# 10 gal planted RCS tank



## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

*I added a more recent FTS at the bottom of this post. Every time I update this thread I will include the most recent FTS here so you can see the progress. Not that anyone is looking or anything...* :biggrin:

So when it gets cold I start to maintain my fish tanks. This inevitably leads to some long drawn out project that I usually give up on come spring time. Hopefully that is not the case with this tank. Thanks to this forum and others I have learned a lot that will help maintain my tanks and keep the inhabitants happy, healthy and growing. That will certainly help with the motivation to keep up on the maintenance.

I have a 65 gal planted tank that I am moving from my old house to my new house. I decided to set up a 10 gal tank to transfer the fish. Well, one thing led to another and now it is another planted tank with CO2 and a bunch of red cherry shrimp. Can't put fish in a shrimp tank DOH!

This is my DIY special. I made the canopy out of 1/2" MDF and used some regular keyless light sockets that you would use for a bare basement bulb. The reflector is made from a small section of 3" round duct that I pried open to make the proper radius. The reflector is attached to the removeable lid so I can take it out and work in the tank with the lights on. The three holes in the back are for heat ventilation. For lights I used two 23 watt daylight compact fluorescents.

The strange thing in the dead center of the tank attached to the back wall with the airstone under it is a parakeet feeder with the bottom removed. The airstone is hooked up to my 2 liter bottle full of water, sugar and yeast for my DIY CO2 setup. The airstone lets the CO2 fill the parakeet feeder to help maximize the contact time of the CO2 and water, thus helping it dissolve better. One of my buddies has this same setup in his 55 gal and it works great so I decided to give it a try. You can get a 2 pack of parakeet feeders at Petsmart for $3. Good thing they come in a 2 pack since I broke the first one trying to drill a hole in it for my suction cup, so I used JB Weld to hold the suction cup to the current one. If you look closely you can see the JB Weld spot lol.

About half of these plants will be transferred to my 65 gal tank, that is why some of them are still in the plastic pots. I plan to use the HC to create a nice green ground cover for the entire front middle foreground. The Riccia will be transferred to the other tank, along with the large mass of Java Moss to the left and the dwarf hairgrass. The plants that are staying are the short crypt up front (the crinkly crypt in the back will be going to the larger tank), the Rotala Indica, some of the Java Fern and the HC of course. I have some crypt Wendtii in the other tank that will go in here and maybe some ludwigia as well. I haven't settled on the scape at all thus far, other than the carpet of HC and the middle background using the Rotala to hide all the equipment.

The inhabitants right now are 20 red cherry shrimp (RCS) of varying stages of maturity. These guys breed like rabbits and should have the tank full within a few months. Unfortunately you cannot keep any fish in the same tank since the fish will eat them. Only the adults are large enough to not make a meal. Eventually I plan to move the adults to the big tank and keep this 10 gal as a breeding tank.

The large rocks are petrified wood and the substrate is Onyx sand.

The pics were taken with the lights on in the tank and the room lights off. No flash was used. If I knew how to do the camera settings I suppose I could make them look a little better, but that is pretty much how it looks when you are standing in the room. Those two little lights are pretty bright over that small tank. Once everything gets rolling, if I need more light all I have to do is run to Home Depot and grab the next larger bulb. 

I would like to add a special thanks to sweetaquaticplants.com for all their help with the plants and shrimp.










































































*Here is a FTS from 2-10-09:*


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## ZooTycoonMaster (Jan 2, 2008)

Looks like a great start!roud:

Do you plan on _planting_ the plants in the pots?


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

ZooTycoonMaster said:


> Looks like a great start!roud:
> 
> Do you plan on _planting_ the plants in the pots?


Hahaha yeah the dwarf hairgrass and riccia are going in my 65 when I get it moved, then I will be planting the HC where the riccia rock is currently sitting. I just started it up on Sunday and everything is already growing like crazy. This is the first time I have added plants and CO2 on day one of a new tank and I am blown away by how well everything is doing.

Lots of stuff will get moved around when I get the 65 gal in my new house, but I'll take weekly photos to show how it all progresses.


