1 Plant Package Available – Nov 2 to 4

There will be one plant package available this week which will be a 5 species package.  Prices, including 2 day express post shipping, are $24 in Ontario and $39 outside.  Shipping will be 3 day express post outside of Ontario.  Contact me via canaquaticgardens@gmail.com if you are interested.  Overnight shipping is available upon request at a higher price.  A couple nice foreground plants in this one with the marcilea and dwarf hairgrass

5 Species Package

• Pogostemon stellata
• Marcilea drummondi
• Dwarf Hairgrass
• Valisneria
• Ludwigia Repens

250G Build Journal….The Arrival

After almost 7 months of waiting for this tank, it has finally arrived.  Not much to see yet since it is still in the crate but here it is.

250G Tank Is Finally Delivered

With most of the crate material removed.  Man what a stressful job messing around with crowbars and prybars with a giant glass box inches away.

Wrapped Up

Here’s a shot of it the builder sent me prior to shipping.  It’s looking pretty good.

Putting The Finishing Touches on the Build

Plant Packages for Oct 26-28 – All Sold

I have decided to no longer take reservations for plant packages.  Rather than build a list of people and then try and sort out who gets what each week, I am going to post the packages that are available and the species that will be included.  Prices, including shipping, are as follows:

5 Species Plant Package

• Within Ontario – $24
• Outside Ontario – $39

6 Species Plant Package

• Within Ontario – $26
• Outside Ontario – $41

7 Species Plant Package

• Within Ontario – $27
• Outside Ontario – $42

The price increases reflect a bit better understanding of what this is costing me in packaging and shipping.  The packages that are posted will be on a first come, first serve basis.  Contact me via the email address on my contact page, canaquaticgardens@gmail.com, or by posting a comment to this thread.

As most (all?) of the people I have sold plants to will tell you, I will try my best to provide fair value compared to a LFS or other online supplier.

Well, with that out of the way, the following 5 and 6 species packages are available this week:

Package 1 – TAKEN

• Pogostemon stellata
• Valisneria spiralis
• Ludwigia repens
• Hemianthus micranthemoides
• Christmas moss

Package 2 – TAKEN

• Pogostemon stellata
• Rotala macrandra
• Rotala wallichi
• Blyxa japonica
• Hygrophelia polysperma
• Ludwigia repens

These plants will be available until Oct 27th.

250G Tank Journal….DIY Exhaust System

One of the things I am concious of with keeping tanks is the humidity they create.  I have never experienced a tank as large as a 250G so I can only imagine the humidity it will create.  I am trying to address this by exhausting the hood section of the tank out of the vicinity of the aquarium.  Here I will have some photos and explanation of how I created an exhaust system in my unfinished basement that will allow me to exhaust the hot, humid tank air to 1) my furnace cold air return during the winter (improves heating efficiency and will help humidify the house during the super dry Canadian winters) or 2) outside using my dryer vent during the summer.

This system was put in months ago, before I started finishing my basement.  To start, I had to put together the piece which will actually sit inside the hood and draw air.  I am using a 120V 4″ drive exhaust fan that was given to me as the first piece of hardware that will move air.  I attached it to a 4″ PVC elbow using some nails and construction adhesive.  Once the adhesive dried, I wrapped it in duct tape to make the seal air tight.

Drive exhaust fan mounted to PVC elbow

Duct tape added

The next step was to mount the assembly to a floor joist and add an electrical junction to house the electrical connections for the exhaust fan and the flow boosting fan (to come).  I drilled a couple holes into the PVC elbow and screwed it to a floor joist and mounted a standard light junction to the joist so that the junction was flush to the PVC elbow.  This will give me access to the junction in the future since it will be below the ceiling drywall.

