Flukeworld
Member
Hello,
I've been looking for an answer across the webs, even here I have read a lot of posts but still something is bothering me without an answer. So, I decided to ask instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
With modern LED lightning where you can change the intensity of each light color what is the "recommended" periods and settings?
To rephrase the question - default factory settings run as "sunrise light", "morning light", "day light", "sunset" and "night light", so where the "8 hours of light" advice is fitting into this as factory light settings are over 12 hours of lightning. Is the "day light" - max intensity light with the strongest white light setting needs to be within those 8 hours? Or, the other lower intensity periods, for example having strong red light for 12 hours is adding to the equation. I am at the point to drop off the cool tweaking light intensity feature of my expensive LED just because I cant figure this out and the plants seem not thriving as expected. I am sure I have more problems than the light, for sure unstable CO2 which I keep tweaking, but also seeing my scape getting some green/brown algae dots hinting my lightning is not okay. I know I can experiment and find my way, but I feel like having too much gadgets and options to tweak..
More info about my tank:
My problems till now:
My guess is instable / incorrect CO2 dosing and bad lightning setup. So, if someone can advice me at least on the lightning and its density periods and settings, I would solve the CO2 issue with time for sure..
Any overall advice is welcomed.
Some pictures inclided.
I've been looking for an answer across the webs, even here I have read a lot of posts but still something is bothering me without an answer. So, I decided to ask instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
With modern LED lightning where you can change the intensity of each light color what is the "recommended" periods and settings?
To rephrase the question - default factory settings run as "sunrise light", "morning light", "day light", "sunset" and "night light", so where the "8 hours of light" advice is fitting into this as factory light settings are over 12 hours of lightning. Is the "day light" - max intensity light with the strongest white light setting needs to be within those 8 hours? Or, the other lower intensity periods, for example having strong red light for 12 hours is adding to the equation. I am at the point to drop off the cool tweaking light intensity feature of my expensive LED just because I cant figure this out and the plants seem not thriving as expected. I am sure I have more problems than the light, for sure unstable CO2 which I keep tweaking, but also seeing my scape getting some green/brown algae dots hinting my lightning is not okay. I know I can experiment and find my way, but I feel like having too much gadgets and options to tweak..
More info about my tank:
- Its 170 liters, real volume is around 130 as I have 28 kilos of Dennerle scapers dirt with 1sm of Dennerle 9+1 enriched substrate under it, also some stones and scape.
- I use EI fertilizations from home made dissolved salts - Nitrates, Phosphates, Iron and Micro elements. I tried ferting a lot, then lowered it, now I keep the recommended dosage (I believe). My floating Pistia is my "duck weed index" indicator, which seems is thriving.
- I have soft tap water(GH4, KH2), so I add branded salts to increase GH to 7 and KH to 6.
- I have Fluval 407 external filter which seems to be more than needed and keeps the water crystal clean with a good flow for the tank volume.
- My light is 2x ZetLight Lancia2 ZP4000-895PW 36W Plant (6400LM in total). I start the light at 9AM, around 5% of intensity on all colors for an hour, at 10AM only red increases to 80% (factory settings), at 11AM it gets 80% on all colors, except green which is 50% (factory settings), at 6PM it goes down to around 20% on all except red which is still 80% (factory settings) for 2 hours, and then from 8PM to 11PM all colors on 8%.
- I have CO2 bottle injection and try to keep concertation of 25-30 - I measure this this using electronic PH meter and a KH test. What keeps failing sometimes is my solenoid valve switch timer, which seems to reset its settings on each power failure. This happens once on two weeks or something. I am on my way to get analogue one. The CO2 injection starts with the low intensity lighting 2 hours (9AM) before the actual strong light period (11PM), where the concentration of CO2 measuring the PH is around 1PH drop ~30ppm CO2 and stable at that concentration over all the strong light period. The injection is turned off 1 hour before the intensity light period (5PM).
- Doing around 50% water changes on Sundays.
- Having a large life stock of around 60 small fish. I realized I feed too much but I doubt this is adding a lot to my EI dosing. Still, I decided to switch to feeding once per 2 days, for sake of fish health.
My problems till now:
- any carpet or red plant will not survive in this tank. Tried with two types, which should be perfect on this setup, but they are or dissolved or really poor looking. Also I have two types of moss which looks awful for some reason.
- All fast growers look good overall and not demanding plants look okay, but not perfect.
- I had to move my tank to a new place and replant it. Its been around two months now, seems stabilized but I see a lot of green/brown dot algae over the scape and before each water change and cleaning on the glass.
My guess is instable / incorrect CO2 dosing and bad lightning setup. So, if someone can advice me at least on the lightning and its density periods and settings, I would solve the CO2 issue with time for sure..
Any overall advice is welcomed.
Some pictures inclided.
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