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## EdTheEdge (Jan 25, 2007)

Very nice DIY project!!!! Please keep the thread updated... It'll be interesting to see this progress.

Thanks for sharing!


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

The Riccia finally started growing. Now I am going to transfer it to a small piece of slate and wait a little while before I split it. By the way it is going now, it looks like I will be able to split it in about a week or two.

The JB Weld failed at exactly the 1 week mark. I was moving the parakeet feeder around yesterday when I did my water change and the suction cup came right off. I went to HD and read every single label of every glue/epoxy available and settled on Loctite waterproof adhesive. It was not recommended for potable water, so I used it to stick the suction cup to the parakeet feeder, then waited 24 hours for it to cure. Once it cured I went over it with aquarium safe silicon to make sure it is sealed off from the water. Once that cures I will toss it back in and cross my fingers. 

I learned something about prefilters as well. I learned that I need one lol. While doing the water change and filter cleaning I happened to look down into the bottom of my Aquaclear 50 and I noticed about 12 of my shrimp hanging out. All of them were alive and seemed perfectly content. I dumped them back in and they all look happy. I thought they were hiding hahaha. Needless to say I ordered up a prefilter. The Top Fin 20 has really small slits in the intake pipe and is total weaksauce so I don't think it will be sucking any of the little guys in. If it does I'll just ditch it, I can't remember quite why I put it on there in the first place. Probably just because it was laying around.

I'll put up some new pics on Thursday just to keep it on a weekly update schedule.


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

Time for my first weekly update...

I added 4 Ottos over the weekend and I tossed in 20 more RCS last night. I wanted RCS from at least 2 different sources so I wouldn't have a bunch of inbred shrimp. Hopefully they get a little bigger so you can tell that I have 40 shrimp in there.

I fixed the parakeet feeder and put it back in the tank last night. Everything looks like it will work a little better this time.

I took the riccia off the original rock and noticed that it was super dense so I cut it in half and tied it to 2 different pieces of slate. I am going to let it grow for another week, then I should be able to tie it down again with it covering the entire piece of slate. This stuff grows really fast.

I moved the Riccia over to the side so I could plant my HC. It was really starting to grow and I didn't want to stunt it in those pots. I removed the rockwool and realized that it was going to float so the two pieces of petrified wood are currently holding it in place until it roots into the substrate.

The hairgrass is going nuts, but it will be moved to the other tank. The way things are going right now it looks like it will make its way out of the pot and into this tank whether I want it to or not. Oh well, worse things could happen.

The crypts are doing really well, lots of new growth from both of them. The crinkly guys won't be staying in this tank, they are just part timers. The Rotala is going nuts as well. All the tops have turned a nice pink color and the leaves are becoming much larger. I will probably split the big clump in half with the next water change this weekend and start filling in the area right in front of the parakeet feeder.

I ordered up all my dry ferts this week and look forward to getting on the EI regimen as soon as they come in. I can't wait to get the 65 over to this house so I can get it back in order and get all the extra stuff out of this 10g.

Here are a bunch of new pics...




























































































This one is my favorite, it really shows how massive the canopy looks compared to the tank. Reminds me of the monolith from 2001 A Space Oddysey lol.


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## Karackle (Dec 11, 2007)

Really nice tank! If this DIY 10g looks this nice, I can't wait to see the 65! 

Oh man, every time I see that someone made a nice DIY hood or stand or something, it makes me totally bummed that I a) don't have tools like saws and routers and b) don't own my own house where i'd have someplace to put those tools! I LOVE working with wood, I just don't have the space or tools to do real projects. One day. I wonder if my professors in the college scene shop (i used to do set construction) would let me do a project using their tools if I brought my own wood......hmm...

anyway, your hood is really cool! I'd love to know more about how you put it together, I could always have Home Depot do the cuts for me if I wanted to do a small project like that I suppose!  

