37 Gal build thread, Pic Heavy! (30"x12"x22")

[Alexk3954]

Hi everyone,

Just to give a little background about myself, I started to get interested in aquariums about 7 years ago and have had many tanks, including a 20 gal planted, 125 gal freshwater, and 125 gal reef among many others. My true passion is coral and reef tanks, and I am planning a 250 gal reef which is about 6 years away. I just graduated from college with a B.S. in biochemistry and am on the way to pharmacy school, so I don't have the money or stability for such a large project yet. To get my aquarium fix, I am setting up a 37 gal tank that will be high light, pressurized CO2, and heavily planted.

I hope that I can get some good advice from all of you in this thread while entertaining you with a constant stream of pictures. I am about to take and upload some pictures in a few minutes. I will update with my plans for the tank along with the pictures.

 

[Alexk3954]

First, I thought I would put up a pic of my first heavily planted tank that was running ~3 years ago. It was a 20L filled with cardinal tetras, otos, and amano shrimp.
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During my last year in college I lived in a tiny studio in San Francisco and all I had room for was this low tech betta tank.
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Now I graduated and moved back home to southern California and have the room for a bigger set up. I have a friend that I exchange aquarium stuff with regularly and I took back this 37 gal set up that was mine originally. We tore down the tank and moved it with its inhabitants. It now contains 5 neon tetras, a big pleco, my betta, and all of the plants from the betta tank. The pleco is going to a new home but the others are staying. The tank is fully cycled and ready to go! The tank has its old HOB filter running so my canister filter can get some bacteria established. I ordered some more parts so that I can position the spray bar and tubing in a neater way.
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Here is a list of the equipment I will be using:
37 gallon glass tank (30" x 12" x 22")
Eheim 2215 Canister Filter
Hydor inline heater
2 x 65W 6700 K PC lights
ADA amazonia aquasoil
5 lb CO2 tank with mailwaukee regulator

I have some dry ferts from Rex Grigg that I plan on dosing as a liquid. I still have to work out all the details with nutrients.

My plan is to have the driftwood protruding from some rocks in the back left corner with java fern and moss growing all over it. Behind that there will be some sort of very tall plant to take advantage of my tank's extreme height, maybe some sort of vallisneria or eleocharis. On the right corner I will have a piece of driftwood with some rocks at the base with some java moss grown on it. Behind that I plan on having a shorter variety of eleocharis. All of the space in the middle/front of the tank will have a carpet of Hemianthius c. that will hopefully grow up onto/between the rocks that surround the driftwood. My overall goal is to have it look like a dark, thick forest (left) turning into an open field which is the rest of the tank. Only time will tell if this will look good or not!

My eventual stocking plan is :
~15 cardinal tetras in addition to the 5 neons already present.
~ 6 striped kuhli loaches (to be added in a month or two after the HC is nicely rooted)
otos and amano shrimp for algae control, maybe a siamese algae eater
1 crown tail betta

There is a new shipment of plants coming in tomorrow so I will be buying my soil, rocks, more driftwood, and plants tomorrow. I will post some pictures of the initial aquascape tomorrow.

 

[Alexk3954]

I picked up a bunch of plants, wood, rocks and soil today and have my layout setup pretty much how I want it.

My plants are:
Rotala wallichi
Vallisneria nana
java fern
java moss
Hemianthus c.
Eleocharis sp. (dwarf)

Here are some pictures of the aquascape and the tank being filled. My hardscaping techniques are not all that great, but I think the wood and rocks will look more natural once the HC fills in between the rocks and the java fern grows on the wood. I am planning on changing the angle of that long skinny branch, it kind of bugs me how it blocks the view of the big piece of wood on the left. I also left some extra rotala I had floating to maximize the plant biomass in the beginning until everything starts growing.

My extra plumbing parts and powerhead are coming on Wednesday so I can tidy up all the hoses that look bad right now.

 

[Tug]

I have some dry ferts from Rex Grigg that I plan on dosing as a liquid. I still have to work out all the details with nutrients.

http://calc.petalphile.com/

 

[Alexk3954]

Thanks for the link, that calculator looks very helpful.

Yesterday set up all my lights and CO2 on timers and had the first full day of both. My HC was pearling and looks like it is already starting to spread a tiny bit!

I am having some weird issues with my CO2 setup though. First, it looks like my check valve is not working or something, this morning there was water on both sides of it, looks like it may need replacement. Also, I can't figure out what is going on with my drop checker. I don't have the glassware to make a 4 dKH reference solution, but my tank water is conveniently ~4dKH. I added a few drops of my indicator to my bulb and added some tank water. For the several hours before my lights turned on, the fluid was dark green, maybe a little blue. After the CO2 was on for half of the day, the fluid became light green almost yellow. Now, after the CO2 has been off all night, the fluid is more yellowish than it was after a full day of CO2... I am starting to think that thing is useless and plant health and fish stress seem to be better indicators of CO2 levels. My fish were not gasping and the HC was pearling so I figure the amount of CO2 I am injecting is fine for now.

After doing some more research and talking to the guy at the LFS, I am starting to reconsider the kuhli loaches. The guy at the LFS says they like to dig and might uproot my plants even if they are well established. RIght now I am thinking of making the cardinal shoal even larger, or keeping ~15 cardinals/neons and maybe a dozen of another schooling fish. I was thinking maybe some rummynose tetras or rasboras. I want to add something that will be active and tighly schooling.

I will try to put up some more pics today, maybe some of the HC pearling.

 

[Alexk3954]

I would appreciate some help troubleshooting this CO2 setup. I got home from work today and the solenoid had been open and releasing CO2 for 4 hours, but no gas was coming through my diffuser. Water gets into my diffuser and it acts as sort of a second bubble counter. When I crank up CO2 at the needle valve to over 3 bubbles per second (BPS) I only get about 0.5 BPS at my diffuser. Like I mentioned earlier, when the solenoid turns off, water fills my CO2 line and goes through the check valve. When the solenoid opens, it seems like there is not enough pressure to push all that water back in the tank and the CO2 leaks out of my check valve or something.

Should water be able to enter my CO2 tubing at night if the check valve is functioning? Seems like when the CO2 turns off, the valve should close, and any water trying to get into the tubing would have to compress the gas in the tubing, thereby preventing water from entering. Maybe there is a leak and the force of the entering water is able to push all the air through the leak and the water has no trouble entering.

I don't know if all this makes sense, hopefully one of you have some sort of recommendation.