• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

HOB effective enough for carpeting plants?

T

tanker

Member
Joined
23 Feb 2008
Messages
102
Location
Malaysia
Hi guys,
i have a HOB filter for my 27 litres tank. But i havent have any success on my carpet plants - glosso.
i am very much convinced that i had improved my CO2, lighting and dosing. The other plants are doing well except for the glosso. while i still see CO2 bubbles from the diffuser gets carried near the substrate, there's still some dead spots and detritus that accumulate on certain area of the water surface.


So i'm just curious is there anybody out there with HOB filter that successfully grow carpets?
 
Substrate: ADA Malaya
CO2: pressurised with timer (8 hrs a day)
light: T5 36W (covered a small portion of it as 36W is too high)
ferts: since i cant find any dry powders here i'm dosing ADA to experiment if it is indeed ferts that i lack.
have been dosing Step 2, ADA lights (with NPK), potassium carbonate. i dose double the recommended dosage.
filter: EHEIM Liberty 100 (rated 380litres per hour)

the glosso really looks sick. new leaves are not even green. more like yellowish
 
I used a HOB on my nano to replace the rubbish internal that came with it. However I found the HOB wasn't really great either. I think part of the problem is that you get a rather diffuse return that doesn't quite have the same power as a normal filter return. I think you need to really over spec a HOB to get the same results. The way the return enters the water also seems to gas off quite a lot of CO2 if you set it to get the best flow so your kinda battling strong flow with high surface agitation against not gassing off CO2.

I'm debating setting my cube back up again (if I can keep my desk at work clear enough...) and will use my old Fluval 203 on it if I do.
 
Try placing the diffuser right in the flow path of the water outlet from the HOB. This blasts the CO2 microbubbles all over. Also experiment with filter positioning to obtain best all-round cirulation.

You can see what I mean from my old nano here. I used a tiny Dymax diffuser that looks like an airstone.

f_nanom_84b0c29.jpg
 
alright. thanks guys... i used to place the diffuser below the filter, that results in some microbubbles got sucked into the filter. then i switched it to the opposite side. i'll probably switch it back again.

i'm considering ordering dry ferts online, as for my case its possible nutrient defficiency as mentioned by aaronorth. liquid ADA didnt work for me (though it apparently worked for others). just that by looking at the shipment cost, it wont be cheap after all compared to liquid.well actually i've decided to have a go actually. 😀

hope i can post some good news after a few weeks!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top