Aquarium substrates, what they knew back 45-years ago.
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- čas přidán 27. 05. 2024
- Aquarium substrates, what they knew back 45-years ago. Why is it today we pretend that the downfalls do not exist?
Setting up a Plenum for an SCA aquarium
• Part 2: Building the P...
Thanks Dr Novak. We knew a lot more in the old days than I think we gave ourselves credit for. In the old days I was using UG filters and breeding fish with no issue. Never had disease outbreaks or water parameter issues. In fact I hardly ever did water changes. Another great video thanks
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Very wise information on this video. Your are a wealth of info and you save the old magazines that are still full of information, Dr. Novak.
Also it amazes how fluids can still go through the plenum even with gravel/kitty litter and sand (
hello!! you inspired me to setup an undergravel filter for my new hex setup, i've been watching a lot of your content trying to learn as much as I can to make sure I can pull it off and start recommending it to all my friends haha
but a few questions i have regarding my setup
1. Im using aquasoil spread about 2.5" roughly, is there anything to be worried about using aquasoil as the substrate?
2. My tank is a 37G hex & I made a lift with a pex tube attached to a powerhead running 118gph on about half power, am I okay with only 1 tube and is that enough/too much flow?
3. I seeded the tank with a sponge from an established tank and added plants, now is there anything i should look out for or signs that the tank's plenum is establishing and safe to start adding fish? I'm not too sure how long I should expect
thank you so much if you have time to answer any of these & for putting all this info out here, it has been so helpful! All i can think about is plenums these days im ready to see it in action!
If you're talking about the Amazonian aqua soil, there is no problem using it as a substrate. For that matter, if you're going to use the Fluval plant Stratum substrate that's OK also.
Great thanks for sharing!
No problem 👍
When I was a kid in 1982, my parent brought home a 5 gallon tank with 3 goldfishes. It was just water and gravel, and those fishes lived for over 10 years. The only maintenance was my mom washing everything when it got too stinky.
Great video. Is there a minimum and maximum or ideal ratio for the volume/ depth of substrate to volume/ depth of the plenium? Im planning one now but confused whats best. Thanks
So to summeries this all thing after all those years and many videos of great info from you! - to plan and design a marine system that will thrive for years without any issues and can support fishes like warrases,gobies, and other sand sifting specias witch type and size of substrate should it go with ???
Thanks for the discussion. I find it confusing the topic of substrate. I see the old timers do things differently. Greg over at Select Aquatics runs prettymuch all glass bottom tanks with no substrate and box filters with daily water changes. Father fish seems to prefer sand bottom tanks that are heavily planted. I've seen others do a dirted tank with another substrate over the top of that with the intention of having it heavily planted. I've ran tanks with undergravel filter and my floating plants seemed to love that setup. I could never seem to get plants to root in the gravel over the filter very well. Maybe i didn't have the substrate deep enough. I also have just gravel, sand, eco complete tanks. It seems once plants get going in a sand bottom like jungle val, they spread and take over. I do dose my tanks with fertilizer and root tabs in some tanks. Some tanks are over 90% planted and others are under 20% planted only because of a similar problem to your goldfish in that i have a couple tanks with marbled crabs and they like to rearrange the substrate to their liking regardless of whether or not there are plants in their way. I'm currently working on a automatic plant waterer (potted plants outside aquarium) that draws the water from my 55 gallon tank. I plan on doing this in leu of water changes. I'm also growing micro greens in a custom built lid on a 29 gallon tank. That's still in the early stages of the project. I think the bottom line is to try to find a way that works for you and go with it. I enjoy your videos and look forward to watching more.
Thanks for the information and good luck with your aquariums.
This guy should be more popular
Somebody told me that CZcams is holding back people from seeing my videos. It's a fact that I try to go on CZcams and watch one of my videos, but when I typed in the name which match the name of other videos, my video never came up..
Question, how does the air pump keep working when the power failure cut out the other filters ? If you had a back up generator everything would be running, just curious
Luckily, the air pump was not on a timer, and therefore was not affected..
Hello Dr Novak, could you please comment on the use of an under substrate heater in an aquarium with a under gravel filter... it seems to me that they would be working against each other .. am I right?
