# Am I too bright?



## Simon (2 May 2014)

I'm starting to see a little bit of GDA in this tank. Never used LED's before and I'm concerned that I'm overlighting this considering the plant load and more low tech approach. The tank had been running for 4 weeks. That piece of wood with the nice moss growth was from another nature tank.

Heres the details.
Tank 370L its 30" deep (never again!)

Lighting - 1 x 12" 6500k Beamsworks LED, 1 x 18" 6500k Beams work LED. They are place over the planted area. I believe the lights are 1400 lumens. These are on for 9 hours a day.

I'm using Macro's/Micros's with the standard mix from Plantfood UK, but I'm only doing 10ml a day, alternate macro/micro, which is around 10% of the recommended dose for a high tech tank. The tank also gets 7ml of Easy carbo a day.

Substrate is pool filter sand. There is a plastic ring under the large piece of wood that has 1cm of Tropica substrate in it. I thought it would help the swords and foreground plants.

Planting is mostly moss and narrow fern on wood. Some swords and tenellus in the foregound.

I'm changing 50% of the water a week with HMA. Water is around 12DH and 8Ph. I want to stick with this, as ultimately it will house some discus.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=5vbuj7" target="_blank"><img src="http://i62.tinypic.com/5vbuj7.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>


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## EnderUK (2 May 2014)

There will always be someone brighter than you...


could not resist. Sorry can't answer you're question as I have no experince with LEDs.


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## pepedopolous (2 May 2014)

Where is the GDA and how much have you got? For such a tall tank, it doesn't seem like a  lot of light but then again you don't use CO2. 

Does the aquarium look acceptable if you only turn 1 light on?


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

pepedopolous said:


> Where is the GDA and how much have you got? For such a tall tank, it doesn't seem like a  lot of light but then again you don't use CO2.
> 
> Does the aquarium look acceptable if you only turn 1 light on?



If I turn the 18" Beamsworks down to it's low setting, it still looks OK...but is that enough for the plants?

THE GDA seems to be worse right under this LED. It's not too bad, a thin film over most of the glass.


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## pepedopolous (2 May 2014)

Reducing light is usually the solution for algae problems. So you could use this 'low setting' or reduce the time the lights are on for. Even with high tech, 8 hours is about the most people typically have and even less (5-6 hours) for newly setup aquariums.

I guess it depends on how much of a problem it is for you to manually remove the algae from the glass every now and then.


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

The nice thing with these LED's is the moonlight mode. I could set the bigger one for a couple of hours less on full power, then leave the small one on moonlight so I have some light to enjoy it with, later in the day.


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## sciencefiction (2 May 2014)

Nice tank. The discus will love it.

You have a low plant mass with slow growers so algae can be a problem. Maybe either reduce the light or get some floaters or fast growers temporarily until the rest of the plants grow to use up unused stuff and block a bit of light.

I've reproduced GDA with lots of micro/macros in a glass bowl. I placed a 2nd bowl with no nutrients at all but with salvinia again. The fertilised bowl developed a thick film of GDA. The non-fertilised one didn't.
In about a couple of months the GDA fell off the glass sides altogether itself and was clear as someone scraped it thoroughly, the detritus from the algae at the bottom.  I presume the nutritents were used up. The other bowl still had no GDA at all but developed spots of green spot algae and the floaters didn't look as nice as in the fertilised bowl and grew way slower.  I suppose suffered for lack of nutrients.
They both had the same light which was the summer sunshine blazing.


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

sciencefiction said:


> Nice tank. The discus will love it.
> 
> You have a low plant mass with slow growers so algae can be a problem. Maybe either reduce the light or get some floaters or fast growers temporarily until the rest of the plants grow to use up unused stuff and block a bit of light.
> 
> ...


I have some Frogbit in there and have from the start. Maybe not enough. Looking at the floaters leaves i would hazzard a guess that I'm possibly not adding enough ferts. It's a bit early to tell really.


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## sciencefiction (2 May 2014)

Simon said:


> I have some Frogbit in there and have from the start. Maybe not enough. Looking at the floaters leaves i would hazzard a guess that I'm possibly not adding enough ferts. It's a bit early to tell really.



If the surface agitation is wetting the top leaves of the floaters they won't live. So make sure it's not that the cause for lack of growth.


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## EnderUK (2 May 2014)

Simon said:


> I have some Frogbit in there and have from the start. Maybe not enough. Looking at the floaters leaves i would hazzard a guess that I'm possibly not adding enough ferts. It's a bit early to tell really.


 
I use to have problems with floaters my solution was to lower the water line about an inch, drop the spray bar as well, and to use an air hose loop and sucker to corral the floaters in the place I wanted them.



sciencefiction said:


> I've reproduced GDA with lots of micro/macros in a glass bowl. I placed a 2nd bowl with no nutrients at all but with salvinia again. The fertilised bowl developed a thick film of GDA. The non-fertilised one didn't.
> In about a couple of months the GDA fell off the glass sides altogether itself and was clear as someone scraped it thoroughly, the detritus from the algae at the bottom.  I presume the nutritents were used up. The other bowl still had no GDA at all but developed spots of green spot algae and the floaters didn't look as nice as in the fertilised bowl and grew way slower.  I suppose suffered for lack of nutrients.
> They both had the same light which was the summer sunshine blazing.


 
I don't think this is a very control experiment though I'm not doubting the results. A better way would be set up 4 similar glass bowls.

1. Distill water (Control).
2. Distill Water and Floaters.
3. Distill Water + Neutriants.
4. Distill Water + Neutriants + Floaters.


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

sciencefiction said:


> If the surface agitation is wetting the top leaves of the floaters they won't live. So make sure it's not that the cause for lack of growth.


Ah. Nail on head 

But I need a lot of surface agitation to get 02 in. The temp is 28.5 (discus)


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## sciencefiction (2 May 2014)

I agree, it wasn't a control experiment. 
But from preceding and further experience for me it was impossible to grow any algae in a bowl in plain dechlorinated water or even tank water(low tech tanks) without added nutrients. I had tried many times because I wanted algae covered stones for my ottos.
Once I dosed up the bowl with nutrients it wasn't long before everything got thick green. So it works for me.
I guess if the water you put originally is high on nutrients you may get algae but I've used tap dechlorinated water and tank water and couldn't get algae without dosing because my tanks are low tech and not dosed with anything(floaters don't flourish)


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

EnderUK said:


> I use to have problems with floaters my solution was to lower the water line about an inch, drop the spray bar as well, and to use an air hose loop and sucker to corral the floaters in the place I wanted them.



But it looks ugly? no?


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## sciencefiction (2 May 2014)

I normally lowered the spraybar a good bit below the water level so the flow doesn't catch the roots of the floaters but this was in a long tank so the other side had some sort of surface agitation.
You may also do better with a different floater that is more resistant to wetness on the leaves such as salvinia. It also has shorter roots that wont' get caught in the current. But I personally prefer the look of frogbit more.
You have to try and see. In one of my tanks the way the filters are blowing the floaters always got sunk from time to time and it was enough to kill them eventually no matter the kind. They don't tolerate that at all.


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

sciencefiction said:


> I normally lowered the spraybar a good bit below the water level so the flow doesn't catch the roots of the floaters but this was in a long tank so the other side had some sort of surface agitation.
> You may also do better with a different floater that is more resistant to wetness on the leaves such as salvinia. It also has shorter roots that wont' get caught in the current. But I personally prefer the look of frogbit more.
> You have to try and see. In one of my tanks the way the filters are blowing the floaters always got sunk from time to time and it was enough to kill them eventually no matter the kind. They don't tolerate that at all.


I have the spray bar set up so it's blasting the surface. The floaters are getting somewhat battered and pushed under when they get right in the current. That's a problem, I want a good surface coverage of floaters, but have concerns about 02 saturation at 82 degree's. How about an eheim internal with the venturi fitted and backing off this spray bar a bit? Or maybe I should get a 2nd external power filter on there now. I'm not sure a 2217 is going to give me enough filtration when the discus arrive. I'm also undecided on an adult pair or 6-8. The load on the tank with a group of discus may cause issues.


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## EnderUK (2 May 2014)

Simon said:


> But it looks ugly? no?


 
Kinda but once the floaters grow they start covering up the air hose. I did have a solution to the sucker in that I just use a zip tie to anchor the air loop to the spray bar which seems to work okay for me but I have that small section of the spray bar firing down into the tank and not across it. If you mean the water line lookin ugly then I don't think it does make the tank look ugly. If you mean the spray bar than you can see it in your tank anyways.


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## sciencefiction (2 May 2014)

Simon said:


> I have the spray bar set up so it's blasting the surface. The floaters are getting somewhat battered and pushed under when they get right in the current. That's a problem, I want a good surface coverage of floaters, but have concerns about 02 saturation at 82 degree's. How about an eheim internal with the venturi fitted and backing off this spray bar a bit? Or maybe I should get a 2nd external power filter on there now. I'm not sure a 2217 is going to give me enough filtration when the discus arrive. I'm also undecided on an adult pair or 6-8. The load on the tank with a group of discus may cause issues.