Also, as for RCS and fish, it is actually pretty doable. You may lose some babies, yes, but they drop so many babies at once that you'd still end up with good breeding. I started out with 5 juvenile RCS in my 30g tank that has 3 zebra danios, 5 male endlers, 2 male guppies, 15 ember tetras, 15 b. brigttae and a sparkling gourami. All fo the shrimp (i think) grew to adulthood, I've definitely seen 2 males and 2 females at once, so I assume #5 made it. Anyway, with only 2 females and a load of fish (granted some are small) I still have a bunch of little RCS roaming around the tank. So if you really wanted a few small fish in there (other than otos) I'd say you could do it. 

I found 6 or so happy healthy baby RCS in my filter yesterday too just hanging out....silly shrimp! :hihi:


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

Thanks for the compliments. I do plan to put some small fish in there in the future after I have enough fully grown RCS. I'm not necessarily into the breeding aspect of the shrimp, but I think it looks pretty cool when a tank is crawling with them. I will probably go with white cloud minnows at some point in time.

As far as the hood goes, I used 1/2" MDF since that is about the only thing home depot carries that isn't warped big time. I used a 1/2" rabbet bit on my router to cut a groove in the vertical ends of the front and rear faces, then I just used wood glue and some finishing nails to hold it together. I routed the whole top all around so the top of the canopy just sits in the groove. Makes it pretty easy to pull out. MDF is horrible for painting, so that was the biggest challenge.

As far as not having the tools or space, I am certain your college would let you use their equipment as long as you clean up your mess and use their tools responsibly. I used to use our machine shop at school all the time when I was in college. There were also times that I made simple designs that would allow me to have home depot or a lumber yard make all the cuts, then I could assemble them at home. My use of the router was just to make things quick and easy.

The 65g is going in my living room so the stand and canopy need to look perfect. I am taking my time on that one, but hope to have it up and running sometime in January. The frame is done, I just need to add trim, doors and build the canopy. I might even go crazy and run water lines from the basement up into the walls for automatic water changes.


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## Karackle (Dec 11, 2007)

Hahaha if you know how to do it, you might as well go nuts and plumb the tank for automatic water changes i'd say!  Sounds like a good project though! 

Thanks for the how-to on the canopy, it occurs to me my buddy and his brother both ahve a lot of tools that I bet they'd let me use as well, the only reason I'm not sure my college would let me do it is that I graduated a few years ago :tongue: I still live in the area though and I worked in the shop 10+ hours a week (did it as a work-study) so I know the profs who run the shop really well, so they might not mind  

Otherwise, simple designs I can put together if HD cuts the pieces for me would work too. I know my friend has a router, and those always make projects easier :tongue:


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

I got all my stuff for EI dosing from aquariumfertilizers.com on Fri, so yesterday when I did my water change I went ahead and made up my stock solutions. I dosed macros yesterday and today I plan to dose my micros and iron.

This may end up being a tank with no hardscape. I really like my petrified wood (no pun intended lol) and would like to show it off in an Iwagumi style tank. I may grab a 20 long at some point and move all the petrified wood in there and do dwarf hairgrass and riccia or HC.


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

Time for my weekly update. I have been dosing EI all week and so far so good. I had one shrimp carrying eggs last week and 3 carrying them this week. I don't know how long it takes them to hatch and get big enough to see, but I have seen a couple really tiny guys hanging out in the moss the past couple days. I put an enormous pre-filter on my Aquaclear so they won't get sucked up anymore, it's amazing how many shrimp are in the tank now that half of them aren't hanging out in the filter hahaha.

I went to one of the many LFS last week and found a Hagen bubble ladder for $5 so I snatched it up. The only thing better than DIY stuff is cheap fish store stuff lol. Between all the glues I tried I spent more money on that parakeet feeder, but the bubble ladder dramatically increases the bubble contact time.

The Riccia is going like wildfire still. I'm going to let it get a little bigger then tie it down to the slate again so it covers the entire piece of slate. My original intentions were for no riccia in this tank, but it looks so bright and healthy that I may tie a piece to a small rock and keep it in this tank.

The HC is still mad at me, but it is slowly growing and not melting so I guess that's a good sign. Once it has some good root growth I can move things around a little and hopefully watch it take off.

