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I managed to acquire some Eriocaulon ratnagiricum. It should arrive early next week. I am pulling my 60U out of its extended dark start this weekend, and figured it would be an intriguing addition at the base of the large stones. (Not my image, this was from the seller):



I did read Dennis Wong's 'how to grow' for this species, which was very helpful, and will add some APT Jazz in the areas that I plant it as it seems it wants a fairly rich soil. Tank is 0KH, remineralized RO with APT Sky initially to dGH 6 when I initiated the dark start.

However, despite being sold as 'inert', the Sensei stone I acquired from AFA is most definitely not proving to be entirely inert. I haven't drained the tank yet, but will this weekend when I start planting, but this morning KH is holding at 0, but dGH is currently sitting at 10! There is a vein of quartz-like crystal running through the largest stone, presumably calcite, as it is driving the GH up, and leaving KH unaffected. Calcite reportedly can run in some Magura/Sensei stone. I am already reconsidering the type of shrimp for this tank based on the higher GH level, but I am wondering if anyone has experience with this plant in a tank with higher GH? This Erio is KH sensitive, and the tank is ok there, but I am wondering if the excess calcium in the water column, pushing that higher GH, might be less than ideal for this Eriocaulon?

I did consider sealing the vein of calcite with cyanoacrylate glue, and covering it in riccardia to maybe slow the leaching/rise in GH, but I think most of the rocks have at least some of this material running through them to varying degree, and I am expecting that the leaching could increase once the CO2 is running, and the pH drops. Regardless, if anyone has experience growing this lovely little spiky Erio, please share!

An area of confusion for me has been the degassing of CO2 in my aquarium. It's often talked about but we don't seem to have real data except for that done by our friend @Dennis Wong in his article How to measure CO2 levels in an aquarium.

According to this article, standing water sits at .6 ppm of dissolved CO2 and a normal planted aquarium will degass to 2-3 ppm. Therefore, our tanks are never full degassing CO2, especially because we supplement to such a high level. This, in turn, concerned me of an ever increasing CO2 level.

For example, if we started at 2-3 ppm and we went up to 30 ppm on day one, is it possible that on day two you degass only to 3-4 ppm and that is your starting point. Adding the same amount of CO2 would then end up at 31 ppm on day two. This would continue increasing the total high over time.

Curious that I have not created a CO2 disaster in my tanks in the past, I decided to pull up my Apex Fusion log showing my pH drop daily. Here it is:


I was pleasantly surprised to see that my 1.3 - 1.4 pH drop is absolutely consistent day after day. This seems to indicate that I am not on an ever increasing cycle but one that repeats exactly the same day after day.

Does this mean that degassing really isn't an issue to be concerned about or that it's more about oxygenation than decreasing CO2?

Welcome to ScapeCrunch, @Aquafish!
We would love to get to know you. Please tell us about yourself. What tank do you have?

Hey guys, I've made a couple of yugang reactors some horizontal, some vertical (soda bottle with a hole in it).

I've noticed a reoccuring issue constantly in that it will eventually fill up with air (oxygen) from plants pearling.

Once the co2 + oxygen concentration gets high enough, Oxygen from plant pearling will eventually make its way into the reactor. After a few days, this severely reduces its efficiency.

You would think the oxygen just gets pushed out by the co2 coming, but plants pearling will kinda just refill it up extremely fast.

Is yugang better in lower light tanks where you won't get intense pearling? I usually find co2 misting much more consistent in this case and might swap back to just using a ceramic diffuser for consistency. I only have 10 gallon tanks... a ceramic diffuser is fine, its just easy to nuke your tank with too much co2 where yugang limits your co2 ppm based on reactor size.

I have read an awful lot of warnings and conjectures by people. And “I used bdbs and a shrimp died so I got rid of it…”…

My personal experience with the product has been uneventful.

I have put rare earth magnets through a quart sample with no hint of any attraction and then washed it with no hint of oil slick or dustiness and then added the rest of the bag to a new aquarium with no treatment, no ill effect…

I have probably employed 7 bags by now with no hint of a problem. Dozens of corys sifting through the stuff as well as khuli loaches and yoyo loaches…. No hint of problems with them…

Other than it self leveling itself and being totally incapable of holding a slopeI love the stuff. The black always looks great. It costs about 1/4 aquarium specific substrates. I really haventexperienced anything negative about it…

I know it is popular here…. Has anybody here had bad experiences with it?

Well I’m done talking about it, it’s time to get this journal started.

I have been really out of it the last year or so in terms of maintaining my own tank, mainly out of frustration with time constraints and inconsistency with dosing etc. However, I have now acquired a dream tank, rimless and with low iron glass like I’ve always wanted. While I loved having a sump and prided myself on putting it together, I’m past that desire. The AIO allows the same benefits with hiding equipment, and overall easier maintenance without climbing in and out of cabinets. Now onto the details of this build.

Tank: Planet Aquariums Tideline 62 Gallon AIO Lagoon

Filtration: (2) 250gph pumps on either side of the tank with center overflow into socks (I’m going to punch holes in the socks for now and stuff with polyfill, reviews state the socks clog way too quickly and there is no replacement sock as the insert is not the common round style). The baffles will be stuffed with the poret foam I have already from my sump for extra mechanical/biological.