Assembly mounted with junction box

In all honesty, at this point I figured I just hook up some more PVC, and the drive exhaust fan would be able to overcome the head pressure and move the air from the one end of the system to the other.  Boy was I wrong.  I had no flow, so I had to figure out a good way to boost the pressure.  Walking through Princess Auto I noticed furnace duct boosting fans.  What do you know, they had a 120V 4″ fan.  Perfect!  So I mounted the fan at the elbow and wired it up to a 120V electrical cord.  In hindsight, I should’ve placed the boosting fan at a different spot but it works pretty well where it is.  Attached to the boosting fan is length of 4″ PVC that runs the length of the floor joist.

Boosting fan with PVC extension

If you are wondering, yes that is 14-2 standard wire.  It has since been replaced with 14-2 flexible outdoor wire.  I used duct tape again to seal the PVC connections to the boosting fan.  The long run of PVC was secured to the floor joist at each end the same way the PVC elbow was secured.  The 4″ PVC run took me to the tricky part of the project.  I had to get the air from my future rec room, across the whole basement to where my furnace and dryer duct are.  I had already boxed in my furnace duct work so I figured I could run a line next to the existing duct work without any problems.  I used a modified funnel to taper the connection from the 4″ PVC to a 1.5″ flex hose that would carry the air the rest of the run.  The braided flex hose creates a bit of an issue in terms of extra head pressure but I really didn’t have much choice at this point.  Here’s the funnel adapter and it attached to the PVC with duct tape.

Funnel adapter

Funnel adpater connected to the PVC run

I don’t have any photos of the termination of the whole system but there is a T connection with valving on each of the branches that allows me to run the air to my cold air return on my furnace during the winter or to my dryer duct during the summer.  The whole system doesn’t move a lot of air but enough that I think the humidity in the main room of the basement won’t get out of control and it should help cool the lighting a little bit.  It may have just been an interesting project and not particularly useful, but I figured with this setup I might as well go for everything I can think of rather than get the tank going and wish I had this or that.

20G Build Journal….Great Growth and Some New Algae

I haven’t touched this tank in any way since the last update (except for pulling rogue riccia strands transfered over to this tank from the didplis diandra).  The stems are growing really well and the hairgrass has really thickened up and is sending out plenty of healthy runners.   The blyxa japonica has done quite well too and the marcilea drummondi is ready to be culled back a bit.  Here’s the tank as of Sept 29:

High Angle FTS Shot

Low Angle FTS

Side Shot

There has bee some growth of cladophora algae in the last few days, mainly around the front center of the tank.  I think the water circulation in this tank is a bit too low.  I’m probably going to add a 2nd HOB filter to this in the next few weeks.  The diatom algae has continued to recede and hopefully the otos will have it all eaten shortly.

When I first started this tank I was expect a lot of crypt melt.  I have only had a couple plants lose a leaf or two since the startup and all of them seem to be growing now.  I’m wondering if the key to minimizing crypt loss is keeping the water parameters the same.  Almost all of them came from the 70G tank and water from the 70G tank was used to start this up.  The substrate was all new but neutral pool filter sand.  CO2 was fairly high, like the 70G,  with 2x 2L pop bottles of DIY CO2.  This might be an interesting experiment to try and duplicate if I ever move some crypts around again.

10G Shrimp Tank Journal….No More Shrimp

Well I think I have nuked all the shrimp in this tank.  It has been a few weeks since I have seen any of them.  I think I may have killed them when I went to dry fert dosing on this tank.  To dose these small quantities is tough with only a 1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon.  I think I overdosed on some element and lost them all.  Although, I haven’t seen any bodies, so they may just be hiding in the jungle munching away on algae, but I doubt it.  I will have to do a bit more research on keeping shrimp and also get a better measuring system for dosing this tank.  I may even go back to liquid dosing if the dry dosing doesn’t work out.

Here’s the tank as it stands now.

10G Tank Update Sept 29

The pogostemon stellata has been trimmed several times since the last update.  It has been sent out to a few plant package buyers.  I have finally identified the other stem and it is certainly ludwigia arcuata.  It has taken off since I have stayed on top of the DIY CO2 injection.  It will be trimmed up this week.  The java ferns are starting to produce tons of plantlets now as well.  Soon I will be able to start offering these in the plant packages as well.