I cut and replanted the tops of the rotala indica again and I am starting to get a nice dense little area of it. I haven't decided how I will shape it just yet, but so far I really like the look of the pink tips. I may look for some rotala walichii to mix in there for a little texture and color change.

Hopefully I can go pick up some trim for my 65g stand and start working on that this week. I am itching to visit the plant dude again, but the 10g is a little too cramped until I can move things out of here. The 65g is really going to be fun since I will be starting from a clean slate.

Just a few pics this week. That bubble ladder won't look so bad if I ever let the rotala grow a little. :icon_smil


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## demosthenes (Aug 23, 2008)

i'm really liking this tank so far. I like how there are only a few different kinds of plants, but every one looks great... haha i have like a million species but none of them are exactly thriving.. :icon_roll
I agree about the wallichii. a little splash of red would add a lot to the tank. I think you should move the petrified wood (would that be pw instead of dw?) in front of the HC. Its such a small plant, i think it should be the very front of the tank if its in there.

also, i like how the hairgrass still isnt planted! lol, its growing like crazy though, great job! and the hood looks sick, i used to have something sorta like that except mine sucked :hihi:


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

demosthenes said:


> i'm really liking this tank so far. I like how there are only a few different kinds of plants, but every one looks great... haha i have like a million species but none of them are exactly thriving.. :icon_roll
> I agree about the wallichii. a little splash of red would add a lot to the tank. I think you should move the petrified wood (would that be pw instead of dw?) in front of the HC. Its such a small plant, i think it should be the very front of the tank if its in there.
> 
> also, i like how the hairgrass still isnt planted! lol, its growing like crazy though, great job! and the hood looks sick, i used to have something sorta like that except mine sucked :hihi:


That little piece of petrified wood is just holding the HC in place until it gets rooted a little better. Once it is rooted I am going to take out that rock and hopefully let the HC cover the entire foreground. The hairgrass pot is just chilling in there until I get my other tank setup. Of course it has been in there so long that it has completely grown out of the pot and into the substrate so it looks like I'll have a little hairgrass in here too hahaha.

The CO2 isn't going quite as fast as I would like it to be so I am going to mix up a new batch with a little more yeast. I'll probably do a little air separator to make sure I'm not clogging up the check valve. I put in some fish yesterday. I added 5 white cloud minnows. I intend to add 5 more in a week or two and see how they like it in there. The current 5 look like they are having a good time, but they definitely need more friends to start schooling.

I buried one patch of Riccia just to see what it looks like and I like it a lot. Maybe I'll cut a patch off and tie it to a smaller rock to keep in this tank permanently. Looks like the right side will have a nice little Riccia and dwarf hairgrass patch when I get things in their final spot.


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## Craigthor (Sep 9, 2007)

The HC will spread better if you seperate it out to small groupings of 2-5 stems and plant them that way. 

Craig


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

Craigthor said:


> The HC will spread better if you seperate it out to small groupings of 2-5 stems and plant them that way.
> 
> Craig


Thanks Craig, I'll give that a shot. It was rooted in rockwool so it doesn't have much of a root structure right now. It's pretty hard to keep it in one spot. The smaller pieces might be easier to hold down.


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## Chrisinator (Jun 5, 2008)

This tank looks amazingly clean!


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## Phoenix-cry (Dec 25, 2008)

I likes your shirmps!


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## mizu-chan (May 13, 2008)

I like this tank. It really does look super clean. The Riccia looks so nice and healthy.
That hair grass is going crazy.


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

I didn't know what to think about the Riccia when I bought it. You can tell from the pics that it was kinda yellow and not dense at all. I had no idea it would take off so fast and get so bright green. Now I love it, but it looks to be kind of maintenance intensive in a small tank. I guess I could give it regular haircuts. If the HC doesn't want to take hold I may just do Riccia for the foreground and try to keep it trimmed.

I did separate the HC and spread it out a little better. The shrimp and the current like to pick it up so I am constantly trying to get it settled. It is becoming a PITA, hopefully it will root soon and start to grow.

