• 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

Last go for some help

Sort of yes. Doing a large water change weekly prevents build up if the tank isn't using it but more importantly it removes other nasties in the water which do encourage algae. Plants themselves have by-product waste so encouraging them to grow faster with unlimited ferts and co2 enrichment combined with high light=fast growth and more waste produced by the plants.
With high lighting even the slightest of raises in pollutants, stuff you can't reliably measure will result in algae growth.
If you're not wanting to go down the route of large weekly water changes the best option would be to reduce the lighting in either intensity or duration. You maybe could get away with dosing Tropica ferts at their standard dosing. The good thing about having your old salts is if you come across a deficiency you could just top off with the salts as long as you know what deficiency the plants are showing which is no mean feat.

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk
 
Do you actually need to use premium and specialised? Something I've often wondered. I thought specialised was traces+npk. Best suggestion would be keep the light period down to start with and dose specialised at its standard dose. Notice any ailing Plants and up the dose slightly. If it gets to the point where it's going to get expensive or you you can't keep up with the water changes you could reduce lighting further or add some extra n and p through salts. You should be covered for traces using Tropica. I've often fancied the specialist but my local P@H never has it in. Would be interesting to compare.

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk
 
Just been having a quick look at Tropica Specialised to satisfy my own curiosity. Checked with Rotala Butterfly and Tropica Website . Now I could be wrong here so anyone please feel free to correct me. According to the Tropica Site you would dose 6ml per week or 5 pumps per 50 ltrs, Going by Rotala, to achieve dosing somewhere in the region of EI methods you would need to be more like dosing 43ml per week. Even at that as you can see that still wouldn't take you into the lower region of EI dosing regarding your N and P.
A 300ml bottle at that rate would last two weeks! Unless you have deep pockets then either supplementing with dry salt or reduction of the lighting would be the way to go.

Tropica Spec 1.png

Tropica Apec2.png
 
At the moment the lighting period is 6 hours, so maybe I'll try that with specialised as suggested. Do you count 6 hours as a short lighting period?
 
I'm not sure what you would class as a short or long lighting period or the minimum. Somewhere between 6 and 8 hours seems to be the norm for most I think. I have mine on for 6.5 hours at this time of year because the tank gets some sunlight for an hour or so before lights on because of the position of the tank. I winter when it gets dark earlier I would change that to about 8.5 hrs just so the room the tank's in isn't dark when the light comes on.
I also have the ability to dim it if needs be when things are getting out of sync. If I get some algae issues generally down to lack of time and poor cleaning regime and I don't have time to keep up I drop the lighting to 50% for a while.
Does your light have any dimming options? Some of the generic eBay dimmers will work with a lot of lights.

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk
 
No it just has an on and off, funny you mentioned the dimmers as we talking about dimming the lights last night when the light went off at 10 and plants and fish were plunged into sudden darkness. It would be nice to dim them down and up over 30 minutes
 
Sorry if I've missed a bit here - but isn't your LED 10w Swackett?

I'm assuming that's low light which is making me question your need to raise the light/use a dimmer or lower the duration at all.
 
Yeah if the light isn't that bright you could see how it goes with the Tropica specialised if big weekly water changes aren't your thing. I don't know much about your light fitting just assumed it was going to be medium to high.

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk
 
No I think its more like medium to low. We used to do big weekly water changes, but then found it too laborious every week and before you know it you have forgotten one week, then the next week, etc, so wanted an easier life rather than give up on the whole thing
 
You can only try mate. I know the feeling keeping high-tech, sometimes it can feel like a full time job if you have a busy lifestyle. If commercial prepared ferts are your thing and you have the coin to buy it I would try lights for 6 hours with Tropica Spec and maybe change 50% water every two week. At least if you're not too heavily planted and the plants aren't chomping through the n and p you might have a chance of it building up to sufficient values. People often forget EI is what your plants are unlikely to use not bare minimum. More often than not you can get away with far less but you need to keep an eye on it. You can always throw an extra WC in the mix on the odd day when you find yourself with a couple of spare hours, the more the better as it removes all the other crap in there. If your plants do look a bit under the weather you have your salts there to top off. I think the traces will be fine if anything the n and p will be the ones to watch.
Have a read up on plant deficiencies and the plants it affects, that way you'll know the tell tale signs early before it gets out of hand and algae rears its ugly head.

Good luck.
 
Thanks for informative help mate, very much appreciated. I have started a journal which shows the setup so far if you are interested?
 
In fact, just remembered Darrels duck weed index if you search for that. That could be beneficial for you, basically put some duck weed in the tank and monitor that. Being a floating plant with access to plenty co2 and closest to the light first signs of low n and p and the duck weed will tell you.
 
swackett said:
Thanks for informative help mate, very much appreciated. I have started a journal which shows the setup so far if you are interested?
Click to expand...

Very interested, link it up I'll be keen to see how this goes.
 
What ppm of phosphate should I be looking to achieve?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top