On New Tank Syndrome and the benefits of ATO

As part of my mission to make my tank maintenance as easy as possible, I decided to set it up from the start with an Automatic Top Off (ATO) system, in this case the Hydor Smart Level ATO system, along with a Hydor Seltz L20 Centrifugal Pump, and for an ATO tank I have an Advanced Acrylics 9 gallon ATO tank. All in all, it is a dream setup. All I have to do is to keep the ATO tank full and the rest takes care of itself. For the return I used an identical Hydor return as for my Hydor Pro 150 Canister filter, with a swing check valve from AAP (American Aquarium Products). I should note that a check valve is not a luxury for an ATO system - you don't want to accidentally start a syphon, for the pump would end up running all day. You can set the level low enough that the outflow remains just slightly above the waterline, and you should not have a problem, but this is one case of better safe than sorry. If you do have a check valve installed, it does not matter if the outflow is below the waterline.

When doing a water change, I simply switch the ATO off temporarily, and syphon out as much water as I want, and then I turn the ATO back on. It is silent as can be. The pump is attached with rubber feet to the bottom of the ATO tank, and you do not even hear the pump.

Pictures: On the left: Because of the angle the ATO tank seems big, but the tank is 29 gallon, and the ATO tank is 9 gallon. The ATO hose runs straight up to the tank and the Smart Level controller hangs on the wall behind the tank, and the on/off switch is on top, so it is easy to switch the ATO off for a water change. On the wall behind the tank you also see the hoses to the canister filter that's in the cabinet, with the in-line Hydor ETH200 heater, which is the backup to the under gravel heating cable. On the right is the ATO level sensor, peeking just above the water line, meaning it was recently topped off, and whenever evaporation brings the water level down to the lowest sensor, the top-off starts again.

New Tank Syndrome

The other day I found the nicest description of New Tank Syndrome (NTS) so far, The graphics this author uses clearly show how Ammonia/Ammonium (NH3/NH4) spike first, and Nitrite (NO2) spikes next, and finally Nitrate (NO3) spikes third, as the successive bacteria cultures start up. More very valuable documentation of the nitrification cycle is on the AAP website, here, and here. There is a very good article on the Nitrogen Cycle on the Advanced Aquarist site, here. Clearly the nitrogen cycle is not the simple linear cycle we used to think it was. Very importantly, the AAP articles do pay attention also to the fact that the plants and the filter system do compete for waste products, so it is a good idea to start your filtration first and seed it with some bacteria, before you plant the tank too heavily. Note also that the total break-in cycle can take 6 weeks or more, as I am in fact experiencing in this case, because I went in very small steps with adding any live stock to the tank.

This time I had taken care to use one plant from my old 5 gallon tank, along with some imported gravel, and by way of an experiment I setup this Wisteria plant in a terracotta pot in the new tank, it has some organic potting soil covered by a layer of gravel from the old tank. Aside from that, out of an abundance of caution, I used a bit of Ammolock, and some Stresszyme, to help get the bacterial culture started. I am also using a Prodibio BacterKit Soil to seed the substrate with bacteria.

As to the livestock, I went very slowly - easy does it. First, I allowed some inverts to get settled in, including tubifex and Malaysian Trumpet Snails (MTS), and after about a week of doing that, I added 6 Amano shrimp, and between the snails and the Amanos, algae does not stand a chance. Finally after about 2 weeks with just the shrimp, I migrated 5 pygmy cories from my 5 gallon tank. The highest ammonia spike I've seen so far is about 0.5 PPM, and that is after almost a month of running this tank. Sofar, I've done just one partial water change in the 3rd week - about 25%. I may do 33% this week. Of course once you can see that the nitrates start to build, water changes are needed, unless your tank is so heavily planted and thinly populated, that the plants use up all the nitrate, which I guess is possible, if you read Diana Walstead and Matt Owens. In fact I may be in that condition just now, for as of right now, I cannot read any nitrates yet, and my ammonia and nitrite readings are down to zero. I am growing some duckweed in both tanks, and I'll be very interested to see how well it does in keeping nitrates and phosphates in check. Clearly the 5 gallon tank is doing much better now that I'm back to just MTS and the Betta, Mr. MJF II.