The tank stays pretty clean without any work. I haven't scraped for algae yet, but since the EI dosing the glass looks like it needs a minor scrape. I do get some hair algae, but I tend to remove that every day or every other day so it never really gets out of hand.

Thanks for all the compliments and suggestions.


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## dirkgent001 (Nov 20, 2007)

This is very inspiring for my 10g tank I'm just starting up! I also had problems getting HC to establish in my 2.5g nano a few years back. any little thing seems to unsettle it and slowly they sorta floated off and it never worked out. This time i'm gonna try some glosso as I hear its super easy. 

I curious as how the hair grass spreads? underground runners? or do you literally have to divide the clumps constantly?


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## Karackle (Dec 11, 2007)

Tank is looking very cool! I'd love to see more recent pics if you have them!  

Dirkgent - hair grass spreads via runners so you don't have to divide the clumps constantly. That's just a good way to get it started so that you have more 'clumps' to start new sets of runners so it fills in faster.


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## Hilde (May 19, 2008)

coolnick said:


> The strange thing in the dead center of the tank attached to the back wall with the airstone under it is a parakeet feeder with the bottom removed. The airstone lets the CO2 fill the parakeet feeder to help maximize the contact time of the CO2 and water, thus helping it dissolve better.


Looks similar to a bell diffuser. I might try it. Will use glue it instead of drill a hole since I don't have a drill.


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

I didn't have much luck with any glues and I tried quite a few of them. Eventually I found the bubble ladder for $5 so I went that route.

I'll have to take some updated pics. I switched to wine yeast thinking it would allow me to only add sugar and keep the CO2 going for longer periods of time, but it sucked and barely bubbled at all. So I got a massive hair algae outbreak. Then I thought it would be a good idea to stop dosing for a week to help out with the algae. Yeah so that made it about 10x worse. So I added another 2 liter of yeast/sugar, got some Amanos and started dosing again. The amanos ate all the hairgrass in 2 days and the dosing kept it from coming back. I finally ditched the wine yeast yesterday and went back to fast rise bread yeast and had my bubbler going crazy.

Just before the hair algae outbreak I hacked the Rotala big time to get it to bush out. Needless to say it hasn't grown at all since and looks like crap. Now that the CO2 is back in action hopefully it grows back quickly.

I got a 20L and started getting stuff ready for it so I am once again housing a ton of plants in the 10g waiting for the 20. I had to remove my huge rock and literally crammed a ton of new plants in there. I also crammed a ton of fish in there. I have 20 fish, 2 amanos and a bazillion RCS in there right now. Twice-weekly 50% water changes and my new friend. :icon_redf

I'll try to take some new pics tonight and post them up. I am going to leave the 10g with the RCS and maybe a few white clouds and keep it as my quarantine tank. The 20L will be another planted tank with maybe some kribs and some neons. I already have the neons, so now I just need the kribs. Once that tank is up and running I'll probably try to get some of those sweet nigerian red kribs from pedro at invertz factory.

Keep an eye out for my soon to come 20L thread lol.


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## Pinto (Jan 23, 2009)

Wow, your tank looks amazing and sleek.


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

Thanks Pinto, now we'll see if you still use the word sleek after you see these new pics lol.

This first set is from today before my water change and trim. As you can see, I just crammed all the new plants in there willy nilly like. I even left the poor red wendtii in the pot.

Oh yeah my pic skills don't exist. 



















If you want to fill some space in a hurry pick up some riccia. Remember those tiny little clumps I started with? This is after hacking it in half about 2 weeks ago and giving a ton of it away. I am going to trade the huge clump in the center to my plant dude this weekend, then split the smaller clump. It will be back to this size in about a week.









Here is my red myrio, sunset hygro and red wendtii before the trim. The sunset was that pale lime green from top to bottom on Sat, in only a couple days the tops are starting to color up. I am going to hack it a little this weekend to get it to bush out a little more. If anyone has anything cool to trade let me know. 









