Caliban's 46G Dirted Bowfront Evolved

[Caliban07]

My hubbie just ordered a $400 microscope. He's a nerd and will spend hours looking at everything with it. When I pointed out that now I should get to blow $400, he offered to pull together the online purchase info for my tank over the past few months... Lol.


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Now with the right gear you can take samples from sick fish to see if you are dealing with gram positive or negative bacteria ?


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[TMaier]

OMG I hope he never reads this...he would try.


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[Caliban07]

OMG I hope he never reads this...he would try.


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Hahaha?


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[Caliban07]

Caliban's Dirted 46 Bowfront

Congrats on the new water toy, err, equipment. Keep up posted on its performance and ease of use.


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Thanks. Set it all up last night. Finished about 11pm then went bed. Probably shouldn't have done but The floor isn't flooded this morning so the leak test has passed ?

Initial thoughts upon opening were that it is bigger than I thought. Doesn't look as quality as the fluval but the media capacity is really impressive (compared to fluval 205).

There's 4 really easy locking clips that lock the pump head to the canister and each media tray has its own old away handle.

The hose inlet is detachable and prevents leaking from the water left in the hoses similar to the fluval whereas the ehiem Classic didn't have this function.

I've never primed a canister filter so easily. There's a huge start button that I depressed a couple of times and the canister and hoses filled instantly.

I used the fluval spraybar as the jbl supplied one was shorter. You get 3 trays of course media and some sintered glass bio balls. Lots of angle pieces, adaptors and right angle connectors. I feared it may come with a euro mains plug and it did. Luckily I had a few adaptors knocking about.

It just squeezes in to my cabinet but looks right at home. Probably would be no room for further modifications such as co2 reactors in the juwel vision 180 cabinet.

Flow is immense but the filter is no quieter nor louder than the fluval although the fluval is moving less water. For silence in my opinion the ehiem Classic wins here but the JBL is by no means loud.

At the moment I think the Amano's may be sulking or maybe not I can't really tell. I can see them more now so I don't know if that's because they are freaking out or they appreciate the flow. Fish don't seem bothered.

The glosso is struggling to hold on but only the bits I have let get up to a few inches. The smaller plantlet's are doing fine. This may change after a trim tonight as the floating limno and ludwigia will no longer be dampening the outflow from the spraybar.

Will post some pics later. So far, very impressed.


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[Delapool]

Nice buy! The priming function sounds great, such a pain with the ones I have to manually fill with water and prime.

 

[Caliban07]

Thanks. Did some trimming but not had time to replant yet. The plants are in a bucket and will probably trim and replant the stems tomorrow. Removed the vals completely they were always threatening to take off but never really did.

Here are some pics of the filter and flow.









And here is a picture of a ludwigia stem I pulled out. Seems a shame really...


Sorry about the puppy mats




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[Caliban07]

.....




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[Delapool]

Lol - love that last photo. I'm wondering how you got that canister filter in! Did you keep just the standard filter media or adjust anything?

 

[Caliban07]

Lol - love that last photo. I'm wondering how you got that canister filter in! Did you keep just the standard filter media or adjust anything?

Lol I thought it wasn't going to fit despite what I had read but I just had to negotiate the hinges on the door and viola! No I just used the fresh media. Forgot to put some crushed coral in though so may have to rectify that at some point. I'm thinking of not putting the stems back in and finding some other type of reddish plant for the background.

For once I have healthy Amazon swords.


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[Caliban07]

Just trimmed more. Took some dead leaves off and removed glosso. Going to go with the full helferi carpet.

Just need a nice non stem red for the gap in the middle. Is there such a plant?




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[Caliban07]

Forgot to mention that in two days with this new filter ALL trace of cyano has disappeared.


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[Caliban07]

Added alternanthera. Some snaps now that I'm back on track.












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[Caliban07]

Caliban's Dirted 46 Bowfront

So I added nymphoides hydrophylla sp. Taiwan.



After two days in higher light with co2 you can see the difference in leaf size from the lower to the upper leaves. Incredible. I can see a lot of trimming in the future with this plant.


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[Delapool]

Oohh! Very nice. That's a really good photo for CO2 marketing At the recent talk here, the presenter was pretty much of the mind that CO2 deficiency is a large problem for planted tanks.

 

[Caliban07]

Caliban's Dirted 46 Bowfront

I know right. Looking forward to seeing it when I get home. No glut today though. Upped the bps yesterday and plants look better for it.

