Tufa Waterfall Aquarium Biotope

[rhizotron]

This project is freshwater, but it has some reef tank conceptual overlap with the calcium reactor and biomineralization, so I hope it's not too far afield.

Tufa Waterfall Aquarium Biotope

Last fall I had an opportunity to visit a local tufa waterfall. In this very unique natural feature, new tufa rock forms where calcium and bicarbonate-enriched water tumbles down a cliff face. Water agitation causes rapid CO2 off-gassing, dropping pH and encouraging CaCO3 precipitation. This process is hastened further with dense growth of mosses and other organisms that strip CO2 with photosynthesis. The waterfall really was very impressive. We were there during a lunch hour and I didn't have a lot of time for photography, but I got a few quick pics.

Moss covered most of the waterfall, but where water dripped down at the base I found two different Green Algae as well as a fine Cyanobacteria crust.

With permission, I also collected a few small tufa rock, sediment and organism samples for this project. Here is the unidentified moss covering most of the tufa waterfall. This plant had an un-mosslike rough, sandpapery texture owing to the development of many CaCO3 crystals in its foliage.

I took a few botany classes in college, but never did venture into bryology. Anybody have any ID suggestions?

The tufa rock has a texture similar to that of the moss.

Some microscopy images with 100x, 250x and 2500x magnification showing that Moss, a Green Alga and a Cyanobacterium.

The setup hardware is a work in process and I still have the live stuff in a culture tank, but the basic display will be this UNS 45s 5-gallon on top of an 80-20 stand I built with hidden corner brackets and some plastic parts cut out on the CNC router. The stand with this hardware seems just sturdy enough for this much weight. I would not put a tank any bigger on here without additional corner braces.

More updates on the way pretty soon.

Thanks for reading!

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

So, are all your fantastic projects temporary or do you house them in a huge studio? It would be great if a aquarium or a museum could give you a show. I love how you combine Form/Function with water.

 

[rhizotron]

So, are all your fantastic projects temporary or do you house them in a huge studio? It would be great if a aquarium or a museum could give you a show. I love how you combine Form/Function with water.

Well I'm working toward something like that, but it's pretty slow. I have a lot to resolve still. It took years just for some of these ideas to coalesce inside my head. This is all just in my home basement shop for now.

Here's a couple pics in its more permanent spot and a water test. The waterfall feature is lava rock, which isn't exactly representative. But it was the right size and shape and I had it handy. It is very soft material that was easy to drill for the water connection and rod pegs. If I can get tufa development, it should be easy to see the tan CaCO3 against that dark gray.

The reactor setup is a Green Leaf Aquariums paintball regulator with cTech T-NANO and Kamoer pump + microcontroller. The plywood is temporary and I'll make a nicer HDPE mount plate when I get the hardware design resolved. Unfortunately, with the water test I found a rapid leak from the reactor Sicce pump, so I'm trying to resolve that with the seller.

This will be a small miracle if I can get it to work. There are a lot of potential points of failure and it looks to me like operation will be very fussy. But I don't know. I'm eager to have that new pump and get it running.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Very Nice! You seem to use very similar tank sizes in your projects. Are they the same size? Have you picked this size because of its visual aspect or other reasons? My tropical, temperate and frag all use the 24 x 19 foot print, I love the consistency visually on the one wall, plus it is a nice foot print to work a biotope.

 

[rhizotron]

Very Nice! You seem to use very similar tank sizes in your projects. Are they the same size? Have you picked this size because of its visual aspect or other reasons? My tropical, temperate and frag all use the 24 x 19 foot print, I love the consistency visually on the one wall, plus it is a nice foot print to work a biotope.

That sounds very nice. Do you have pics of the whole deal anywhere?

This is the first UNS 45s I've used. I have another project in mind using their 60s with an approximate 24" X 14" footprint and 7" tall which should be quite appealing.

