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Paul's 200L, "Punishment of Luxury"

Wow, what happened here. The algae monster has released his evil seeds....

Paul, my advice to you is remove as much of the algae as you can. Leave any plants that look healthy or recoverable underneath.
Do a large water change and then black it out providing an air stone at the same time.
Black out for a week, yes 6-7 days!
Once the week is up, do an 80% water change and remove all the dead and shlup plants. Do all the messy work before you change the water.
Get your light on, go easy at 1st, reduce the lighting period or intensity, just for the first week.
Only dose trace at half dose for the first 3-4 days, then go to full dose near the end of the week. Stay in trace for around 2 weeks and avoid adding any N and P unless its in your tap water.

Ive not had time to read where things went wrong, but i suggest that while you are doing the black out. Look at your rhythms, check your dosing times, light times, flow rates and filter pipes. Look at your diffusers, check your reg and figure out of the Co2 had been off for any period of time, even a day. Usually, when it gets this bad, there has been a serious break down in the balance, just need to figure out which link was broken.

Good luck - may the force be with you!
 
Good EI discussion (split from Paul's 200L journal)

paul.in.kendal said:
Unfortunately the resulting ammonia spike and sudden reduction in plant mass has clearly upset the tank's balance, and I'm now awash with BBA and other algae, and plants have gone into decline - the collapse of the frogbit is fascinatingly horrible.

So - I've learned yet more from my 'learning' tank, and I'm now thinking about how to re-scape. If you can advise, perhaps you'll look at my post on 'How to re-scape' in the General Discussion thread.

I'll post some pictures of the mess in a while.

Yep, this, along perhaps with the Co2 issue you had will have done it.
In hindsight, what you would of been better doing, is doing a few extra water changes and cutting your ferts down until things grew in again.
This is where in my opinion ( controversial im sure ) EI does fall down. ( I dont know if your dosing EI or not,but im guessing you ).
In future, if things start looking grey and iffy, check everything and do more water changes until you know what is going on.

Cheers
 
Clive! Please, please jump in! You can't offend me (I'm the newbie with bugger-all experience), and if it's Graeme you'll be taking issue with, I''m sure he can cope with a (cough) 'difference of opinion'. ;)

Cheers for the sound advice Graeme. I'll be following it - unless anyone else cares to suggest an alternative course of action! :wideyed:
 
paul.in.kendal said:
Clive! Please, please jump in! You can't offend me (I'm the newbie with bugger-all experience), and if it's Graeme you'll be taking issue with, I''m sure he can cope with a (cough) 'difference of opinion'. ;)

Cheers for the sound advice Graeme. I'll be following it - unless anyone else cares to suggest an alternative course of action! :wideyed:
Hey Paul,
I reckon there is one fundamental error you made after you returned from vacation; you turned the lights back up. You should have just turned the CO2 and nutrients up, fattened the plants up and then slowly introduced more light.

The problem is that the plants adjusted to the low light/low CO2 by changing their Rubisco levels. They had also started using their energy reserves as well as pulling nutrients from the sediment. By the time you got back they would have been low on energy reserves. Turning the lights up drains them further of those reserves because they are unable to use the extra CO2 for at least a few weeks. It takes that amount of time to generate another Rubisco change.

So energy production demand increased (due to higher light) but energy production did not (because Carbon fixation apparatus was stuck in low gear.) Since they were already low on reserves, you basically emptied the tank by turning the lights up.

This is a classic failure that happens to many nutrient haters at tank startup. They put in new plants that have been grown emmersed. Emmersed plants have a pretty good energy reserve built up. The tank is flooded, the plants are pummeled with light and the hobbyist decides that no nutrients will be added. This is fine if a nutritious substrate is used, but often it isn't. The plants grow fine for weeks but then they start to fail. The nutrient hater then immediately blames NO3 for his/her problem. The real problem is that the nutrient and energy reserves are spent. With poor nutrient uptake and under high light, the plants economy crumbles.

Now, apart from the obvious CO2 related algae, what algal forms do you see in those images? Is there BGA? Well, do you really think that a post blackout NO3 restriction will solve that problem? You know what causes BGA, so why on Earth should you only dose traces, which the plant needs very little of and not dose NO3, which the plant needs a lot of? Do you also see the GSA? What causes GSA? Do you really think that restricting PO4 will solve that problem?

