending on the ldds I use. However early on the orpheks were not dimmed (besides for ramping) when it was just them, and now everything is somewhat dimmed, so my light output is probably somewhere in the 3-4 undimmed orphek bars range.

My lighting is... way over what most people would recommend for "high" light.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)




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## Immortal1 (Feb 18, 2015)

Nice group of pics wobblebonk. Still a bit memorized by the nearly white plant at the bottom of the first pic (have noticed it in many of your pics).


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Immortal1 said:


> Nice group of pics wobblebonk. Still a bit memorized by the nearly white plant at the bottom of the first pic (have noticed it in many of your pics).


That's ludwigia white... I'm trying to propagate more but it grows a lot slower for me than I would like it to. It's probably a little too crowded for it in this tank, I've cranked the lights even higher now to see if that helps.


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

A plant w/ seemingly little chlorophyll growing slow.. go figure.. 
https://www.reddit.com/r/PlantedTank/comments/8u44b3/my_ludwigia_sp_white_showing_of_its_colors/


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I mean I expect it to have a harder time but I'm just scared if I turn the lights up enough for it, the light will be too high to be easily managable for the other plants unless I give it more space / not let things shade it. I've been experimenting a bit with turning the lights up higher heh though my laptop video card is totally dead  so I'm not sure what the par is at right now.








heh this is another of that guy's ludwigia white stems none of mine have done this... but apparently this is possible too. I've seen a random green streak on 1 or 2 leaves at most.

I think nurseries grow this emersed sometimes where it's mostly green and just has white leaf tips/edges, if you can find that it's much cheaper than the 5$ a stem or whatever people are asking.


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## jeffkrol (Jun 5, 2013)

some plants just don't play well w/ others.. 
https://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/plantfinder/details.php?id=69

FYI for fun.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I am willing to accept that I can't grow some things together or even at all... 
Are you saying my pantanal is growing like crap?! That may be the case :/


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## Greggz (May 19, 2008)

Wobblebonk said:


> I am willing to accept that I can't grow some things together or even at all...
> Are you saying my pantanal is growing like crap?! That may be the case :/


I think your Pantanal looks pretty good. It's a plant that likes a LOT of everything (light/macros/micros/CO2). The thing is those levels might not be the best for other plants.

That's the tricky thing about pleasing a lot of plants. What ones loves others may not. 

Your tank is interesting, as you are growing a nice wide variety of plants. In my opinion, keeping things like Buce & Anubias with fast growing stems (like Pantanal) is a difficult thing to do. Walking a bit of a tightrope there.

So you must be doing an awful lot right, because I know it's not easy keeping everyone in that jungle happy.

Keep up the good work and keep the updates coming.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Is the branching good or bad? The tops don't seem stunted...


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## Immortal1 (Feb 18, 2015)

I really hate that first pic....
I get multiple shades of green and brown... you get multiple shades of the entire color palet!
Ok, seriously, great looking pics! Gotta love the pearling in the last pic.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Immortal1 said:


> I really hate that first pic....
> I get multiple shades of green and brown... you get multiple shades of the entire color palet!
> Ok, seriously, great looking pics! Gotta love the pearling in the last pic.


Some of that is probably the lighting... though I certainly have quite a variety of plants if you count different anubias variants there's like 15 different plants in that first pic.

and I knocked off the pearling on the right side replanting and such. Also... it's quite possible I'm in the 200 par at the substrate range right now during the "day" period. The stuff in that first pic is mostly raised up on wood and that corner is just higher so all of that is almost certainly over 200 par. I can't tell you why I only get a little hair algae though, I think the low fish load helps? It's probably not actually 200 par at the substrate but I think it easily would be if everywhere wasn't shaded by plants.

This getting the hydrolea to flower might be a lost cause though  it's now sticking up like 15-18" over the water heh and sometimes falling over. I might try topping them and seeing what happens but hrm maybe I should just keep it trimmed to below the water line or to a max of a few inches out of the water. It's blocking a lot of light to the LA mini now. Though I've also been thinking of replacing the la mini with either macandra tornado or kimberly or some such (after I fix the lighting situation/give up on the hydrolea flowering out of the tank)

I may try giving it some o+ before I completely abandon the attempt.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

So anyhow I got real busy at work, then was helping a friend whose father died get their life in order, then had a serious medical issue of my own in nov/dec... will possibly start updating this again soonish. Almost nothing actually died off but I certainly had some issues with algae / stunting pantanal / ludwigia white etc when I had an extended deficiency of maintenance/ferts/water changes. Getting things back into order...