If you are using substrate heating cables, then the use of a Plenum is not necessary. The only thing about heating cables is they are not reliable over a long period of time. They also are dependent upon how the ambient temperature of the room is depending on whether or not they are going to work in the winter or the summer.
Plenums are not dependent upon the temperature of the room, and therefore they will work in colder environment along with warmer environment.
Ok, thank you very much.for taking the time to reply.
This was an exploratory question as I'm just setting up the tank and have only just become aware of under gravel heating.
However, as I have already prepared the plenum, I will stay with the original plan.
Thanks again👍
I've watched quite a bit of your content, and a question I have is about the Jaubert plenum vs. your slow bubbler plenum (is there a particular name for this type of plenum?). Is there any research that shows the superiority of your plenum? I'm thinking that because there is the possibility of over oxygenating the substrate using a bubbler, there needs to be quite a bit of performance (denitrification) advantage to your plenum vs. the Jaubert plenum, but I never hear you saying so. Where would I find your list of suggested readings to the research?
Very good question and years ago it was just called and under gravel filter and this is the way they use them and I'm talking back in the 60s and very early 70s. Then in the 70s the under gravel filter change to 1 inch uplift tubes and higher priority was spent to pushing more water through the filter plates.
There is quite a lot of information and research done on plenums. Basically, there are a lot of articles that were written about it in magazines, and even today there are many open subjects about it fromThere is quite a lot of information and research done on plenums. Basically, there are a lot of articles that were written about it in magazines, and even today there are many open subjects about it from Jaubert himself.
If you follow what I say over oxygenating, the substrate will not happen.
I was wondering if laterite is useful in the lower substrate even if you're not growing plants. Does it help the anoxic bacteria? Or is it just to provide the plants with iron?
Most people with aquariums add iron for the plants, and that will be more than enough to survive for the Plenum and bacteria.
So now we know what is the worst substrate, so what is the best substrate? Please do a show on that
Best substrate is that of a #3 size or 0.125 in diameter. Which is anywhere between 3 to 5 mm in diameter.
PLEASE HELP... My friend has a small pond and is using a biological filter made from a plastic 50 gallon drum.His pond does not have any access to electricity, so he hooked up a pump to a small solar system. His pump only works during the daylight hours...
Will his biological filter ever have the needed bacteria as the filter has no water flow for about 12 hours per day. ALSO... would he be better to have a 100% anoxic filtration in that barrel, and would it be ok with just 12 hours of water flow per day? Thankyou.
If your friend is having problems with his Pond because he's shutting off his filter, that is one reason why. When you use highly oxygenated filters and you shut them down for like 12 hours a day, they can become depleted of oxygen and kill off beneficial bacteria. That's why when you use an Anoxic filter. It does not depend on the oxygen that is in the water as much as an aerobic filter does. This was proven in my lanai aquarium where the canister filter was shut down for over two weeks without any water moving through it. Yet there was no ammonia when it restarted back up and did not smell of hydrogen sulfide.
@anoxicfiltrationplenums thankyou... I remember you explaining that an anoxic filters bacteria will remain alive for a very long time as long as it is kept moist, so I thought it may be a good option for my friend who has solar electricity during the daytime only.
Thankyou very much.
you can use sand as in a FF system with thriving plants and a gradient fish load. BCB and water movement can take superior amount of bioload in my experience. Sand has not worked well for me combined with plenums etc. Goldfish spaning and doing fine with BCBs
a main factor is the gravel must be big enough to not fall through the slots in the UG plate. if you put sand on top, seems like it will eventually migrate down and go through the slots. if i take the time /energy/$ to set up tanks with various different parameters then i would know which worked best, perhaps they all work in there own diff way.
right now i have one test tank set up with fine silt (loam dug from yard) from a flood plain where i live, no UG, no filter, just an air stone. water is crystal clear, i change about 50% a month, and i never stir the bottom because it would cloud the water and take 2 weeks to settle again. i can see a small spotty black layer in the sand along the glass, but that might be algae too. the tank it completely carpeted with dwarf sag, extremely dense, growing wonderfully/healthy.
