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My humble start - need plan advice

Added a small fragment susswassertang about 5 days ago, but kept the larger ball in the NICU.
Added some frogbit 4 or so days ago. 4 or 5 plants.

Ammonia levels peaked at ~2ppm and are slowly going to 0.

ammonia is either 0 or 0.25
pH is 7.8
Nitrites are through the roof at 3-4ppm
Nitrates are about 10ppm

The frog-bit isn't taking off like I expected some of them have really nice white roots with tiny filaments, others the leaves are looking pale yellow sickly with some browning on the edges of the leaves and the roots have gone varying shades of brown, are these toast?
The small fragment of susswassertang is a much paler yellow green than that portion in the NICU.

could the high nitrites be killing the plants?
 
A1EE82A4-339F-4AFC-8F57-00B8F28301EB.jpeg
71822ED5-0227-452F-B047-D82990EFE3F6.jpeg


Healthy vs sickly (on Right in both photos)
 
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Hmm. Are you getting any algae?
Not dosing the watercolumn with anything at the moment, is that correct?
You have gentle filtration right, so theres no way that frogbit has been pushed under water repeatedly?
 
@Hufsa I did squirt a very tiny bit of MiracleGro 4-8-4 like 10 drops, and in the substate I cut 4 Jobes plant spikes in half and buried them about 1.5 inches down, spacially aroud at about 5" apart.
yes there is a whisper iQ40 that does agitate the surface quite a bit and sends them for a swim

seems I am getting some diatoms to on the wood
 
Getting dunked under water too many times will kill the floaters, if theyre just moving around a bit at the top of the surface thats ok.
So no regular addition of aquarium type fertilizer then. Is there room in the budget for that? Maybe a cheap EI mix it yourself pack? (You dont have to dose EI amounts neccessarily)

Your bacopa doesnt really look like its doing anything.. and if youre not getting algae either I would start thinking maybe increasing the light a bit. Lowered lighting for low tech works against algae but you cant go too low, or the plants will not get sufficient light to grow.
Then again the bacopa at the waters surface is much closer to the light, how long has the surface bacopa in the picture been there?
 
Getting dunked under water too many times will kill the floaters, if theyre just moving around a bit at the top of the surface thats ok.
So no regular addition of aquarium type fertilizer then. Is there room in the budget for that? Maybe a cheap EI mix it yourself pack? (You dont have to dose EI amounts neccessarily)

Your bacopa doesnt really look like its doing anything.. and if youre not getting algae either I would start thinking maybe increasing the light a bit. Lowered lighting for low tech works against algae but you cant go too low, or the plants will not get sufficient light to grow.
Then again the bacopa at the waters surface is much closer to the light, how long has the surface bacopa in the picture been there?
I pulled 3 of the 7 them out on the 25th and let them float as I read online they could be dual purpose, I also put one in my NICU as a backup should they melt completely.

suggestion for eI Mix?
 
Youre based in the US right? Im not familiar with the product lines over there, ill ping @MichaelJ one of our trusted americans ;)

To be honest im not entirely sure whats going on here, so im going to hang back a bit and let the others chime in. Usually theres algae everywhere and things look horrible and that is apparently much easier for me to advise on 😅
 
Youre based in the US right? Im not familiar with the product lines over there, ill ping @MichaelJ one of our trusted americans ;)

To be honest im not entirely sure whats going on here, so im going to hang back a bit and let the others chime in. Usually theres algae everywhere and things look horrible and that is apparently much easier for me to advise on 😅
I may have to consign myself to "I'm not ready for this hobby yet." no sense in buying golf balls if you cant afford clubs. I'm not following best procedure.

I'm totally winging it "rube goldberg" style with cheapo as possible solutions (no pun intended) to problems I dont even know about.

The secret sauce to a successful tank seems to be the ability to have a massive starting plant mass that will help buffer any sort of fert mistakes, and buying actual aquarium ferts.

I actually thought I was doing myself a favor with the miracleGro, cause it had some ammonia in it and it would help me cycle my tank.

