new to the forum

[surfnvb7]

Hey everyone,
I am a grad student at VT and am relatively new to the saltwater stuff and have slowly been working on a 20g for about 2 months now.

I am done with the cycling and initial blooms I suppose. Just got lots of snail varieties, a couple hermits, and an emerald crab. I have just been sitting and letting them do their thing mostly while the pod populations go nuts.

I do have 1 question though. I have converted an AC500 into a fuge. When should I put macro algae in, and what kind? Should I put it in same time I put a fish in?

I only ask because I had some cool kinds of macro at one point that came on a nice live rock I got in richmond, but it has all died off since I have no nitrates for them to consume. Here is what the macro's looked like:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/ayoung/misc/macroalgae.jpg

And here is a pic of my saltwater tank and freshwater tank, cause I know people like to look at pictures as much as me. :beer:

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/ayoung/misc/20gal.jpg

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/ayoung/misc/planted%20tank.jpg

[Andrew]

:welcome:

Nice tanks. :)

[Shivaji]

Welcome to the NRV - love that plant tank. Are you using CO2 injection ? What filtration - if any ?

[surfnvb7]

Yeah, its running CO2 injection pretty heavily. For filtration, I'm still waiting to upgrade to an Eheim canister filter to minimize the water disturbance, water evaporation, and loss of CO2. I'm running a biowheel HOB at the moment, along with a UV filter and a biowheel mini as a return for the UV that I also store some phosphate absorbing media in.

That pic was a couple of weeks ago. The plants started getting too thick so I did a major cutting back and rearranged some things since I got some red plants and riccia/crystalwort to grow better.

I love my planted tank, but its a bit of work!

[manderx]

nice tanks. some people like grape/feather caulerpa or chaetomorpha in their fuges. we have plenty of it floating around town, if nobody else hooks you up shoot me a PM.

i'm in the process of setting up a planted 90, just waiting till i can afford another 6-8 bags of eco-complete, and then re-enforce under my house so it doesn't go right through the floor.

[Shivaji]

Originally posted by surfnvb7
Yeah, its running CO2 injection pretty heavily. For filtration, I'm still waiting to upgrade to an Eheim canister filter to minimize the water disturbance, water evaporation, and loss of CO2. I'm running a biowheel HOB at the moment, along with a UV filter and a biowheel mini as a return for the UV that I also store some phosphate absorbing media in.


Would the Eheim minimize the water disturbance ? I have a 11 year old 2215 on my 55 and it stirs the water up quite a bit. I would have thought that the BioWheels would be less "disruptive", somehow.

Looks like you have some nice Rotala Indicas growing there. I would love to see the tank sometime. I know it is a lot of work, which is why all I have are swords ...

[surfnvb7]

Well, I figured the Eheim would minimize water disturbance since the spray bar would be below the water surface. I'm not worried about current in the tank as much as the actual water surface being disturbed, which is leading to a HUGE loss of CO2.

I went through a 5lb tank of CO2 in 2 months, when it should last for 6. But I should also get a more effecient CO2 reactor to run in-line with the Eheim, and UV.

Yes, the Rotala Indicas were growing like mad, I had to take a out at least half because it was getting ridiculous. When they start growing out again, let me know and I'll give you some if you want. I hate just tossing stuff. I also have a much better set of Rotala Magenta now that is doing good.

Mandrex: how many WPG are you planning on running on that 90g? I hope for your sakes you plan on doing low light to minimize the amount of work batteling algae on 90g's.

[surfnvb7]

Any comments on when to add the macro algae? (see previous post) I just figured that the reason the feather caulerpa died was because there were no nitrates available, but this is coming from a planted tank person.

Also, I'm looking for small frags of stuff, zoos and ricordia's mostly I guess, easy stuff, if anyone has some.

PS. Don't get me wrong I love zooquatic, but on a grad student budget I can't afford to be a medium sized rock of brown zoos for ~$50 or more.

Oh, so anyone have any experience with ordering like a nanopack of zoos/ricordias or other easy stuff off the internet?

[Shivaji]

Hey - I will take any cuttings you want to get rid of.

It will motivate me to get going on really setting up the plant tank I have been talking about for years.

I agree though that the Eheims will give a good flow without agitating the surface too much. What substarte are you using ?

[Shivaji]

Regarding the caluerpa - yes they suck the nitrates right out of the water, so if you want them to grow, put in a canister filter with some bio beads or something. My tank went crazy with caluerpa when I was out of the country for about three weeks, so much so that I killed the whole tank and started from scratch. You could not see anything - it was like a jungle.

By the way, I saw a Discovery Channel program on a species of Caluerpa that was created by cloning just for the aquarium trade that grows like crazy. This species accidentally go released into the Mediterrenean Sea and has take over hundreds of square miles of the sea bed despite being a tropical species.

I have some halimeda if you want some - they are growing like weeds in my tank.

[surfnvb7]

I am using 100% fluorite, which seems to work very well, aside from the nasty algae outbreaks in the first couple of months, that killed plants and some fish it has done quite well. My girlfriend also has 100% fluorite on a 7gal minibow at 3wpg and a Nutrifin C02 yeast reactor that is doing quite well also.