i have 9 het rasaboras, 5 red eye skirted tetras, 6 galaxy(celestial) danios, 6 zebra danios, 6 glow light tetras, 6 white clouds, 1 clown loach, and a hundred ramshorn snails. the danios and white clouds spawn every morning in the plants, i see the clown loach about once a month, he stays hidden in the plants, eats the snails and earthworms i feed. i have managed to rescue a couple fry and am raising them separately, the others get eaten fairly quickly. i feed live, frozen, and flake food every day. the fish are huge, loaded with eggs, look like they will explode. that's almost 40 fish in this 20 gal long tank.
this is my first experience with a natural tank also. except for a number of betta jars, this is my only tank, however i have had many in the past with filters and all the usual stuff. tank is over 1 year old and started with 50-70 guppies i have since removed and replaced with the current fish. so, this is quite surprising to me to see amazing success in such a different manner than i have been brought up to use. if i had another lifetime i would set up a number of tanks with all different means and see how the fish/plants respond with health/spawning. that's the best measurement to use
That problem of sand sifting through an under gravel filter, was solved a long time ago with using a screen or what they call ground-cover fabric over the UGF.
Is the use of sand just cost or is it the popularity of aqua scaping which produce beautiful but usually short term aquariums? Interested I you and your viewers opinions
Only reason, I say it's cost, because I actually have seen CZcams channels and the proprietors admit it.
I wanted to share that using the plenum method with kitty litter, I can keep about 20 baby shrimps in a 1 gallon aquarium with no problem (temporary until they grow into my bigger tanks).
Many people will say small aquariums are harder to maintain good water parameters but not with anoxic filtration.
I even found some laterite on Amazon last weekend and bought some to also add to future aquariums.
Lastly, I’ve been able to grow easy plants (Bacopa) in a small vase with a small plenum and kitty with little to no algae while facing the sun.
Simply put, it works. Now I’m excited to also try adding some sand 👍
My bacopa stems are struggling to grow... Is it cause of low nitrates? Are yours growing fast? They seem healthy but the growth is slower than when i was using external filter a year ago..
This is really helpful thanks
I have been trying to figure out what the 'best way ' to implement this system in my African cichlid tanks 👍
The problem being
That large African cichlids like to dig holes and caves :)
❓
Would Kitty Litter ⏫or⏬ the PH ?
Haha I wrote this comment half way through your video , you did address my first question :) 👍
Oh and to add to your comment on sand
FFish tells his listeners to Only use sand on dirt , so this could also be a reason people use sand 🤔
Glad it was helpful! Just add a screen about 1 inch under the gravel above the Plenum, and then your African cichlids could only dig down to the screen and no further.
1. just because something was written long time ago doesnt mean it true, earth is not flat, not anymore
2. everybody know substrate will compact, everybody know about old tank syndrome in sand as well as broken down aquasoil. No one hiding anything, stop saying that.
3. no one use under gravel filter anymore, compact substrate is much less of an issue unless it get disturb badly enough to release ammonia.
4. what if you dont fill your tank with plants? then dont fill it with sand either. who said you have to have a thick layer of substrate for no reason?
if you want to know what changed you have to keep an open mind and learn what changed, stop thinking your old way is the best and push people into doing what you do. For the last 10 years I have never heard anyone has problem with sand, or anyone using under gravel filter. my tank ran 5 years with 3 in sand just fine till I change it to aquasoil.
OMG! If you haven't heard of anyone having problems with sand in the last 10 years, where have you been living? On what planet? People even those that are considered to be professionals have admitted, the only reason they use sand is because it is cheap. Please before you keep trying to tell everybody how great you are with your sand substrate. Please look at the professional aquariums that are out there that are public aquariums, and what they do when they use a sand substrate. So in other words, you're right and all those professional public aquariums are wrong. I don't think.
As I have said in my videos: What do they use to hold back water during flooding? If you guessed a sandbag, you would be absolutely right. Sand compacts and doesn't allow water to penetrate it very easily. It isn't rocket science.
I just created my new patio mini pond for medaka rice fish in my backyard and once again I found the best substrate in the world to make my plenum, which is OIL-DRI, which is 100% natural clay, OIL-DRI is the best product for aquariums and extremely cheap
Ignorance, lazy, stubborn, waste effort?