If my drop checker would stay stuck to the glass I'm sure it would be a nice green colour. Plants were pearling last night at photo period end. Something I have not seen for a week or two on the lower co2 setting.


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[Caliban07]

Oohh! Very nice. That's a really good photo for CO2 marketing At the recent talk here, the presenter was pretty much of the mind that CO2 deficiency is a large problem for planted tanks.

I too believe that co2 is terribly underestimated and people are probably sick of me droning on about it. The progress of this journal should be enough to convince some.

The problem is that when people who have the right environment to get by without co2 preach success stories and are adamant that it is not needed people believe that they can just replicate without understanding what's going on and they try everything else and blame everything else on their failings without ever actually using co2.

Then there are the co2 users who blame their failings in everything else until they realise that they need more co2.

Co2 is the most difficult aspect of keeping a planted tank and this is coming from someone who swore by the natural approach.

It's a shame really.


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[Fresh2o]

I agree with the importance of having an adequate CO2 level in a planted tank. I believe the key factor is the amount of light: more light, more CO2 needed.
I've skipped adding daily fert doses while on travel and have yet to see any negative effects on plant growth (holes, yellowing, etc). However, I let the CO2 tank run out and waited about a week before filling it and the effects lasted several weeks. Primarily algae outbreaks and poor plant growth. It took a while for the plants to recover from that. I would have been better off running the lights for shorter durations in the latter situation.


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[Caliban07]

I agree with the importance of having an adequate CO2 level in a planted tank. I believe the key factor is the amount of light: more light, more CO2 needed.
I've skipped adding daily fert doses while on travel and have yet to see any negative effects on plant growth (holes, yellowing, etc). However, I let the CO2 tank run out and waited about a week before filling it and the effects lasted several weeks. Primarily algae outbreaks and poor plant growth. It took a while for the plants to recover from that. I would have been better off running the lights for shorter durations in the latter situation.


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I too have never really seen any negative affects from skipping ferts but then my lighting is lower than most injected tanks. Even when I started adding easycarbo post Walstad and the phosphates and nitrates bottomed out there were still know external signs of deficiencies. If I'd have left it any longer I'm sure there would have been but nothing immediate.

I agree lighting is an issue too. It's mainly because people don't want to hear that their new batman signalling strength lighting fixture is too strong for their 10 gallon tank. Everything could be solved in this case by providing additional co2 and good flow. I've been criticised a number of times for recommending co2 in low tech setups where lack of co2 is clearly the problem (or light intensity) with responses such as those plants do fine without added co2.

But this is where the problem lies. How can anyone actually say that?

What they actually mean is that in their tank, with their lighting, with their filter, with their flow, with their bioload, with their other plants, with their plant mass, with their tap water, with their substrate, with their water change frequency and their water change volume, at their temperature at their ph, at their KH etc etc this particular plant happened to survive and even flourish.








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[Delapool]

I'm not giving up my lights

I did get told this week that a single dose of liquid carbon (I assume normal dosing) gives 7ppm CO2. I did wonder if that was a little high. Although in a tank with no CO2 injection and tank at several ppm CO2 could see how anything extra would help.

But as it is a one-off dose daily, I'll stick with the injected CO2 for higher light setups. In varying the liquid carbon dose I've never noticed much difference in growth.

If I miss potassium dosing too much that does seem to show up several weeks later in leaves that seem poorer quality.

Micro ferts I've been trying to cut back on and haven't noticed much to date (was probably over-dosing to start with )

 

[Caliban07]

Caliban's Dirted 46 Bowfront

I'm not giving up my lights

I did get told this week that a single dose of liquid carbon (I assume normal dosing) gives 7ppm CO2. I did wonder if that was a little high. Although in a tank with no CO2 injection and tank at several ppm CO2 could see how anything extra would help.

But as it is a one-off dose daily, I'll stick with the injected CO2 for higher light setups. In varying the liquid carbon dose I've never noticed much difference in growth.

If I miss potassium dosing too much that does seem to show up several weeks later in leaves that seem poorer quality.

Micro ferts I've been trying to cut back on and haven't noticed much to date (was probably over-dosing to start with )

I'm not sure how that information came about but I'm quite skeptical on the calculation of glut to co2.

I've been lean with micros. I'm due a water change. All in good time. My drop checker fell off the glass again. Hate that thing. Think in of taking it out. Haven't looked at it for three days.

Edit: a knew you were another light fiend

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