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BPB's 75 gallon planted


Bpb

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Tank in my posession in some time around 2008-2009. FTS shots through the life of the tank. I'll keep post 1 simple and update FTS as time passes. Can I do that? Most won't have dates

3/3/2013 - oldest picture I've got

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6/8/2015

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Thank you sir. From a distance it looks alright. Up close you'll see a horrible bba outbreak that I can't get a handle on.

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crossing my fingers...i've not had any algae issues...yet! No updated pics yet for me...waiting for my water to lose it's cloudiness and for a big piece of driftwood to become waterlogged so I can move a large rock back into it's planned spot. Then I can move all my plants to their planned spots...right now I just have them randomly placed.

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  • 1 month later...

After sitting on my thumbs for a couple weeks and not doing anything about my co2 situation I finally did some work today. Swapped out the Milwaukee regulator with the dual stage concoa. As mentioned before. It's a beast. I strapped the co2 tank to the stand to keep it from falling over. This regulator adjustment knob and hoke needle valve are just buttery smooth and reek of quality. Never knew what I was missing. The solenoid is hotter than a firecracker though.

Also finally pieced together the adaptors I needed to run the BRS dual reactor inline with the canister filter as a two chamber cerges reactor. I wish the planted tank community was aware of this device. They spend more making cerges reactors from whirlpool water filter housings and they don't work as well. I'm loving the 100% dissolution rate. Still hard to wrap my head around how that many bubbles are going in but not building up. Love the water clarity now that there aren't a trillion micro bubbles from the diffuser. Also took the bubble count down from a full wide open stream, to a modest 3 bubbles per second. You really do waste so much gas with ceramic diffusers and atomic inline diffusers.

Lastly, cleaned up under the stand. Had a trash bag full of junk i tossed.

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I've outlined this pretty thoroughly in other tank journals, just generally keeping a photo chronicle on here. Not many fw people on the ol' ARC, but there isn't a local planted tank club. I've performed a 1-2 punch of hydrogen peroxide dosing, and a massive flourish excel overdose along with a 2mL per 10 gal daily maintenance dose and it's all virtually gone at this point. I believe it to be a result of my finicky cheap regulator and needle valve i was using which required daily adjustment which lead to widely fluctuating co2 levels.

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Nice!!!! Glad to see the BRS reactor is doing it's job for you. :-)

There is a local group with a facebook page. Austin Planted Aquarium Keepers. They've asked if I'll host their Aug meeting. Cara is wanting to check out my set up.

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Do you have a link to your build? I keep a discus tank but they're still growing out so the tank is bare bottom with driftwood and Anubis but for Christmas I'm gonna scape it out planted.

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I used to be a huge FW person and still love it, i just only have itty bitty FW tanks now lol

2.5 gallon planted female betta tank

5.5 gallon planted male betta tank

And i help my brother with his 20 gallon long feeder guppy tank and 180 tortuga tank

I still do have all the tanks at the high school as well buuuuut I havent been up there since last August :(

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Nice hope this subforum gets some more activity.

Here's a link to the build thread with details. I need to post an updated full tank shot. I'm letting it grow wild like before in order to get a large mass of healthy stems. Once it's packed I'll likely chop them all down and spend a few hours creating an actual Dutch scape with the traditional dense groupings and "lanes" as they like to see.

http://www.bvreefclub.com/topic/52-bpbs-75-gallon-planted-wanna-be-dutch/

I also have a thread up on plantedtank.net but don't update it as frequently. My goal is to pick up 4 decent looking angelfish, large as I can find and as diverse looking as I can find. As well as a couple blue Rams and a bunch more Otos. I'm ok if the Angels eat all 100 of my guppy endler hybrids.

Interesting observation about the co2 reactor. I'm actually having to INCREASE my bubble count substantially. This is counter to what I anticipated. My reasoning is likely that micro bubbles from the diffuser were ending up in the drop checker and giving a false high reading for co2. Now that I'm getting 100% dissolution, the drop checker is likely reading more accurately. It went from canary yellow, to turquoise. I cranked the needle valve open to get the drop checker back to a green/yellow color. I have noticed some signs of both nitrogen and co2 deficiency despite my heavy injecting so the false reading may be the culprit. I also have doubled my nitrate dosing to hopefully get an actual reading.

