70L planted - first tank

[John q]

I’m not familiar with feeding Solufeed, but if @Happi worked out the dose then you should be OK.

I'm putting my reputation on increased PAR being the <"secret ingredient

I'll put my reputation on the line and say it's nothing to do with lack of light, my suspicion is the Pistia stratiotes is lacking nutrients, unfortunately we will never know.... I suppose that's the beauty/downfall of ei... liebig's law and all that 🫡

I'll paraphrase "Happi plays all the right notes. But not necessarily in the right order."

 

[LFNfan]

I'm doing both and I will prove you both right

Come on dammit, thrive, thrive!

Thank you for the guidance as always

 

[LFNfan]

I'll paraphrase

"Andrew Preview" - classic stuff.

 

[hypnogogia]

I'll paraphrase "Happi plays all the right notes. But not necessarily in the right order."

A classic sketch. 😂

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I'll paraphrase "Happi plays all the right notes. But not necessarily in the right order.

A classic sketch.

"Andrew Preview" - classic stuff.

Still fantastic.

I'll put my reputation on the line and say it's nothing to do with lack of light, my suspicion is the Pistia stratiotes is lacking nutrients,

One or the other or both. It will be interesting to see what happens.

cheers Darrel

 

[LFNfan]

Well, after some unscheduled after-dinner DIY the light is lowered by about six inches. This is still six inches above the height that caused the bleaching issue previously.

And as of this morning I have doubled the dosing for macros and micros.

Now, how long do I have to wait??

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Now, how long do I have to wait??

If it is a nutrient issue (I'd guess that @John q is right with this and it is largely nutrients) you should see a <"fairly instant growth response"> for the mobile nutrients (nitrogen (N), potassium (K), phosphorus (P), magnesium (Mg) etc).

The first thing you are likely to see is some "greening" as nitrogen is incorporated into plant tissue and the <"chlorophyll density increases">.

If it was lack of light (PAR), or a <"deficiency in a non-mobile nutrient">, there would be a little lag period before growth improved.

cheers Darrel

 

[Happi]

Hi, it's the N1 amount there, yes. Dosing 4x per week. I decided not to go full EI. If I'm upping the light maybe I should up the ferts too but I'd ideally just tweak one variable for now.

If you are dosing 1 ppm N 4x a week, you are adding 4 ppm N weekly, which is about 17.7 ppm NO3 equivalent. Also keep in mind that some of the N is in urea form.

Floating plant actually consume high rate of ammonium compare to NO3, I would expect floaters to multiply rapidly if the source of N contain Urea or NH4.

Am not sure how good your lighting is but this is one of the area you should explore. You can also get a container, fill it with the water, dose the fertilizer amount to target the same ppm and put the container in the sunlight with the same floater and see how it does. I would expect it to grow well even at 1-2 ppm N.

I do not see any reason why you should see any deficiencies while you are at 4 ppm N dose. There could be other issues if it's not the lights. Do you see any prectipations in your liquid fertilizer? Is the solution clear?

 

[John q]

Would probably be helpful if @LFNfan explains exactly how much of what the tanks being dosed with, by my reading he's been adding 1N per week up until a few weeks ago when the dose was cut.

My starting point was adjusting your 50 gal N1 'strength' for my14 gal tank size. That would still be N1 in my tank dosing 20ml per week eg 4 x 5ml doses. My maths makes that N1 amount 31.545/50*14 = 8.83g of 2:4:1 in 500ml solution.
If I wanted to go to N2 'strength' (ie double the N1 strength), I could either a) double the amount of 2:4:1 in the 500ml solution (17.66g) and dose 20ml over 4 x 5ml doses per week, or b) keep the N1 'strength', and dose 40ml per week eg 4 x 10ml doses.

For the past three weeks until this week I've been dosing only 3ml of the macros due to the filter-being-off-for-ten-days issue I had. Back up to 5ml now.

🤷

 

[MichaelJ]

I believe this is a low-tech tank? I have a gazillion of healthy floating plants (frogbit and duckweed) in my two soft acidic water tanks. In one tank I dose what is equivalent to 0.22 ppm N and the other a bit less than 1 ppm N per week. All that said, the extremely hard water (25 GH / 18 KH) and high pH probably limits the efficiency / uptake of the fertilizer so that may call for more or different dosing especially of micros (Fe). I don't think it's a light issue either - at least the floating plants will get all the lights they need I would think, but trying to dial it up a bit and see how it goes might be worthwhile. Also watch out for very low levels of Mg (I don't know what London tap water provides, but UK tap is usually pretty low on Mg).

Cheers,
Michael

 

[LFNfan]

Am not sure how good your lighting is but this is one of the area you should explore.