I really like these 24" X 24" shallow enclosures I built with a plastic bottom frame and Sintra PVC floor. They make a visual impact with this broad footprint, but with only about 17 gallons of water. So it's more like a nano for water changes and hardware demands and the tank is very light and easy to move around. I have one more of those molded frames and I'm going to build another for an additional project, but use pieces of 3/8" plate instead because that quarter-inch is kind of thin.

Bookshelf tanks are also really a great combination. At 30" or 36" long they fill some space, but they're also light for moving around and only cost about a hundred bucks each. I have another astrobiology concept in mind also using a bookshelf like this Mars biotope, but with a few additional concepts.

My water wave machine is another half-finished project. I tore this setup down, but I'm going to build an update in a shallow 48" X 12" for longer wave travel. This will use another economy plastic frame from aquariumframeswholesale.com securing the bottom, but with a rimless top and probably also a PVC floor.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Everything is always fluid (pun intended). The frag tank is in progress but it replaces the 10g in the photo. The photo is a bit distorted and a work in progress. The cabinets in between are Ikea Besta's and are the same size and both have vented doors now. A lot of things have changed but this gives you a working mans view of the concept. Not in the picture but to the left is a softie tank that is a 30g long. The photo shows the day to day mess. I tend to get a project going, then move to the next, but tune the details of the previous one slowly. That and the just keeping up with the dailys with the natural organic growth and changes a reef tank encapsulates equals a never ending project.

This is a sump I built which was a surge filter. Two chambers would fill and randomly dump 2.5 gallons into a temperate nano (modified 13.5) Also had a refugium built in.

 

[rhizotron]

Very nice. What did you have in the temperate reef? My wife collected some East Coast tide pool material for me over Christmas and I've wondered how it might do with room temp conditions, since that environment is more subject to extremes.

I also have a project in mind combining an upstream sump on a small shelf above the display as a way to minimize hardware in a nano setup. What kind of surge mechanism is that? This would be another cool thing to incorporate...



Not exactly natural, but I think it could look cool slowly turning like a mill pond water wheel and in combination with a surge device it could achieve considerable water movement without impeller pumps.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Very nice. What did you have in the temperate reef? My wife got me some East Coast tide pool material and I've wondered how it might do with room temp conditions, since that environment is more subject to extremes.

I also have a project in mind combining an upstream sump on a small shelf above the display as a way to minimize hardware in a nano setup. What kind of surge mechanism is that? This would be another cool thing to incorporate and in combination with a bell siphon could achieve considerable surge water movement and without impeller pumps...

The temperate nanos turned into Red Sea RS170 (middle tank top picture).
70 degrees is about the warmest you want to be. I keep mine at 63 degrees with a 1/15 chiller. The six gallon nano used a canister filter to drive the chiller. The surge system worked on a Bell siphon principal. My wife called it the toilet because of the sound it made every couple minutes. You would stop hearing it after a while.
This morning in the temperate:

 

[Widdlyscudds]

I'm stoked to see how this turns out. Best of luck to you hope it all comes together.

 

[rhizotron]

It's a benefit to have basement space for potentially noisy hardware. I'm also working on another thing with stepper motors and it's a challenge to cut the noise down to zero with them.

Nice stuff in there! I haven't kept one, but I'm familiar with the idea of coldwater reefs with chillers. What I have pondered though is the alternative idea of a tank with more relaxed control including warmer temps for tide pool biota, especially from locations further down the coast like Georgia and Florida.

The temperate nanos turned into Red Sea RS170 (middle tank top picture).
70 degrees is about the warmest you want to be. I keep mine at 63 degrees with a 1/15 chiller. The six gallon nano used a canister filter to drive the chiller. The surge system worked on a Bell siphon principal. My wife called it the toilet because of the sound it made every couple minutes. You would stop hearing it after a while.
This morning in the temperate:

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Very nice. What did you have in the temperate reef? My wife collected some East Coast tide pool material for me over Christmas and I've wondered how it might do with room temp conditions, since that environment is more subject to extremes.

I also have a project in mind combining an upstream sump on a small shelf above the display as a way to minimize hardware in a nano setup. What kind of surge mechanism is that? This would be another cool thing to incorporate...