Some, if not most, of my plants may have a high light requirement. How many WPG are you running, and any CO2? When I am ready to cut back again I'll put a post up saying what I have, maybe with pics. I'm pretty sure you won't find anything I have at the LFS.

[manderx]

not sure what i'm going to do yet for lighting. i'm thinking T5s (mostly so i could use them on a big reef in the future if i wanted to), but would probably need 4 of them and don't want to spend 300 bucks on lights for it, at least not all at once. i might just wimp out and put 2 shoplights over it for the time being. wanna get together sometime soon? i'll gladly trade zoo/mushroom/macroalgae frags for freshwater advice.

[manderx]

caulerpa is also taking over the california coastline, which is why it's technically illegal there.

[Shivaji]

Originally posted by surfnvb7
Some, if not most, of my plants may have a high light requirement. How many WPG are you running, and any CO2? When I am ready to cut back again I'll put a post up saying what I have, maybe with pics. I'm pretty sure you won't find anything I have at the LFS.

The LFS does not have much more than the standard swords, bacopa, anubias stuff. It is something else entirely to get the cuttings from a tank where they stuff is growing properly. Which is why frags from Matt and others here are the way to go. I have lots of Xenia, and as I said before, halimeda if you are interested.

I currently have a 55 FW & a 38 Reef and am thinking of swapping tanks. The 38 has dual 96w PCs which works out to 5 WPG if I switch out the actinic bulb for a daylight. I would probably break down and get an MH system for the 55 (like the one Matt wants to get rid of - or something similar). I also have a 20 which is unused right now and would probably be unsuitable as you would have to prune pretty aggressively because of the height limitation.

Glad to have a FW plant person around ...

[surfnvb7]

Well, I can't tell you exactly what works and what doesn't in the freshwater planted tanks. I don't claim to be an expert on equipment, fish, and plants by any means. What I know is either from experience or because I research a TON just by instinct, because thats what I am used to doing for school, but that still doesn't mean it will work right.

I have a friend who's less experienced than me, and she has a 55g with cichlids and somehow gets her temple plants, and some others to grow fine at 2wpg with the addition of salt...and that blows my mind...lol

Here is a good story to learn from your mistakes...
I really screwed up a couple weeks ago, probably right after I took that pic of my planted tank above... My CO2 tank ran out, so I went and got it filled, and in the process of hooking up the regulator something happened and it "blew out". So I was pretty ticked cuz I thought I had broken it, and unplugged it from the pH meter to mess around with it. So the tank went maybe 2 weeks without CO2 addition, so I also cut down on the light to prevent any algae outbreaks. After messing with it again I realized I didn't break it, but in fact my CO2 diffuser in the tank was causing a negative pressure build up on the regulator due to a bunch of green spot algae that had built up on it, not allowing the CO2 to escape into the water. SO I fixed that, turned it up the CO2 one morning to get the pH back down by the time I got back from class around lunchtime...I came home and just about all my fish belly up....I forgot to plug the CO2 selonoid valve back into the pH meter, and the pH was around 5.2, I quickly acted and managed to get a couple of survivors. Luckily nothing that great died, mostly algae eaters (oto's and SAE's, and an expensive gold nugget pleco). But now that I have hardly no fish, I have not much nitrates at all. So I think I am in a major growth stunt due to nitrate shortage because alot of plants are getting some pale leaves, some holes, and a few even melted away (ozelot sword). I have rapidly added some oto's and SAE's back in, but I may even have to dose some nitrates into the tank as I have heard in some planted tank forums.

BUT, the way to go is to keep it around or under 3WPG, I highly reccomend fluorite, or a mixture of fluorite and something else, and some kind of DIY CO2 yeast reactor.

[surfnvb7]

What is halimeda exactly? I am so bad with the names of stuff, plants too.

Xenia scares me...lol...reading so much on nano-reef.com and seeing pics of it literally taking over tanks. And I'm so not in the mood to have to trim and cut back something else that grows like my cancerous planted tank.

However, I could be persuaded into it since I still don't have any corals yet.

[manderx]

xenia, especially the pink kind, is pretty good about growing around things. best tank i've ever seen firsthand had every spare square inch of rock covered in pink xenia. it's easy enough to peel off if you don't want it anymore.

[Shivaji]

And what is nice is that they are alive - pulsing away, quite pretty actually ...

My non-pulsing Xenia are also doing quite well so you can get some any time Matt, along with the nepthea, which is now some six inches tall and branched out nicely.

Halimeda is also known as money plant, and is calcerous algae that grows in bunches. Fish do not eat them - too chalky, I suppose, like eating TUMS or something.

BTW as you may have gathered from all my posts today - I am home with a foot problem, so I am catching up on stuff.

[surfnvb7]

ok, getting new frags, no matter what it is sounds too tempting no matter what now.

once i get another pump in there to increase the flow I'll let you know. maybe I'll have some plant cuttings by then too.

I guess the big thing that was unappealing before about the xenia was perhaps what the LFS wanted for just one stalk ~$30.

[mbort]

Let me know what you want, I can get you plenty of frags also .. shrooms, zoos, xenia, montis, etc.

[mbort]

Oh yeah, welcome to the forum !!:rollface: