# What are my plants telling me?



## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

Gents, I know there must be a lot of threads like this but can anyone please help advise on what my plants are telling me below?

*Specs*
Maturity = 10 months+
Tank = ADA 60-P, 60 liters
Filter = Oase Biomaster 350 Thermo rated at 1100 lph (Flow is strong)
Media = stock sponges, bio-media and activated carbon
CO2 = measuring to ~25ppm with FE set-up and aqua rebell drop check, CO2 on 2 hours before lights
Light = Twinstar 600S, dimmed to approx. 70% strength, 7 hour photoperiod
Dosing = Tropica specialised, 2ml, 3 x a week
Schedule = 1 x 50% weekly water change


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## Siege (21 Oct 2018)

A few thoughts -

- fertiliser regime looks low. Should be dosing nearer 5ml per day and massive weekly water change.

- co2, don’t trust the measurement chart telling you 25ppm. Your drop checker looks moss green. Turn it up to get a nice lime green, almost yellow.

Your diffuser is not in the flow of the filter outlet. It needs to be blasted by the current. Co2 bubbles should not be allowed to go straight up as they are.

- think about flow. The filter inlet should be next to the outflow to get that circular movement to move nutrients around. At the moment there could be a massive dead spot just where the bulk of your plants are, also just where your diffuser is placed.

Can you move both inlet and outflow to the front left side of the tank as you look at it. Flow going length ways. Again inlet and outlet should be placed together. Better flow and stem plants won’t get in the way.

What do you think?

Ps. Makings of a nice tank. Nice and heavily planted


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## Zeus. (21 Oct 2018)

Seige beat me to it 
Looks like flucuating [CO2] during photoperiod in possible combination to insufficient tank turn over to me.
Have you done a pH profile?


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## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

Siege said:


> ...


 Wow ok maybe I'll up the ferts quite a bit then 

I've done a quick change up as suggested, what do you think? It seems a bit difficult to get bubbles to hit the outflow. I have a JBL inline diffuser which works so I might switch around to that?




Drop checker is usually this colour but the lights had just come on in above pic. Anything above this then my oto's quickly tell me that it's not OK..!


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

Yeah I'd rearrange the inlet and outlet like mentioned, maybe turn the light down to 50% and double the fert dosing. Trop Spec is very low in Nitrogen, you have to dose quite a lot of it. If you've used a substrate that contains nutrients after 10 months I would say they're running out.


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## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

Zeus. said:


> Seige beat me to it
> Looks like flucuating [CO2] during photoperiod in possible combination to insufficient tank turn over to me.
> Have you done a pH profile?



Thanks Zeus, this biomaster 350 kicks out a pretty hefty flow for the tank size. I could try changing up the diffuser to an inline one to move the CO2 around the tank a bit more but it was less efficient and needed double the bubble rate to nudge the drop checker.

What is a PH profile ?


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

Also put your drop checker lower down, about 100mm from the substrate. Co2 levels are higher further up the tank but what want to see what's going on further down.


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## Siege (21 Oct 2018)

Much better 

Would be good long term to move inlet and outlet to front as the flow is going to blast your stem plants at the back there. They’ll have a job growing and if they do will block flow big time.

You could change the tubing to clear to assist. Will look much better.

As Karl suggests a co2 profile will tell you exactly what’s going on with co2. In the meantime start the co2 3 hours before lights come on to build it up. You’ll find that you won’t need to run it so high and fish will prefer it.


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## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Also put your drop checker lower down, about 100mm from the substrate. Co2 levels are higher further up the tank but what want to see what's going on further down.



Ah yeah thanks, I had just moved it there following the change up but will push it down.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

Rob Wilkinson said:


> What is a PH profile ?



If you have a ph pen test your water before injecting co2, aim for 1 drop in ph by the time the lights come on and hold it there ie 7.0 before co2 aim for 6.0 by lights on. As a rule of thumb this should give you 30ppm co2 but you don't need to be exact. Te drop checker has a delay of around 2 hours so it tells you what your co2 levels n that particular spot were some time ago whereas the ph pen gives you real time.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

I would still also drop the light to 50% for a couple of weeks while you get things in order to give yourself a bit of room for error.


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## Zeus. (21 Oct 2018)

Also raising the lily pipe will increase tank turnover and surface agitation which will help also. But a slightly higher BPS may be needed to achieve the same pH drop but the higher BPS will get the pH drop faster.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

If you look on Rotala Butterfly you can see that to achieve the correct amount of iron you would need to dose 17ml of Trop Spec 2 to 4 times per week and each dose will add 3.88ppm of Nitrogen so three dose would be 12ppm. Unlimited EI ferts is based on around 20-30ppm Nitrogen, that's not to say that you need unlimited ferts of course but you get the idea of how much it costs to achieve that using Trop Spec, You would be dosing around 90ml per week. Not sure how deep your pockets are but you should maybe look into dry salts of you plan on running the light full chucky with some dense planting. Looking at the amount of red stems and carpeting plants in there I'm guessing that's your intention?


