LED light 7h/day but...at what power? Plants melting

[Joao Vera-Cruz]

Hi there,
I have a "semi-heavy" planted Fluval Roma 200 with the following setup:

• Fluval fresh & plants LED light running 7h/day
  
• No pressurised CO2, instead I've been using Seachem Flourish Excel;
• As substrate I have Caribsea Eco-Complete and silica gravel sand on top;
• As plants nutrients I've been using Complete Plant Food

Tank has been running for 1.5 months now and for the past 2 weeks I started seeing some plants melting lightly, the anubias nana petite being affected the most. Some of them have lost all the leaves ending up with just the roots left

From research and reading on the forum it may be related to (lack) of nutrients, could be too much lighting, could be CO2...

Focussing on the easiest to be solved 1st - lighting >> I know the guideline is 8h/day max but for the fresh & plants LED should power be 100%? Or dimmed to 80% during those 8h? Or less?

Lights schedule is:
8am - 12pm @ 100%
12pm - 3pm @ 30% (break)
3pm - 6pm @ 100%
6pm - 7pm dimming gradually until 5% moon light until 8am following day where the loop restarts.

Appreciate the above is a lot to process but wanted to give as much info as I can to drive an informed feedback.

Thanks

 

[ian_m]

Couple of possibles...

1. Too much light for the level of carbon source and fertiliser source you are supplying. Solution is to reduce light intensity and duration or increase liquid carbon and ferts.
2. Having a light break is generally bad for the plants, much better one light period.
3. Liquid carbon can cause plant melting so some varieties of plants. Sometimes it can be a month or two before the plants melt.

 

[Zeus.]

Thats one long photoperiod

How much ferts you dosing and how often?
plus what size tank?
WC how much how often?

I would reduce the light 50% to start off with, whilst you have time to consider the other factors.

 

[roadmaster]

I use same light plus triple T8 fixture over 80 US gallon low tech for eight hours a day.
I dose 15 ml of Metricide each day, ten or fifteen minutes before lights come on.
I also dose macro and micro nutrient's once or twice a week.
Fluval 2.0 and T8's at full power.
Light's rest on the edge of the tank.
Water change every two weeks at 50%
I have Anubia,Echinodorus,crypt balansae,crypt parva,crypt blassi,water sprite,duckweed,bucephalandra.

 

[techfool]

I've got anubias growing well with less than five hours of light a day. and what light they get is stock LED. I don't think yours needs more light.

 

[Joao Vera-Cruz]

Hi @Zeus. thanks for your feedback.

Q1. I'm dosing 8ml (2ml x 4) of Complete Plant Food every other day. I consider my 200 litres tank falling under the medium dosage guidelines:
Low - aquariums with low lighting and no CO2 or liquid carbon
Med - aquariums with low-moderate lighting and liquid carbon
High - aquariums with moderate-high lighting and CO2 gas injection

DOSAGE GUIDELINES
Low - 1ml per day per 50 litres
Med - 2ml per day per 50 litres
High - 5ml per day per 50 litres

Q2. The fluval roma 200's dimensions are 100cm x 40cm x 73cm (L x W x H)

Q3. WC once after 50% weekly water change following bottle indication of 1 cap per 50L >> 50% water = 100L = 2 caps.

Cheers.

 

[ceg4048]

Lights schedule is:
8am - 12pm @ 100%
12pm - 3pm @ 30% (break)
3pm - 6pm @ 100%
6pm - 7pm dimming gradually until 5% moon light until 8am following day where the loop restarts.

Hello Joao,
You would be much better off if your dimming scheduled looked more like this:
8am - 12pm @ 30%
12pm - 3pm @ 50%
3pm - 6pm @ 30%
6pm - 7pm dimming gradually until 5% moon light until 8am following day where the loop restarts.

Tank has been running for 1.5 months now and for the past 2 weeks I started seeing some plants melting lightly

Ordinarily, melting is always a sign of poor CO2. It has nothing to do with nutrients. Lighting and CO2 are closely linked because the more light you have, the more CO2 you need.

Dosing Excel however, clouds the issue, because a typical toxic response to liquid carbon is melting, but, you do mention that your daily dosing of Excel was fine for the first 6 weeks, so if the plants were responding negatively to the Excel then that should have occurred earlier.

It is more likely therefore that the melting and dropping leaves is a response to insufficient dosing or too much light driving an unsatisfied demand for CO2.

If the melting is not due to toxic reaction to the Excel then adding a little more of it in combination with reducing the light intensity should help the plants to recover.

