My 60p soft water

[plantnoobdude]

Fast forward a bit andddd


Good news: plants lookin really good

Ludwigia Pantanal and macrandra doing well .two of the hardest plants in my tank🙂

Fairly sure the wallichii is doing well but uhm I can’t really see it. There’s some fuzzy algae on some stuff but not too fussed yet. Guess I’ll just have to wait for now.

 

[plantnoobdude]

Here are some Eriocaulon quinquangulare plantlets.
I always read that these would only grow in nutrient rich soil. And I certainly know I’ve told a fair amount of people that…
Welp I decided to “test” my beliefs




Aqua soil specimens at the top and sand at the bottom….

Well what do you know? They grow fine, just fine in sand… in fact the only plant that actually suffered from swapping to sand is ammannia pedicellata. That’s just being sulky right now. 🥲 rotala Mac, Pantanal, wallichii, cuphea all growing well/better..

Sand specimens were placed in slightly less favourable positions e.g. less light, flow.( Due to space reasons.) and aqua soil specimens were in the middle of the tank. (This may account for plant size difference). Also if I recall I may have used scraps from splitting and not full planlets to start of the ones in sand.

But what I want people to notice is the root health, the plants in sand maintained brightly coloured white and fleshy roots where as the aqua soils plants which had browning and melting in the roots.
The sand specimens grew almost as well as soil Id say. So, for anyone reading this, if you have an inert substrate eriocaulon quinqunagulare may still be an option!

I have a feeling that the tank should and will be clearing up soon. But not yet…

 

[Hufsa]

 

[erwin123]

I have a feeling that the tank should and will be clearing up soon. But not yet…

have you considered 50 micron polishing pads - they really remove a lot of stuff 🙂

 

[JoshP12]

Lovely @plantnoobdude

I think you’ve found these perfect column targets as demonstrated by the root structure on the erio.

I bet you could invert those results by adjusting your column the other way. What I mean is if you start increasing probably potassium and phosphate and then scale the rest up, you may get healthier results in the soil erio vs the sand.

Now that’s neat. Thanks for sharing!

 

[_Maq_]

I bet you could invert those results by adjusting your column the other way. What I mean is if you start increasing probably potassium and phosphate and then scale the rest up, you may get healthier results in the soil erio vs the sand.

No. The healthy appearance of roots depends on other variables.

 

[JoshP12]

No. The healthy appearance of roots depends on other variables.

I struggle to believe that root structure has nothing to do with water column parameters. Water column being a subset of influences, sure.

 

[_Maq_]

I struggle to believe that root structure has nothing to do with water column parameters.

Well, yes, but "water column parameters" may cover almost anything, par example extreme temperature (boiling water). Yet you developed your idea in the direction of adjusting fertilization, as I understood. To that, I say it's of marginal importance for roots' health. It may affect roots' length, though.

 

[plantnoobdude]

Some promising side shoots from pedicellata.


Tank as a whole seems to be calming its self down. It has some green algae here and there but Not too bothered as the plants and algae seem to coexist just fine.
Might get a UV like @erwin123 and run it post WC


Whole tank finally clearing up.. can finally see the back of my tank. Syns seem to have been settling in the back and the rest seem quite good in terms of plants health.

Wallichii seems to be chugging a long and had to thin it back. Same as Pantanal.
Guessing the tank clearing up will stunt some plants, more light blah blah blah. So I need to keep co2 on point, just washed out the diffuser in bleach.

 

[JoshP12]

Might get a UV like @erwin123 and run it post WC

The first time I blasted through it, I waited. Was neat. The first time… hahaha!

In tandem with you now, and I’ve flicked on UV just to get on with the “end result”.

 

[plantnoobdude]

Any suggestions for an in tank UV for post WC from UK folks? Can’t be too expensive, perhaps @KirstyF ?

The first time I blasted through it, I waited. Was neat. The first time… hahaha!

Pretty cool not gonna lie, I was quite
sceptic of you saying it’d clear up on its own, but what do ya know it’s almost as if after two three weeks a switch had gone off and in amatter of days it cleared up. Just waiting for the same to happen
now, well it already has!


Couple days difference

 

[KirstyF]

Any suggestions for an in tank UV for post WC from UK folks? Can’t be too expensive, perhaps @KirstyF ?

I would love to help buddy but mine looks like this….and the cabinet is 2ft deep!! So……I don’t think that’s really what you are after 😂


The Vectons are highly rated and they do much smaller versions, so for an external I would certainly recommend, but I’m not sure they do an in-tank version.

It’s the only one I’ve ever used so I couldn’t give you a genuine recommendation on anything else tbf! 🙁

 

[erwin123]

submersible UV are quite common in Asia, I surfed a couple of UK sites but they don't seem to be sold in UK - possible legal liability if someone goes blind? (btw I cover my tank up when the UV is on so no UV leaks out - though supposedly aquarium glass should absorb a fair bit of it)

Fish lovers, beware: Singapore man blinded by pond's UV lamp

Man partially blinded by UV sterilisation lamp in fish pond while cleaning it. -TNP

www.asiaone.com

 

[plantnoobdude]

submersible UV are quite common in Asia, I surfed a couple of UK sites but they don't seem to be sold in UK - possible legal liability if someone goes blind? (btw I cover my tank up when the UV is on so no UV leaks out - though supposedly aquarium glass should absorb a fair bit of it)

Fish lovers, beware: Singapore man blinded by pond's UV lamp

Man partially blinded by UV sterilisation lamp in fish pond while cleaning it. -TNP

www.asiaone.com

Wow that is scary😲
I’ll do a search on suitable fixtures and see what I can find.

