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been away long time, need ideas
hello all,
Been a LOOOOOONNNNNGGG time since I've posted here. Well, I am embarrassed. I used to be quite the "stuck up Plant tank fanatic" until I had an opportunity to get a 125 gall reef ready tank with all the live rock and bells and whistles. Guess what people?! over there in sal****er land they get algae too!! Lots of it! all new kinds of algae to fight with. Just when I became a pro at my planted discus tank... now I've got diatoms, red slime, and the worst of all yep you guessed it HAIR ALGAE. Hah! The thing is in a reef tank you don't have the nice macrophytes in your corner to have your back and kick the algae's @**. BTW guess what the new rage is in marine world? Hooking up a second tank to your main tank to grow only "macroalgae" i.e. using attractive algae to outcompete the lower algae. it's called a refugium, and some of this macroalgae is wild lookin. Anyway enough of that now for my questions..... I've seriously neglected my discus 55 gallon. But the absence has kind of had the "walk away from the painting" effect. Now I want to do something cool but I want it to be lower maintenance. Slow growers. With the reef tank I simply do not have the time to dedicate to pruning every third week. I alrady have a full carpet of lilaeopsis, and a bunch of stem plants. Full bed of flourite. I've got 4x 40 watt NO flourescents, fluval canister, and DIY CO2. If I remember correctly when I was "psyched" about a year ago people were getting into cork, attaching "barriers" to the corners inorder to make shelves so that the gravel was at different levels. if anyone has any cool links or pics that would be awesome! I am picturing something along these lines. btw is that glossostigma? thanks everyone, Ben |
been away long time, need ideas
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been away long time, need ideas
I don't have any ideas but I sure do know what you mean by your salt
water tank. And to think that algae is your friend in there...lol. Vicki |
been away long time, need ideas
A year is a long time? Last year was about 15 minutes ago for me.
If you know enough to have a planted Discus tank, and you are screwing around with Marine, how much else can we really suggest to you? It's not neccessary to show off to us that you are doing Reef, keep in mind that many of us here also read the Marine newsgroups, so your revelations are not earth shattering. As far as Links and Pics, just surf the web "Benthic" wrote in message ... hello all, Been a LOOOOOONNNNNGGG time since I've posted here. Well, I am embarrassed. I used to be quite the "stuck up Plant tank fanatic" until I had an opportunity to get a 125 gall reef ready tank with all the live rock and bells and whistles. Guess what people?! over there in sal****er land they get algae too!! Lots of it! all new kinds of algae to fight with. Just when I became a pro at my planted discus tank... now I've got diatoms, red slime, and the worst of all yep you guessed it HAIR ALGAE. Hah! The thing is in a reef tank you don't have the nice macrophytes in your corner to have your back and kick the algae's @**. BTW guess what the new rage is in marine world? Hooking up a second tank to your main tank to grow only "macroalgae" i.e. using attractive algae to outcompete the lower algae. it's called a refugium, and some of this macroalgae is wild lookin. Anyway enough of that now for my questions..... I've seriously neglected my discus 55 gallon. But the absence has kind of had the "walk away from the painting" effect. Now I want to do something cool but I want it to be lower maintenance. Slow growers. With the reef tank I simply do not have the time to dedicate to pruning every third week. I alrady have a full carpet of lilaeopsis, and a bunch of stem plants. Full bed of flourite. I've got 4x 40 watt NO flourescents, fluval canister, and DIY CO2. If I remember correctly when I was "psyched" about a year ago people were getting into cork, attaching "barriers" to the corners inorder to make shelves so that the gravel was at different levels. if anyone has any cool links or pics that would be awesome! I am picturing something along these lines. btw is that glossostigma? thanks everyone, Ben |
been away long time, need ideas
whoa?!?!?!?!?
