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biodives

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Everything posted by biodives

  1. I have Aqueon Optibright+, Finnex (model?), and USA Current Satellite Pro+. The latter is more powerful but also a lot more expensive. The first is barely adequate for a 12" tall tank but affordable, looks sleek, and has sunrise/sunset + timer. My Finnex was second hand and the power supply broke within a month or two. I just bought a new PS with higher rating and expect to still get a lot of use out of that light. It would be powerful enough for 12-16" tall tanks, perhaps a little more but probably not 24". The USA CSP+ will do a 24" tall planted tank looks good and has sunrise/sunset + timer. I'm now building my own LED lights from parts. Much more powerful than any commercial aquarium LEDs (at least within my budget), much more lumens/watt, but not as pretty and no build in sunrise/sunset features. The 40G breeder I set up last weekend has a DIY 4000 lumens 3' LED light for about 50 bucks and less than 30 watt. A 4' USA CSP+ gives 3000 lumens at 60 watt for a little over $400.
  2. biodives

    Hi all!

    Wellcome! I just started a 40G breeder last weekend. It's a good size and not too tall so lighting plants will be relatively easy. Are you aiming for Asian, South American, African or cosmopolitan inhabitants? I'm into South American fish, dwarf cichlids in particular.
  3. Hi All, I've been writing blogs about my adventures with (planted) tanks. One is on using plants as filter instead of a bacterial filter and showing that plants support a normal bio-load and give near-zero nitrate levels. The last two are about an experiment to grow high-tech plants in a low-tech tank. That is, use high light intensity but without the liquid fertilizers and, hopefully, without CO2. The last part was posted today and includes the first batch of high-light demanding plants that I got from Hung Lee. You can find the blog at biodives.com/blog
  4. No charge for club members. That's how I got them myself.
  5. And there are people in the club with microworms too. Me for instance. I'm in the process of restarting my culture but can make some extra for you. For fish in the Edmonton area you can also post on the Edmonton fish group facebook page. There are some members who import fish or may have a colony from which to sell you fish.
  6. biodives

    Hi

    You do realize that there are 98 days, 14 hours and 25 minutes left before it is mother's day. That won't do. I suggest family day as a much better alternative. It also looks less sel"fish" Cheers
  7. Holy cow ... manure. I thought I was thinking out of the box by adding mud/goop from a river valley pond but you are king! How did it work out, any ammonia/nitrate issues?
  8. biodives

    Hi

    Hi Terri, It's a great hobby and even nicer if you can share it with your kids. As a fellow biologist I also find it fascinating to get a look at the hidden world underwater and learn about fish, plants, bacteria ... Livebearers, including mollies and platies, store sperm and can keep it viable for a while so you may get more babies from that same mystery dad. I hope for you that the other two kids will turn 8 soon so you get an excuse to buy more aquariums Bart
  9. biodives

