# I've come a long way baby! (ohyeah, not 56k friendly)



## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

I was looking back over some pictures I had from my initial set up.. up to my current one and thought I'd share. Ohyeah, most of the pictures are blurry because I stink at photo's.

My first tank.. 5 gallon walmart special.. I kept it for 3 months and nothing croaked.










After 3 months, I got a great deal on this behemoth. Picture taken immediatly post set up btw.. those aren't normal water conditions.










After the dust settled and the decorations placed I saw it, and it was good.










However.. it was not enough, it was at this point that I decided plants were the way to go.. if only I knew the trouble and heartache it would be to get everything set up right, I would have probably ran away screaming.. but I didn't.. soooo

I got a few plants..










I got some cheap lights










And it was good.. however.. my plants weren't healthy.. they looked whispy and broken. After some research it turns out you have to feed these buggers!

Sooo, I went the route of traditional DIY kit using a 2 liter ozarka bottle pictured here.










This was ok... but it required a lot of maintenance and I try to avoid physical labor whenever I can.. soooo I had devised myself a plan that would be the envy of most any man.. I'd build myself a large co2 tank out of a battery of 3 five gallon buckets.. the plan looked something like this..










(to be continued..)


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

Ok.. so here we are again.. now.. after the emminant failure of the co2 factory.. I decided that I should go ahead and go the right way, I bought a red sea professional c02 kit and strapped it onto a 10lb co2 bottle bought from a local welders supply company. (no pics)

It was about this time I decided that sand was a bad idea.. so I bought a 20 gallon (long) tank and scooped out the inhabitants into there.. though I had to drain the tank down to the last inch of it's life to get that SAE out.. little bugger..

Anyways, I replaced the sand substrate with 50 lbs of Flourite.. covered by 50 lbs of black rock mixed with 25 lbs of white rock.. the effect was something like this..

Before: Note the villa on the left reserved for mr dragonfish.. who was no longer an inhabitant of the community tank after the great substratectomy.










After: Note the absense of annoying background that I hated since day one since I bought it 4 stupid $%#$ @## @#$#@ inches too short for the tank and it bugged me all the time since I'm anal about stuff like that and everytime I looked at it I saw the father who didn't love me enough as a child and my anger boiled and I took my rage out on hapless drivers going 5 mph too slow in the fast lane... .. .. .. .. ..*breathes*.....*zen*

Ahem.










Clean...tidy....empty!

[You can see the c02 injection kit on the right side of the tank]

Sooo I went on a plant begging spree, squishing more and more plants in until I really.. had too many. (pics coming soon). For those who might have wondered how I cleaned all that sand out.. well, what I did was I drained as much water out as I could.. then I called my neighbor up and said (btw this only works in rural texas.. all you yanks will have to find your own method.. but even for you texans... it only works once) I told him that I had a six pack of beer left over from the weekend and would he like it.. he was on my porch before I could hang up. So naturally I pulled the ol' "Heeeeey man, since your here you got a sec?" Sucker! We drug that tank outside for a good hosing, then lugged it back inside fo the setup.

It was at this point I realized.. I STILL didn't have the right idea on substrate, so while I have waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many fish to scoop out into a 20 gal tank again.. I am going to attempt an open tank surgery and resubstratisfy my tank one section at a time.

This will be interesting because A) I have no new substrate to place right now and B) I am getting a very very nice 96 watt X 4 lighting system + moonlight this weekend which will greaty increase my need for proper lighting.

(to be continued...)


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

Interesting saga you got there greeb. Amazing what a 6 pack will do, huh?


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## sarcare (Sep 10, 2006)

I really like the drawring of your co2 plan.


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## Skelley (Mar 4, 2006)

*I enjoyed your story...*

Why did you decide to go against the sand? I currently have sand in my 52g and am wondering if you had the same problem. Maybe I missed it somewhere; what size tank is in the pictures? WPG? What do you have for plants in there? I am looking forward to updates!


