Comparision Of T8s And T5s

[shrimply]

I'm all excited now

My easy carbo arrived today along with my JBL Florapol.

My light tubes should also be delivered today, although I have nothing to run them yet.

I'm still about 5 years old at heart, and it easy to see when I'm waiting on anything.

I'm just impatient to get everything setup now.

 

[three-fingers]

Sounds good .

There's ways to get round not having to add extra CO2, such as shortening photoperiod, using dirt substrates and choosing the plants well. Though as you will learn from reading others posts here it does seem very important to have a decent flow (to avoid letting pockets of ammonia sitting around anywhere and giving great conditions for algae to grow), if your not adding extra CO2, try not to let the surface of the water be agitated too much.

If you find the light is far too much, you can add tall or floating plants to shade the others.

If you try different things like the above, its not hard to avoid algae and use high lighting, the trick is getting it to look nice at the same time. I've had tanks with 2wpg and over without CO2 (or liquid carbon, I dont like using it ) and they can work very well and algae free...I only had trouble with staghorn algae when I neglected flow, so I suspect that CO2 had less to do with it.

Added CO2 speeds up the growth, makes it easier to grow more demanding species and just generally gives you far more flexibility.

 

[Dave Spencer]

Just been reading George Farmers experience of easycarbo of the practical fish keeping site.

[URL="http/www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/....php?blogid=234"]http/www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/....php?blogid=234[/URL]

Just be aware that George`s tank was established with pressurised CO2 before switching over to organic carbon. It is at the beginning when your tank is most vulnerable that I think you may struggle. Still, fingers crossed and I may be talking a load of rubbish.

Dave.

 

[shrimply]

Thanks Guys,

Dave, I have no doubt your not talking rubbish. And I do understand that it was an established tank.

I'll see what happens and work from there, in an ideal world I'd buy the CO2 kit but its not to be right now. Hopefully, everything will stabilise up nicely with plenty of plants and a nutrient substrate, The JBL stuff sounds great from reading the box for stabilising the nutrients but dunno how successful it will all be.

My Light tubes have also arrived now, so we've had a DHL and a UPS van, and both have complained about our road wonder who'll be next. I'm hoping the rest of the lighting set will be here with the royal mail tommorow.

I'll keep you updated of progress for anyone's who's interested in hearing about the upcoming disaster. I personally can't wait.

 

[shrimply]

Well thought I should update a bit, yesterday the tank went from this

To this

I was up most of the night doing it, and as you can see, I've made a tank that look perfectly all right into a tank which is a bit if a mess. My Ballast for my lighting still hasn't arrived, so the new lighting isn't fitted yet.

Things I've learnt so far

1) No matter how old you are you can still get shouted at for spilling water all over your parents carpet.
2) I truly hate the fluval 304, its the worst filter in the world and was nearly binned at 2am, it is now doing what its supposed to
3) The VAX is a truly amazing invention, even if its 12 years old and been unused for most of those years. Nothing else has the ability to remove all the water and left over coral sand from a tank quite the way a VAX can.
4) The VAX is also very good for removing water that the 304 spills all over the carpet
5)Never trust the calculator on the internet that tells you that 10KG of gravel will give you a 1cm of depth
6) No matter how angry your parents are they are still prepared to get the colander from the kitchen at 1 am to remove the finer gravel from bags of larger stuff.


Next steps

I need to fit the lighting, get another 20kgs of fine gravel and order plants. I also want to add a couple of fish from my other tank to give the filter bacteria something to do. The tank will eventually be properly stocked but for just now there are a few fish without shoals in my other tank so they are going to be moved, probably sometime tonight.

edit - Oh yeah I also meant to add a handful of peat to the top soil along with the jbl substrate concentrate, it was to give the plants a few extra minerals and also counteract the higher pH in the water. But I forgot so nevermind.

 

[shrimply]

oops