LED lamps often produce more energy than we think they do and the six weeks of good performance could easily be attributed to the possibility that the plants were grown emmersed and that they built up a reserve of carbohydrates. They would have been using this reserve food source but were not able to replenish the sugars due to the combination of light stress and insufficient CO2. When the fuel tank is emptied they then start to suffer and drop their leaves to reduce the demand for CO2.

It is a very delicate economy when plants are submerged. They produce food from light and CO2 but they also consume the food. Our job is to ensure that they produce more food than they consume.

Again, this assumes that this is not a toxic response to Excel. The reason for doubt is that Anubias, under poor CO2 conditions, typically develops GSA on the leaves or other CO2 related algae occurs in the tank. On the other hand Excel is an algecide, so that might explain the lack of algae. As I mentioned, with gas injection the symptoms are very clear, but with Excel, things are less clear.

In any case, I suggest that you proceed, with caution, to increase the Excel dosing and to reduce the lighting intensity.

Cheers,

 

[Joao Vera-Cruz]

Hi @ceg4048 I'm lost for words...I have learnt more from your post than 3 months of YT videos and reading through internet!!!
Thanks a lot for taking the time explaining the above.

I will tweak the lighting schedule and tweak the Excel dosage accordingly.

As you mentioned "Dosing Excel however, clouds the issue" >> this made me remember a couple of weeks ago my water being super cloudy, milky actually. I had supplemented the tank with a bit of Seachem Iron as I read the melting/yellowing could be related to lack of iron. I did a 50% WC 2 days after and all fixed BUT I was left with some green algae on the glass, wood, plants and substrate. Some plants has brown algae patches. I feel so stupid for following people's direction but hey, I can't be asking questions all the time on forums and expect people to "maintain" my tank for me. Part of the hobby is try-fail-learn I guess.

Anyways, I will tweak the lighting and Excel dosage and hopefully stop/improve the melting.

RE the algae it's not a drama (yet), I believe apart from the above some measures could be taken not to prevent 100% but maybe keep the algae in check? Considered otto / siamese algae eater but not sure I want to add more fish in, specially the SAE as they grow big-ish and get lazy w/ time... Thoughts?

Also...I'm considering switching to pressurised CO2...After appropriate research and acquiring as much knowledge as possible in terms of equipment needed, safe usage etc. You advise against me being a beginner? I was hoping to find good deals on CO2 equipment now on black friday but definitely want to do the right approach...

Thanks again and sorry for the long post, it feels good to post the questions out there and hopefully get a solid steer from experience hobbyist.

 

[ceg4048]

Hi Joao,
OK, I did not realize that you had, or were, getting algae. This is a really important piece of information because all of the symptoms that occur in the tank are usually related, perhaps not necessarily to a single cause, but they can be, and knowing the symptoms helps to determine the cause(s).

So it's really important to exactly identify the species of algae that you observed. There are some algal species that are strictly related to poor CO2, so if those species appeared at the same time as the melting then that would help to corroborate whether the tank were suffering CO2 shortage versus Excel toxicity. Any type of green filamentous algae or Black Brush algae automatically means poor CO2. Brown cotton looking or brown dirt looking algae are actually diatoms and they relate to a combination of poor flow, too much light and poor CO2.

Yellowing is caused by a shortage of almost any type of micronutrient - not just Iron - as well as by shortages of Nitrogen, so you should not automatically attribute yellowing to Iron only.

If you don't know the names of the algae then try to take good, clear photos and upload them so we can see and identify.

As to the question of whether beginners should try gas CO2, well, it depends on who the beginner is as well as who the beginner is listening to. It is a famous fact that using CO2 does not guarantee success and typically, CO2 related problems occur when using CO2. Remember that CO2 is extremely toxic to fish, so if you have very expensive fish, you may want to try gas on a different tank instead of the tank containing valuable stock. If you decide to try gas, please check the Tutorial forum section and study the CO2 related articles there.

Regarding your question of adding SAE, my philosophy is that I do not believe that fish can solve an algal problem and even if they do manage to eat the algae then they would be masking the problem. If I have only small amounts of algae on rocks, wood and so forth then it is easy enough to clean them during a water change, and in any case, it tells you that you are using too much light. If you like SAE, then get them because you like to look at them, not because you think they will solve your algae problems.

Cheers,

 

[Joao Vera-Cruz]

Hi @ceg4048
I will proceed with Excel then, my understanding is that plants won't grow as fast but with correct dosing with plants fertiliser from AquaticGardens and correct lighting I should get satisfactory results. But I suspect my carpeting plants will never "take off"

On to algae issues - got some pics this morning before dashing to the tube, hopefully good quality enough to give you an idea of how plants I have and where the issues are.