Yes, I had been wondering if quality of the light is part of the problem, or if photons is photons is photons. The Siamensis and spider plant and sessiliflora all seem happy and growing so I've slightly put the quality of the light further down my list of possible causes. The light itself is 10W LED exterior floodlight (grimace), warm white colour temp. Like my eBay tank and cheap(er) equipment, very much in the spirit of my introduction to this world, which was: definitely want to try this out but have a pretty modest budget.

Do you see any precipitations in your liquid fertilizer? Is the solution clear?

No, it's really clear.

Would probably be helpful if @LFNfan explains exactly how much of what the tanks being dosed with, by my reading he's been adding 1N per week up until a few weeks ago when the dose was cut.

Yes, that's exactly right - 1N per week since Feb apart from a slight drop to about 0.75N for two weeks (17 and 24 April). And as of today going up to 2N via 10ml 4x per week, and on the micros 10ml 3x per week.

extremely hard water (25 GH / 18 KH) and high pH probably limits the efficiency / uptake of you your fertilizer so that may call for more dosing especially of micros.

Since July last year I've been adding RO at water changes. I do 40% weekly water changes, with 50% RO and 50% tap. So that helps but the hardness is still fairly elevated I assume, and pH is still around 7.5 as far as I can tell.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

The light itself is 10W LED exterior floodlight (grimace), warm white colour temp.

I've got one of those as well, same but in "cool white". That it isn't a huge amount of light. I know Marcel @zozo has had a play with <"various floodlights">, I'll add him in (and @Aqua sobriquet ).

cheers Darrel

 

[LFNfan]

I do have another one, so my lighting solution is modular - it has that going for it! They're not dimmable though so I have to 'manually dim' by raising or lowering their height above the tank. I have about two foot of travel.

 

[MichaelJ]

Since July last year I've been adding RO at water changes. I do 40% weekly water changes, with 50% RO and 50% tap. So that helps but the hardness is still fairly elevated I assume, and pH is still around 7.5 as far as I can tell.

Unfortunately, that only changes the picture a little bit. 12.5 GH / 9 KH is still very hard water. if you can dial that down to ~5 GH / ~3.5 KH by using only 20% tap you will find it much easier to lower the pH with say botanicals and improve uptake across the board... Alternatively (ideally), you could go 100% RO and remineralize from there targeting say 5 GH (or lower depending on livestock needs) and ~0.5 KH and make sure you get the right amount of everything - including Magnesium. In a low tech tank you really do not need to dose much fertilizer provided your water is soft (GH), very low alkalinity (KH) and slightly acidic, you just need the right blend of NPK and traces thats all.

As far as light goes (not talking about floating plants), I must say I am continuously amazed about how little light my submerged plants can thrive under in one of my tanks that is particularly prone to get overgrown with frogbit.

Improve the water and improve the quality of the light as suggested above.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[MichaelJ]

Yes, I had been wondering if quality of the light is part of the problem, or if photons is photons is photons

No they vary by energy - which is proportional to the frequency. The lower the wavelength (i.e. the higher the frequency) the more energy a photon will carry. With aquarium light you want to use light that provide reasonable coverage throughout the visible spectrum (350 - 700 nanometers). In particular you want to make sure you have enough coverage in the blue range and red range of the spectrum as that are wavebands where plants absorb the most light for photosynthesis (hence most plants being green). While I am not really in the camp of paying too much attention to spectral distribution, I do realize that most lights that look good to our eyes also happens to coincide with a spectral distribution that also fairly well supports the needs of the plants... perhaps not surprisingly.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[LFNfan]

if you can dial that down to ~5 GH / ~3.5 KH by using only 20% tap you will find it much easier to lower the pH with say botanicals and improve uptake across the board... Alternatively (ideally), you could go 100% RO and remineralize from there

I appreciate what you're suggesting. Unfortunately I'm operating as best I can within some practical constraints, which for the sake of identifying options we could say is 20 litres of RO each week. One option might be to add just RO water at each change and change less, so change 20 litres each week with just RO. Every <period to be defined> I would add a bit of tap to bring up the GH and KH.

If ultimately the plant biology doesn't work within my practical constraints there is only one sensible course of action. Happily though most of my plants ex floating do seem pretty content.

wavelength

I enjoyed this explanation 👍

 

[hypnogogia]

say is 20 litres of RO each week.

What about 20 RO and 5 tap. That way you’d be changing 35% of your tank with water at the correct GH and KH?

 

[LFNfan]

Got it. Thanks Hypnogogia. Reading your suggestion and rereading MichaelJ's up above, I see you are saying the same thing. Took me a while but I think I've cottoned on 👍

Ok, we have tweaked light, ferts, water parameters. Not a bad days work! 😂

I will report back in a few.

 

[LFNfan]

Bentosi with an identity crisis.
Hangin' with the corys

 

[LFNfan]

First 20L RO / 5L tap water change yesterday.

New growth seems quite vigorous and looks ok to me, but established growth is melting / continuing to melt.