Not exactly natural, but I think it could look cool slowly turning like a mill pond water wheel and in combination with a surge device it could achieve considerable water movement without impeller pumps.

The surge sump is available, since I am not using anymore. Some of it has been scavenged, but most of it is there. Just needs a bit of love. I was able to get a good water movement with the water dump. One at water level, one below.

 

[rhizotron]

The replacement Sicce for the reactor arrived and I also got the little 5v pump to run the waterfall so tonight I was finally able to get this running.

The Kamoer pushes tank water into the reactor for 6 seconds once every 120 seconds. How long do you think the peristaltic tubing will last?

I had wondered about an additional enclosure hung on the wall with a line from the reactor and overflowing to the tank in order to moderate pH, but decided to instead put a cylinder glass vase right inside as a primary chamber. A planted tank drop checker will provide easy visual monitoring. After about five hours the 4dKH fluid was green but trending to yellow, so I turned the CO2 bubble rate down to only about 1 bubbles/5 seconds.

I'll need to work on tube and wire management. The underwater area also needs a sand substrate and hardscape. I might add underwater plants eventually, but the priority is to get the Moss and stuff growing on the waterfall. I haven't added those yet and instead want to get the setup running stable and with OK parameters. It's going to be a few days.

After about three hours of operation, I completed tests for GH, KH (API titrant kits) and conductivity (digital TDS meter) comparing the field sample values with effluent directly from the reactor. I only have a high-range (7.4-8.8) test kit here. This returned 7.4 for the field sample, but a yellow color off the scale for the other three, so I don't list pH here. I'll probably just count on the drop checker for assessing pH.

The reactor was sitting quiet for a couple weeks with water and media inside, so I don't know to what degree this initial change reflects what might have been dissolving slowly inside versus the action of CO2 injection.

Field:

• GH - 19
• KH - 16
• TDS - 270

Effluent

• GH - 23
• KH - 18
• TDS - 307

Primary

• GH - 13
• KH - 12
• TDS - 188

Tank

• GH - 5
• KH - 3
• TDS - 47

 

[rhizotron]

I got the Moss and Algae planted in here a week ago. I don't see much growth yet, but they look OK. They're still green. I'll try to share a photo update soon.

Meanwhile here's a pretty cool mechanism that should be a more durable option in comparison with a peristaltic pump for low-flow waterfalls and similar projects. It would need some kind of valve configuration for directional water flow. I like how it incorporates no limit switch, which I've seen with similar projects, but instead just uses the easier option of defining steps for the forward and backward control.

 

[rhizotron]

Day 16 Update.

Some of these things are responding. Requiring cooler temps, humidity and very clean water, wild mosses from my temperate climate area usually grow poorly indoors, but there is noticeable new green foliage on the possible Cratoneuron that I found covering most of the waterfall. This moss is also tightly adhering to the rock surface as it creeps along, which is nice to see. The pillow moss with less extent in situ, on the other hand, hasn't changed much. I also see little new growth from the hair algae Green Alga, but it is still present and green.

A few teaspoons of loose tufa sand material were also added to depressions in the lava stone. Interestingly, after just a week or so these coalesced with a jelly-like form that now appears to be Cyanobacteria extrapolymeric substances (EPS) mat. I think I see both brown and green Cyanobacteria growing and spreading from there.

I've added just a couple shots of aquarium plant NPK + traces fertilizers. I'm not testing for nutrients but instead just keeping an eye on the photosynthesizers. The calcium reactor runs for just five hours per day and it looks like this is adequate for this small water/setup volume.

So far this looks like a good proof-of-concept for configuring a CO2 calcium reactor to model groundwater for tufa waterfalls and other karst topography features, such as caves. It's too bad the manufacturer discontinued that cTech Nano reactor, but there are other options for comparable reactors available.

I will replace that white 1/4" tubing with black and hide it better. The line going to the reactor has some filter floss wrapped around it with a mini media bag and so does the 5v circulation pump. I just need to tuck that in back. I'll add sand and more stones underwater along with underwater plants eventually as well.