250G High Tech Tank Build….The Journey Begins

There have been several mentions of a future, big tank in some of my posts.  My 70G tank was actually re-setup to be a proving/testing ground for learning to run a higher tech tank so this big tank would not start out as a huge disaster.  Well, the time has finally arrived to start this project.  I received a call today from the tank builder, Bow Valley Aquarium in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, that my tank has been built and will ship to me on Monday.  All I can say is finally!  The builder selection is a long story, and if you ever want my opinion please send me an email.

Although I haven’t actually received the tank yet, I have a few things that I am going to post before the big arrival.  I’ve got a drawing of the tank back that I supplied to the builder.

250G tank drawing for drilling

The overall tank dimensions are 66″ long x 26″ wide x 36″ tall.  The tank will be 3/4″ Starphire glass on the front and sides with a rimless eurobracing design.  Clear silicone will be used for the joints and the background will be a navy blue laminated sheet.  As you can see the tank has been drilled with five 2 3/8″ drilled holes for water flow.  The top two holes are for water return to the tank and the bottom three will be for overflows.  The plan is to plumb the tank for silence using a U style overflow and a DIY custom spray bar for the returns.

I have been finishing my basement for a while and this aquarium will eventually be the center piece.   I have put in some hardware already that I will post prior to the tanks arrival.  The process so far has been a few months, but I will compress this into 1 or 2 posts.  Hopefully, by then, the tank will have arrived and the real action will begin.  I’m going to build a custom stand for it.  I’m hoping to finish up with a fully automated tank with a foolproof, fail-safe design.  I’m sure there will be a few mishaps as things get worked out.  Just hopefully none while I am asleep.

Anyone with any experience moving large glass tanks like this?  I was thinking of calling a moving company to do it since I figure it will be over 500lbs.

70G High Tech Jungle Tank Journal….New Pics

I’ve added a bunch of new rummynose tetras to this tank again.  The total is up to 13 now, but I have yet to count 13 in sight at once so one or two others may have died as well.  I’m normally not a big fan of silver based fish but these guys are quite nice.  Very active and the larger ones have some pretty distinct red faces and striped tails.

When I introduced the new batch of rummy nose there was an outbreak of ick on them after 2 days in the tank.  Some ick guard and leaving the drip system going for a few days seems to have cleared it up.  This has been an issue before from a certain LFS.

Here’s a full tank shot.  Soon all the riccia floaters will be gone and you will be able to see the left side better.

70G Tank Update

20G Tank Journal….Not Much to Report

I feel like this tank is starting to settle in now.  The brown diatoms are starting to recede slowly.  The stems are growing like weeds already and the hairgrass has filled in pretty well.  The marciliea drummondi is filling in the left corner now too.   The HC has been growing a bit of late as well, but more up than out so far.  I have been a bit negligent with he DIY CO2 upkeep so upping the CO2 will probably help out.  I’m posting a couple angles of the tank here for some slightly different perspectives.

20G Tank Sept 13

Looks like a pretty steep hill now

10G Shrimp Tank Journal…Some New Crypts

I’ve recently added a new crypt sepcies to the back middle/right area of this tank.  I’m not sure the species, it was labeled wrong at the LFS.  Any ideas?  A few leaves have melted but so far they look like they are going to hold on.  The pogostemon stellata in the left corner has been trimmed already but has kept growing like a weed.  I hacked it back this week for a new plant package.  Here’s the tank before a bit of a trim:

10G shrimp tank update Sept 13

You’ll notice a bit of green thread algae on the dwarf hairgrass.  I’ve been pulling it off lately, but it hasn’t been a big deal yet.  It will soon be time to do a bit of research on this.  Might be a change to the 9ish hour photoperiod that would be the easiest way of ridding the tank of it.