Help with plants

[Ispookie666]

I'm new to the forum but have had a tank for 4+ years.

Tank: Juwel Vision 450

Lights: arcadia Led replacement for Juwel, same as E5 bulbs

Filter: Fluval Fx5
Circulation: 1x newa jet (8klph) eheim stream on (2klph)

Bioload: 4 x angels 3 x algae eater 1x bull nose pleco, 2 x Pakistani loach, 1x clown loach. Maybe around 20 cherry barbs and a few guppies.

Substrate: black sand

Co2: via a diffuser, solenoid controlled according to light schedule around 10 hrs per day.

Dosing:
I started off with Perpetual and kept tweaking. Currently use a doser.
Macro(made upto 2000ml) : Potassium sulphate 106 g, Mg sulphate 108 g, mono potassium phosphate 53g. Dose 60ml/day

Micro: Chelated trace - 80 g in 2000ml @ 20ml/day

I started off with the standard dosing using PPS Pro and have had to go up on the dosing till the system reached a steady state. My phosphate dosing had to be increased to keep the green spot algae in check.

My nitrates is water is around 40 (checked a long time back) hence why I have been using potassium sulphate.

It had been great going for 3 years with brilliant growth with the swords leaves reaching to the top and having to cut back every other week. It has been downhill for the last year.

Not sure where to start to get this back in order.

Is ICP test any useful?

Ps: tank had been neglected for some time, but been on autopilot. I have a reef tank aswell, so have access to more equipment and stuff.


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[Edvet]

I would start with a cr@pload more plants, just cheap ones to get more plantmass in there.
Look up EI ferts, sold through sponsors here, and start feeding plants, i don't believe your test results.
Basically for plant growth we need light (can't comment on yours, don't know it wel enough, ferts (EI dry salts are cheapest and work very wel) and some CO2 (depending on amount of lightt), good maintenance ( 50% waterchange /week, and remove dead and not healthy leaves) and plenty circulation( depending on light up to at least 10x tankvolume.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Something is having a good nibble at the Amazon Swords, it looks like Plec damage, so it may be the Chaetostoma.

Try putting in some green vegetables, it might stop some of the damage.

cheers Darrel

 

[Ispookie666]

I would start with a cr@pload more plants, just cheap ones to get more plantmass in there.
Look up EI ferts, sold through sponsors here, and start feeding plants, i don't believe your test results.
Basically for plant growth we need light (can't comment on yours, don't know it wel enough, ferts (EI dry salts are cheapest and work very wel) and some CO2 (depending on amount of lightt), good maintenance ( 50% waterchange /week, and remove dead and not healthy leaves) and plenty circulation( depending on light up to at least 10x tankvolume.

I am dosing the ferts (dry made up into solution) using PPS Pro (modified), dosing CO2 with nearly 3 bubbles per sec.
Light - I'm not so sure, I don't have a PAR meter to check.
Flow wise there is close to 10000LPh flow via power head and not including the FX5.


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[Ispookie666]

Hi all, Something is having a good nibble at the Amazon Swords, it looks like Plec damage, so it may be the Chaetostoma.

Try putting in some green vegetables, it might stop some of the damage.

cheers Darrel

I'll give that a go. But why would the leaves not get big but curl up?
The swords and twisted Vals pretty much covered the tank. The leaves of swords were reaching the water line.
The pleco has been there for 3+ years.

I've trimmed all the dead and dying leaves, this damaged leaves (holes) has come on in a week.

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[Edvet]

You're not dosing NO3 are you?

 

[ceg4048]

The swords and twisted Vals pretty much covered the tank. The leaves of swords were reaching the water line.

Hello,
Holes in plants (if not due to predation) and curled leaves is caused by poor CO2.
Poor CO2 takes many forms. Monitored slow and deliberate injection rate increase, as well as trimming the Val is a good place to start.

Cheers,

 

[Ispookie666]

Hello,
Holes in plants (if not due to predation) and curled leaves is caused by poor CO2.
Poor CO2 takes many forms. Monitored slow and deliberate injection rate increase, as well as trimming the Val is a good place to start.

Cheers,

Thsnx
I do dose CO2 via a diffuser at bubbles a sec from a FE controlled by a solenoid.
Is there a better way?

I'm not dosing nitrate - my source water is 40 and tested it as > 100 using API

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[ceg4048]

Hello,
I can appreciate that you you are implementing CO2, but the technique of CO2 is more complicated when the tank size gets large.
450L requires a more robust configuration.

In tank diffusers are not efficient in large tanks unless you port the gas directly to the filter intake. This allows the filter to aid in dissolving the gas more effectively and it also allows the saturated water to exit the outlet and to be more easily distributed throughout the tank.