    Hello it's me~

    South American or African cichlids? You're welcome either way of course.
  10. Welcome from another cichlid fan, but my love is for South American fish. Probably showing my naivete about African cichlids ... why all male? For me the territorial and courtship displays that are part of mating are what make cichlids so fascinating.
  11. The 48" model was Cnd$405 or so. They have shorter models including 2 and 3 foot I believe. Not sure if the shortest one will fit a 20" 10 gallon tank but just check on the internet. The Plus Pro gives out a lot of light and perhaps too much for a 12" tall tank. The Plus model costs considerably less and has about half the light output while retaining the timer, sunrise/sunset, etc. I also now have Aqueon Optibright LED lights that come with timer and sunrise/sunset, and are more affordable. They work well for me on 12" tall tanks and just ok on 16" tall tanks. You have to decide how much light you need based on plant choice. It is nice to have a little too much light and then just dial down the output to what you need and ramp it up/down as your needs change.
  12. Haha, the product info states "... water temperature-dependent downward control: light is dimmed if water gets too warm." So must be a very powerful and smart light indeed.
  13. Hi Ian, What are the things above the tank. Shading/reflectors for the lights? and what lights are you using? They look rather potent.
  14. Do you want to grow challenging plants and consider going all-in for a high-tech setup or are you happy to pick plants that you like and are also known to grow well at lower light levels? I have a 4' long 24" tall tank and use a Current USA satellite pro plus LED light and find it is powerful enough for lush plant growth (but expensive). I also have a 4' Aqueon optibright plus on a 16" tall tank and that would not be strong enough for a 24" tank. For fluorescent tube lighting I would expect two high output 6' tubes would do, especially with good reflector but I haven't used tubes for a while so others may chime in. The main challenge is providing light for the ground cover and to the bottom ends of stem plants. I am using dwarf sword plants (Helanthium tenellum, aka Echinodorus tenellus) as foreground plant and it grows well even in shaded areas. I also have micro sword plants (Lilaeopsis brassiliense) and it survives but grows very slowly. In my tank I use Myriophyllum mattogrossense as the main stem plant and have no real problems with the bottom end of stems deteriorating due to shading. However, it helps to get longer stems to start with as I got them just 2" tall and it took a long time for them to catch on. Once they grow closer to the light they take off though. Mayaca fluviatilis also grows well for me as do bigger amazon sword plants. There are many more low-light tolerant plants to chose from, this is just what has worked for me. I basically looked at the list of Tropica's "easy" plants and started with that. As they all grew well I started adding some "medium" difficulty plants and they are also all doing well. Next year I plan to try to some difficult plants, but in another less tall tank. My tank is on soft neutral water, so if you are on tap water you can also look for plants that like or tolerate hard water (a lot of plants from natural soft acidic waters do just fine in hard water). Still it is easier, or at least a lot cheaper, to match the plants to your lights then to match the lights to difficult plants. Adding richer soils or just potting soil is quite standard, can give an ammonium/algae spike at the start but seems to work for many people. I use straight unwashed playground sand in all my tanks and don't use liquid or root tablet fertilizers either. I believe the best fertilizer is elf poop but fish poop is a good alternative and that is what my tanks rely on. My oldest tank is now running for 6 months so it is possible that my plain substrate runs out of juice earlier than if I had added a richer soil underneath. Time will tell (but in the Netherlands I've been running tanks like this for years without substrate issues). There is always going to be a bit of trial and error. Good luck with the trials and hopefully not too many errors
  15. Just FYI, I got in some missing parts for a DIY LED light. Threw it together without housing, just 2' LED module and power supply, and it draws 17 watt at the wall and produces 2200 lumens while keeping temp at a very reasonable 41C. It is very bright, comparable to my Current USA satellite plus pro and a lot brighter than the Marineland optibright+. It is basically blinding to look at directly. A 2' light based on this module could probably be build for around Cnd$30 if you don't mind DIY looks and cabling. I also tested a 2' 6000 lumens module. When running it at 90% of nominal output (so about 5400 lumens) it draws ? watt and warms to ?C For final production units I want to look into different options for aluminum housings that offer better water protection, look better, and dissipate heat better. There are also options for lenses to get a more or less focused beam. Due to a diving trip I expect that the final products will appear in January or February depending on how hard it is to get the parts I want.