I'll still keep up with questions, because I enjoy the interactions and just learning things, but I can seriously understand someone not wanting to get involved in my "sh*tshow"
 
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Nah man, whats the fun in doing things the easy way!? Another way to see it is that youre maximizing your learning per dollar ratio :thumbup:

You could potentially still use the miraclegro, especially if you dont have any livestock in that tank. You'd have to work out a nice small dose so the ammonia doesnt melt your plants though. Have you checked out any of Happi's targets for ammonia dosing? If it makes your eyes go a bit glassy and nothing makes sense then thats ok, im sure we can collectively figure something out. Im just waiting for my backup cause im totally wingin' it here 😅
 
ill ping @MichaelJ one of our trusted americans ;)
Now, I wouldn't take it that far... :lol:

Ok, kidding aside... @swyftfeet , I didn't read the whole thread in excruciating details, but it looks to me that you might want to do a couple if things:


1. Add more fast growing plants in the easy catagory - it will just help everything get going... Its almost a bullet proof approach - if later on you get bored with certain plants you can always give them away or bring them back to the LFS (they will take back everything except for duckweed :) )

2. Lower your light - since your not injecting CO2 there is usually no way your plants will thrive under such high light - at least not until you get a nice blanket of floating plants... (which is kind of like lowering the intensity anyway...).

3. Opt for a complete fertilizer solution such a Nilocg - which is readily available in the States. Make sure you dose consistently. I cant't find the exact content of MicracleGro 4-8-4 or
QuickFeed 12-9-6 so I do not know what your getting by the amount your adding to your 30 US Gallon / 120 L tank, but its likely not enough of anything. Perhaps our residential Fertilizer expert the all-mighty @Zeus. knows?

Also, what is your water source? If your in New York and using tap water you may be a bit low on Mg.... (I know the Ca:Mg ratio out there is magical if your into bagel-making :) )

Your frogbit certainly look like they are suffering from deficiencies - the unhealthy looking leaves and the very long roots are a tell-tale sign they are short on essential nutrients (the long roots by itself if not necessarily bad, but the combo is... the plant dont have a reason to allocate resources to build long roots if nutrients are plentiful). They can actually take quite a bit of moisture on the their leaves as long as they are not forcible submerged for a longer duration of time - mine are very healthy and are always quite wet (picture below). Frogbits are not CO2 limited (they have access to 400ppm of CO2 from the air), so you know its fertilizer deficiencies, in all likelihood, when they do not thrive. They suck up a lot of NPK. In any event, @dw1305 might be able to pin down the nutrient deficiency (I am still trying to figure out how you make the determination of what nutrient is in short supply by looking at the leaves...).

frogbit.jpg


Cheers,
Michael
 
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Hi all
Opt for a complete fertilizer solution such a Nilocg - which is readily available in the States. Make sure you dose consistently. I cant't find the exact content of MicracleGro 4-8-4 or
QuickFeed 12-9-6 so I do not know what your getting by the amount your adding to your 30 US Gallon / 120 L tank, but its likely not enough of anything.
It definitely looks like a deficiency of something. Nutrient deficiencies are difficult to diagnose due to the <"assembly line aspect of plant growth">, so a complete fertiliser makes a lot of sense.

cheers Darrel
 
https://mcwa-wordpress-media.s3.amazonaws.com/portals/0/pdf/2019_data_summary.pdf
@dw1305
I'm in the second column "MCWA - WWTP"

I empty 10sh gallons and then fill 10.

I use regular tap water I get the faucet about 78sh degrees then add 5 drops of API TWC.

I take it theres no way short of mixing your own to understand how much fertalizer is being added.

A nice local guy is going to give me some free plants, more frogbit, some water lettuce and some salvia. I only came home with 5-6 of the original frogbit so the specimens werent all that awesome to start with.
 
2. Lower your light - since your not injecting CO2 there is usually no way your plants will thrive under such high light - at least not until you get a nice blanket of floating plants... (which is kind of like lowering the intensity anyway...).
Have we established that OP is running too much light? I thought this case might be one of the few where it is running a bit on the low side
 
Have we established that OP is running too much light? I thought this case might be one of the few where it is running a bit on the low side
short of test equipment I wouldnt know. I am using the 24/7 hygger on its standard timer 22W version.

Amazon product ASIN B08N19TY71
my tank is 22" deep. I ran it on low manually and it looked very dark down there. So I turned on its standard timer.

even now it looks very dark to me compared to the pics I see, but I could be overdoing it.

I found this... Hygger 24/7 Aquarium LED Lighting Kit Par Tested, Compared & Reviewed 2022 - Modest Fish
LED-Light-Par-Test-768x421.png
 
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