Freshwater African Cichlid ATS Build

I cycled a freshwater 180g african Cichlid aquarium a few weeks ago. I put a L4 on it right away. I started running it with only 7 hours a day to get it started. This was not working and when I jump it up to 10 hours a day it kicked in. I'm finding that as I up the hours it is growing more and more.

I also added my L2 to it a week ago and have it running on the same timer at 10 hours a day. It is half covered with green already. I'm thinking to up the Led timer to 14 hours.

So far it is not keeping up with the Nitrates. I did a water change thursday and the Nitrates went from 30 down to 20. Now today 2 days latter they are back to 30. So at this point I'm doing 3x40 gallon water changes on the 180g a week. I'm hoping to keep the Nitrates down at 5-20ppm.

Here is the L4 screen at today's cleaning. Thinking to clean the L2 mid week to spit them up.

Thoughts?

 

Oh and I'm feeding 1.5tsp of pellet food per day at this point.

Filtration is 2x6 gallon Wet/Dry trickle filters, 300gph canister to polish the water and the 2 L2 & a L4 ATS's

 

Ah Okay nice to see that your ATS's are so easy to make setup changes to them! And good to hear that you have some experience with running a freshwater ATS. I wonder if they are less popular because most FW tanks don't have sumps..? Be nice to see a good working hang on the back ATS for sumpless setups.

I wonder also if the cubes per day also is only close for a SW system.

I have bumped my hours up to 20hrs per day. Here is my Led version.
Thanks

 

Yes I was running the diffuser. I was concerned that the light was going to be too much at first to get the screen started. I see now this is not an issue with a freshwater ATS screen. It diffuser is still on the other side because the heat sink is up against something. So I'm thinking to remove it the next big full cleaning.

So should I swap the wires on the terminals to have the 2 halfs in parallel? Will the Led's and the driver work with that?

 

Okay, I just wanted to make sure that I was on the same page as you.

Oh and an update on your ATS's;
They are still working like the day I got them! I will never sell mine even if I get out of the hobby. I would hate to need them and not be able to find one someday.

 

The ATS lighting is running 21hrs a day and I figured that I would test No3 before I did a WC. It has been 3 days from the last one. The No3 reads just a hair over 20. YAY. For the first time I'm not going to a WC.

 

Here is after a week. There is a weird tan hard stuff in the middle.

 

This was 7 days. No3 was 20ppm after a water change Wednesday. I tested it today and it is holding at 20ppm. This is a good step forward.

 

The L2 screen with both diffusers is solid green.

Maybe it is too much light in the L4? I'm going to try the diffusers back in that one and see what happens.

Wondering if ultimately I should pull the diffusers and run less hours of light in both. Not sure if so, how many hours to start out with.

 

I made a filter sock hanger out off a poly toggle anchor. It works okay.

Note, The only reason that mine is clipped up is because it is close to a sump drain and it would go inside and slow it down.

 

Yay ATS. No water change in a week and NO3 went to 0.

 

Yes I'm running both the L2 & the L4. I have them lite for 20hrs a day. The growth is still basically like the pic above. I still get tan crusty stuff at the base once and a while. I have been scrapping it off with each 7 day cleaning.

 

The harvest on the L4 was bigger this week. Usually it's about half of this one.