Re: NANFA-L-- plants and soil


Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- plants and soil
From: Todd Crail (farmertodd at buckeye-express.com)
Date: Wed Sep 29 2004 - 18:44:14 CDT


From: "James Smith" <jim at vtwebware.com>
> If your driftwood is new, that's definitely it.

Thanks Jim. I'm pretty sure that it is as well. The question will be how
to boil this dumb thing. It may be easier to just give it time and
waterchanges. You'll see in the pictures below... It's a pretty substantial
piece of wood :)

From: <Moontanman at aol.com>
> How much metal halide light are you using and what light/dark cycle? Have
> you
> thought of using a good AC to remove the yellow from the water?

I have 2 175 watt metal halides on a 100 gallon (72x18x18). The ballasts
are PFO (which _are_ geared to drive lamps optimally for aquaria,
hydroponics and displays) and the lamps themselves are Venture 5500k.
Here's some pictures if you're interested:

 http://www.farmertodd.com/nanfa/100gal/092904/

I would have topped it off and stuff for aesthetics, but like I mentioned,
it's in a swing period right now. I just basically walked downstairs and
what you see is what you get :) If you would like to compare it against
August 23rd pics, just go back to /100gal/

You can then see how the val has taken over the right end of the tank. The
left end had a bunch of hornwort I removed last night. That should colonize
pretty quickly, especially after I make an adjustment on the left light to
move it out away a bit from the driftwood. I wanted to create shadow there,
but I'm mainly growing an algae culture right now, especially in the absence
of the snails (they DID NOT like the salt bath!) You wouldn't believe how
much algae those things eat. Good thing they're easy to replace :)

100gal_03.jpg gives you an idea of how much current I'm kickin. I took a
Rio 2100, attached an Eheim spray bar and viola! You have instant
directional current. You can kinda see it in 02 and maybe 01 there in the
left bottom. I'll take a better pic if people would like to see how simple
it is.

In the future, I'd like to replace it with a heavier duty, more efficient
Eheim powerhead. But for now... This works. Also, the driftwood helps
deflect it back to itself... The return from the canister also goes down the
back.

And I will say this... It is so amazing to watch the darters play in the
current. Totally different animals. Some suprises too... The blackside
darters _love_ to play in the current. I would have thought they'd be
chillin' over by the driftwood (which they do probably half the time), but
that seems to be rainbow darter habitat, the orangethroats hang over in the
slower water among the val (not a suprise). But those blacksides are all
about swimming into the current!

Of course, the variegate, greenside and banded darters just romp right
around in full on current like it's nobody's business :) Something else
I've noticed... They seem to sit up on what would be the riffle behind the
current (just below the spray bar) and then dart out into the open to grab
food. Some cool partitioning going on for sure.

I can't wait to get my suckers in there. But prudence first. I'm going on
6 and 8 months with some of them, and they ain't goin' out like that! There
will be many more less "weighted" introductions before they move in :)

Oh and check out that tadpole madtom. Thing looks like a danged bullhead!
I'm sad they passed away in all of this.

Todd

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: Fri Dec 31 2004 - 11:27:23 CST