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Beginner

confusedman

Member
Joined
30 Jan 2021
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151
Location
London
We have a little tank with gravel and 7 fish

We bought an Anubias Barteri. Then @shangman kindly gave me some Pistia stratiotes, Salvinia minima and another type of Anubias Barteri. Then we bought some Anacharis and we added some Java moss

The light we have is the 6 w LEDDY TUBE SUNNY that came with our Aquael Leddy 60 tank.

Because of our brilliant tank skills and well researched setting up (irony) we had to do 50% water changes every other day for this first month

The situation is now:

The anubias are coping ok , the Salvina Minima has completely disappeared and the Pistias have been reduced to a minimum (which makes me sad cause I loved them). The ancharás is going brown and we are chopping bits with every water change. The moss is not as green as it was but survives

We have added some TNC complete fertiliser but in a quite random way cause we didn't know exactly how to do it.

I would love to be able to add some more floating plants.

Advice please and remember we have not previous experience at all
 

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Its only that because we were changing 50% of water every other day we weren't sure how to do it for this reason
 
You can redose the fertilizer right after a water change.

To get your weekly dose of 5 ml into a daily dose we divide by 7.
5 / 7 = 0.7 ml per day.
To get a dose to replenish the 50% unfertilized clean water we added with the water change, you need to add 0.35 ml.

So every time you change 50% of the water, add 0.35 ml of fertilizer back.

It might be difficult to measure up such a small amount though.
If I were you I would just estimate by eye approximately 0.5 (half) a mililiter and dose that. It wont hurt.
Hope this makes sense.
 
You can redose the fertilizer right after a water change.

To get your weekly dose of 5 ml into a daily dose we divide by 7.
5 / 7 = 0.7 ml per day.
To get a dose to replenish the 50% unfertilized clean water we added with the water change, you need to add 0.35 ml.

So every time you change 50% of the water, add 0.35 ml of fertilizer back.

It might be difficult to measure up such a small amount though.
If I were you I would just estimate by eye approximately 0.5 (half) a mililiter and dose that. It wont hurt.
Hope this makes sense.
It makes total sense. Ive got a one mil syringe so measuring it won't be a problem.
Any advise regarding the lights? I have no idea how long I have to keep them on for
 
If you are daily dosing just dose the same each day regardless of waterchange.

For example if you dose 1ml and the plants use 0.9ml that day there is 0.1 ml left over. If you dose another 2ml tomorrow there will be 0.2ml left over at the end of the day, and so on and on...

If you waterchange you dilute the leftover excess, not the needed dose as you will add that straight back in after waterchange as another 1ml dose. There is no need to add any extra on waterchange day. You should always be slightly in credit with your dose and whether you waterchange daily or weekly it will always even out over time.

If you start to see any deficiencies in the plants then you up the standard daily dose, it isn't the waterchanges that are the problem, it's the daily dose not meeting demand on any day. The only time I would say there could be an issue is if you do weekly dosing and do an extra mid week waterchange but in that case you would just split your weekly dose into two, one after each waterchange. If it was an unplanned waterchange and you already added full dose earlier in the week, just add a half dose anyway rather than trying to get fancy working out what you've lost. No harm in being in credit and over time it will even out with future waterchanges.

Hope this makes sense, I typed the work waterchange a lot there haha
 
i thought the Pistia might be dying because of the lack or excess or light.. or bad type of light
 
I'm no plant expert but doubt it will be bad light, probably fertiliser if you haven't been adding any and doing 50% bi daily water changes.

You're now adding fertiliser so that's a start, now choose a time period for your light (7-8) hrs and see what happens over the next week or two. Might be helpful if you get a timmer for the light so at least the time period will be consistent.

Best advice I can give you is have patience after every change you make.
 
Are the water lettuce getting battered by the filter flow? Generally floating plants don't like to be moving too much. Pretty much the only way to kill floating plants is to 'drown' them with water movement.

Other than that they do take all there nutrients from the water column so some fertilisation will help them. Most tap water has some nutrients already built in though and if you are water changing they shouldn't be running out. Do you have any ideas what your water parameters are?

Easy style plants don't usually die from lack of nutrition quickly, they will just have slow stunted growth, same with lack of light.
 
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