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20 gallon breeder seems to have algae issues whenever I go above 10 watts of light in the tank. Co2 Injected.
I'm currently on a 10 hour photoperiod.

I was wondering If I would get better results in color plant robustness if I just did a short but intense burst of light for shorter instead of slow but longer?

Tank is mostly just buces + some eriocaulons. I've noticed better buce color in higher light, which is why I'm asking.

So.
6 Hours (30 Watts) Vs 10 Hours (10 Watts).

My best guess for par values would be 100-150 par (30 watts) 30-50 par (10 watts).

TLDR: Wood buy from Belinda again

I was on the hunt for a very large piece of driftwood for my 120p. I knew I wanted something that would have branches that stuck out of the water. Everything local to me, including Aquarium Co-Op, was on the smaller side (the piece in my 75p was about the biggest they had). I didn't want to combine pieces and was really looking for a singular piece of large driftwood. I had seen some local posts on marketplace with larger pieces, but nothing really caught my attention.

@JayP had made a post about Belinda's Driftwood on Facebook and I started casually browsing her posts until I saw a piece that really spoke to me.

Belinda responded to my DMs surprisingly quick, including some back and forth to figure out if it would fit in the tank. She estimated shipping would be $100 and asked if she should remove the longer branches to save on shipping, estimating it would save roughly $30, which I declined. I started messaging her on a Wednesday morning and had tracking Friday afternoon. All in, $160 for the wood + $113* for shipping = $273. For comparison, I spent $40 on the wood for my 75p, which is a fraction of the size. While $113 for shipping seems high, it seemed reasonable to me given the size (oversized shipping) and recent USPS temporary increases due to oil prices. Not to mention, Belinda didn't charge anything for packaging, which there was no shortage of. USPS took about 2 weeks to get the wood to me, but thanks to the packaging, it arrived undamaged!
*This was shipped with retail pricing and Belinda is now using PirateShip (based on FB posts), so I'd expect shipping costs to be lower given the commercial pricing via PirateShip.

Without further ado, this thread is worthless without pics

Here's the initial screenshot she sent me since I had messaged before the piece was posted. She essentially does a photo dump of pieces that she's posting soon and I messaged her that I was interested in one.



As delivered by USPS. This thing was packaged like a tank!


Humans for scale


Unwrapping the packaging

Each individual branch was padded with support and had cardboard on it. The carboard in the top right corner of this picture was shockingly thick.

45 minutes later, I had it free


In the tank (It's almost a perfect fit as is!)


Soaking (now).

The Biomaster Thermo 600 on my farm tank had been screaming at me lately that it was time for some TLC. It was doing the typical air sucking, hard to prime, small leaks, etc. all the indications it needed to be fully torn down and have all the gaskets/o-rings lubricated. This is the nice thing about having extra complete filters so I can have a pump head, heater, priming assembly, and inlet/outlet connection unit all cleaned, lubed and ready to go on an active filter. This is especially true for the Inlet/Outlet Connection Unit which seems to be the most common cause of leaks and air intrusion. For this reason, I also keep a couple new spares on hand because I've had a couple break in different ways. Today, while tearing the old one down to lube not only the two visible o-rings, but also the 3 buried within, I broke one of the retaining tabs that hold the inner portion in tightly against those buried o-rings. When I grabbed a new one that I'd just recently purchased, I noticed the visible o-rings were now orange instead of the normal black. They also look a little beefier. I wonder if this is Oase addressing the known common issues with this assembly and making some quiet updates and improvements.



Oh, and the farm tank filter is running great again...so far.

Hello everybody im new here and wanted to introduce my tank,

The tank is a 350 liter Juwel rio (120x50x60)
Pretty high tank but wanted to have 50 cm wide

Lights: 3 daytime onex (1x plant 2x colour)
Good for 180 par at the bottom, 1.5 hour build up/5 hours full and 1.5 hour build off

Co2 by Inline with a co2art series pro dual stage regulator dropping 1.4 in ph

Filtration: 2 external filters (1x crystal profi 900, 1x tetra ex 1500 on a spraybar) and a eheim skim 350

Substrate: mastersoil black powder with masterline root tabs

Fertilizer: apt e

Fish: cherry barbels, siamese algae eaters, kuhli, ottociclus and some bloody mary shrimps

Plants: rotala macandra, anubias tinto, reineckii mini, reineckki rosenarvig, rotala blood red, ludwigia repens super red, bacopa carolinia, lobelia cardinalis, crypto flamingo, crypto rosen maiden, staurogene repens, spiralus tiger, ludwigia inclinata meta, samolus parvifloris red.
Might have forgotten something

Currently battling algae and unhappy plants due to nutrient inbalances and a no3 tester that was not correct.