I did get the hydrolea to make purple flowers, but it was just ugly ass stem/roots below the waterline so I just went ahead and moved it to other tanks, it probably would make for a better aquatic plant in a taller tank than this one.


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## Immortal1 (Feb 18, 2015)

Not much fun when life gets in the way. Hoping the rest of 2019 is a little less hectic.


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## Greggz (May 19, 2008)

Good to see you post again.

And I understand. Last year I had a real scare, and everything else gets put on hold.

Always enjoyed your tank very much, and looking forward to seeing more updates.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Well this is roughly what it's looking like








Apparently my eriocaulon all tried to flower so that's interesting... not really sure what's gonna happen there. Removed some of the stuff in front of the overflow (ludwigia super red / rotala butterfly looking thing) and theres a bunch of plants there that are just trimmed way down right now/hard to see here. Macrandra oddly was fine but that's also trimmed relatively short right now and not visible in the pic. The moss has come in a little too well on the wood but probably to be expected. Definitely need to do a full replanting of the downoi it's a complete mess. I'm certain I can regrow the white/pantanal and the tornado is basically back on track already. I've pretty much got the algae taken care of for the most part, just gotta get some new growth going on some things.

and this is for Greggz though obviously not this tank...








Melanotaenia Picta... 14-15 months? They would look a lot cooler not under the beamswork yellow pee™ lighting through tons of pure neglect plant cover but if I put a good light on them they're stupidly hard to photograph.


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## Greggz (May 19, 2008)

Wobblebonk said:


> and this is for Greggz though obviously not this tank...
> 
> Melanotaenia Picta... 14-15 months? They would look a lot cooler not under the beamswork yellow pee™ lighting through tons of pure neglect plant cover but if I put a good light on them they're stupidly hard to photograph.


Very nice. Have they been displaying to each other? They put on one of the best shows!


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Greggz said:


> Very nice. Have they been displaying to each other? They put on one of the best shows!


Occasionally, but usually the lights turn on while I'm at work so it's hard for me to catch it. They're still a little small and it took a stupid number of tries for me to even get this picture... they are not fans of me holding a phone or camera up to the tank and they move so fast... I have too many tanks maybe. Thinking of making a proper fish room in the basement in stead of tanks spread all over the place heh but that will be quite the endeavor.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Durr, still working on it but 








reduced this mess to... should have turned off the pump maybe
















I think the algae looking bits are actually downoi roots but haven't done a water change just yet.









some macrandra, ar purple, you can see where the mermaid weed went to the thin needly leaves while I was not doing anything... hyptis... badly stunted ammania...









I thought this thing developed staghorn algae for a bit but now I think maybe it put out roots everywhere? little bit of hair algae.

















uprooted some meng meng(maybe?) messing with the downoi and some of the buce definitely had some mg issues while I was mia... 









I should probably attach this anubias to something and trim the roots instead of using a particularly long root to "tie" it there. Probably should trim the moss a bit. Kind of weird clearly a different moss on the right side... there's some fissidens in the front corner of the previous fts not sure where I want to put that exactly.









echinodorus aflame and some kind of piptospatha && the stunted ammania whee

need to do some water changes and get rid of some of the debris but taking a little break for now... working on several tanks :/ slowly getting back on track


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I took out 2 big rocks can you tell? :/


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I've learned alchemy... or it's a different tank, whichever.










static cling window frosting? I moved it while I was clamping the light and I've only got one bulb?!









...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

The damn thing didn't hold water. One of the bottom seams was no good, so I've taken it apart and scraped as much silicone off as I can... gonna attack it with some acetone to get the rest of the leftover silicone and see if it holds water when I silicone it back together. Not sure if this really requires pics it's 5 panes of glass right now...


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## Jamo33 (Feb 18, 2014)

Wobblebonk said:


> The damn thing didn't hold water. One of the bottom seams was no good, so I've taken it apart and scraped as much silicone off as I can... gonna attack it with some acetone to get the rest of the leftover silicone and see if it holds water when I silicone it back together. Not sure if this really requires pics it's 5 panes of glass right now...


