DAY TWENTY-TWO ...and I'm still having trials and tribulations. My filter has been quietly leaking, blowing some of the cabinet chipboard, which is a real pain. The damage can't be seen when the doors are closed, but it's a real downer.
I've removed the fine floss from the bottom of the filter and reinstalled the siporax. I've restarted full ferts (instead of just K2SO4), but at slightly less than 50% of full EI levels (because my plant mass has been going down, not up!). Lighting has been at 48w for six hours daily plus a 20 minute additional 'midday' burst of 150w MH for a few days now with no obvious ill-effects; I'm upping the 150w boost to 40 minutes from today. Been doing 1x60% water change every other day for a week now.
Algae - green water hasn't gone, but it's much diminished - I'm hoping as the set-up matures it'll cure itself. Some hair algae about, especially on the HC and hairgrass - I'm hoping cycling will be completed fairly soon, so I can get some algae munchers in there. Doing some Easycarbo spot-dosing, which doesn't seem to make much difference - although for all I know the algae could be much worse without it.
Plants - growth (which was never that strong) has tailed off generally - I'm hoping upping dosing and lights will reverse that trend. Im guessing that I've been a bit over-cautious (less than 1wpg) with lights in a fairly deep tank - as I've now got a whole three weeks of experience (!) under my belt, I'm trusting I'll spot any adverse reaction to the beefed-up regime quickly.
I've lost a good 60% of the HC so far - the remainder is looking a bit sorry for itself, too, with hair algae and die-back.
Hydrocotyle has stopped growing, but only suffering very minor algal growth.
Rotala has stopped growing, but looks healthy.
Pogostemon has had quite a bit of older leaf die-back, but what remains looks healthy, with virtually no algae.
Staurogyne - hitherto my strongest grower - has stopped growing, but looks healthy. I'm intending to use this as my primary 'indicator' plant.
Vallis - doesn't seem to have done a thing since tank start-up. Maybe a smidgeon of new growth from the base.
Hairgrass - no recent growth after initial burst. That new growth looks healthy, but the original trimmed stuff has hosted quite a bit of algae. This is the only algae that seems to have been knocked back by the Easycarbo.
Limnobium - older mature leaves have died off, but quite a few new plantlets have formed. Perhaps my best performer, especially since I put on the MH, which encourages me to increase the MH a little more. This was always supposed to be a temporary resident to boost plant mass in the early days. I like the way it settles in the vallis; I'll be keeping some in the tank longterm I reckon - it may be all that survives! (Only half-joking...)
Not much point in posting pics, as the only real change you'd see is - more substrate visible!
