Hi, my name is Hartvig, and I live in Norway. I’m 30 years old, and I have had this hobby since I was ten. Lately I have had 3x250 L tanks and a 720 L tank.

In the largest one , I have kept wild caught Discus and different types of plants. I have been using CO2 and PMDD in all my tanks. Despite the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing (!) the plant growth have been quite good. I have just added a dose of PMDD when I wanted to see more bobbles…

Last week I sold all my tanks (!), and the last one (720L) will bee gone before Christmas. The reason for this is the fact that I need the space. I need the space to build my dream tank

In May 2006 I will begin to build a 4-5000 L tank. The dimension will approximately bee between 4-500 x 100 x 100 cm.

I will like the tank to be designed for Discus and plants. I have quite a lot of experience with Discus, but I’m note sure how to design the tank fore the better when it comes to plants. I would like to have it more or less automatic when it comes to fertilising, water changes, lights and adding CO2 etc. I would like to spend my time with the tank aquascaping and watching the result.

My question is this – is it possible to do this within reasonable budget? And if it is, what kind of technical equipments/set up would you suggest? I realy need an :gw

Thanks

Well, I am going to be doing a 1500 gal Discus tank in LA, CA soon.
3.2 meters long x 1.22 meters tall and deep.

If plan on getting inside and doing scaping, then you might consider 80cm instead of a 100cm height, unless you have very long arms, you will see why.

The tank I am doing is 122cm high, I am getting around this by actually being inside the tank for the set up, but we have design things so that no mainteance will be needed on the lower reaches.

I would also suggest some long reach tweezers, sicissors etc and get good ones, don't use cheap stuff.

Water changes. You need to hard plumb the water changing into the home plumbing.

This will save you large amounts of work.
I use a simple valve to drain and another to fill.

I can change 300 gal of water in about 1 hour.
I run the tap water through a carbon filter and have a mix of warm and cold water to adjust the temp.

I'm not sure how much $$$$ you might have, it will not be cheap to run it no matter how you approach things.

Solar power, hydroelectric, wind etc perhaps, but that is not possible for many.

This is really a public aquarium at this point in terms of size and design.

The scaping part is fair easy, might not seem that way to most, but it's the same. Lots of ferns, Anubias and other slower growing easy to care plants.
Lots of branchy driftwood to attach these plants to, this makes maintaining the design easy over time.

I have 3 large pin wheel root stumps for the design for the large tank I am doing. They are turned on their sides and then covered with ferns/mosses etc.

There are no foreground type plants really for the tank, wood and attached ferns take care of all that, white sand is used but nothing is planted in it.

Regards,
Tom Barr

" but we have design things so that no mainteance will be needed on the lower reaches."

How do you mean?

-derek parr

I will be able to handle the electricity bill ( I really hope so… ). But I need to figure out what kind of lightning I will need in a tank like this. When it comes to water, I’m planning a system that automatically changes 5% every night. I also need to figure out what kind of automatic system I can use when it comes to fertilizing etc.

I have never been able to avoid different kind of algae on my driftwood . What is the trick?

Use something other than Gloss!
Rock, cobble, sand etc.

Reagrds,
Tom Barr

Good CO2.

I'd suggest 4 to 5 400W MH's. Every m^2 you will need one. Best light for the watt. so 2000w for 10 hours per day, x 365 days.....
73000 kilowatts a year. We get charged about 13 cents a kilowatt, so that is 9500$ a year in lighting. That's about 2 w/gal at 100cm depth.
But the light is very good with 400w MH's, better than any other light source.

Peristalic dosing pumps are easy to set up on a timer.
Aqua medic makes some with the timers built in etc.

Just set them to run for 20 minutes etc at 30mls/hr and make whatever concentration of nutrients you want to add in 600mls of water.

Main thing is the amount of work you will need to do to keep it up as far as pruning etc.

Regards,
Tom Barr

i think some extra zeros slipped into that...
does 1 kilowatt not equal 1000 watts?

if so.. 2000 watts a day would be 730 kilowatts a year which would be $94.90 at the rate $0.13 per kilowatt.

-derek

I'm not sure I follow the math. Doesn't the electric company bill us for kiloWatt*hours, not kiloWatts?

Brian

I think you are both wrong.

You have 2000 W of lighting, 10 hours a day means 20 kWh a day. That results in 7300 kWh per year, which will cost you $949 per year at .13c/kWh.

Regards,
Frank

One of the architecture firms I used to work for did a big project for 3M a few years back. One of the things they incorporated into the building was a new product they were developing. It was a tracking mirror solar lighting system that used the mirrors to capture sunlight and reflect it into the office space. I don't know if your roof/ceiling structure would allow it, but it's an option if someone is still making them. Note, these are NOT the 'solar tubes' which are just a skylight with a piece of duct. Those might work too as supplemental light.

TW