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Consistency Deficiency

Ive been considering, considering and reconsidering ferts, 2/3 EI -should- be enough for the new setup, right? @Wookii
Two fluvals running at 30% each, not exactly "photon lasers", so medium light, 20ppm CO2 but tank should be light limited so that doesnt matter so much. Full EI is supposed to be unlimiting for "the nosebleeds", my tank isnt in that league. I could just increase the dose by 50% and do full EI, just feels unnecessary y'know? Especially since im going for lean within some months and want to ramp it all down slowly.. 🤔
 
Ive been considering, considering and reconsidering ferts, 2/3 EI -should- be enough for the new setup, right? @Wookii
Two fluvals running at 30% each, not exactly "photon lasers", so medium light, 20ppm CO2 but tank should be light limited so that doesnt matter so much. Full EI is supposed to be unlimiting for "the nosebleeds", my tank isnt in that league. I could just increase the dose by 50% and do full EI, just feels unnecessary y'know? Especially since im going for lean within some months and want to ramp it all down slowly.. 🤔

The choice is yours at the end of the day. If you want to go the lean route, then just watch the plants. You’ve got an iron deficiency currently, so address that, and then see what happens. If you get any other deficiencies deal with them as they arise.

I forget, are you mixing your own ferts?
 
Alright, thanks 😊 I'll go for 2/3 EI for now, make sure its topped up a bit after a water change, and just see how it does with that level.
Yep I am mixing my own ferts, although still using CSMB traces + Fe DTPA for now
 
Sorry to derail the thread further but I have to agree with Hufsa:
How dare you, brunost is a national treasure :hungry::lol:
Brunost/mesost is great, at least if you can find a small scale producer, since the one in the shops tends to be pretty bland.
It sounds a whole lot better than Swedish Surströmming at least! 🤢
Yep, that stuff is awful and is only fed to unsuspecting tourists these days. The trick to eating Surströmming is by having it in a flat bread with plenty of potato, onion, and mayonnaise, but then you might as well skip the fish. Whatever you do don't open the can indoors!
 
Sad news today, I just found two dead kuhli loaches 😢
They were not stuck in anything, and looked entirely intact, I have no idea what took them..
I also cannot find the silver noodle anywhere 😟

Normally this kind of thing would have me really upset for most of the week, so much that ive been close to quitting the hobby several times because of it.
I have gotten a bit better about not taking it quite as harshly, so im sad but in a more constructive way.

Everyone else seems perfectly normal, I wonder if there was anything wrong with them from the store or not.. They had only recently gotten them in.

I will test the water for ammonium/ammonia, but I think I have to open a brand new test for it since I havent used my open one in a while.
I dont test my water that often, liquid tests sure get really expensive if you only get one use per kit before they expire 😵

Other than that I think im just going to monitor the situation and see.. The plants are growing and no one else seems unsettled.

Besides those unpleasant news, I was just going to note that I increased the photoperiod a bit.
From 6 to 7 hours would be the gradual choice but I bumped it up to 8 right away.
No super good reason, 6 just feels too short and my plants are growing really sideways from the ambient light before the photoperiod.
So I added the hours at the start of the photoperiod, not towards the evening. Adjusted CO2 timer and skimmer and everything else to fit.

Ive always got it in the back of my mind that the photoperiod in the wild for most of our plants is ~12 hours, sometimes more.
It seems most high tech tanks run 6-8 hours. The reason I find most often stated is algae or something along those lines.
I wonder if I can do injected CO2 and 12 hours. Not right now obviously, but later I want to try. This is "Hufsa does high tech" after all..
An inability to follow simple instructions and a general lack of common sense might turn over a few stones that are normally left unturned.
Maybe it will work, maybe I will get a lot of algae. I would like to find out.
My light is not very intense so the setup could be different to really high light tanks.
 
Sad news today, I just found two dead kuhli loaches 😢

Sorry to hear that, its always upsetting losing fish.

Ive always got it in the back of my mind that the photoperiod in the wild for most of our plants is ~12 hours, sometimes more.
It seems most high tech tanks run 6-8 hours. The reason I find most often stated is algae or something along those lines.
I wonder if I can do injected CO2 and 12 hours. Not right now obviously, but later I want to try. This is "Hufsa does high tech" after all..

I run my high tech for 12 hours without issue, but the lighting levels beneath the surface are lower due to all the floating plants. A 12 hour lighting level is fine for a high tech, you just have to adjust the lighting accordingly - run 12 hours in 'photon cannon' mode, and you'll likely run into issues.

I would say you'll be fine gradually going up to 12 hours at your currently lighting levels, just don't forget to change your CO2 timer at the same time.
 
I run my high tech for 12 hours without issue, but the lighting levels beneath the surface are lower due to all the floating plants.
Oh, I must have missed this, that is really good to hear :thumbup::thumbup: I should reread your journal, who knows what other useful stuff I could have missed 😮
Glad to know someone is already having success with it, better odds then 😀
 
Normally this kind of thing would have me really upset for most of the week, so much that ive been close to quitting the hobby several times because of it.
I have gotten a bit better about not taking it quite as harshly, so im sad but in a more constructive way.
I had exactly the same reaction when my first fish died. And especially when I inadvertently caused mass shrimp genocide (very obviously my fault as opposed to being a bit unknowable). I felt like I'd completely failed in my duty of care.
Fish deaths are the inevitable bitter edge to this hobby. It took time and - unexpectedly - the two-part documentary on <the fish trade of the Amazon> for me to start coming to terms with that.
 