You are more than likely to find that 1 bubble per second is almost nothing. In that size tank, if you expect to have healthy plants you will need to have a bubble rate that is probably not countable.

Not dosing NO3 is not a good idea. Hobby grade test kits are actually incapable of returning valid information. It is highly unlikely that your NO3 concentration is > 100 ppm. In any case, the symptoms described are symptomatic of CO2 failure.

If you do manage to improve your CO2 you will probably discover that you will need to add more nutrition. You should be dosing KNO3, KH2PO4 as well as micronutrients.

Cheers,

 

[Ispookie666]

The interesting thing is my CO2 dosing has not changed and the plants were growing brilliantly before. Probably the diffuser has become clogged. Ill up the CO2 dosing to see if that helps.

As I mentioned initially I have a reef tank and have test kits which I trust (confirmed with ICP testing). I just ran my water sample using those and these are my finding, not sure what the range is supposed to be

pH - 7.74 (using a digital pen, my lights have been out for 4 hours and the pH meter is calibrated)

Nitrate - between 50 and 100 (using salifert nitrate test kit, it only reads 50 then 100, and the colour is between both)

Calcium - 100 ppm (Red sea Calcium Pro - accuracy of 5ppm)

Magnesium - 100ppm (Red sea Magnesium - accuracy of 50 ppm)

dKH - 11.2 or 4.0 mEq (Red sea KH/Alkalinity Pro- accuracy of 0.14 dKH or 0.05 meq/L)

Potassium - 300 ppm (Salifert potassium test kit)

Phosphate - >1.0 (ELOS Primaline Phosphate test kit on Freshwater scale)

I'll recheck the pH when the lights are back on

 

[ceg4048]

The interesting thing is my CO2 dosing has not changed and the plants were growing brilliantly before. Probably the diffuser has become clogged.

Yes, that's also possible. The diffuser disk should always be cleaned at least twice a month with a bleach soak. But it's also possible that the plants have put on more mass and that more mass requires more CO2.

Well, I'm going to offer a couple of comments about test kits and let it go afterwards because people become very emotional about this topic.

I cannot say anything about the reliability of test kits in a reef environment, but in freshwater they are all scams.

The worst of the worst is any kit attempting to measure Nitrogen.

I'm not sure whether you water sample was taken from the tank or from the tap, but be advised that the legal limit for NO3 in all of Europe is 50ppm. It is virtually impossible therefore, that a tap water sample taken in UK can measure more than 50ppm. Having said that it's entirely possible that the NO3 level in the tap approaches 50ppm and that your sample is from the tank.
There aren't a lot of plants, but there also aren't a lot of fish. Those particular plants are NO3 hogs, so it's unlikely that the actual NO3 values are much above 50 unless you avoid doing water changes or filter cleaning. I suppose that might explain it. In any case, there are no hobby grade test kits that can reliably measure Nitrogen in freshwater at least.

Likewise 300ppm Potassium? Highly unlikely unless you are adding high potassium foodstuffs to the tank.

Also, 50ppm-100ppm Magnesium is very unlikely.

The pH and alkalinity seem to corroborate the Calcium levels, so I'll buy that if you confirm that your kettle heating element gets clogged with chalk.

In any case, as I said people either trust their kit data or they think it's complete hogwash.
Again, having said that, it is likely that your tap water is high in nutrition, especially if you are living in an agricultural zone, and that you may not need to dose.
As you say, things have been fine for a few years, so I reckon that's the case, but I don't think those numbers are anywhere near reality.
Very few plants care about those numbers anyway so there is not much to worry about.

You should get more plants though, as Edvert mentions...

I'm not really sure what those metal grate looking things are though. They are not very appealing. You can cover them with ferns or moss so it doesn't look so industrial.

Cheers,

 

[Ispookie666]

HI
Thanx for taking the time to reply, much appreciated. As I said, I trust those test kits in reef environment as they have been consistent with Inductively Coupled Plasma testing. But, as you rightly said, I have no idea about their validity in freshwater. I think I'll do an ICP testing on my freshwater setup to see where things stand.

And you have hit a point of water changes and Maintenance - I have been cleaning out my filter every 3 months (due to time constraints) and water changes ever 2-3 weeks that is roughly 60%.

Ca and Alkalinity - I live in East of ~England and the water gets as hard as its physically possible, I had a look on the company which supplies water their testing which I believe is done often and published - calcium carbonate 353 ppm(Ca is 141ppm), dHK of 20, Magnesium of 5.6 ppm, K around 3.5 ppm, Nitrate 36 ppm. Phosphate is measured as Phosphorus and has an average value of 0.9ppm.

Just in the process of cleaning up my diffuser. I have a Calcium reactor lying around and tried to use it as a CO2 reactor, but that was a mess - and it would not work.

