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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.

Ive reorganized the order of my tanks so I can better keep track of them ie. Tank 2 moss tank is now tank 3. This helps in any confusion I had when tracking tanks they are in a sort of order now. Rather than taking time editing my old journal id rather create a new thread. Pics will be current (for the most part) as they are posted. I am not aquascaping. I am just farming.

This is the future home for the announcements when someone obtains an achievement badge. Let the games begin!

I’ve been wanting to do a tank for a while that focuses just on finnicky plants -erios, lud. panatal, tonina and the sorts. So this is my detailed journal of how I start my planting process all the way from cycling to planting, fertilizing, water changes and the pitsfalls, lighting and what processes work best for me.

Equipment:
Oase biomaster2- 350
Fluval Visi-white 60P tank
Fzone CO2 regulator and a 2.5lb CO2 tank
Week aqua L600Pro Series Light
Fzone Brite60 Light
Yugang reactor made using a 375 mm PC cooling reservoir - will post another journal detailing this.

CO2:
1.3 pH drop from a baseline of pH 6.8.

Aquasoil:
Three 5L bags of APT Feast

Cycling:

APT Feast being a high organic content soil - I like to cycle it for a full month at least using the dark start method before planting anything. This is even more important for me as I almost exclusively use tissue cultures for my plants. Because I will be injecting CO2, the tank was also getting injected with CO2 during its dark start. I know there’s opinion out there that it’s a waste and what not, but I think CO2 levels in the water might affect microbial ecosystem development in the long run, so I like to start off by exposing the microbial community of the tank to CO2 levels it will be seeing in the long run.
The water parameters 2 weeks after start dark cycle were as follows:
Total ammonia : 10 ppm+
Nitrite: 10 ppm+
Nitrate : unreadable as the nitrite levels were interfering with the API test. I eventually used a 25% dilution to read 30 ppm+ nitrates.
At this point I did a large (100%) water change to remove some ammonia and speed up the leaching process. The steeper the diffusion gradient between the soil and water the quicker the ammonia leaches, hence large water changes facilitates that.

After 4 weeks I did another water test and the parameters were similar as above. Proceeded to do another 100% water change.

After 5 weeks I did another water test and this time the parameters were:
Total Ammonia: 1 ppm
Nitrite: 2 ppm+
Nitrate: 40 ppm+
Decided to give it another week to see if the nitrites would drop to below 0.5 ppm.

One week later the nitrites had vanished. I did another 100% water change.
So it takes about 6 weeks to fully cycle a tank with APT Feast if you don’t use any old media or cycling aid.

Next step is to plant the tank. I wanted this tank to focus on mostly uncommon species:
1. Ludwigia Pantanal
2. Ludwigia Arcuata
3. Tonina fluviatilis
4. Rotala Macrandra
5. Macrandra Mini Red
6. Mayaca Fluviatilis
7. Rotala Florida
8. Rotala Bonsai
9. Ludwigia Cuba- white edge
10. Ludwigia Senegalensis
11. Lysimachia Parv. red
12. AR mini
13. Bacopa compacta white
14. Erio Vietnam
15. Erio Quinquangulare
16. Crypt Flamingo for my centre piece

Here’s a photo after planting. Not all the species listed above are present in the photo but I did eventually add them once I was able to acquire them.

I’m also trying to make a carpet with buce needle leaf on the left side, we’ll see how that goes. I plant on planting clumps of ratnagiricum in the carpet once the carpet has settled in.

OK, so parameters after planting:
1. CO2: 1.3 pH drop from a baseline pH of 6.8. About 55-60 ppm possibly. The verify by making sure my drop checker is yellow before lights on. I turn on CO2 4 hours before lights on and turn it off 1 hour before lights off.

2. Lighting at 80% strength. I hadn’t hooked up the week aqua yet at that point so it’s just 80% on the fzone which would amount to about 60 umol of PAR at the substrate. After a week, I installed my weekaqua L series and increased the PAR to around 100 umol at the substrate. I’m a big fan of using high light (80-110) umol from day 1 of planting, I think this gives plants the best chance at fast growth. The faster the plants grow adapt and generate mass the higher my chances on skipping the diatom/GDA phase. Here’s an 8 gallon tank below where I used a 100W grow light from Day 1 of planting and you can see how the tank is algae free and growing rapidly at the 3 week mark.


This method has worked really well for me, although the key to this method is to maintain very stable nitrate levels. Your nitrates could be anywhere between 0-30ppm, and it won’t matter as long as it is kept stable. A common mistake is to not replenish nitrates after a large water change.

3. Fertilizers:
APT 1 - 1.5 ml per day

4. Water parameters:
KH - 0dKH
Nitrate: 10 ppm
Phosphate: 0 ppm

Here’s the tank now after 4 weeks of growth:


The macrandra on the left had been trimmed last week and replanted, they had almost reaching 80% of the tank height. The tonina at the back has settled in well, some diatoms on the lower leaves which I’m not worried about. Although I don’t think that’s where I’ll kepp the tonina long run. I might use it as a midground plant and maybe move the panatal where the tonina is. You can barely see the quinquangulare behind the AR mini, but they seemed to have settled down as well. I planted 6 crowns and lost 3 within the first 2 weeks. I suspect damage from transportation - they smelled like cooked spinach when I received them.
So as is evident from above, even though I’m supplying higher levels of lighting, diatoms and GDA haven’t really taken a hold yet. The key has been regular water changes to remove detritus produced by the ramshorns, keep a stable nitrate level of 10ppm, stable CO2 at 50+ppm and good plant husbandry. I always make a point of trimming away older and emersed leaves so they don’t attract algae. The ludwigia white is actually emersed. I have removed all of its emersed leaves except the ones from the top 2 internodes and as soon as I will see sideshoots grow and develop past the 2nd internode, I will trim them and replant them and uproot the emersed stem and toss it. The plant arrangment is a little “block-like” as of now, but this isn’t really the final arrangement. I prefer to grow the plants out in a rough layout before I arrange them once they’ve all taken off.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I will add to it as the tank develops in the upcoming weeks.

Does anyone know how a chiller should be connected? Do I need to buy a separate external pump, or can it be connected directly to a canister filter?