Again a FTS before the trim, you can see how hardcore I cut back the rotala indica a few weeks ago. I was bummed that it didn't come back at all, but now that the CO2 is back on and popping I expect it come on like a freight train.









And after the trim. I moved the tops of the myrio over by the sponge on my filter inlet to help hide it a little better. I cut back the java moss big time for a nice little RAOK that I am going to post here in a second. I have all that java fern crammed in the left side for now until I get another piece of driftwood to tie it too. Kinda looks like crap, but oh well the fish love it. I also removed all the emersed leaves from the wendtii and got all the rockwool off the roots. It now has a permanent home.




































And just to show the DIY CO2 for all the people that I direct to my thread to look at all my cheapskate solutions hahaha.


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## ZooTycoonMaster (Jan 2, 2008)

Wow your tank looks awesome!!! Especially the Crypt and Ricciaroud:


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

Yeah so guess what grows really really fast? Riccia and sunset hygro. I have 4 stems of hydgro and a nice chunk of riccia for sale if anyone is interested. I am going to put them in the SnS, but figured I would let my faithful follwers know first. I actually just want to trade for cool stuff. :biggrin:

Here are some cool pics:



























This is an overhead shot after the hydro cut but before the riccia cut. I didn't even take a dent out of the riccia so it still looks the same.









And here are pics of the goods up for grabs, both are on a 5gal lid for reference. This is pretty much an open offer, if you need either of these just PM me since I trim every week or every other week.









The clump of riccia on the right is spoken for, the two others are bagged up in one bag and available.


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## Hungry Wendigo (Oct 3, 2008)

I'm setting up a 10 gallon planted soon, and I'll probably be using clip on lights with standard bulbs. Your tank is gorgeous; is it still operating with two of the 23W flourescents from Home Depot? The output of the "green bulbs" is very confusing to me, because I can't figure out whether I should be looking at the bulbs that use 23W or put out 23W...


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

Hungry Wendigo said:


> I'm setting up a 10 gallon planted soon, and I'll probably be using clip on lights with standard bulbs. Your tank is gorgeous; is it still operating with two of the 23W flourescents from Home Depot? The output of the "green bulbs" is very confusing to me, because I can't figure out whether I should be looking at the bulbs that use 23W or put out 23W...


Yeah it is still running just like it was in the first post. You want to look at how many watts they use. Let me know how they work for you. I am about to build a hood for my 20L with 3 26W bulbs.


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## Hungry Wendigo (Oct 3, 2008)

Ah alright, thanks so much for your help. I'm going to try to grow a blyxa scape in my 10 gallon and I'll be using a similar setup. I'm not sure if I can get away with not using CO2, but your DIY system seems to be working well.


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

Hungry Wendigo said:


> Ah alright, thanks so much for your help. I'm going to try to grow a blyxa scape in my 10 gallon and I'll be using a similar setup. I'm not sure if I can get away with not using CO2, but your DIY system seems to be working well.


Yeah the DIY is so easy and makes a tremendous difference on a 10g, I would just do it for the algae fighting benefits.


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## imdanny (Feb 23, 2009)

is the ladder working good? im stuck between picking the ladder and the glass diffuser. right now i have an airstone =\ lol


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

imdanny said:


> is the ladder working good? im stuck between picking the ladder and the glass diffuser. right now i have an airstone =\ lol


The ladder works just fine. I picked it up for $5 so the price was right. I don't think a ladder would work on anything larger than a 10g though. I also didn't know if a glass diffuser would work with a DIY setup, but I have seen lots of people using them. I will be using a glass diffuser or a powerhead driven reactor on my 20L. I use a glass diffuser with compressed CO2 on my 65g.


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## imdanny (Feb 23, 2009)

i have an internal filter, if i stick the airtube with the co2 up the intake, do you think that would work?


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## coolnick (Oct 28, 2006)

imdanny said:


> i have an internal filter, if i stick the airtube with the co2 up the intake, do you think that would work?


Yes, quite a few people use that method.


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## imdanny (Feb 23, 2009)

oh, i thought it'd burn out the motor over time. im gonna give it a try now =D


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