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

At present you're adding about 1.33ppm of nitrogen to the tank per week with your 3x2ml doses. To answer your original question based on that lighting what your plants are telling you is I'm Hungry


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## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

Siege said:


> Much better
> 
> Would be good long term to move inlet and outlet to front as the flow is going to blast your stem plants at the back there. They’ll have a job growing and if they do will block flow big time.
> 
> ...



Thanks! 
OK cool I'll see about moving the inlet and outlet forwards with clear tubing, although I seem to have trouble keeping it clean..!!
Also changed the co2 to start 3 hours before which is a good idea, thanks.


AverageWhiteBloke said:


> At present you're adding about 1.33ppm of nitrogen to the tank per week with your 3x2ml doses. To answer your original question based on that lighting what your plants are telling you is I'm Hungry



Haha, awesome, thanks - just the feedback I'm looking for. I guess the dosing instructions on the tropica bottle aren't much to go by.


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## Zeus. (21 Oct 2018)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> If you look on Rotala Butterfly you can see that to achieve the correct amount of iron you would need to dose 17ml of Trop Spec 2 to 4 times per week and each dose will add 3.88ppm of Nitrogen so three dose would be 12ppm. Unlimited EI ferts is based on around 20-30ppm Nitrogen, that's not to say that you need unlimited ferts of course but you get the idea of how much it costs to achieve that using Trop Spec, You would be dosing around 90ml per week. Not sure how deep your pockets are but you should maybe look into dry salts of you plan on running the light full chucky with some dense planting. Looking at the amount of red stems and carpeting plants in there I'm guessing that's your intention?



We'll spotted missed that myself


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## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

Siege said:


> Would be good long term to move inlet and outlet to front





Zeus. said:


> Also raising the lily pipe will increase tank turnover and surface agitation which will help also



Moved around again based on above, how is this looking guys? I will change-up to clear pipes at some point.



 

Based on other feedback I will also massively up fert dosing. Lighting I will keep at 70% for the time being to see how the other changes go first.
Watch this space.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

Rob Wilkinson said:


> Haha, awesome, thanks - just the feedback I'm looking for. I guess the dosing instructions on the tropica bottle aren't much to go by.



Tropica stuff is very weak in comparison to the methods we generally use. They are based on not very high lighting and quite a heavy fish load providing the nutrients like Nitrate and Phosphate but we tend to change a lot of water weekly to remove other excess organics that promote algae which unless you have quite high nitrate coming out your tap water also takes the nitrate out with it. From other people's experiences that's quite a tasty light brightness wise and plants are big consumers of nitrates also. The dose you are putting in is the type of dose you would generally associate with low light non co2 enriched tanks, most people try around a tenth of EI or around 2/3ppm of nitrate in these types of tank and sometimes that's not enough if you have heavy feeding floating plants so there's no chance you would get away with it under that lighting with co2.

Dry salts work out far more economical unless you're a pro scaper and companies want to give you the ferts for free to promote them, other than that what you end up paying for is the bottle and 99.9% water. I'm sure they're things you already have at home. On the plus side though once you finish using the Trop Spec which I'm guessing is going to be a lot sooner than you thought you already have a bottle to mix the salts in.


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## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Tropica stuff is very weak in comparison to the methods we generally use. They are based on not very high lighting and quite a heavy fish load providing the nutrients like Nitrate and Phosphate but we tend to change a lot of water weekly to remove other excess organics that promote algae which unless you have quite high nitrate coming out your tap water also takes the nitrate out with it. From other people's experiences that's quite a tasty light brightness wise and plants are big consumers of nitrates also. The dose you are putting in is the type of dose you would generally associate with low light non co2 enriched tanks, most people try around a tenth of EI or around 2/3ppm of nitrate in these types of tank and sometimes that's not enough if you have heavy feeding floating plants so there's no chance you would get away with it under that lighting with co2.
> 
> Dry salts work out far more economical unless you're a pro scaper and companies want to give you the ferts for free to promote them, other than that what you end up paying for is the bottle and 99.9% water. I'm sure they're things you already have at home. On the plus side though once you finish using the Trop Spec which I'm guessing is going to be a lot sooner than you thought you already have a bottle to mix the salts in.



Awesome advice here thanks, it seems like where I have been going most wrong. I'll look into dry salts but for convenience are there any ready made ferts that are OK e.g. TNC Complete or Flourish comprehensive?


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

Rob Wilkinson said:


> Lighting I will keep at 70% for the time being to see how the other changes go first.



Its a trade off mate. The higher the light the more ferts the plants consume, the choice is lower the lights or increasing the ferts. I would personally lower the lights until I had more ferts and let them have a rest to build up reserves. Up the dose then gradually increase the lighting over the space of a few weeks. The plants looked washed out to me and to be fair it's probably only the co2 keeping them alive. If the plants fail and start falling to bits you know who's waiting in the background to take their place!


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## Siege (21 Oct 2018)

Flow looks much better.

Only change I’d make is move the co2 diffuser to front right, opposite the outflow. You’ll really see the bubbles move round then.