I don't know how my little blurb manufactured that kind of reaction. My point was that I used to post here very frequently helping out people and getting help.... I had a looooonnnngggg hard battle in the discus tank with algae, finally after that (if there are any vets here they may remember) smooth sailing. My point was when I tried a reef setup I was severely dissappointed to find out that yes sadly they get algae over there too. And I was kind of poking fun at the SW people b/c often they believe that it doesn't get much more challenging than a reef tank yet..... they totally borrowed the idea of the refugium from FW planted tank people. Trust me I did not mean to gloat! I'm sorry if I came off that way. I was kind of making a joke at myself. While by my tank's and inventory it would be apparent that I need no help, that is only partly true! The science of the tank is solid... but I am looking to give my 55 planted discus a fresh design and since I have been away from the hobby I am just curious if there have been any new ideas / trends in aquascaping? I am a scientist and not an artist and thus have trouble with the latter. Regards, Ben p.s. as far as a year being a long time... try thinking of the discus that after two years of weekly water changes and the plants that were pruned bi weekly and the yeast bottle that was changed monthly to all of that happening monthly or even bi monthly and a year being a long time will make more sense. :-( "Zion Hill" wrote in message ... A year is a long time? Last year was about 15 minutes ago for me. If you know enough to have a planted Discus tank, and you are screwing around with Marine, how much else can we really suggest to you? It's not neccessary to show off to us that you are doing Reef, keep in mind that many of us here also read the Marine newsgroups, so your revelations are not earth shattering. As far as Links and Pics, just surf the web "Benthic" wrote in message ... hello all, Been a LOOOOOONNNNNGGG time since I've posted here. Well, I am embarrassed. I used to be quite the "stuck up Plant tank fanatic" until I had an opportunity to get a 125 gall reef ready tank with all the live rock and bells and whistles. Guess what people?! over there in sal****er land they get algae too!! Lots of it! all new kinds of algae to fight with. Just when I became a pro at my planted discus tank... now I've got diatoms, red slime, and the worst of all yep you guessed it HAIR ALGAE. Hah! The thing is in a reef tank you don't have the nice macrophytes in your corner to have your back and kick the algae's @**. BTW guess what the new rage is in marine world? Hooking up a second tank to your main tank to grow only "macroalgae" i.e. using attractive algae to outcompete the lower algae. it's called a refugium, and some of this macroalgae is wild lookin. Anyway enough of that now for my questions..... I've seriously neglected my discus 55 gallon. But the absence has kind of had the "walk away from the painting" effect. Now I want to do something cool but I want it to be lower maintenance. Slow growers. With the reef tank I simply do not have the time to dedicate to pruning every third week. I alrady have a full carpet of lilaeopsis, and a bunch of stem plants. Full bed of flourite. I've got 4x 40 watt NO flourescents, fluval canister, and DIY CO2. If I remember correctly when I was "psyched" about a year ago people were getting into cork, attaching "barriers" to the corners inorder to make shelves so that the gravel was at different levels. if anyone has any cool links or pics that would be awesome! I am picturing something along these lines. btw is that glossostigma? thanks everyone, Ben |
been away long time, need ideas
I am sure you have seen this site before, but this is the best place I
have ever seen for tank ideas. Hope it helps. http://www.tropicalfishcentre.co.uk/Othertank.htm Vicki |
been away long time, need ideas
Some ideas re cork:
http://www.koedcandies.com/Cork.htm I did some terracing with slate. Had to split it down pretty thin, but covered the whole back of a 20g and have some plants in the wall, similar to what you would do with cork. If you want to slow down the tank, you can chuck the CO2, and start reducing your ferts- you can go back to testing water macro parameters while things are changing. And maybe chuck one of the light tubes if you can- shooting for about 2wpg. Add some floating plants to shade things a bit. Some peat in the substrate (lower quarter) would be helpful- but that requires a lot of work (not an issue if you are doing a major rescape). Replace the fast stems with crypts (XL if you can find them), not all at once, some stems might still do OK. One gentleman on the APD stopped his CO2, let his vals overgrow the surface to shade it, and it worked great for him. The vals continued to pearl, and the tank slowed enough to be low maintenance. Make sure you have an algae crew (SAEs, Amano shrimp). Advantages are few water changes, no fert regime, no constant pruning and replanting. Disadvantages are a less forgiving tank to mistakes, difficulty in balancing and keeping algae in check. But then, there’s a reason the CO2/high light/fert thing got popular, no? ;^) James |
been away long time, need ideas
Hello james!
terracing now that was a word that I was thinking of. I don't really know if I want to do cork along the walls but am definately looking the add some kind of "dimension" to the bottom. I am thinkingof going 96% with a carpet plant and let em really grow in thick. Then possible have one maybe two slow growing showpieces (anubias or something similiar). And have the focal point be rockwork with only 2-3 big rocks. BTW where can I get REEEAAAALLLLYYYY cool rocks? Like petrified wood or something. Basically I am looking for a way to give shape/layering to the bottom. I mean if it's not reinforced gravity will just pull it down and flat eventually. thanks again, Ben "elwood" wrote in message m... Some ideas re cork: http://www.koedcandies.com/Cork.htm I did some terracing with slate. Had to split it down pretty thin, but covered the whole back of a 20g and have some plants in the wall, similar to what you would do with cork. If you want to slow down the tank, you can chuck the CO2, and start reducing your ferts- you can go back to testing water macro parameters while things are changing. And maybe chuck one of the light tubes if you can- shooting for about 2wpg. Add some floating plants to shade things a bit. Some peat in the substrate (lower quarter) would be helpful- but that requires a lot of work (not an issue if you are doing a major rescape). Replace the fast stems with crypts (XL if you can find them), not all at once, some stems might still do OK. One gentleman on the APD stopped his CO2, let his vals overgrow the surface to shade it, and it worked great for him. The vals continued to pearl, and the tank slowed enough to be low maintenance. Make sure you have an algae crew (SAEs, Amano shrimp). Advantages are few water changes, no fert regime, no constant pruning and replanting. Disadvantages are a less forgiving tank to mistakes, difficulty in balancing and keeping algae in check. But then, there’s a reason the CO2/high light/fert thing got popular, no? ;^) James |
been away long time, need ideas
|
been away long time, need ideas
Benthic wrote:
If I remember correctly when I was "psyched" about a year ago people were getting into cork, attaching "barriers" to the corners inorder to make shelves so that the gravel was at different levels. if anyone has any cool links or pics that would be awesome! I am picturing something along these lines. btw is that glossostigma? I think what NetMax did here is quite appealing ... if I ever get a big enough tank, I may try something like it: http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_o...tmax_styro.htm -Dennis |
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