 

[foxfish]

Hi, nice big tank you have there.
A lot depends on if you are aiming at a lush looking tank with healthy fast growing plants or a slow burner with low levels of ferts & C02.

Generally speaking most folk who inject C02 are looking for a large mass of vibrant plants, in which case you would need to up your game considerably
.
EI fertilisation will stop you worrying about that aspect as the system will guarantee you have enough ferts in the water.
Getting enough C02 enriched water to flow around all the plant mass is the tricky bit, maintenance is extremely important as well as large water changes.
There will always be exceptions to the tried & tested methods that lead to success but in theory it is all quite basic stuff...

Even though test kits have been proven to be unreliable we can still make very good use of you PH pen.
There are two main ways to monitor the C02 content of your water column. The drop checker filled with the correct fluid will register a colour change to a lime green when you approach our goal of 30ppm of dissolved C02. They are a great long term indicator & should be viewed every day.

Testing how much the PH drops while the C02 system is operating will also give a very good guide.
Even if the pen is not giving a true reading we can still use the results to form a PH profile over a set period.
Start by testing the water just before the gas is switched on & continue testing every hour until the lights go out.

What we are looking for is a drop in PH of one point (ie 7.4 dropping to 6.4) that should also put you in the 30ppm of C02 but the profile will also show how effectively your C02 is working.
I think you will find that 1bps wont do anything & a two kg cylinder wont last very long once you have the gas dialled in correctly.
However you do need to take care as if you go to far & inject to much C02 you could kill your fish.

So basically to start the ball rolling ... min 50% water change a week, 10 x tank volume flow rate, EI ferts, a one point drop in PH by lights on & 6-8 hours of light.

 

[Ispookie666]

Hey thanx.
I started off with 7.74 and it's down to 7.28
When I started, I was using EI but switched to PPS Pro and it gave me good growth. I kept tweaking it and reached this mess.

I have steadily increased the CO2 going in - I've given the diffuser a clean. Changed the position - so that half of it goes into the intake of my FX5 and rest is going into the path of my Powerhead.
I have enough and more flow in my tank roughly 10000lph by two powerheads but tank turn over is down to my FX5.
Will see.
I shall rework the dosing and see.

Co2 - I have 4 x 5 KG CO2 cylinder in garage

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[Edvet]

With very hard water a 1 point pH drop might not be feasible, do a profile first. Maybe a 0.6 point drop might be enough.

 

[tam]

Swords grow well low tech - if that's all you want to grow and you were having to cut them back weekly to keep in check, personally I'd ditch the CO2 and add some root tabs underneath and fertilise as needed. You'd get slower but just as healthy growth and not have to cut back so often or worry about balancing the CO2.

 

[Ispookie666]

Swords grow well low tech - if that's all you want to grow and you were having to cut them back weekly to keep in check, personally I'd ditch the CO2 and add some root tabs underneath and fertilise as needed. You'd get slower but just as healthy growth and not have to cut back so often or worry about balancing the CO2.

Oh no.. I'd love to keep others but these were thriving.
After increasing the CO2 - pH had dropped to 6.89

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[foxfish]

Be careful not to gas your fish!

 

[Ispookie666]

CO2 is on a timer, hopefully not.

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[dw1305]

Hi all,

As I mentioned initially I have a reef tank and have test kits which I trust (confirmed with ICP testing). I just ran my water sample using those and these are my finding, not sure what the range is supposed to be

ICP should be about as accurate as you can get for the metals, for the NO3 you could use IC (Ion Chromatography) or an Ion Selective Electrode. The values you get from your water company will be accurate, and if the mean NO3 value is 36 ppm, it is quite possible that your tap water may breach the 50ppm EU limit in the spring. You should have maximum and minimum values as well in the report?

You could have very high nutrient levels all around in the tank, particularly because your source tap water is nutrient rich (from arable agriculture and sewage treatment etc.). If you have a conductivity meter? it would give you an idea of the nutrient content, your base level (from the Ca++ and HCO3- ions) will be ~600 microS. and with all the other ions it should be up near 1000 microS (1 milliS.) which equates to about 660 TDS ppm.

Because your water is hard you may have problems <"with keeping iron (Fe+++) in solution">. Plants need all the essential nutrients for growth (<"Liebig's law of the minimum">) and it doesn't matter how much you have of all the other nutrients, if one is severely limiting then you don't get any growth. You could try DTPA as an iron chelator.

Swords grow well low tech

They do, Echinodorus bleheri is fine without CO2.

If you add a floating plant you can use its growth and colour as an indicator of nutrient level. Because they have aerial leaves they aren't CO2 limited.

cheers Darrel