Throwing this out there to answer startup queries in one place rather than via multiple PM’s.
This is the method being used for high light, high Co2, high soil located nutrition and large scale planting in this setup here. Plenty of alternative views on this and not saying this is ‘the’ way, just my way to ensure a single tanks weekly maintenance doesn’t go over an hour and belt off in the wrong direction
after the startup period.
Setup is started with lighting at 100% (can hear members screaming at their screens already). There is no controller, no ramp up, no alternative with this style of lighting so don’t consider it controversial, simply adapting to what it is - an on/off lighting unit. Six hours of light at 100% just like it used to be with halides and T5’s, nothing new. Personally prefer running tanks this way, gets the tank on its feet more efficiently and know the lighting isn’t a variable, fixed duration and intensity.
Rescapes also usually done in late autumn/winter to avoid ambient daylight during startup. Penalty here is plants tend to come in smaller from the grow houses this time of year but seasonal change doesn’t matter if using in-vitro pots.
Soil is nutrient rich, in this case ADA Amazonia on top of powersand advance, but would happily use alternatives like Tropica or Prodibio with ground up root tabs on the base glass topped with soil. Plants don’t care about branding, just sufficient nutrition. Substrate is started off rich to accommodate to the nutrition needed under high light from the get go.
Schedule for the first 28 days
Water changes, water changes, water changes. Not interested in marketing blurbs or any particular company’s recommendation on startup procedure. Don’t have a problem with any products that are supposed to help but find them unnecessary if water changes are being executed.
Doing daily for the first four weeks and use all that waste water to keep our drains clear in the colder months, so it gets a double use. It is a chore and appears wasteful. However, it has proven to pay dividends in the longer run and water is a cheap consumable. You’re getting a reset daily, taking out tannins leaching from the wood, organics, algal spores - good bang for your buck for simply switching some water out.
Water changes before Co2 on or after the photo period, whatever works best around your life commitments.
Obviously changing this amount of water with anything other than tap water isn’t really feasible. Rain water, might not rain enough, RO, would drive you mad on a large setup and waste even more water.
Water column fertilisation for startup period; potassium source (K2SO4 for example) and a meagre amount of micros daily just before lights on. That’s it. Trust that everything else is soil located and this leaves the water column as lean as possible until plant growth demands a change up.
Also dose glutaraldehyde (2%) during the first 28 days dosed at 1ml per 50l then discontinue after the startup.
Co2... get it right beforehand. Drop checker, pH pen monitoring, whatever. Used to fill the tank when empty with filters and skimmer running, place several drop checkers around the tank and assess how much of a ramp up is needed to get lime green at that water volume. Once this is known (e.g 3 hours 15 minutes ramp up needed at that injection rate) set the timer appropriately before lights come on ready for startup and leave Co2 settings alone. Obviously adding in hardscape/soil reduces the overall volume of water at finalisation of the scape; this means your dissolved Co2 rate will be higher than needed (yellow drop checker) on your first day and you can gingerly dial it back through the first month or leave it fixed and see if it ends up sufficient after some plant growth. Also depends on the planting type but overshooting to begin with and working your way back is less detrimental to falling short on Co2 demands. No livestock during this period so no potential of harm. Do this enough times with the same equipment you can usually eye ball it.
Aeration outside the photoperiod at the beginning:
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Stop this once a good amount of plant growth is established. Then it’s possibly a matter of dialling Co2 in once again as the night time aeration won’t be bringing dissolved gases back to atmospheric equilibrium everyday.
Skimmers and lily pipes that create a vortex can help manage a baseline of surface agitation for gas exchange:
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Filters left alone for the first 28 days. Simple. It is literally just 28 days of water changes then moving on with your life.
If this were a non soil setup using an inert substrate then this method is mostly obsolete.