  16. My bad, the whole point of the post was to include the link. Here it is: http://missionled.com/product/150w-linear-bay-light/
  17. Someone on the facebook page made me aware of a Leduc company selling a 150 watt 15,000 lumens LED light that is also IP65 water protected. At $350 not a cheap light but if you need that much light it is very good value. My 3,000 lumen LED costs $50 more.
  18. Welcome. The more the merrier. I know nothing about shrimp but you will find many who do here.
  19. Hi AJB, Nice to see a new member from Edmonton with interest in South American fish. Maybe you should check out a monthly Aquarium Club of Edmonton meeting so see what is going on locally. The next one is Dec 6 (Starting at 7:30 pm, Allendale Community Hall, 6330-105A St). As of this summer I'm running 6 tanks with South American fish and plants. Two species have been breeding so far. Would love to talk about your experiences and plans. Cheers, Bart
  20. I haven't had my white or red wriggler cultures rot so far, but I do get small black flies. They tend to stay inside the container so haven't been a problem yet. What I really would like to do is find a way to catch the flies and feed them to my pencilfish and splash tetras. They like fruitflies but the smaller black flies may be easier to fit the tiny mouths of pencilfish, in particular the Nannostomus eques.
  21. I'm growing all my plants under LED light but don't use CO2 supplementation. Until recently all my LEDs were commercial systems. Just this weekend I put a 4ft DIY LED together for ~$50. It sits on a 48x24x16" tank where the one Aqueon optibright plus LED light doesn't cover the full 24" depth of this tank. At about $170 I didn't look forward to buying a second Optibright so I used a 8x1ft LED strip set sold at Home Depot for just under $50. It comes with power supply, 2 connecting cables, and 8 1ft LED strips, each with 2-sided tape backing for attachment. I used a $4 10ft U-shaped steel track (used to fix 2x4 wall studs I believe) as the luminaire. Painted the outside black and used 6" wide clear tape to protect the LEDs from getting wet. At first glance it gives about the same amount of light as the Aqueon optibright plus but lacks the build-in timer, sunset/sunrise, remote and colour tuning options. That said it is less than a third of the cost and since it switches on/off while the optibright is already on full power there is no sudden light shock. I'll get some pictures and see if I can run some comparison tests tonight to update this post. It draws about 17 watt at the wall and 12 watt of that should be consumed by the LEDs. I haven't found specs for the optibright plus but I can determine its power draw tonight. The light is not bright enough for tall tanks, 16" is probably as tall as I'd go, or hi-tech planted setups. To get something much brighter I ordered three types of 2 ft long Fortimo LED modules (Philips) last Saturday. Two 2200 lumen modules and one each of 4000 and 6100 lumens, with about 150 lumen/watt efficiency and all at 5000K colour temperature. My brightest commercial LED so far is a USA Current Satellite plus pro which is just about enough to light my 24" tall 90 gallon tank. That one costs $407 and produces 3000 lumens over 4 foot with about 50 lumens/watt. So these new modules give up to twice the output at half the length and should be VERY bright. My main concern will be dissipation of heat so I can run them at full power. My thin steel luminaire may not be able to do the job and I've been looking for aluminum alternatives. The modules cost $12/$21/$30 for the 2200/4000/6100 lumen models and $31 for the power supply. Total should be about $60-80, depending on what I end up using for the luminaire. Assuming I can run them at full power that works out to 1.5-2 cents per lumen compared to 13.5 cents for the commercial unit and at 3 times the energy efficiency. Once I get the parts in and assembled I will let you know if it actually works as advertised.
  22. If there is an efficient way to get them to Edmonton I'd be interested in a group of 5-7 as well.
  23. No excuses needed for your excitement. I got excited by just reading it. Good luck with raising them!
  24. I think your plants will be just fine until then. Even better if they catch some (indirect) sunlight. You can also rig up some (poor) substitute lighting using a clamp-on and floor standing lights, whatever you have already, and put it next/over your tank. I also keep some plants in a large transparent plastic bin in front of a window. That would be another option.
  25. Welcome and congratulations with catching the aquarium bug. You will find there is enough to discover, learn and enjoy to last a lifetime and hopefully help your grand kids understand and appreciate the wonderful life underwater. If your new planted tank has a lot of plants, including floaters, you may find the cycling to take a lot less time. I cycle my tanks for as little as 1 week but patience and resisting temptation at the LFS are important. Update: the tank does not necessarily cycle faster but the plants compensate for the immature biological filter so your pioneer fish will be happier. In my case I run all my tanks completely without biological filter and just rely on my plants. So my tanks are never truly cycled at all.
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