If you lower the spraybar enough to stop the floaters from sinking but not too much to stop the surface movement completely you'll still get some sort of surface movement. The point of surface movement is to move the top water away so new water replaces it and gets saturated with oxygen. You don't need a mass amount of surface movement for that and the spraybar below the surface will still ensure that. Plus you don't want excessive surface movement to release all the CO2.  The floaters will go in circles and moving but not sinking. You can trim their roots if they get too long I guess. 
Then if you have high healthy plant mass below you should have good oxygen levels for the fish.


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

OK. I've made a change to the tank. The JBL spraybar has been halved in length and put on the side of the tank rather than the back. Now the floaters are circulating in the current, but not getting pushed under. 

So, hopefully improved that problem and have shortened the lights on to 7 hours a day. 

I may also add some more plant. Perhaps something that will do well at the higher temperature and grow up to the surface. I have had some nice bright green bacopa doing well in other tanks.


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## sciencefiction (2 May 2014)

A fast growing stem plant would be a good idea. Bacopa, ludwiga, they grow very well for me in low techs but not sure at higher temperatures.


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

Is the idea of the floaters to create shade or suck up nutrients? The reason I ask is that the way this tank is now set-up the floaters now congregate at the bare end. If they are required to create shade over the planted area, I need to move the spray bar to the opposite end.


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## sciencefiction (2 May 2014)

Simon said:


> Is the idea of the floaters to create shade or suck up nutrients?


Well, it's both at the same time but you don't necessarily need both benefits. At this stage however it's probably a good idea if they give some sort of shade as well as a guide to nutrient levels.  Plus if they gather on one side they still won't grow well because they'll try growing on top of each other and thus wetting themselves again. They need to be kind of "free" floating.
I'd try lowering the spraybar a lot. At this moment the priority is a healthy tank free of algae. Eventually you maybe able to change things around and even do without any floaters when you have a bigger plant mass underwater that grows relatively fast.


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

Cheers sciencefiction. A solid days learning[DOUBLEPOST=1399036172][/DOUBLEPOST]





sciencefiction said:


> Well, it's both at the same time but you don't necessarily need both benefits. At this stage however it's probably a good idea if they give some sort of shade as well as a guide to nutrient levels.  Plus if they gather on one side they still won't grow well because they'll try growing on top of each other and thus wetting themselves again. They need to be kind of "free" floating.
> I'd try lowering the spraybar a lot. At this moment the priority is a healthy tank free of algae. Eventually you maybe able to change things around and even do without any floaters when you have a bigger plant mass underwater that grows relatively fast.


OK. I've now twisted the spraybar down...there is now no surface agitation, just movement. Floaters drifitng around nicely and now moving over the planted area. One question, surely I'm now lacking enough oxygen, particulalry with discus in mind?


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## sciencefiction (2 May 2014)

No problem. We all learn every day in this hobby.


Simon said:


> Cheers sciencefiction. A solid days learning[DOUBLEPOST=1399036172][/DOUBLEPOST]
> OK. I've now twisted the spraybar down...there is now no surface agitation, just movement. Floaters drifitng around nicely. One question, surely I'm now lacking enough oxygen, particulalry with discus in mind?



To be honest I don't think so, some surface water movement is enough in a reasonably stocked tank. In a planted tank you want oxygen from healthy plants which is theoretically higher than what vigorous surface movement can give you. Your surface water is moving thanks to the filter flow below which will give reasonable oxygen exchange.

Also, the spraybar is best if it's still blowing against the glass on the opposite side to create circular flow so best is to lower it entirely if possible, not make it blow downwards by twisting. At least that's what I think.


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## Simon (2 May 2014)

Excellent. Thanks again for the help. I'm going to make a quick video of the tank next week as I have a DSLR filming lesson coming up. 

Also ordered a large portion of Salvinia.


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## ourmanflint (2 May 2014)

My suggestion would be to point the spraybar towards the surface from as low as possible, that way you will get good gas exchange and create a circular flow drawing up water along the bottom of tank to the top.


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## kirk (2 May 2014)

I think I'm too bright too........since going led.


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## Simon (9 May 2014)

Just a little bit of BBA appearing on the moss that's high up on the drift wood and close to the LED light. I've cut the lights to 6 hours a day and will increase the Easy Carbo dose.


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