Thanks a lot for having a look.

 

[ceg4048]

Hi Joao,
OK, thanks for the photos. Studying them from left to right, I can see in #2 and #3 that there is a leaf showing paleness in . between the "veins". This is nutrient related and can be a shortage of a few different micronutrients.

The hydrocotle leaves are suffering from both Green Spot Algae (GSA) as well as diatomic algae. GSA results from any combination of poor CO2 and poor pO4. The wood also has coatings of diatoms. The diatomic algae can be caused by poor CO2.

Phot #4 is not quite in focus, so I cannot really tell for certain, but it might be Cyanobacteria otherwise known as Blue Green Algae (BGA). If pick up some of the affected gravel and if it is slimy and has an odor then it is definitely BGA which is typically a result of poor NO3.

Photo #5 also shows Diatomic and GSA.

In photo #6 that anubias in the back definitely suffers GSA and diatoms as well as some melting.

The photo #7 shows that the Bacopa(?) has curled and deformed leaves. Deformity indicates a CO2 fault.

I suggest more frequent large water changes and you should attack the wood and any other hardscape that has algae. Normally, algae on hardscape indicates excessive lighting. I understand your wish to fill the carpet areas with plants quickly, but I think it's better to slow things down a bit and to get the tank healthy first.

Remember that toxicity of the Excel, or of any agent is really a function of the agents concentration as well as the plants level of resistance. It seems to me that these symptoms are more a result of insufficient Excel, rather than too much, however, I do not know at what point each of the particular plants will exhibit toxicity if you increase the concentration. In the past, I have dosed up to 3X the bottle suggested Excel dosing without any issues except for bladderworts and Liverworts which melted almost within a few days. Other plants such as stems, crypts, moss and carpet plants responded favorably to higher Excel dosing.

As I mentioned, the leave paleness and possible BGA suggest that your nutrient levels are insufficient,. I really disagree with your suppliers list dosing low, medium and high. You should never pay attention to those kinds of recommendation because no one really knows what category their tank is in. You should always start your nutrient dosing program at the EI reference level and then make adjustments from the results of your observations.

In any case, reducing your light intensity by 50% or so will reduce the stress on the plants, first and foremost and the extra Excel will help, I believe.

Cheers,

 

[Joao Vera-Cruz]

Thanks @ceg4048 I will gradually increase both Excel and fertilisers and see how it gets on.
You believe with time the algae will die off and disappear (the ones on pic 5 look really meah...).

Cheers m8.

 

[ceg4048]

Hi Joao,
Well, it's a LOT easier to trigger algal blooms than it is to solve them. You'll need to be mentally strong and not get discouraged. The leaves that are attacked will never recover and in a way, they add to the problem, so you should remove them. The anubias leaves are very slow growing so you may not want to remove all the affected, perhaps only the worst affected.

Also you should scrub and clean as much of the hardscape and glass at least during every water change or as frequently as possible.

Algae appears when we do the wrong things and the plants become unhealthy. The algae are immortal, so they will never die in the tank. They will only go to sleep if your technique is sound and if the plants are healthy.

So you should always think in terms of maximizing the health of the plants and not in terms of killing algae. Good CO2, good nutrients and large & frequent water changes maximizes plant health.

Cheers,

 

[techfool]

A purist ) would consider it to be cheating but horned nerites have done wonders clearing the algae off my anubias which I was just about ready to toss. They stay small and don't live very long so not a big commitment. They did produce a lot of visible waste at first which I brushed off the leaves. There is much less of that now as there isn't as much algae for them to eat (yay!). But if you are a snail-hater I would skip it rather than get an animal you don't like.

 

[ceg4048]

A purist ) would consider it to be cheating but horned nerites have done wonders clearing the algae off my anubias which I was just about ready to toss. They stay small and don't live very long so not a big commitment. They did produce a lot of visible waste at first which I brushed off the leaves. There is much less of that now as there isn't as much algae for them to eat (yay!). But if you are a snail-hater I would skip it rather than get an animal you don't like.

Hi tech,
Well, I mean, it's less about cheating than about problem solving. As you well know, Anubias is notoriously difficult to grow algae free when the light is strong, even if CO2 is excellent and even if the tank is otherwise healthy and clear of algae. The same with algae on hardscape or on equipment. So whatever animals you like having such as shrimp/SAE/snails that reduce the last remnants is a good idea from an aesthetic point of view. These animals also help to reduce the biofilm and debris that builds up on the plants leaves. By keeping the leaves clean this improves gas transfer across the membranes. Within this context I think that's all goodness.