I would love to help buddy but mine looks like this….and the cabinet is 2ft deep!!

Just a bit too big perhaps. Haha

Anyway the tank is clearing up but I still have some algae, just the fluffy green kind. Nothing else, zero gsa, bba, staghorn or nasty stuff. I’ll probably just keep my dosing at 1N and 0.0875 Fe weekly for now and let the plants over grow and see where that gets me, in combination with some extra precautions such as a fine sponge in my skimmer.



Tank prolly would like a water change but haven’t gotten round to for the last few weeks. TDS has risen a bit since I haven’t been to accurate with remin salts either. Need some effort to get everything back to my ‘golden numbers’ knowing everything that’s in the column just sits well with me for some reason.
Before my TDS with remin salts + K would sit at 79-81 ppm and the tank stayed Maybe one or two ppm higher than that and just sat there. Now it sits at ~110 ppm
Perhaps I should stop fretting but yeah, perhaps the sand is leaching some stuff or maybe it’s my remin that was done by eye.
Plants look happy enough for now so🤷‍♀️

 

[plantnoobdude]

Plant are happy but I have that flufff dust algae plus column bloom… the algae comes off if I just rub it lightly… yeah it’s not serious stuff, seems my tank and @JoshP12 ’s tank are going through the same thing. Plants seem happy enough, pedicellata unstinted but the Pantanal seems a bit angry, the stems are not stunning massively but they are smaller than I’d like. Mac doing really well.
Just needa remake remineraliser so I can dose at WC more accurately.

 

[JoshP12]

Definitely the same thing!! What triggered your bloom - do you remember?

 

[plantnoobdude]

Definitely the same thing!! What triggered your bloom - do you remember?

First bloom, triggered by tank being left alone and skimmer malfunction. O2 availability I’m guessing.
Second bloom, full substrate reset. Before the second bloom the tank completely cleared up, but the swap to sand was still too much for the system.

 

[JoshP12]

First bloom, triggered by tank being left alone and skimmer malfunction. O2 availability I’m guessing.
Second bloom, full substrate reset. Before the second bloom the tank completely cleared up, but the swap to sand was still too much for the system.

Basically same as me then - complete start up and reset.

System in turmoil - plants are fine.

Kind of bizarre. If we didn’t have the plants taken care of, then what do we think would happen? Which algaes would show?

 

[plantnoobdude]

Basically same as me then - complete start up and reset.

System in turmoil - plants are fine.

Kind of bizarre. If we didn’t have the plants taken care of, then what do we think would happen? Which algaes would show?

Dunno, but I know for sure I have zero BBA, Staghorn, GSA, thread algae.
I doubt that’d be the case if plants were unhappy. I don’t think algae such as (bba, staghorn) are related as much to co2, more so the unhappy plants. I remember happi did an experiment where he overdosed trace metals in soft water, this triggered BBA in an otherwise algae free tank. Something like 0.5B 0.2 Zn if I remember correctly. Maybe plants will succumb to Low co2 levels over time and attract BBA, but I don’t think co2/flow is the only issue.
When running EI I had a urine yellow drop checker and fish on edge, I still had huge amounts of staghorn. I had something like 20-30 times turnover as well…. Now I run less co2, much less nutrients, more light and less flow, recipe for disaster perhaps? But the plants that were previously struggling now do reasonably well. With much less input from me. When running Ei I remember cleaning leaves from the skimmer weekly, that rarely happens and plants stay healthy all the way to the bottom even where flow and co2 availability is greatly reduced. That’s all the proof I need for me to continue my current dosing.

 

[JoshP12]

Dunno, but I know for sure I have zero BBA, Staghorn, GSA, thread algae.
I doubt that’d be the case if plants were unhappy. I don’t think algae such as (bba, staghorn) are related as much to co2, more so the unhappy plants. I remember happi did an experiment where he overdosed trace metals in soft water, this triggered BBA in an otherwise algae free tank. Something like 0.5B 0.2 Zn if I remember correctly. Maybe plants will succumb to Low co2 levels over time and attract BBA, but I don’t think co2/flow is the only issue.
When running EI I had a urine yellow drop checker and fish on edge, I still had huge amounts of staghorn. I had something like 20-30 times turnover as well…. Now I run less co2, much less nutrients, more light and less flow, recipe for disaster perhaps? But the plants that were previously struggling now do reasonably well. With much less input from me. When running Ei I remember cleaning leaves from the skimmer weekly, that rarely happens and plants stay healthy all the way to the bottom even where flow and co2 availability is greatly reduced. That’s all the proof I need for me to continue my current dosing.

Thanks for sharing that.

To be honest, EI makes the water column unnecessarily complex. If you have hard water, EI matches it in complexity, but if you have soft - it’s just unnecessary.

EI in hard water is 1/5 EI in soft water - these are the “same systems” in behaviour.

And then add the complexity of urea/ammonia/nitrate balance and then toss co2 and metabolism into the mix - it’s a nightmare especially if you start ramping up on nitrate (and not the rest) …