65g FW Journal

[Delphinus]

Here's a view of the sump in the stand.

The bioball chamber is a glass box that can be removed if need be. In theory this is nice but in practise due to the height of the sump, it would have to be slid out of the stand in order to get it out. So this may be a luxury that doesn't get fully utilized but at least it's there.

Sump return is slated to be a Mag5. Additional flow in the tank will be from a Tunze 7025.

[Delphinus]

My goals for this tank, despite that it seems perhaps complex, are in fact simple.

First of all, my current FW setup is a disaster, a big mess of algae and no matter what I do, I can't get the algae and cyano at bay. So I've been wanting to start over at square 1 for some time.

Secondly, my clown loaches are getting too big for their current home, which is a 30g.

Also, the current tank is on a steel stand with canister filters, lights timers, powerstrip, etc. all exposed and I now have a very curious toddler. So a tank with an enclosed stand was needed as well.

Last, I'm just absolutely tired of suction cups failing. So the canister filter returns, the heaters, the surface skimmer, the spray bars ... always fall off. And if you fix it, they fall off within a day again. Hopeless. So a new tank that didn't need *anything* suctioned to the glass was desired.

As far as going with a sump ... well .. I don't know if this was needed. Being that I'd never build a reef tank without a sump, I thought I'd give this a try. If I get nothing else out of it, I think I'll at least get a place to hide the heater, be able to use bioballs instead of a canister filter (less electrical things to plug in, just the sump return), and never have to worry about the water level in the main tank dropping due to evaporative losses (it will just lower in the sump, out of sight). And I think these reasons make it worthwhile to try it even on a FW. And if I ever decide to upgrade or downgrade, this tank is now reef-ready.

This will be a planted setup, with black gravel. I'm also thinking of a black background for the tank. However I haven't decided how that will happen just yet. I don't want to haul it outside in the snow to paint and I don't want to paint inside the house. So I'll probably try something like construction paper or something and see how it looks.

Next up is the water test and look for leaks inthe plumbing. I filled the tank tonight but left the sump empty since I was letting my sump return line dry out as I only put the last piece on tonight.

Already though I can tell I need one place that needs attention, the overflow box is not leakproof. It slowly filled and is now draining into the sump. It's not a huge showstopper by any means but if there's a long power failure the tank will (eventually) drain about 5" instead of the 2" I was hoping. So I plan to find the leak and resilicone that spot. Good thing I made the plumbing modular. (And I guess it goes to show that you really do need to pay attention to the measurements when designing an overflow box. If I had done that right I bet I wouldn't have this problem now.)

[Delphinus]

Been a while since I updated this journal, wow, April now, last update in January. Whoops!

Got the old tank moved over, the 30g this will replace, and wrestled this new tank in place.

First, I laid down the substrate cable heater..


Then, several bucket brigades later, I got the substrate and water in. I couldn't get more Eco-Complete so I went with at least 4 bags of Volcanit subrate at the bottom and the two bags of Eco-Complete on top. This gave me about 3" depth of substrate.


So, here's where a problems showed up. Nothing too bad, but enough that it slowed my progress for a bit.

1) The Mag5 I was using as a sump return was way too loud. It practically howled and since this is a tank in the TV room, near bedrooms, I wasn't able to run the pump at night. So I needed a new pump.

2) I could not tune the overflow right. It always burped no matter where I had the air valve set at. I decided the problem must be that with the 1" overflow pipe, combined with the lateral distances the water had to travel (into the overflow, and then down, and then at least 6" horizontally back, to get into the sump) that the overflow simply didn't have the flow carrying capacity I needed for the sump return volume I was hoping for.

So I decided to step it up to a 1.5" overflow - leaving the bulkhead and 90-degree elbow in the overflow as 1".



This worked out so well that I thought I would try a Sedra 7000 as my sump return. I decided on Sedra because I have one on my ASM and it seemed quiet enough to give it a try.

Unfortunately the 7000 was way too much pump. 30 seconds on and my tank was overflowing. So again, still couldn't run a pump for a few weeks while I send the Sedra 7000 back and ordered a 5000 instead.

The Sedra 5000 is a better fit (smaller pump housing) and is the perfect flow for this tank. It's not as silent as I wished for but it is tolerable. Finally, I could get the tank cycling. Hooray!

[Delphinus]

Fast forward to April, and here is the tank now..

Couple pieces of Mopani driftwood, some plants, and some clean up crew.

Full tank shot..


Left side..


Right side..


Current stocking list.. Plants:
Lagarosiphon major ("Oxygen weed") (note - may also be Elodea crispa)
Hygrophila difformis ("water wisteria")
Bacopa monneri ("water hissop" or "moneywort")
Echinodorus muricatus ("compact sword")
Lilaeopsis brasiliensis ("Brazillian micro sword")
Vallisneria spiralis (possibly var. tortissima - "corkscrew val")
Crytocoryne wendtii
Anubias nana
Vesicularia dubyana (Java moss)

Fish:
2 Otocinclus sp. cats - Otocats
1 Sturisoma nigrirostrum - Farlowella cat
3 Crossocheilus siamensis - Siamese algae eaters

Various hitchhiking snails, some look like ramshorns ..

Also bought some Malaysian Trumpet Snails to help with substrate turnover.

Need some more ground cover and then I'm hoping in the next couple weeks I'll be able to move over my clown loaches, butterfly loach and bristlenose plec from my 30g.

[Delphinus]

I appear to have some FW hydroids in there. Not sure what to make of this..

[Fish]

Tony that is a beautiful tank. Really nice work on the aquascaping and placement of your plants.

... I still feel so intimidated at the thought of planted tanks...

- Chad

[Delphinus]

Thanks Chad! I'm trying to have some fun with this tank. Hopefully once the plants settle in, the layering will show a little more (I'm trying to keep the taller plants in the back, low-lying ones more in the front). The first few plants I moved in are showing signs of new growth so that's got me excited.

I need to find something that eats hair algae though, you can't see it in the pics but the microsword (the grass like plant in front) has hair algae growing in between. It's really delicate stuff so manual removal seems to mean "manually removing the plant as well."

Plus, getting some fish that like to come out during the DAY might be nice. It looks like a fish-less tank setup in the pictures .. but you should see them all come out after the lights turn off. Flurry of activity at night..