The Aquarium is now fully running again, it has been a lot of work, it is not just to remake the aquarium it self, it also includes cleaning the gravel pump and more.
Here are some pictures of the start up, the last is today.
Well it has been some time since last post again, this time i will blame it on the aquarium which has been leaking and i have been a bit tied up with that.
I was on a quick trip to Ireland for work purpose, when i arrived there my wife called me and sounded totally devastated “I have had a though time since you left home, the aquarium is leaking, the neighbors has been here and helped me to lower the water level and now the leak is ok”
Well i could not do to much from Ireland but when i came home i had to deal with it. I have been cleaning the glass and frames for a week now.
The fish and plants is moved to the bathtub, I hope the plants will survive.
Today i have glued i together again and i will finish it up on Sunday.
Now when i have a stable CO2 level and found out that it probably was the snails who used the carbonate by taking up calcium carbonate i begun wondering if i also could have a problem with missing Ca, I have had problems with deformed and stunning growth for a long while and maybe it could be due to missing / instable Ca level, I will put in 20ppm Ca between water changes for a couple of weeks and se what happens.
Otherwise the growth has been better since i raised the kh-level and got a stable CO2 level.
It seems like my KH boost is working ok, the Co2 level is ok during the week and the bubbles are extensive during the week as well.
DefDac has an idea about my Malaysian snails using calcium carbonate for their shells which also would lower the KH level, i don’t know how that works but it sounds like a possible thing, any comments?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate
“It is a common substance found as rock in all parts of the world, and is the main component of shells of marine organisms and snails.”
I have been adjusting the KH level to find an OK level for my aquarium and have now found that it works quite well if i raise the level by 3 degrees, the change in percent is not that large when i raise the level and the CO2 level is more constant as i use a pH controller.
I still wonder where the carbonates goes, last week it went from 2.5 to 4, any ideas?
I will post some pictures later this week.
Well it did not help at all to clean out the gooey brown stuff, the KH value went down anyway.
New idea, As we have extremly low KH the lowering will be more serious than if it were higher.
I have now increased the KH level and hopefully the lowering will not be as notable and not alter the CO2 level as much.
I’m starting to get a bit tired of the current layout, i will have to think about doing a major rescape.
For a while I have had some problems with sinking KH value, this is affecting the CO2 level as the pH is kept the same.
Today i have “moved the lawn” and sucked all the gooey brown stuff out of it, I also flushed through the filter which had almost an inch of the same stuff on the bottom. I wonder if this could have affected my KH.
The KH is normally not fluctuating too much, of course the plants cold use some but it should be close to nothing especially as the CO2 level is kept rich.
The fluorescents have probably become a bit more whitish or I have gotten used to them, they are quite similar in colour to the Ocean white ones, but there could still be a lot of difference for the plants, anyone seen the spectra for the Aquarelle T5?
I have just managed to get hold of some Philips Aquarelle in T5 style, quite a difference to the old setup, the T5 Aquarelle seems a lot more blueish than the T8.
The photos shows the old setup (2pcs Aquamedic ocean white 10000K, 1pcs Aquamedic planta, 1pcs Narva Nature superb) and the new one with 4pcs of Aquarelle.
The photos are taken with the exact same settings (all manual) and is verified against a color calibrated screen to be as close to reality as possible.
Let see if it makes any difference..
Vacation trip is over and i forgot to enable full remote management, thats why it has been no updates during this period.
A positive thing though, out ISP has solved the static IP problem and i don’t need to run the site through DynDNS anymore and you will not get the popups from DynDNS anymore.
Hmmmm. its really hard to get the time to sit down and write a post in the vacation / summertime, and a flooding of the house is not helping.
I cleaned out the aquariun today, it has gotten the same amount of attention as the blog, this cleanout was mostly for keeping it running untill i have more time to take care of it, no pictures for the moment.