Re keeping clean. Check out a George farmer 1200 maintenance video on YouTube. Soak glassware in mix of cheapest bleach and water whilst you do your maintenance and then clean with a long brush on a wire and a toothbrush.
 will need to do it a once a fortnight along with cleaning tubing with the same brush on wire.

https://www.aquariumgardens.co.uk/filter-tube-cleaning-brush-150cm-2127-p.asp


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## Siege (21 Oct 2018)

AWB is correct would be good to reduce lighting to 50% whilst you get things straight. Should only be a couple of weeks! Then slowly turn up.


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## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Its a trade off mate. The higher the light the more ferts the plants consume, the choice is lower the lights or increasing the ferts. I would personally lower the lights until I had more ferts and let them have a rest to build up reserves. Up the dose then gradually increase the lighting over the space of a few weeks. The plants looked washed out to me and to be fair it's probably only the co2 keeping them alive. If the plants fail and start falling to bits you know who's waiting in the background to take their place!





Siege said:


> AWB is correct would be good to reduce lighting to 50% whilst you get things straight. Should only be a couple of weeks! Then slowly turn up.



OK thanks, lighting now @ 50% while I sort out my ferts.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

Rob Wilkinson said:


> TNC Complete or Flourish comprehensive?



Looking on Rotala again TNC complete looks to be a very similar makeup as Trop Spec but with marginally higher Nitrogen so you will still need quite a lot of it. Flourish Comp is even lower still than the Trop Spec. Make the initial investment in the salts mate and spend the savings you're going to make on a set of £10 digital scales off Ebay if you don't like the sound of mixing with spoons. 

Here's a simple mixing method based on EI levels. Just put 40 Grams Kno3 and 4 Grams of Po4 into 500ml of water and dose about 10ml three days a week and the Trace elements alternate days for three days. Altogether you will probably get a years worth of ferts for the price of three bottles of Trop Spec.


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## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

Siege said:


> Flow looks much better.
> 
> Only change I’d make is move the co2 diffuser to front right, opposite the outflow. You’ll really see the bubbles move round then.



Good idea thanks, I'll move this around too. I'll move the drop checker back to the opposite side to the diffuser right?

I also have a JBL inline diffuser that I could switch to, what are the thoughts on these?



Siege said:


> Re keeping clean. Check out a George farmer 1200 maintenance video on YouTube. Soak glassware in mix of cheapest bleach and water whilst you do your maintenance and then clean with a long brush on a wire and a toothbrush.
> will need to do it a once a fortnight along with cleaning tubing with the same brush on wire.
> 
> https://www.aquariumgardens.co.uk/filter-tube-cleaning-brush-150cm-2127-p.asp



Thanks, watched the vid and good tips.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

Just to add make sure you add magnesium sulphate or Epsom salts as its known. Your ferts don't have any and neither does your tap water. A level teaspoon per week will do.


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## Rob Wilkinson (21 Oct 2018)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Looking on Rotala again TNC complete looks to be a very similar makeup as Trop Spec but with marginally higher Nitrogen so you will still need quite a lot of it. Flourish Comp is even lower still than the Trop Spec. Make the initial investment in the salts mate and spend the savings you're going to make on a set of £10 digital scales off Ebay if you don't like the sound of mixing with spoons.
> 
> Here's a simple mixing method based on EI levels. Just put 40 Grams Kno3 and 4 Grams of Po4 into 500ml of water and dose about 10ml three days a week and the Trace elements alternate days for three days. Altogether you will probably get a years worth of ferts for the price of three bottles of Trop Spec.
> 
> View attachment 118846





AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Just to add make sure you add magnesium sulphate or Epsom salts as its known. Your ferts don't have any and neither does your tap water. A level teaspoon per week will do.



Got it, dry salts it is - thanks for the advice again.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2018)

No problem buddy, just keep your hands away from that light control for a while. Once you see the plants starting to cheer up and fill out after dosing higher ferts for a while that's the time to notch it back up again.


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## Rob Wilkinson (28 Oct 2018)

1 week on, so far so good I think...



 

Meanwhile, this turned up.... !


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## AverageWhiteBloke (29 Oct 2018)

Nice one, did you up the ferts on the trop spec for the first pic? I'm guessing the salts have arrived just in time for it running out. 

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk


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## Rob Wilkinson (30 Oct 2018)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Nice one, did you up the ferts on the trop spec for the first pic? I'm guessing the salts have arrived just in time for it running out.
> 
> Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk



Yep, I increased it to 6ml per day which is 7x what I was dosing. Day by day plants are looking much better and all round less algae. The tropica hasn't quite run out yet but it's nearly there.

Lights still at 50%, when I start dosing salts I'll up this gradually from there.


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## Jayefc1 (31 Oct 2018)

Up them very slowly 10%every 3 or 4 weeks


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## Oldguy (31 Oct 2018)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> set of £10 digital scales off Ebay


Wouldn't be without mine. Perhaps a measuring cylinder &/or pack of plastic teat pipettes. Well on the way to a Chemistry Set. Dry salts are the best option. Very good value and you know what you are got.


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