Maybe the glass alone doesn't, but document your methods and write down how you reassemble. Yes it has been done before and written before, but someone will come and see you did this and have the courage to do it themselves. I try to write everything down, you never know who it may benefit. 
Ps. Love the tank


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I mean I wouldn't call them "my methods" but it's basically scrape the [censored][censored][censored][censored] out of the silicone with a razor blade, new blades for the flat surfaces and then... the edges get ready to destroy some blades, can use sandpaper or scouring pads or something to help with the edges but be careful not to scratch the flat surfaces. Apply acetone to leftover silicone to soften it and repeat... a bunch.
It's not strictly necessary but I apply tape to the inside surfaces as one does to make clean caulk lines. Depending on if the sides overlap or the bottom extends to the edges apply silicone bead to where the glass will be connected and put the sides up (probably good to use a level surface) then the front and back. You don't have to work that fast but a skin starts forming after like 20 minutes or so and makes it difficult to make nice clean caulk lines. So anyhow after the 4 sides are up depending on how the panels fit together I either lightly clamp the front and back or apply tape to the outside corners, run my finger along the inside caulk to make a good contact with both inside surfaces and then remove the tape. If the bottom piece is inside the sides uhh it can get stuck to the table or whatever so I don't know what others do for this but I just put it on a cheap piece of plywood or something and move it a bit as it's drying so it doesn't stick. They generally only do this type on smaller tanks.

I just use ge silicone 1 for smallish tanks like this, pretty much any 100% silicone should be okay if you let it fully cure. If you're really worried about it you can avoid the ones with anti mold stuff (ge silicone 1 doesn't have that stuff) but I think if you let it cureproperly it's largely overblown that it is likely to do anything in the tank. After it's fully dry I take a razor to the outside seams and cut them flat (outside and the bottom of the tank) and clean up the panes one more time with acetone/razors for any spaces I may have got silicone on by accident, trying to avoid the inside silicone that's actually part of the seams.

So anyhow I've put it back together and it holds water now, though I've only filled it up half way at this point, but before the bottom front seam was bad so any amount of water just started dripping out immediately.
I'm waiting on some black egg crate to hold up some rocks because I'm too lazy to paint it, but will try to get this tank going again soon.

Back in 80g land for now here's a flowering buce goliath :/ the old leaves got a little beat up from my absence but the new leaves look good... there's no fixing old leaves. Before it opened the flower was like 2-2.5" tall :/. As to the curled leaf they start as little rolled up cones like there's one to the left of the flower... and slowly unfurl.








and uhh orange eyed red tiger?









I'll do an update later tonight maybe, laptop is broke so it's a little bit of a pita.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Slacking :/ definitely need some replanting in this corner... rotalas grow too damn fast. Might replace all of that with macrandra.









New laptop on Friday unless UPS screws something up :/
screwing around with some strip leds... but no par data until I get my laptop. I haven't moved the lower 2 small tanks in yet 

































The wifi app for tc421 is kinda awful. Though I'm not really doing much with these tanks, basically amounts to puffer food production.

and this thing holds water... though clearly I've spent a lot of time scaping and planting things and didn't just drop some crap in there and go to sleep...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Kind of just grabbed some random plants I had... It is sl aqua soil and bdbs but it got all mixed up because I started putting some in before it was rebuilt and I didn't add anymore bdbs the 2nd time so that's on the bottom :/ supposed to be for shrimp but there's none in there right now.


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## aidanw (Mar 9, 2018)

What shrimp are you planning on adding into the tank? Looks so nice


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

To be honest I'm not entirely decided yet, probably not the tigers or neos it's a bit too soft water. Probably something most people find boring like wild type bees.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Durrr so wrong tanks still, I'll update for the 80g when I have more time gotta go back to work shortly... but I ordered silly clips from petco to hold up a lid, that I was going to add some clearish static cling frosting to until I take the lights apart to be able to dim them properly or replace with some other cobs. Par is pretty damn high turns out for this pic the light wasn't really pointed down at it and it's more like 130 par









Turns out petco.com can tell you something is shipped and never ship it so that's cool.

Water is remineralized to roughly .6 kh / 6 gh, it's kinda got a lot of extra stuff in there because the osmocote isn't on the bottom due to the uhhh rebuilding but just waiting for that to even out through water changes before I add any shrimp. Thinking of adding stardust caradina :/

















Also got this thing which came with 10 lbs of the aqueon soil. Apparently you're supposed to rinse it before use... or the dust is too fine for the filter it comes with so I just stuffed the outlet with filter floss to clear it up.

