Another oops I noticed was the temperature. I never used a thermometer for the past year and have noticed the water feels pretty warm. Dropped one in and it was 85 degrees. Yikes. I just unplugged the heater all together and it now fluctuates between 76-78 degrees daily.

These issues may likely have been causing my stunted and twisted new growth, along with excessively leggy growth and heavy bba. Growth itself isn't a problem. I just want bushy dense attractive growth. Not ugly but lightening fast growth. Perhaps I will also reduce my photoperiod

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think I may want to test my regulator for a leak. Since I put it on my tank has lost 100 ppm of pressure in the 3 weeks or so I've had it on. That or I'm just injecting a lot more (which is the case also). I don't bother to fill my bubble counter anymore since it's a full stream of bubbles that isn't countable and it evaporates in the counter too quickly. Either way. Now that I've got so much more co2 in the water the plants are pearling so much more now, the BBA is on its way out. I realize you can still see a little there and some plants are recovering from melting, but I'm nearly out of the woods. Really happy with the color from these bulbs. My schedule is a lot more consistent. And the downoii and s. Repens are really starting to fill in nicely. I got rid of all the sunset hygro and most of the brown hygro Thai. Just grew too fast. Trying to let more attractive stems fill in now. Pulled most plants and did a rescape also. I need to put a background up before I take a fts.

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The easiest way to check for a leak would be to spray some soapy water onto the system and look for bubbles. As for not keeping water in your bubble counter have you considered using a thicker media like mineral oil?

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I'll be doing the soapy water trick at some point. As far as the bubble counter goes. I dunno. I can't count the bubbles anymore so I may just remove it from the line

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I have always been a big fan of visual indicators, if I work on a project for myself and it does not have obvious movement I will add all sorts of LEDs to let me know it is still working.

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Plan is all screwed up to have a fts chronicle on the first post. Won't let me edit the original post. Oh well. Here's a new fts after a little rescape.

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Plan is all screwed up to have a fts chronicle on the first post. Won't let me edit the original post. Oh well. Here's a new fts after a little rescape. 208b0b83f04b05a9aa0afcb1c51985f6.jpg

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Looks great, kind of makes me miss my old planted aquariums.

Did you ever decide if you were going to put a thicker media in your bubble counter?

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  • 2 weeks later...

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Picked up 5 albino bristlenose plecos tonight. Going SUPER slow with acclimation. LFS uses tap water at 8.5 ph and 25 dkh. I use rodi and co2 at 6.5 ph and 5 dkh. Pretty massive swing. They've been floating and "drip" acclimating for a couple hours now. 10ml swapped out every 10 minutes or so.

Never did put anything in the bubble counter. It's a dual stage regulator so the injection rate us ultra stable and I have almost no bba left to speak or so I just basically keep an eye on the tank pressure and the drop checker. My plant mass is very heavy so I don't foresee needing to increase the injection rate at all.

I have been experiencing some VERY cloudy water though lately. Not a clue as to what it could be. Hopefully these plecos and my army of pond snails will assist in keeping the glass a little cleaner

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991944fc9c541ce86dca2210572b2edf.jpgdc28e1f82b859f017106c014fcad8ad0.jpg

Picked up 5 albino bristlenose plecos tonight. Going SUPER slow with acclimation. LFS uses tap water at 8.5 ph and 25 dkh. I use rodi and co2 at 6.5 ph and 5 dkh. Pretty massive swing. They've been floating and "drip" acclimating for a couple hours now. 10ml swapped out every 10 minutes or so.

Never did put anything in the bubble counter. It's a dual stage regulator so the injection rate us ultra stable and I have almost no bba left to speak or so I just basically keep an eye on the tank pressure and the drop checker. My plant mass is very heavy so I don't foresee needing to increase the injection rate at all.

I have been experiencing some VERY cloudy water though lately. Not a clue as to what it could be. Hopefully these plecos and my army of pond snails will assist in keeping the glass a little cleaner

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Looking good, I still think you should add something to the bubble counter but if this is working for you.

What colour is the cloudy water?

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