In short, with a litte pre-planning, it is entirely feasible to minimize the pain of New Tank Syndrome, although you should track the cycles of Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate, so you can see how things are evolving in the water. Once you know that your nitrification cycle is up and running, you should need to check just Nitrate, to time your water changes, unless you suspect a spike in ammonia because somebody died, or you do some kind of extensive cleaning job that could disrupt the nitrification cycle again, which really should not be necessary.    

From 5 to 29... gallons, in under nine months

Once my betta, Mr. MJF II, was all well established in his new 5 gallon tank, with a varying cast of tank mates, I had to tell my old friend Jim from Connecticut, who used to know me when I had lots of tanks at home and who still has a house full of aquariums himself - both fresh- and salt water. Then, last September (2015), about a year after I started my nano tank, he called me to say a friend of his had a son moving out, and he was leaving a 29 gallon tank with a stand and equipment behind, and she wanted to get rid of it. Did I want it? After some hemming and hawing I decided yes. Somehow it found its way from Connecticut to the Bronx in November, and at that point I let it sit over the holidays, but I started reading some of the recent books more intently, and my two favorites soon became:

•  Diana Louise Walstead, Ecology of the Planted Aquarium: A Practical Manual and Scientific Treatise. This book was first published in 1999, after I dismantled my tanks in Connecticut, because I was moving to NYC. It contains a wealth of new insight about running planted tanks.
• Matt Owens, An Alternative Aquarium: A Robust Habitat, published in 2011. More wonderful information and food for thought as to how things really work in a planted tank, if you want to get anywhere close to a natural environment, particularly in terms of adding inverts to the equation.

It turns out some of my most basic assumptions were misguided, and I abandoned all notions that I knew anything, and decided to plan my new tank very differently than I'd ever done before. Having said that, I did also decide that the path I wanted to find was to a high tech "natural aquarium." For me, leveraging the existing technology means in effect simulating a larger body of water than just the tank itself, and to make maintenance absolutely idiot proof by automating everything. The goal is to be able to take off without any worries. Given my new ecological focus, specific choices needed to be made. 

So far this has resulted in the following:

• Under gravel heating cables, in this case Hydrokable from Hydor, with their Hydroset thermostat with digital display. I want to maintain about 78F, and since the heating cable is only 50 Watt, and it can get a bit chilly at night in winter, I needed a backup heater, so:
• Backup heat provided by the Hydor ETH in-line heater for canister filters, in this case the 200 Watt unit. A very elegant solution. I set it about 2 degrees below the under gravel heat, so the under gravel heat always comes on first, ensuring circulation through the gravel, which is the point.
• I did want to use a canister filter, as I do believe water movement is important, and it gives me the option to filter more or less, as needs dictate. In came a Hydor Pro 150, Fair to say, I sort of fell in love with the Hydor gear, and so far my experience with the company has been stellar, especially regarding after sales support. For now, the filter uses standard Hydor media, a black pad for coarse filtration and a white wool pad for fine mechanical filtration in the first tray, and Hydor's Sintered Quartz bio-rings as well as some lava rock in the second tray. In short, with this setup there is excellent mechanical and biological filtration, and chemical filtration is an option, when necessary.
• Because I want to have some live inverts in the tank, I needed a good pre-filter, a sponge filter, and the ATI Filter Max II Hydro Sponge was the way to go. The place to buy it is American Aquarium Products, they have some of the best information on their site on this and other products, here is the link to their impressive information on sponge filtration.
• For substrate, after looking far and wide, I decided to go with Aquadert from Aquarium Plants - about 3" worth of their "Natural Amazon" variety.
• For the rest, I've used an Underwater Treasures 3D background, the Cave Wall, and, because I have a problem with radiant heat in the summer, I applied some Reflectix radiant barrier to the back of the tank, to avoid having to have fish soup in summer. Last summer I learned the hard way that the brick wall continues to radiate heat all night long, even with the A/C running, and without a radiant barrier, it was impossible to keep the temperature in the tank in a reasonable range.
• For UV I chose the TMC Vecton V2 200 8 Watt unit from American Aquarium Products (AAP). Some extensive reading went into this, but eventually it was Strohmeier's articles on the AAP website that gave me the conclusive insight, namely that UV will improve the ORP (Oxidation Reduction Potential) of the water, and since fish effectively swim in their immune system (as opposed to drinking water as we humans do), the main effect is to raise the immune system of the fish, even more so than killing off potentially harmful bacteria or algae.
• Otherwise, the tank is a standard 29 Gallon tank, with a stock hood, with a Hagen PowerGlo T8 high power fluorescent, and I'll keep this around until I am ready to move to high intensity LED lighting, CO2, and some serious aquascaping and permanent plants, 
• For now, I only have 6 Amano Shrimp in this tank, just to get it settled, for other inverts I've added some MTS (Malaysian Trumpet Snails), Tubifex, Planaria, Daphnia, Rotifers, Copepods, and Gammarus (Scuds), hoping that they will become established before the permanent planting and ahead of the fish. The selection of inverts follows the recommendations of Matt Owens, except I did not go out and catch them outdoors, but I bought them from a biological supply house, Niles Biological.
• For plants, as a temporary arrangement, I have a Wisteria that outgrew my 5 Gallon tank, and was well on its way to killing off every other Wisteria in that tank, so by taking it out, the remaining Wisteria are starting to grow again. I put the Wisteria in a terracotta pot, with a shard to cover the hole in the bottom, then a handful of Aquadert, some organic potting soil, and covered it with some gravel from the original 5 gallon tank, and allowed the tubifex to settle in the pot, by way of an experiment. I did use one Seachem Flourish tab in the planter, and the Wisteria is taking off, so far growing two new shoots in the first two weeks. I have two Amazon swords to provide some cover for the sponge filter intake to my canister filter. Then, there are some Marimo balls, and some strands of Java Moss.