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## neonfish3 (Feb 12, 2004)

Thats a great story Greeblies,
From 5 gal to---> (what is that?) 125, 150 gal. is a big jump. 
Did you get a lot of CO2 production from (3) 5gal. generators:tape2: , OMG! Your houseplants probably appreciated it also. 
Speaking of houseplants, you have a few in your tank that are not aquatic. I saw some mondo grass, and lucky bamboo that wont live long in your tank.
I wish I had room for a tank that big in my house.
Good Luck, have fun,


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## tfmcder (Feb 22, 2006)

Thanks for sharing. Keep the updates coming, i hate when threads go dead. Nice diagram...do you have any others![smilie=b:


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

tfmcder said:


> Thanks for sharing. Keep the updates coming, i hate when threads go dead. Nice diagram...do you have any others![smilie=b:[/QUOTE]
> 
> YEEES, in fact, I have maaaany diagrams. =)
> 
> ...


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

Current pictures taken earlier today.

Before you see them..imagine this tank is your wife, who just stepped out of the bathroom, and there is a towell sticking two feet above her head, which is a covered in a wierd green paste.. and she has cucumbers for eyeballs.. Your first reaction is to chase it with a flyswatter, but then you remember that underneath all that goo and slime is an attractive person.

Keep that in mind with these pictures because... I haven't cleaned it yet this week and a lot of my plants uprooted and they aren't really arranged in the first place (I JUST got about 1/2 of them from a friend with a rather large planted tank.. most of them are his trimmings.. I nearly filled a five gallon bucket)

I have been swamped this week and haven't had time to plan anything out, I just had enough time to hastily squish stuff into the water to keep them alive.

Now... Here is my favorite plant.. I don't know what it is (maybe you do?) but it seriously is my favorite. It's the one directly behind the angel fish btw.










Heres a whole view of the tank..










Right now.. I'm kindof on hold with everything until this weekend, 1 I have the new lighting system coming in saturday and 2 the holidays are going to be taking my time. However, the plan is.. to increase the depth of the substrate, by either totally replacing what I have, or placing some new (flourite/something comparable) underneath the old.

As is, I have a hard time getting the plants to stay put because the depth is just too shallow for how tall and bouyant some of those plants are.

This is also going to involve a major redecorating, the rocks have to .. do something, I don't know yet if I'm going to stack them differently or just remove all/most of them altogether, and I have some very nice pieces of drift wood (seen in earlier pics) that I have at work with me right now.. they look great but they turn the water brown really fast.. so I've been boiling them at work the last few nights during my shift in a big water vat.. they still have some brown coming out and soon as I can get all that to stop (any ideas to help this along appreciated) then I am going to place them 'in service'.

Any questions/comments/heckles appreciated =)


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## _Emily_ (Aug 18, 2006)

Thank you for creating this thread, a couple of time I was breathless with laughter. It's good to see the complete journey, not just the perfectly aquascaped end product.


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

I agree about the rocks, they're too overpowering. The plant behind the angelfish looks like a sword - some type of Echinodorus. It will quickly grow *very* large if conditions are to its liking.


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

Bert H said:


> I agree about the rocks, they're too overpowering. The plant behind the angelfish looks like a sword - some type of Echinodorus. It will quickly grow *very* large if conditions are to its liking.


I'll second that, I recently pulled my amazon sword from my 75g 48"x18"x20", it was taking up over half the tank and showed no signs of stopping, each new leaf was larger than the last. I know your tank is much larger than a 75g but judging by the way my sword was growing I bet it could fill a very large tank givin a little more time. I can only imagine what would have happened if I added any substrate fertilization.  when buying swords try to find out how big they can get to help pick the right one for your tank. there are some out there that dont seem to get this big and overpowering.


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## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

hey ramius, looks like you found your way over here. with your substrate you could get with smokin_cache about his eco-complete that is in his tank now. he offered it to me but i have no use for it.


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

^^^^^^^^^

Good friend right there, in fact, his tank looks like what I want mine to be when it's done =)

YES on the substrate though, after I saw that I emailed him so for tomorrows updates you all will get to see....

1 The addition of 240 pounds of eco-complete substrate

2. The removal of some rock

3. The stump is gone 

Oh krap I gotta stop for a minute.. that stump... Ok I took it out of the tank a couple days ago.. I replaced it with the large plant, anyawys.. I took the stump out of the tank and handed it off to the missus who took it over to the sink.

Now, I'm up to my armpits in tank water moving the big plant over to stuff it in it's new home when I hear a blood curtling scream..