Under a pic of the current state and the state it was a little better in balance (not as it should tho)

I've just spotted these latest Hygger luminaire lights.

All the bumf seems to claim that they only have RGB LEDs (all 5054 type). Very reasonable prices. Is this a complete bargain for a genuine RGB light ? Or is there a catch ?? THis is way off my areas of expertise.

Hello folks,

I have a Twinstar 1200S V (the new model that has app support). I love the look of the light itself and it makes my tank look great, but either the app is fundamentally flawed or I'm missing something obvious. I have a smart plug on this light so I can turn it off and on with a voice command. The light clearly has a saved state as when it gets powered on it turns on with the right spectrum and the intensity. BUT, it also only turns on for 6 hours before turning off. Every. Single. Time.

My set photoperiod is 8 hours, so the light turns off 2 hours short of the correct time every day.

I can make a work around by turning the light off and back on again at the smart plug, (gaining an additional 6 hour window of 'on' time when I only need 2 hours before the smart switch unplugs the light again). BUT, I would much rather have the light allow for it to be on for as long as I want and turn off when I want.

I contacted twinstar support via email more then a month ago and got absolutely no response. So pretty much the worse product support something can have.

The obvious issue is the inbuilt timer in the app is defaulting to 6 hours. I have tried changing this timer to be longer (set it for 23 hours). I also have tried having the timer just set to 'off'. Neither does anything.

Does anyone else have this light? Does anyone else have any suggestions?

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!

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.

So I've been trying to recover this farm tank after having been neglected for a couple months after my injury. I had lost some plants which I could understand for obvious reasons. However it seems as though since I've resumed maintenance Its had a major negative impact on the tank. Since resuming water changes & Co2 injection I've had a major issue with plant melt: hygophila araguaia which had been decent has been completely wiped out, buces are shedding leaves at an alarming rate, lagenandra meeboldii green which was easily the largest plant in the tank is a shaddow of its former self and continues to decline, I attributed this melt as likely being a combination of factors:

A.) Aquarium had stopped being dosed with fertilizers and plants had become weak
B.) Co2 bottle had run dry and now suddenly Co2 injection had resumed.
C.) Lack of water changes caused the plants to use up or at least deplete available minerals which were not being replaced with each water change.

My theory was these factors combined with resuming maintenance, co2 injection, etc were drastic enough to cause a significant change in water parameters from what the plants had adapated to.

I had ordered some new plants to replace some that were lost, mostly tissue culture which is what I've had pretty great success with. However now many of these new plants are pretty much also instantly melting. Pogostemon helferi specifically, but also some some swords (echinodorus red diamond) being the hardest hit, but ozelot also struggling.

Nutrient dosing targets:
30mL dose provides
Macros
NO3 via KNO3 - 20ppm
P via KH2PO4 - 1.5ppm
K via KNO3+KH2PO4+K2SO4 - 20 ppm

Micros
Fe via CSM+B - 0.5ppm
Ferts are dosed 10mL at at the time 3x/ week on alternating days.

I use RO water and APT Sky+ to remineralize using the calculator on 2 Hr Aquarist website, and according to the calculator my dosages should put me around 7GH and 1.9KH.
I was going to check water hardness last night but my solution is expired so I need to pick up some more today just for verification purposes. While the tank SHOULD be somewhere in the neighborhood provided by the APT SKY+ when I tested KH (not expired) it tested at 4dKH . Lights are on for 7 hours per day, Co2 Injection begins 1.5 hours before lights on and shuts off 1 hour before lights off. pH is 7.4 and pH drop is approximately 1.2 using an apera pH meter (Tank has no inhabitants other than plants). Drop checker Green. TDS 225. I will add that the tank does start seeing some pretty decent ambient light from the room for several hours before lights on, so I'm not sure if this makes a difference. I'm skeptical because everything had been doing fine until the maintenance fell off during my injury, and the decline really accelerated once the water changes/ Co2 injection resumed. Its not everything in the tank, there are plants that bouncing back, the echinodorus Aflame, blyxa japonica, and crypt lucens all seem to be either doing fine or recovering with new growth. I'm at a complete loss, and by no means an expert, I would love any input, ideas, insights that you all could offer. TIA.

I'm thinking about setting up a carnivorous plant terrarium. I'm looking for a place to go like Scape Crunch to ask a few questions. My experience with aquarium forums has me leery of where I go for info. FaceBook is a storm. Reddit is slightly better. There are a couple forums, but I don't want to end up in a Planted Tank type situation where the wrong question gets me banned. Any suggestions?

FWIW: I've grown carnivorous plants in the past and had good luck with them. However, from what I can find, doing a terrarium might have a few different rules than just a fun pot garden outside.