I'm not sure but it seems like the soil is heavier than sl aqua, contro soil, fluval stratum, or amazonia... but it also looks the least natural might be the "hardest" as well, they baked the crap out of it, and as far as I'm able to tell is the only one that clouded the water like that or had rinsing it in the instructions. Random eriocaulon and juncus repens tc in there currently and the rocks might be mainly to hold the spiderwood down will probably reorganize them at some point. Similar water to the previous tank (as far as what I'm putting in the tank but with no osmocote+)

Probably gonna put the wild type bees in this thing eventually.

and this was under 3 led strips in a 10g... probably a little high as the strips were not as spread out for the measurement as they usually are, but it's definitely enough light for snail farms :/ as if any of my tanks aren't snail farms besides that last one and some other small shrimp tanks. I spoiled my puffers such that they will only accept live food :/


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Durr so slacking as usual and the lights aren't on yet today for the 80g still but... these are some low tech tanks & minor update of my last uhhh rebuilt tank

Chili rasboras && pintos/blue bolts... it's all one set of shrimp they just throw out blue bolts sometimes. I don't know if this makes them mosuras or what all those goofy names are to be quite honest, but traded with some lady who said they were some kinda pinto... definitely some kinda tibee or taitibee anyhow.










OEBT... 









Stardust caradina (they're all babies in here :/)

























and still no livestock but some trimming and moved over some tiny swords from low tech land to see if they stay that small in high tech land :/ their current size is from ~8 months of low tech growth from tissue culture. I think it's finally not so hot from the osmocote not being on the bottom anymore :/ maybe I can just remove the balls that are visible at this point I never added ferts until now because all the osmocote wound up in the upper half of the substrate from having to rebuild the tank.








going to change the lights out on this one for one of these...
















which are...








and


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Dur screwing around with those leds... wiring is pretty ridiculous right now as I haven't built something to hold the ldds and such at this point was just checking everything was working...








the wood is not sinking yet :/

























Tank is an aqueon 30g that comes with a stand and they don't even list on their website yet but it's 17.75"x17.75"x22.75".


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

hah I need to replant this oldenlandia badly, and most of the eriocaulon didn't really make it but threw off little side shoots that look okay and I've obviously neglected cleaning up this corner...








this stuff on the left has come uprooted a bit, I should have held it down when I was pulling runners of other plants out of it :/ 
























I replaced the rotala rotundifolia with macrandra...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I think I will remove the grandulosa... it looks just like the AR purple except just slightly less purple and grows faster.

































bacopa flower... I think it started growing when it was sticking out of the water though and then just kept going when I replanted it.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Moved the grandulosa into the sump for now ;/ and didn't get a pic of it at this point but replanted the ar purple/hyptis... thinking of removing the mermaid weed, not sure what I would replace it with yet... Trying a few stems to see how things grow in there...
























Durr pintos / blue bolts :/








I think maybe these swords do stay small :/


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Mermaid weed is replaced with tornado for now and only ar purple up top, you had to look all extra close to tell the difference from the grandulosa anyhow.

















Pollysperma went all wavy giant green leaves in this other tank that got hit with green water but the new growth looking okay


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)




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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

Working on this foolishness... was thinking of entering it in aga stuff after some rescapes but I don't think it's biotopey enough like probably shouldn't have anubias that dense in blackwater but whatever I still like it for myself :/
any ideas on how I can cover up the white filter without draining it completely and painting it? 









Thinking of removing the rightmost piece of wood or trying to reposition it so it covers more of the filter in the center instead of just making the right side look much smaller...


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

I know I'm always posting the wrong tanks but uhhh I don't want to start 10 journals so :/ the 80g is fine still~

anyhow still messing around with this tank, it's got a bunch of catfish right now and they are timid af if I go in to take a pic :/ uhhh no that anubias is not supposed to be like that on the left. Still waiting a bit before I find out if my puffers get too nippy or just completely ignore them like everything else that isn't a bitesized invertebrate.









and this 30g that will be a shrimp tank is coming along, going to break down the 3 10g quarantine tanks that you can see just in the lower left of the pic to use their sponge filters and also steal the driftwood out of them... (I want to move them anyhow, won't need them anytime real soon someone finally picked up the fish I was holding for them for months.) Probably going to use the malaysian driftwood and some rocks... and I'm not 100% sure yet if I will use inert substrate or not (depends on the shrimp I decide to keep in here... but I'm leaning towards trying to split my OERT line off into here at the moment, otherwise probably some kinda bee)








Tank is probably not going to be placed here when I set it up just there was hardscape and stuff all around. Still waiting on this chinese light I was gonna try out over this tank, will probably be a few weeks till I get the light but I could work out something temporary like just using the light over these 3 10gs for a bit.


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## Wobblebonk (Feb 13, 2018)

... just cycling :/ temporary lighting.


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