It's the type of scream that i can't even describe to you unless your an alfred hitchcock fan.. I mean.. windows rattled and neighbors peeked.. so I jump up from the tank, water is everywhere, I go into ninja mode thinking we're about to get robbed when she points at the sink, MY TWO CLOWN LOACHES ARE HOPPING FOR THEIR LIFE!

Now I scream like a girl! "Quick do something!" I say.. jumping up and down and pointing" She runs away and locks herself in the laundry room.. Thinking fast I spy a tea jug not currently being used.. I tried to pick one up but it failed after the little monster bit me (did you know clown loaches bite?) 

Still to this day i do not know how I managed to get those fish into that jar but.. I did, and ran them back putting them into the tank. I was soooo scared they wouldn't make it but they were just fine. They were really upset with me though.. I know cause one of them was born without a left eye.. I mean, there isn't an eye hole or anything there.. he just didn't have one.. well, he kept that side of himself pointed at me for the rest of the day, he'd flip around every once and a while to see if I was still there, and if I was he'd turn around again. =(

Ohyeah I got a nice lighting system too. It has three pieces, the first piece has four bulbs, each one is 36 inches long, 6,700k 96watts.. it also has a strip of blue LED moonlights. The system is 72 inches wide, and lays across the back half of the tank. Each one of the next two pieces has 1 36 inch 96 watt 50/50 bulb that are rated at 10,000k and actinc. They sit on the front. 


I'll have some nice updated pictures tomorrow after I set everything up.


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## sarcare (Sep 10, 2006)

rotfl That is such a funny story--especially about the loach being mad at you. I'm glad the fish made it ok, and hopefully the loaches will find another spot to hide.


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

oh man... you all will never believe what I did today. So I took pictures.

What started out as a simple (drain some water/replace some substrate) ended up with me pulling everything from the tank, and getting new living room carpet! =( =) =|


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

Ok, todays story starts out with me draining water into a FEMA bucket for my fish to have temporary housing during the ensuing natural disaster.










I employed the assistance of my specially trained helper-babies to complete this task..



















The plants went into an ice chest (though I had to add more water later because some of the leaves that were sticking out of the water started freaking out). This also shows 1 of the lights that I recently purchased, its one of the single 36inch 50/50 10,000k+actinc 96watt systems.










Here is the housing bucket with my favorite plant floating in it to give the fish a hiding spot, comes complete with heating system, filter and carbon box.










It is at this point that things took a turn for the worse......

You see, mrs. greeblies is a stay at home mother of 4, and has not left the cave for anything other than milk in over six years... so recently mrs. greeblies has been helping a friend of hers with a business venture.. where they go into forclosed trailer houses and strip them of whatever they can to put in her friends resale shop, in return they wash the trailer up for the person who did the reposessing.

What does that have to do with todays project? Well, recently mrs greeblies confiscated a very large roll of carpet somehow and has been itching to put it in the living room, the only thing saving me from this task was the 1 ton jug of water sitting in the corner... after all the water was down and the fish were out she began shoveling the old substrate out with a madness that I just could not understand. Then.. in a final moment of clarity, much like when you know the train is about to make contact with you.. it hit me.

We would be installing carpet today.

Shortly after this was realized I had to move the fish housing into the bathroom.. remember what i said about things turning for the worse? Well... the fish house broke.. in half, sounding like thunder and 2 of the 4 horsemen. I even think I heard some fish "eek".

Some how.. and again I do not know how.. we managed to get the fish into my bathtub. There were no immediate casualties.

(Tub Tank)









(Upset helper babies)


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

Heres where the tank usta-was. (Last view of old carpet)










Mrs. Greeblies working hard for her carpet (Could she have confiscated a worse color?)










Where the tank now sits, on the opposite wall, underneath a picture older than time itself portraying how Native American Indians used different plants to create dye for their looms. Note the addition of 240 lbs of Eco Complete, woot!










What a mess!!!! And the Pink... it's overpowering my camera!!! Noooooooez!










ahhhhh, things are coming together, but this picture makes me sad and I will explain why.. for one, it makes me understand art, and I hate that... how one person can look at a photo/painting and see one thing, but based on different life experiences another person can have a totally different feeling.










You: See a tank coming together, getting filled up.. calm...peace..zen.

