Guess Whose Back

[murankar]

Well I was going to link a video but my phone wont do a paste function, never mind got it to work.

(may not be sensored so watch at your own risk)


Finally getting a small break. I have been no stop go since mid summer. Been working on my dads place, caring for my kids, working my full time and doing the army thing, still part time with hone remodeling and now I am finally starting to do stuff for myself.

My bbn latest endeavor is this








First 2 are the day I set up the tank 2 days ago. Nothing really fancy yet. It's a 38 gallon Marine land bow front tank. Got a penguin filter, 12 white, 6 blue led light strip, heater and hood on sale for $150. So I jumped on it without any thought of budget. I have been chapped since October when I missed a stellar OBO offer on a returned 75 gallon long. I think it was sold for $75 at pet smart. I was a little upset in had just missed it. Anyhow I saw the deal and thought it would do the trick for a larger tank.

St this point all I did was set up the tank and added my declorinated water and cycled it for 48 hours. At the 24 hour point i took my base line chem readings.

PH 7.8
Ammonia 0 rpm
Nitrite 0 rpm
Nitrate 10 rpm
KH starter to change at 6 drops and fully changed at 7 to yellow. So I recorded 6-7 drops.









The next 3 pics are from today. I added the gravel, fixtures, plants and a few fish to start the nitrogen cycle. I added a cycle booster to help. The Amazon Sword plant and castle came from an established tank. So those 2 items are helping with the bacteria. I will take another chem reading on Tuesday to see if my ammonia is on it's way up. Yes I am fish cycling and I did everything i could do to ensure the fish can handle a nitrogen cycle. We shall see if I was lied to. The fish I have are 2 molly's and 6 Rasbora tetras. At some point I want to add a catfish a couple Angel's and what ever the lady wants. I want a good mix of fish.

We still have a 10 gallon with fish in it. That tank is in bad shape. On tuesday I will have to do another 25 to 50 percent change to drop my numbers. My ammonia is 50ppm and on a 10 gallon that's on the higher end. The fish are.nitnshowing stressed sonic hope I can get to tuesday to swap out water and maybe get more of the gravel clean out. The biggest issue is the gravel is filthy. So I got a gravel cleaning syphon.

Helicopters have been grounded for a while. Had no time really. If I didn't ha e kids I was either working and trying to keep the lady happy. I recently cought news about the FAA and how they are trying to shut down rc flying for good. I am livid and struggling to be nice about it.

I started to reassemble my charge case, it's still not done. My discharge bank is sitting on the bench waiting to be completed. I want to respray my radio. The battery in the vcontrol is showing its age and. Needs replaced, plus I need 2 new switches.

Finally I lost a lizzard about 3 months ago. We lost our Chinese water dragon. He was out most difficult lizzard to care for. I could. Ot get his enclosure to the right temps. So at the moment the lizzard thing is on hold. Our 2 bearded dragons are doing great.

The Army is going along. I should be getting promoted in february to Staff Sergeant finally. Been a long time coming. I will also be heading to germany sometime around april or may. Still dont have details yet. Even if I did I probably will not be able to discuss it. Right now its unclassed info but could be classed at a snap of a finger. So less is more.

 

[Tony]

good to see you back URI.

The fresh water tank is looking good. Just FYI, you don't need the blue lights unless you have something that you want to enhance something if they are 420nm.

Army trip, best of luck to you.

 

[murankar]

The lady likes the blue. When sitting in the living room at night we switch it to blue. It appears to be relaxing her. I like the mix of blue and white during the day. To me it appears more crisp. And for the record when I bought the bubble curtain I didn't know the LEDs were blue. It just worked out that way. I didn't think to look for a color .

Thank you. It's taken a while for me to get a tank. I finally got one. Not sure how its going to go since its only day 3.

 

[Tony]

It will not hurt anything to have blue. The reason we have blue in saltwater aquariums is because that is the main spectrum of light that reaches the reef. And royal blue (420mn) will fluores certain corals. Basically making them pop with color. Right now, my hammer coral is bright green under the royal blue moon light on my tank. Very nice look and I know what the lady's passion is with the color. As long as you like it, that is what matters.

 

[murankar]

So I did some research on my plants. None if them need co2. The fern is a very slow grower and has almost no fertilizer to grow, the ludwigia is a water column feeder, grows rather fast and will breach the tank and has a very low fertilizer requirement. Now the Amazon sword, this guy is the only plant I have that has a fert requirement along with being a heavy root feeder. It will grow to about 20-24 inches tall. All the plants have a low to medium light requirement and temps between 65 and 80, although temps closer to 80 are ideal. The water chemistry is very flexible for all the plants. I will need to keep the water on the hard side for the 2 water column feeders.

 

[murankar]

So I am looking at the bubble curtain. I really hate the setup I did. It looks like I will be mucking around with a new install today.

What's bugging me is the airlines in the middle of the tank. I need to move them to the corners. It is very distracting to me. I will ha e to discuss with the lady when she comes back. If she agrees then I will be moving stuff in the tank again.

 

[murankar]

So I think I got it to 95% satisfaction. I still dont have a continuous curtain but the area is shadowed anyways because of hiw I have the lights attached .

I moved the air lines to the corners to eliminate the eyesore that it was. To make that happen in had to get one of the bubble curtains exchanged because it had an air leak at a joint. I then repositioned the air defuser under the lights so I can (1) raise the curtain higher off the bottom, (2) the bubbles now catch the light and creates that nice gradient for a backdrop, (3) it allows me to have deeper gravel that is more level all the way back. Before this update my gravel sloped back and it just didn't look right irl. I also had to upgrade my air pump. My 40 gal topfin was not cutting it. It was unbalanced in looks. So I got a 2 port 50-80 gal Fluval. Looks much better now.

At this point I do feel more accomplished and its not bugging me. I guess I feel more calm now.

This is the air curtain and white light



This is just the bubble curtain



Finally the bubble curtain with blue hood lights



You can't really tell in the pics between the last 2.

This is how my over all look is. It just so happened the tank fit perfectly. We have a child watching FGTV on youtube. Yes the family is obnoxious.

 

[Tony]

When we get out tank cleared up, I will take some pictures of it. When the wife purchased the cichlids she also purchased a piece of drift wood, and when you put a new piece of drift wood in a tank, it will leach out some color. Doesn't affect the fish, but it does make the tank look bad. Just have to wait it out, run carbon and do frequent water changes. I know the wife was going to take care of some roosters today, but I'm sure she is also trying to do another water change today as well. She did one yesterday of about 30% and it helped out a lot.

 

[murankar]

Because i haven't stopped messing with it for 2 days now I still have floaties in there. My amazon sword is losing root chunks. The roots stretch all the way across the tank. It was very well established.

I hate looking at a non crystal clear tank sonic feel ya. I am embarrassed of my 10 gallon. It's not done being cleaned and cared for. I still have another water change to go. Nice thing is the plant that's in that tank is doing really well. Its roots run under the plastic filter base and just loving it.

I should make this a different thread.

 

[Tony]

It's up to you if you want to make a new thread. This is your thread

 

[murankar]

Here is my 10 gallon with 10 platties. Be had a birth happen. Started with two platties and two mollies. next thing we know we had a colony of babies. 8 survived the mollies when we discovered the atrocity. Because of that the lady decided to volunteer the mollies for the tank cycle.