Day 20 - Shrimp by Moonlight

Removed the red plant (well, it used to be red) from the background. Although I took a small cutting and placed it in the foreground.

Clean up Crew - Shrimp
Ordered 10 Cherry Red Shrimp from Rare Aquatics for £1.50 each via their ebay shop. I wasn't sure how mail order shrimp would be packaged, here's how:







All the shrimp arrived alive and well. They went into the tank and prompted vanished. I hope their hiding and haven't become neon tetra lunch. If they're alive hopefully they'll munch on algae and breed.

Moonlight
I ordered a strip of 24 "moonlight" blue LEDs for night time lighting for £10, again via ebay. These arrived today. The LEDs are sealed inside plastic so their waterproof.


Once mounted to the hood:

Day 19 - Eggs

The algae is doing well. The Java Fern has become a particularly fertile ground for it.




New Inhabitants
In addition to the neons there is now a young Bristlenose Pleco. He's done an excellent job already of cleaning the bog wood and the front of the glass. He's about 2 inches long.


Eggs
I've noticed a few eggs. In addition to the small clusters of jelly like snails eggs I've noticed the eggs in the photo below. I've no idea what they are.


I'm sort of looking forward to the snail population increasing, they'll help with cleaning the algae from all the leaves. I'm also going to add another few inhabitants to help with the clean up effort tomorrow.

Day 18 - Grass Gone

More triming of dying Vallis leaves and the removal of another plant.

This long grassy plant was already becoming a magnet for junk. It was another of the random selection plants, it's gone.


The tall green plant to the right of the Java Fern I think I've managed to identify as Mayaca Fluviatilis

Quite a few plants are cloning themselves like the one below. The Twisted Vallis and the Echinodorus Tenellus being the bigest culprits.

Day 15 - Tin Foil?

An attempt at a tin foil background, an idea I saw suggested by Andy Gordon over at PFK. It doesn't really work in this case, I don't think the tank has enough plant growth to pull it off yet. Worse still, due to the location of the tank I couldn't really get the tin foil in place without crunching it up too much.

Although I did a bad job of the tin foil background there, I think it can work pretty well. I use it in my small 10 gallon tank here:


The observant may notice a few neon tetras in the first picture. I had a few neons which urgently needed a new home today. Ammonia and Nitrite both at zero (even though I've been adding 3ml of Ammonia a day) so looks like the tank is cycled. Did a 40% water change and in went the tetras. I shall stop adding the daily ammonia now.

Day 14 - Let There Be Light

Trimmed a few more yellowed Vallis leaves, at this rate I should have successfully eliminated all the plants within two months. Oh wait...

There are more and more cables and tubes being connected up to the tank. About time I fitted a background I think to hide this mess.

Fluval Roma 125 T5 Lighting Mod
Time to upgrade the lighting in this tank. It's 33 US gallons, so with the two 20 watt lights that's a mere 1.2 watts per gallon. Dark enough to grow mushrooms.

I was all set to write a long and detailed post how to mod the tank to upgrade the lighting with some additional T5 lights, but it turned out to be so simple it's almost not worth mentioning. Although not the cheapest mod in the world.

I wanted to add two extra 24 watt T5 lights along side the existing 20 watt T8's. I purchased a Hagen Glo T5 HO Twin Light Starter (2x 24W) for £40 from the LFS and two Arcadia T5 Plant Pro bulbs for £15 each.


This T5 starter unit from Hagen is just ideal for the Fluval Roma 125. I connected the light mounts (included in the box) to the front and rear of the tank hood, as in the photo below. Note these are the new lights in the photo, the T8's are hidden from view by the central plastic cover.


It was such a perfect fit that the lights stayed in place without even fixing the mounts to the side, held in place just by the pressure from the mains leads. I ended up just securing the mounts with a tiny dab of super glue, small enough that I could easily pull the mounts off again if I had too but strong enough to keep the lights in place when I give them an accidental knock.


And that was it. Easy and painless.

So how many watts per gallon now? Well, at face value of the wattage we have 20+20+24+24, 88 watts, or 2.7 watts per gallon.

But it's said T5's produce more light than T8's and it's pretty obvious when you look at the lit bulbs that this is true. The Arcadia Plant Pro bulb packaging says, "80% increased power". So if we took this to be true we'd have 20+20+43.2+43.2, 126.4 watts, or 3.8 watts per gallon.

So minimum 2.7 watts per gallon, maximum 3.8 watts per gallon. Mission successful!

Day 13 - More Algae

Just after a 25% water change, the Java Ferns were a bit battered by the deluge.

I noticed a red / green algae appearing on the leaves of some of the plants. This is the tip of a Java Fern:


I've reduced the lighting period to 8 hours and ordered Phosphate and Iron test kits to help prepare for the potential algae battle to come. I hope my extra lights arrive soon.

Day 12 - Removals

Fewer and fewer plants remaining as time goes on. I've cleared a space in the foreground, removing the plants that were there. This is to give room for the Echinodorus Tenellus to spread, and also hopefully the Lilaeopsis nova-zelandae.