But if you have a fundamental problem in the tank that causes algae which attacks the plants then animals will not help you. I read a lot of posts where the answer to the question of algae is to go get some animal, when the answer really ought to be to decrease the light or to improve the CO2/flow/distribution, or even to fix a nutritional issue. This is where I draw the line. Newbies do not understand the difference in context, so they are led down the primrose path of ignoring root cause and they assume getting animals will solve their problems.

So this is where we are here with Joao. I want to avoid his being under the hypnosis of assuming animals will solve his problems. I prefer to have him focus his efforts in correct fault isolation.

Additionally, putting animals in the tank when you main problem is CO2 handcuffs you, especially if you put shrimp in. Now you cannot easily increase the injection rate without risking their health, so a lot of the avenues are suddenly closed when you put more animals in the tank. Also, there are some kinds of algae that animals will not eat. Again, all of these nuances are not obvious to the inexperienced, so I try to discourage this path.

When the problems are solved and there is just the remnants left, then sure, whatever animals you like that will perform some of the cleaning and light duty maintenance - and are interesting to look at can be used, but I think, not before the main problems are solved.

Cheers,

 

[Joao Vera-Cruz]

Hi @ceg4048
I'm with you! I've done a 50% WC yesterday and scrubbed off the algae on the wood, anubias leaves (the ones I could w/o doing damages) and removed the "lost case" leaves on other plants. And scraped off the glass. Oh, and on a cheeky move and pushed down as best as I could the gravel w/ algae. Kind of hiding the dirt under the carpet...hope that doesn't create a bigger problem somehow

Tank is looking good and happy, so are the fish

Last but not least, I dosed just a bit over the bottle dosage for fertiliser and double for Excel. Monitored the fish and all seemed fine. I will continue monitoring the plants for sights of improvement. Hopefully melting improves/stops. I will tweak both dosage up slowly. Maybe every couple of days?

Thoughts.

Thanks a lot and hope you guys had a good WE

 

[ceg4048]

Last but not least, I dosed just a bit over the bottle dosage for fertiliser and double for Excel. Monitored the fish and all seemed fine. I will continue monitoring the plants for sights of improvement. Hopefully melting improves/stops. I will tweak both dosage up slowly. Maybe every couple of days?

Thoughts.

Hi Joao,
Well, you don't really have to be careful with the fertilizer. You can just double it straight away unless you are dosing the Urea and Ammonium Nitrate brands. If you are just using KNO3 for the Nitrogen source then there is no penalty . I clicked on your link for the brand you listed in your post #6 and it shows a typical weak fertilizer which is about 90% water. I don't know why you are spending £12 for water. Why don't you just get the dry powders and get on with it? It's so easy and so much cheaper.

In any case, the Excel is the only one to worry about and if you are dosing double then I would stick with that dosage for a couple of weeks and observe the plants/fish. Remember to dose after you do a water change. The combination of large water change, mechanical cleaning and double dosing should show improvements. I'm more worried about your lighting because that drives everything. Since we have no PAR information it makes it difficult to assess or to suggest a way forward. In any case, stay with double dosing Excel for the moment and see if the melting stops.

I think it's OK to turn over the gravel but I was hoping you would take a sample out and feel/smell it to see if it is BGA or something else. It wasn't really obvious from the photo but typically that's where BGA forms. The translucency of your gravel allows light to penetrate through it though so that might not stop it from growing. If it is BGA then more NO3 is the way to go.

Cheers,

 

[Joao Vera-Cruz]

Hi @ceg4048
I went with Complete Plant Food as it is (according to the website) a product used by George Farmer himself: Professional UK Aquascaper George Farmer has been using it for 12 months to grow his own plants in a number of personal aquascapes. Since George was the person who founded the ukaps.org I thought it would be good choice...

Could you point me to the a powder fertiliser you'd recommend?

I will check the gravel for smell this weekend when performing the WC and report back. I get your point on the PAR, will see what options I have this evening to get readings (I presume getting some sort of reader/equipment?).

Once again thanks a lot.

 

[ian_m]

Could you point me to the a powder fertiliser you'd recommend?

https://www.ukaps.org/index.php?page=dosing-with-dry-salts

And buy a kit from here.
http://www.aquariumplantfood.co.uk/fertilisers/dry-chemicals/starter-kits/ei-starter-kit.html

 

[Joao Vera-Cruz]

Sweet, thanks @ian_m