Substrate: The bottom layer will comprise of bagged pond soil/peat/earthworm castings/ STS. This will be a thin layer and will mainly act as filler to raise up the cap of APT Feast. This is similar to a substrate setup I did when I first started back up in 2020, And that tank did very well. While capping with sand and relying on the dirt to feed the stems worked well, it did require a little more effort on my end with dosing. I don’t trust myself to be as diligent as some members on here are with their inert subs, so I’m taking the mulligan and using aquasoil as a cap, hence, “dirty soil.” This will be another island style layout, and the surrounding substrate will be comprised of Caribsea Carolina Creek Sand.

Hardscape: River rock (local hardscape center sourced) and malaysian driftwood. I have recently acquired another large piece of wood and I’m sourcing new stone this week, as what I have just isn’t meshing with my current vision for the tank.

Plants: …. I have not solidified my vision of what this scape will look like just yet as I haven’t been able to setup the hardscape to outline the island. The plan is to use a good amount of colorful stems, epiphytes, and potentially moss.

Lighting: I will be ordering the Week Aqua Z400 this week and am excited to test it out.

That’s all for now, more pictures and details to come. I should hopefully have the hardscape setup by the end of this coming week after acquiring more stone and wood.

CO2: Almost forgot, for Co2 injection I have made a DIY Yugang with a locking food storage container. It will be stored in the cabinet and the hook will feed into the return pump chamber on the right. I initially was bummed that I had to sacrifice storage to fit a 5lb CO2 tank under the stand, which also meant getting rid of of the 20lb tank I’ve only been having to fill twice a year. @GreggZ Will appreciate this, my awesome father in law suggested that I hide the co2 tank in the pantry closet which is directly behind that wall and just drill a hole for the co2 line. Since my father in laws word is pure gold in my wife’s eyes, that suggestion was approved! He’s just as much my dad too so I appreciated him supporting the project

Hi guys!

I'm new here, but not entirely new to planted tanks though I've been out of the hobby for the better part of the last decade between kids and moving a couple of times - but finally in a spot where I can do something again. I'm mostly going to be making things up as I go along, but plan on a lot of automation (I want to integrate everything into home assistant) and a lot of DIY as I love the challenge of building things out myself.

The starting point:

I picked up a 90P rimless, low-iron tank on a great deal.



I have a rough idea in my head for a stand to be built from plywood - just have a couple other house projects to finish off before starting that built.

Wife says I can only have one aquarium, so for this tank, I want to go all out with a sump to allow for auto top off, and auto water changes, auto fertilizer dosing etc. etc. I have half a plan in my mind.

I've also started on the light fixture which I've modeled up in CAD, and plan on making out of an 8020 extrusion, and some 3D printed bits.

I'm using bridgelux gen 3 thrive CW (3000k) and WW (5000k) LED strips which have super high CRI at 98+ along with some specific XPE2 wavelengths that I'll solder onto some starboards. Far Red (730nm), Red (654nm), Cyan (495nm), Blue (455nm), Visible UV (415nm). Each segment of the white channels will be on its own driver so I can adjust left to right brightness in thirds, and each colour channel on its own driver so I can vary each channel on a time-based approach.

These will be run from a custom PCB board with Meanwell N-LDD drivers, and will run ESPHome on an ESP32 so it can link up with my Home Assistant installation.


That's it for now, this will probably be a very slow build so be warned if you follow along!

I understand that the process of aquasoil neutralizing kh is basically it turning it into co2 through chemical reactions.

However, in practice it just seems to raise the ph if the soil if the ph buffering capacity is exhausted?
If I pre-acidify RO water with HCL the aquasoil seems to raise the ph back up to around where it normally is after a day or 2.

Like my no-tech bowl scaping thread where I have a list of inspiring bowl scapers, I thought it would be awesome to do the same with a Dutch-inspired / True Dutch thread! I have a ton, but I'll post them over time. If anyone else finds good examples of dutch tanks, post them here, too!

---

First up:



I translated the transcript and got as much info as I could. Here's the things I find interesting:

50% WC weekly

He front-load doses the incoming fresh water volume to:

• NO3: ~30 ppm
• PO4: ~4.2 ppm
• K: ~34 ppm
• Mg: ~3.4 ppm

Meaning, his accumulation numbers can never exceed these values (that's the benefit of viewing his front load in terms of incoming ppm values vs total water volume).

If you were to look at it through full-volume dosing lens, it's:

• NO3: ~15 ppm
• PO4: ~2.1 ppm
• K: ~17 ppm
• Mg: ~1.7 ppm

GH booster is used but not described, so IDK how much Ca/Mg he uses.

Micros are dosed 3x per week, but nothing specific provided. Probably ~0.3-0.5ppm/week? He does say the iron is all gone/undetectable by the evening.

Beautiful tank! I love the balance of colors, textures, and plant groupings. That tiger lily is amazing. Very little algae, too!

Time to start a new thread.

I’ll fill in some details later, but I’m working on the hardscape now. Any and all criticism is appreciated. The vision is nothing more, and nothing less, than something appealing to the eye.

90cm x 30cm x 30cm Lifegard Aquatics ultra clear bookshelf tank. Buce and anubias on the hardscape, stems towards the back and center, mid to front carpet with some changes in shade and texture down to a flat grade on the right side of the tank.

Lily pipe inlet and skimmer will be in the back left corner with the outflow in the front left to hopefully achieve circular flow. I’ll be running an in-line diffuser. Light will be the P600 Pro that I regrettably did not upside to 900. Oh well. I’ll mount it high and hopefully it’ll have enough spread.

I have some dragon stone and red lava rock rubble I’ll use at the base to blend into the substrate, as well as some stratum I may or may not cap with.