Me: The dark windows indicate I have been up all day, I work at night so I was up the night before, and I have to go to work shortly again (Greeblies is fueled by red bull). The 'python' on the right is my new hose, after my 25 footer was about 10 foot too short to reach the tank in it's new location, again, this was discovered at 7:45 pm and I have to leave for work at 10:00, and I have fish stressed out in my tub. I see Hectic chaotic sadness =)

I run to lowes, and they had 45 foot of 5/8ths tubing.. I bought it all for $13.50.. hooked my old python fittings on and began filling. Yes... in houston, well water is coming out of the ground at -100 degrees, so as it's filling, I'm running hot water from the bath tub into a five gallon bucket and running back and forth.. can you actually believe the mixture was a perfect 81 degrees when the tank was full? Thank God for sweet mercies.

(Helper baby proud of her work) Note the radioactive pink rays coming off of the carpet.










Things are finally coming together....


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

In conclusion....

I am about 90% done, I still have massive amounts of plants to install (I had juuust enough time to put a couple in for the fish's sake)

There were 3 casualties today, 

1 Neon
1 German Blue Ram
1 Green Barb



Seriously.. I about flipped my wig at least a dozen times today.. and I can only imagine how stressfull it was for the fish. I need to watch them close the next few days and make sure no others croak.

Unfortunatly I also had to take my 20 gallon brackish tank apart too, you see, in the middle of all of this.. my dragonfish finally did it, he mucked up his very own tank to the point that the impellor on his filter broke, or rather, the shaft that it spins on got sand in it, and chewed itself up.. so in the middle of all this I had to remove the dragonfish.. I ended up giving him to the LFS.. now, I had to put a green puffer in with the fresh water fish (as if things weren't bad enough for them already) 

This is an extremely temporary situation, I'm well aware of the un-goodness of puffer fish in a community tank, and also in fresh water.. he's a big pain in the butt fish to keep but.. I love him. It's the only fish I've ever seen that uses his tail fin as a rudder.. thats just.. cool =-)

I have to find a new impellor tomorrow though.. grrr. 

He will have some of the substrate that I pulled from the tank.. it's black/white rock with a some flourite mixed in too, I'd like to dabble a little in brackish plants (if at all possible). 



And thus concludes todays entry for "Adventures in the life of a wanna-be aquariest. -By Dr. Greeblies"


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## Skelley (Mar 4, 2006)

Your helpers are adorable! It must be a great learning experience for them. Hope your fish have a speedy recovery, it's looking good.


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

This is quite the saga you've got going there Greeb!


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

Bert H said:


> This is quite the saga you've got going there Greeb!


If you only knew the half of it, this is just the fish tank part =)

It's all in good fun though, the whole aquarium idea started out as a fun learning family project, we got that little five gallon setup with a couple small fish for the kids to learn hands on about fish, ended up the whole family got hooked and we've been taking off with it ever since.

Though their help can be a bit stressfull at times, they are always involved in everything from the cleaning to the feeding to studying their different behavior.

I don't know whether this is good or bad or what, but used to be they would cry if they saw an ant smushed on the side walk... the other day we went into a fish store and there was a tank full of guppies, one of them was dead and floating, my oldest girl saw it, walked up to the girl behind the counter and said "Excuse me, in that tank over there.. one of the fish is dead, I think your tank is too full and that made him too nervous" in the calmest most professional and helpfull tone I've ever heard, but it was really funny to hear that come from a 6 year old.

It made me happy though, because it shows that she's listening and retaining. The tank wasn't too full (but it was fully stocked) but we go over the good and bad things a lot and in discussing what makes fish die I told her it could be from a few things.. a dirty tank, them getting sick, or it could be too crowded.." You know, giving her the whole list. It is nice to see some of it stick =)


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

Ok the tank is set up... here are some pictures taken under different lighting settings.. Odd how different bulb temperatures make different effects.

One of the most clear pictures photo wise, is one of the most dull looking in real life, and one of the best looking ones in real life, looks almost too bright to see in a photo.. odd.

with 2 6,700k bulbs on










with 2 6,700k bulbs + 1 50/50 10,000k/actinc bulb










with 4 6,700k bulbs + 2 50/50 10,000k/actinc bulbs










I know the first picture looks the best and the last looks the worst but in person it's the exact opposite.. I'm getting my woman a better camera for christmas.. we'll see if everything looks better then.

