Sunday, November 27, 2011

Eheim 2213







I have been reading a lot about this canister lately and pondered whether it would be necessary to get this for my 2feet 35 gal/125ltr tank. Having transferred at least 500 shrimps into my new tank recently, my Eden 501 seemed unable to cope, at least I thought. The water in the heavily planted tank with so many shrimps look quite "cloudy" and no sign of clearing up after 3 days. To make matter worse, the peatmoss I installed has melted in Eden and darkened the color of my water. I would have continue with Eden if I have not transferred so many shrimps. After installing Eheim, I wanted to make comparison between Eheim and Eden as follows:

1) Eden is easy to wash and rinse and scooped out shrimplets if they accidentally got sucked in.
(it might be challenging to scrub the scum off eheim pipes nearly 1 meter long and with so many layers of filter pads/media. I wonder if shrimplets can be easily extracted)

2) Eden pipes connecting to canister and other tubes have its individual tightening ring to provide additional safety lock to avoid leakage.
(Eheim pipe connecting to the rainbar and suction tube has to be manually pushed to tighten the grip, as in above photo, without any lock mechanism like Eden. Thus the eheim brand pipe must be strong and tight to ensure no easy leakage & breakage over time).

3) Eden is extremely light but Eheim is very heavy once filled with water.

4) Eden canister inflow/outflow nozzles are located on its top cover, whereas Eheim 2213 nozzle is separated with top canister for outflow and bottom canister for inflow. It nearly flooded my floor when I filled up the water today, as the water began to flow thru the lower nozzle without any mechansim to block the leak. The only prevention of unncessary flood is to plug in the pipe to the lower nozzle and connect it to the tank before filling up the canister with water. Thus, the water will flow directly into the tank when topping up the canister.

5. Eden cover and container are secured by strong push-lock. Eheim canister is secured by "4 pins & clips" to its container and need to handle with care to avoid breakage because pins and clips are rather small and light.

However, my first good impression about Eheim 2213 is its filteration mechanisem - it comes with layers of different type of sponge/pads and ceramic ring/subtrate pro. The flowrate is good for my 35 gal tank if the rainbar is faced inward to hit the wall thus preventing the current from turning my tank into tornado.

Noise level is as silence as my Eden. Overall, forumners have given these two brands a very good review in the past. Eden good for upto 60ltr tank, Eheim 2213 good for 80-250 ltr tank both with equally lower watt consumption of 5w & 8w respectively.

My mind should be at ease now regardless how many shrimps are going to multliply inside the tank. No more dusty water to worry about with such "huge" acquisition in terms of size and cost and hopefully a reliable quality product that I had already experienced with using Eden 501.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Hair Grass substitute with Stingy Moss




HG is most challenging in a low tech tank. Thereafore I decided to use stingy moss as substitute to create grass effect for the foreground area by cutting the length of several long stingy moss into many shorter length. If it lengthened again (not that it is a fast grower), trimming will further add more of it to the foreground area and slowly create a compact HG effect to the tank. I like stingy moss due to its interesting pattern than HG. Next to it is dark green fissiden which is also not a so demanding plant to consider for foreground.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Shrimps update


New tank update: sign of healthy environment ready to breed? Didn't expect this female shrimp could be so "impatient" while my tank is still cycling. Nevertheless, it look safe because many of the fire red in there are showing darker red tone as compared to those still living in the old tank.


There is always enough space and I thought why not include a couple of yellow shrimps too. Frankly, I was planning to turn my new tank into a yellow/ Fire Yellow shrimp only tank.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Garden by the bay?


Initial Idea


Construct based on concept sketched.

I believed this is as far as my aquarium journey could stretch. It was fun but no less exhausting and backaching having to bend down regularly to do the scaping.


This is my 1 month and 2 weeks of hardwork travelling and sourcing for the right items. Though I am quite pleased with the created "garden", the tank is still aging and I haven't decide which shrimp to add in....


Anyway, I will just enjoy what is already created and let the tank take ownership for now.

Assorted Garden



The result of 6 weeks hardwork.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Peat moss for Eden 501


DIY the larger filter peat moss into smaller sachet using empty tea-bag bought from Daiso.