Pictures: Installing the Hydrokable was a bit of a challenge, but with a few practice runs and some extra cable clamps, I got it to work. The operative thing is, the cable cannot cross over. The ATI Filter Max II is large, but I've mounted it sideways, to get the intake as low as possible in the tank. The return is via a spray bar, below the water line as I am planning to have in-line CO2 injection.

What will be interesting is how I will do with the filter, but I suspect that I will only have to change the filter media once every three months or so, because the sponge filter will get rinsed out every week when I do my water change, and it will prevent a lot of debris from even entering the filter. The filter media are the standard Hydor filter pads of white wool and black foam in the first tray and Hydor's Sintered Quartz bio-rings, plus some lava-rock in the second tray. The sponge filter is very fine, so inverts will not get sucked up in the filter, and the shrimp love to pick the sponge clean. In short, this is mechanical and biological filtration all the way, with the option to do chemical filtration when needed. This is one reason why I like the canister filter better in concept than the no-filter approach (with maybe a circulation pump), for it leaves you without the option to do chemical filtration if it should ever be necessary.

In all, the whole thing is becoming a slow and gradual project, and the culmination will be when I get CO2 and high intensity lighting, and at that time I will plant the final plants, and finally it will be time to add some fish - probably by June, nine months after I was offered the tank.

My thinking about the plants is to have some simple plants that can grow with moderate light first, but then to design an aquascape that makes the most of the lighting and CO2, and for fertilizers it will become an experiment how much can be supplied by the fish, and what needs to be supplemented. I foresee starting out adding fertilizers but gradually to wean the tank from them as much as possible and try to find a balance so I don't need to add a lot of fertilizers in the long run - always striving as much as possible for natural solutions and minimal maintenance needs.

Refugium

I'll also be running a refugium of sorts to have a steady supply of inverts once there are fish in the tank. For now my refugium is a 5 gallon pail that houses a lucky bamboo, and in there I've managed to grow an invert culture fairly well. All in all up to this point, these are just the first steps towards a hopefully nicely balanced natural aquarium, without shying away from hi tech solutions, to make life easier, and particularly to reduce the maintenance requirements. My goal is that I should be able to go away for a week or two without a problem, so in due course I will hook up an Automatic Top Off (ATO) outfit as well.