Ohyeah, heres the moonlights.. the splotches of color in this photo are my danio-glo-fish.. they look simply amazing at night =)










Heres a pic with no light (except for bathroom light)


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

One of the hardest parts for me, in dealing with plants, is having a good work area.. as you all know things get wet and chaotic quick when your constantly going in and out of the tank.

With all this new set up I got an idea.. and took an old tv tray, and one of the kids old toy shelves that they don't use anymore, and made a portable, easy to hide, work station. That combined with my nearly 2 foot surgical 'tongs' a friend gave me.. I have the ultimate planting station (for the price) =)










On the tv tray is the styrofoam lid to the bucket the plants were in, what I did was basically scoop out a lid full at a time and set on the tv tray, then I would sort through them, laying them out on the 'work station' by different plant types, once they were all sorted I began with the arranging in the actual tank. It actually made the whole process a calm enjoyable one. There was also the small trash can handy for all the scrap pieces that had to get dumped =)

This picture was taken early in the morning, and at the bottom of the photo you can see mrs greeblies elbow, she was passed out from a long night of furniture moving (she cleaned up eeeeverything.. lucky me had to work) =)


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

I can't remember if I mentioned it before but I had a couple pieces of driftwood that had been making my water a little yellow in the past..

For a living I work in a plant and have access to wierd stuff.. like.. a boiler system.

So what I did, was tap into a line of water and ran it into a vat.. which would run down into a drain and slowly circulated water through to keep a constant fresh supply of water at around 150 degrees +- a little bit. After letting the pieces of driftwood soak in this vat for a week they were more than ready for the tank.

Now.. I had some moss and wanted to create the old mossy log effect so the method I employed was this..










I laid the log out on the work station, and began draping the moss over the log as evenly as I could, you can see the mixing jar I had the moss sitting in behind the log. (I had long ago run out of buckets)

After all the moss was placed, I wrapped everything down with some white cotton string. I know the string looks bad now, but the reason I chose it over fishing line is for the reason that the string will eventually decompose and 'disappear' after the moss has time to take root in the stump, where-as the fishing line would be there forever.

Here is a picture of the log in the tank..


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## Greeblies (Nov 17, 2006)

Finally for tonight, the issue of my bamboo plant.










Everyone tells me bamboo is not a good aquatic plant, and it's for that very reason that I am determined to make it work. Looking at the plant in this picture you see what appears to be a dying plant, and you would not be incorrect in assuming so, where the plant ceases to be green it is sot, gushy..dead and dying.

Where it is green however, it is extreeeeemely healthy. Now.. this particular plant was in the corner of my tank.. and was actually located right by the outlet for my c02 reactor. My hypothesis is, it was a combination of that, and the top part of the plant being close to the inadequate lighting that caused this particular health condition to happen.

I'm testing this theory by A) Trimming the bamboo at the lowest healthy 'rung' and B) Replanting on the opposite side of the tank from the c02 reactor.

I'm hoping that with better lighting the plant will thrive.. if not, hey, I'll admit it, bamboo isn't a good aquatic plant. I'm not giving up without a fight though!

Unfortunatly, barring any other extreme or crazy idea I'm afraid this will be one of the last entries for me in this 'journal'. I'll put up some progress photos here in a month or so once everything settles in and begins to grow but as of right now.. well.. theres nothing left to do but maintain.

It's been fun, and I'll be around in other threads, but I've taken this one as far as I can =)


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## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

i think if you had a spare hob filter you could throw the bamboo in it, kinda like a hob refugium.

with the clown loach they have little switchblades on ther side of their face and when threatened they come out. 

now that you have all that light you can start doing some serious plant growing! you pretty much have it all covered now co2, gw ferts, lighting and substrate! i have some B. japonica that BertH sent me that is more than i can handle in my tank if you would like some. 

oh and you need to get some close ups of those glo-lites!


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## Satirica (Feb 13, 2005)

> Everyone tells me bamboo is not a good aquatic plant, and it's for that very reason that I am determined to make it work.


That "bamboo" is actually Dracaena sanderiana, a terestrial plant, not an aquatic plant and not bamboo. Unfortunately, determination will not change a terestrial plant into an aquatic plant.

I am enjoying reading your adventure!


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## Kelley (Aug 27, 2006)

Any updates, Greeblies? This has got to be one of the funniest threads on APC!!


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