Layered peat moss in my Eden501. Let's see whether such method will decrease the PH in my new tank.



This is how I placed my Eden 501 on my 35 gal tank.

Monday, November 14, 2011

PH reading




Still spotted about 10 shrimp casualties in my old tank this morning. Immediately did 80% WC and rinsed my canister throughly. I also minimised the flora in my tank and rinsed them in a pail. Took another PH reading this evening - 6.6. Hmmm...pretty stable but I was unable to perform other test without any further kits.




PH test again on my new tank - still maintained at 7.2 despite adding bogwood and blackwater drips.

Friday, November 11, 2011

First Bog wood



This is my first bogwood, approx 10" tall, without costing me a bomb: 3 SG gold coins. I hope it blend well and give my heavily planted tank an added texture.







Update on Gloso - 2nd day after planting. They are very much alive now, really growing fast, vertically though, for a low-tech tank. Never much fancy this plant but on closer look, I think they are cute mini flora for foreground, midground?

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

PH 7.2 - 2ft tank

Latest update on my 1.5ft tank. Daily casualty about 10 pcs. For 3 consecutive days when I switched on the light in the morning, I saw them lying lifeless. It really hurts to see heavy casualties even though I have so many FR in my tank. Yesterday, I quickly did a 20% WC and today another 50%WC including siphoning out poos which have been accumulated over a year because I don't usually do WC to my tank except topping up water. I took a PH test before WC and it read 6 - too acidic (forgot to take photo of the test). Now it went back to around 6.5 after major WC. I suspect it could be amonia strike or was it the result of my recent over-trimming of watersprite? Whichever, I am closely monitoring the livestocks closely......
The purpose of the above photo is to show the Glossostigma I bought recently for my new tank. These are extra pieces to try out in my old tank. It is not appealing in the current sorry state because I have been quite impatient pulling the clumps apart. I wonder will they even survive under my care...hmmm

Latest update on my 2ft. I took some of the aged water from my 1.5ft tank during WC for my 2ft tank and added couple drops of black water. A day later, I think there is slight improvement to the water PH - 7.2. Still a long way to go before adding in shrimps.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Midground plant



As usual, I am exploring what plants are suitable for the midground area. I decided to concentrate around the "tree roots" in order to leave more spaces at the foreground for shrimp/fish feeding.


Some of the plants I have an idea how tall and far they will stretch but several of them are pretty new for experimenting. It looks a little "messy" for a start but as the journey progresss, everything should fall in place (I hope) with some trimming to be done.



Saturday, November 5, 2011

Underwater Creatures

Let's see what creatures I have adopted during my tank cycling process, and hope the poos so created by these animals will give my plants an added natural source of nutrients.

Endler


Galaxy


Otocinclus & couple of fire red at the background


Nirite Horn snails





Hara Jerdoni, a night roamer (my new favourite)

Underwater Garden


Background flora scapes


Flora along the "river walk"


As the title suggested and the journey I have painted previously. I love greens, the more the merrier especially now I have so much space in my tank to explore what work or doesn't....thus I invested quite a fair bit in planting my tank, though I am not at all sure what were some of those names. Here is a glimse of my tank slowly taking shape as planned.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

"Tree Trunk"


It was a long hunt for me to find dw that looks like "tree trunk". My hands and arms were nearly covered with dust from tossing all the dw around to finally catch this piece of gem. It has bark, quite rare among the dw and certainly live up to being a real looking tree trunk in my tank. The only challenge is to get it to sink since I can't squeeze it into a small pot to boil. I just have to tie two rocks around its base until it settled down in a month of two. While I was at it, I decided to "decorate" it with nana. java fern and some moss took from old tank.

Touch up with loose dw as extension to the roots of the "tree" above....

River Gravel


Started to fill my new 2ft tank. Gravel from unknown source which was believed to contain element of fine coral chips?

Anyway, decided to change the substrate to real river gravel which is neutralising according to LFS who sold it to me.





PH Test Kit


First time using a PH Kit. Let's carry out some experiments...



Singapore water from the tap...pretty high PH 7.6 at least...
Fire red will be very stressed and appear "retarded".



The aged water from my 1.5ft tank where shrimps are in abundance...
PH 6.4 - 6.5. Fire Red in happy mood.