Some update spam pictures. Some of the plants look a -tiny- bit better and some I cant see any change in.
Im a nervous nelly and I fear the posh plants are rejecting the transplant into my peasant tank :nailbiting:

I was unable to persuade my nerves to calm down, so I increased the ferts up to full EI (30, 3, 30, 0.5 + traces)

I mixed up this new batch of ferts with the IFC calculator, thanks to this very helpful post I was able to use it for the first time despite not having the Excel program to run it.
Im going over my notes as I am writing this, as I am getting a bit suspicious of human error at this point and wondering if I have messed something up either in my numbers input or in previous calculations.. If there is a mistake it will likely have been already in the last batch, since things have been looking chlorotic for a while 🤔
It seems the batch from 25.10.21 had -more- Fe DTPA than EDTA, while the batch from 10.12.21, DTPA is about half that of EDTA. Could it really just be down to that?
It could explain why I can be dosing at levels that my experience indicates is enough for my tank, but still see chlorosis...
If its simply down to ineffective chelation then I should probably spike my new batch with some more DTPA, that way I wont have to go all gung-ho about the rest of the micros just to get some iron into these plants.

While I was squinting hard at the plants looking for improvement I spotted an interesting thing in the below picture. Immediately to the left of the rock with Hydrocotyle tripartita 'Mini' unceremoniously strapped to it, there is a rock of native Fissidens, should be Fissidens adianthoides if memory serves. Doesnt it look like the newest growth on it has changed a bit? :geek:
Maybe it likes the recent addition of CO2
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@Hufsa looking at tonina it looks not like deficiency. Screen Shot 2022-03-04 at 21.09.54.png
especially this stem. I think it's variegation. variegatin is fairly common in TC. afaik there are very few variegated stable eriocaulocaea, you may have something truly precious! if the colours revert, try and trim it back to where you last saw the white leaves. something like that can go for ~50 euro/stem if it proves stable.
 
ah, it looks like it might not be stable..


in case anyone doesn't want to click on the link:
"This here is a marbled/non-patterned sectorial chimera of a white mutation and normal Tonina fluviatilis that is not stable.

A chimera is any organism that has two or more sets of genomes in it. In this case, normal green Tonina fluvuatilis as one and a white mutation as the other. Marbled/Non-patterned-sectorial is a word to describe how each of the genomes are spread with in the shoot tip (Shoot Apical Meristem) which makes the whole plant, it means you have a random mix of each. Not stable here means that eventually the green tissue divides faster than the white so the ratio of green to white goes towards green as the plant grows, eventually being all green and of course never reverting back.

No matter how many sideshoots I tried or in what conditions I grew it, I could not get it to show a stable pattern. So it's a plant that wasn't meant to be.

Edit: A word on the how-to: By sheer luck I found a streak of lighter colored tissue in a stem of Tonina. I recognized that streak as a chlorophyll mutation and in an effort to get a sideshoot with more of that mutation I forced that stem to sprout from a node where the lateral bud intersects with the white streak. Eventually, the shoot above emerged as a sideshoot of a sideshoot. While that it is of course sad it failed, I did gain a nugget of knowledge: The marbled Cultivar "Tonina fluviatilis 'Marble Queen'" is most likely not a chimera, because it is stable, unlike my chimera here."
 
I think it's variegation
While it would be a fun thing to have, im not so sure about that. I think this "whatever deficiency" is just showing up a bit striped in this species, I can see the effect more or less pronounced in all of the Tonina stems. That coupled with all the hungry plants looking pale I think it is unlikely to be anything else. You can even see the paleness on the new leaves of the trident fern to the very left of Tonina.
 
So the virus got me in the end, Ive just about had one foot in the grave for exactly 24 hours. Sundays water change I could just forget about, I could barely summon enough consciousness to shuffle from the bedroom to the bathroom occasionally. If this is the light version for vaccinated people then I dont want to know how the original stuff feels like 😵 Luckily I am feeling quite a lot better today, so Ive put some water in the big blue barrel to get the right temperature, and will get the water change done when that is ready.

The tank has been looking better for a while now, since about mid last week the water has been clear and I felt ok enough with it to scrape the front glass. Just like I thought there was a fair amount of biofilm on it.

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On saturday I pulled out the Limnophila sessiliflora, that plant looks horrible with CO2 injection, its all stem. Also threw out the extra floating stems of polysperma. Shifted the Cryptocoryne purpurea grouping a little bit closer to the front, and the Rotalas too. The Rotalas have been a bit floaty, there was a fair bit of non viable material at the bottom of the planted plugs, and the growing stems have been prone to coming loose and floating all over the place. Ive been dutifully cramming them back in on a daily basis.

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I see I have another melting leaf on the B. Black Ventii, I think its probably just a result of really aggressive trimming that has it upset.

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Im not happy with how the plants are looking, not seeing any clear signs the new growth is coming in much better. Thinking I either need to spike the current micro with more DTPA or make another micro mix entirely. I want to do the latter but im not sure its a good idea when my brain has been recently cooked and is not running on 100% power yet.
 
Get well soon @Hufsa - I got lucky when I had it over Christmas, I’ve had worse hangovers, but it clearly affects folks differently.
 
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