The guys over at the PFK forums helped me to identify the plant below as Lilaeopsis nova-zelandae. It came with the random selection from Plants Alive and can, given the right conditions, grow into a nice foreground carpet. Mine is looking pretty sickly, many of the leaves haved melted. I hope the introduction of some more lighting may help save it.

Day 11 - The Algae

The first signs of algae appear on the back glass, green stripes can been seen if you look closely through the haze of CO2 bubbles.

Day 10 - The Snail

I noticed a snail in the tank today. I had done a pretty thorough job of rinsing the plants I thought. Apparently not good enough. I didn't pull him out because I figure he'll help to clean up some of the decaying plant material and maybe the developing algae. It won't be long though before that lone snail turns into hundreds...

TropiQuarium 55 Light Timing Mod

The TropiQuarium 55 from Hagen is a nice little 10 gallon tank, but it has one fundamental problem. The heater, filter and lighting are all connected to the same power lead. This makes it impossible to put the lighting on a plug timer because the heater and the filter would go off with the lights.

What would be much better is if the tank had two power leads, one for the heater and filter and another separate one for the lights. Luckily it's very easy to modify the unit, here's how I modded my TropiQuarium 55 so I could put the lights on a timer. If you can rewire a plug, you can easily perform this modification yourself.

Equipment Required

• Screwdrivers
• Some two core flex (just brown/blue, no earth)
• A mains plug
• A cable gland
• Sharp knife
• Electrical insulating tape
  

Modding
Obviously we make sure the unit is unplugged first. Where the power lead enters the hood, there are two screws when viewed from above. Remove these screws.


Lift off the plastic panel to reveal the electrics.


Attach the mains plug to the flex and strip the other end ready to connect.


Gently pull the existing mains lead up and out of it's slot.


Locate the brown and blue wires connected directly to the existing cable, undo the screws which hold them to the connector block and gently pull the mains cable free of the unit.




Cut off the end of the cable, including the moulded cable gland.


Now take the ends of the old mains lead and the new lead and push them through the cable gland.




Put the newly combined mains leads back into the unit and connect the brown and blue wires from the old mains lead back into the connector block in exactly the same place as they were before. Don't get the wires around the wrong way. Notice how all the brown wires are connected by the same gold coloured copper connector on the right of the connector block, and the same for the blue wires. Make sure you're joining the brown wire to the other brown wires.


Now we have the old mains lead connected back where it was originally.

The unit is back to it's original state, just with an additional (not yet connected) mains lead.

Next we need to connect the new mains lead to the lighting.

For this we need two segments of a new connector block.


Notice how inside the unit the lighting is attached to the existing connector block with two white wires.

One of the white wires is connected to the group of brown wires, the other is connected to the group of blue wires.

Disconnect the white wire which is connected to the group of brown wires and connect it to the brown wire of our new mains lead with our new connector block. Disconnect the remaining white wire and connect it to the blue wire of our new mains lead using the new connector block. We then have something like this:


Apply some insulating tape to the new connector block.


Push everything back inside the unit.


Put the plastic panel back on using the two screws and we're done. We now have the original unit but with an additional mains lead for the lights which we can attach to the mains timer.

Day 9

Minor pruning of some yellowing Twisted Vallis.

Day 8

Day 7 - Devastation

Some heavy pruning today. Pretty much anything that looked like Cabomba has been removed. plus a few other fast growers and things I didn't much like the look of. The removed plants were blocking light from the Twisted Vallis behind them which is a central plant in my overall design plan.

The things in the photo which look like scratches or white dust particles are actually tiny bubbles of CO2. The result of a bit too much CO2 entering the filter intake and getting blown out as a mist. The bubbles gather on the plants too:

Day 6 - DIY CO2

Fertilisers
I've invested in some decent plant fertiliser. 500ml of Easy Life ProFito for about £10. I've begun daily dosing at half the recommended amount, which means I'm using 0.8ml per day. I'll probably increase to 1.5ml once I have more powerful lights. Money well spent I think, this bottle should last well over a year.

The Return of the Slime
The slime that had appeared around the CO2 diffuser has returned.


So the previous remedies have failed. Time to rebuild the DIY CO2 system with an added slime catching compartment!

DIY CO2
The current DIY CO2 system was a bit of a rushed job. I'd used a hot glue gun to glue tubes into the bottle lids, it was... messy. To say the least. I'll try to do it properly this time.

The prerequisite items:

• Some airline connectors (£2 from LFS)
• Super glue
• Two 2ltr bottles
• One 1ltr bottle
• Bottle lids
  

I drilled holes in the bottle caps using a 5.5mm drill bit and super glued the airline connectors into the holes.



Then it's simply a case of cutting and connecting the airline to the lids. When connected the CO2 generator looks like this:



The two large bottles contain the yeast/sugar mixture, generating the CO2. The output from the large bottles enters the third smaller bottle which is designed to catch any gunk that may be pushed down the airline from the yeast bottles. Gunk remains in the bottom of the smaller bottle, CO2 is pushed out the top. At least that's the theory, we shall see if it works in practice.

This has been installed and I've placed the diffuser directly underneath the filter intake once again, just like it was initially, as I've ruled out the filter suction as a cause of the slime. This placement of the diffuser makes it easier to ensure all the bubbles go into the filter intake.