Habitat - Indoor :: Moe's new 75G home - build thread.

[happycamper]

Rummynose are my favorite! They school so nicely! Looking good

[VeipaCray]

Thanks! Yeah I just need to find some time to make a trip over to the store to pick out some fish. I'd get them online but the shipping is nuts and it's hot outside.... I'd hate to stress the fish any more than what they've already gone through.

[steve]

If I didn't know that was a planted tank, I wouldn't know there was water in there. Very nice!

[VeipaCray]

Thanks Steve. Just never mind the levitating fish then.


The sump is an awesome filter - I wish it worked as well for turtles. Anything floating in the water is carried to the 100 micron filter socks keeping the water very clear. There's a huge amount of bio media but that may not have much to do as the plants themselves consume most of the ammonia / nitrites / nitrates from the water. The fish waste same thing... it doesn't necessarily float like it would in salt water but we don't want it to. We want the waste to sink and serve as food for the plants. That eheim 1262 pump is a silent powerful beast. I'd HIGHLY recommend this pump to anyone looking for a mid sized workhorse pump. So far I'm very happy with the equipment. I wish my aquascaping skills were better.

[VeipaCray]

So you saw him at the beginning of this thread a year and a half ago when he was born. Here's Derek trying to catch the fish...

[slider_keeper]

The plants look great. Derek is getting big!

[VeipaCray]

Thanks Slider keeper.... yeah the old cliche is true. They do grow up really fast.

[slider_keeper]

Yeah, didn't we grow up fast? It seems like yesterday I was under my parents roof and that was 13 yrs ago, lol! If you blink he will be heading off to college;)

[VeipaCray]

Who needs college when you've got google? ;P

[slider_keeper]

true! lol and its cheaper! Trust me college is expensive!

[slider_keeper]

do you still have your cichlid tank?

[VeipaCray]

Yes, we still have the cichlids tank.

[slider_keeper]

I love cichlids. I have a African cichlid tank. I was gonna ask you, what type of CO2 system are you running on your planted tank? And, is it necessary to have a CO2 system with plants in the tank if you have fish, shrimp, snails and a turtle? Wouldn't they combined put off the necessary CO2?

[VeipaCray]

The CO2 system I use is a 5# pressurized tank with the milwaukee regulator and the Red Sea 500 co2 reactor. There's pictures of it on previous pages in this thread.

To answer your questions, it depends on a few things. What type of plants? How much lighting? etc. Could you run a low tech tank without CO2... certainly but you'd generally need to supplement the water with liquid carbon like seachem flourish excel.
Plants will generally grow faster with co2 and ferts added.

The fish, shrimp, snails, etc would produce waste that helps to fertilize the plants. They probably won't produce enough co2 to benefit the plants.

Turtles at least in the case of mine would just eat the plants - co2 wouldn't be needed at all, neither would lighting or substrate. If I drop a plant in my turtle tank, it's usually gone within an hour.

[slider_keeper]

Oh ok, I'm curious if a big tank with lots of plants would fair better to a turtles appetite? There is more room and a larger selection, kinda like a small pond?