I agree with Graeme that you ought to start with a blackout and massive water change, but our opinions diverge drastically for the post blackout procedures. This is a nutrition failure due to poor uptake as a result of the inability to adapt quickly enough to an acute spectral change. That was your fault, not EI's fault.

Dosing programs do not fall down, whether ADA, PMDD+PO4, TPN, EI, PPS, whatever. They are all valid. It is the poor implementation of the dosing principles that causes the hobbyist to fall down.

As far as I can tell from looking at the progress within the 17 pages, you started the tank using the ADA procedure and then switched to EI, at which point you saw the most improvement in your tank until your departure. Is that right? I can't quite tell, but I believe that there was a change to the spectral energy input (from fluorescent lighting to MH?) which cause problems, undoubtedly because you were unable to compensate the CO2 delivery for the energy increase.

At the end of the day, this is the same old story. Too much light, poorly compensated for by adequate delivery of nutrients CO2. I see this every day. Yours is simply a different flavor, but the physiology of the failure is the same. Oh, but now, EI must be evicted, because it surely must have been the cause of the falling down, even though it saved you 10 pages ago. Tsk. tsk, tsk, what an ungrateful so and so.... :thumbdown:

My suggestions are that you dose NPK but delete CO2 while you are doing the blackout. Passive uptake of nutrients will occur in the plants during the darkness but the algae will fail due to the darkness because light causes algae.

Post blackout, continue EI dosing, as high a CO2 as the fish can handle + Excel. Keep the lighting levels low. It will take a few weeks for the Rubisco synthesis to build enough of the protein to be useful at CO2 uptake (then you'll see real improvement.) During this time 2X to 3X massive water changes per week will help. So will a lot of elbow grease - physical removal is necessary. high nutrient and high CO2 levels will encourage new growth far more than nutrient restriction.

I've never seen the logic is withholding nutrients. I don't care if the algae grow faster in the beginning due to high nutrient levels. This will happen. But your focus needs to be on getting plants healthy, not killing algae. This is fundamental principle that all EI haters have difficulty coming to grips with. EI is concerned with maximizing plant health. EI is never about killing algae. When I look at those photos I see unhealthy plants.

When you maximize your plants' health the algae will automatically go away, so there is no point trying to starve algae out of existence because you couldn't do it even if you tried. And if you try to do it you will hurt the plants more than you will hurt the algae because plants need 1000X more nutrients than algae do. Unhealthy plants have ruptured cell membranes which eject what nutrients they have into the water column, so it doesn't matter to the algae if you restrict nutrient dosing, they are already sitting at the banquet table munching on the plant. That's why they attach themselves to the plant. The longer you restrict nutrients, the longer the plants suffer, and the longer the algae can feed off of damaged plant structure.

In my view, it's much better to take the early hit of faster algal growth in high nutrient water. That's what the high water changes and scrubbing helps to mitigate. It's more annoying, sure, but ultimately, more successful, because we are all about plants, and plants need food.

Cheers,
 
I have to agree with Ceg that all of the problems we have with our tanks are due to our laziness :). Good advice, you can post it and stick it as an article :).
 
Thats the most rounded and honest post you have written about EI that I have seen, Clive.
Nice one.

Normally people who love EI dont talk about the algae, or the pitfalls, because there are, you mention them your self. ( scrubbing, 3x water changes etc...... thats the first time ive heard some one talking about EI in that way...... )

My interpretation of EI from what I read, not what I have done, ill be honest, is loads of light, loads of ferts and a big water change. Well I know, and I know you know, its not as basic as that. And that is why I have had to deal with many people trying to get EI right. Because EI to the nubie or the non ppm/science waffle waffle, minded people is not black and white like some science, techie peeps see it.

That post, to me, finally admits that EI is still a case of balance and its not about throwing everything you have at the plants all the time from the day dot. Come on, its not that simple.....

Nice post Clive. :thumbup:
 
Graeme Edwards said:
Thats the most rounded and honest post you have written about EI that I have seen, Clive.
Nice one.

Normally people who love EI dont talk about the algae, or the pitfalls, because there are, you mention them your self. ( scrubbing, 3x water changes etc...... thats the first time ive heard some one talking about EI in that way...... )

My interpretation of EI from what I read, not what I have done, ill be honest, is loads of light, loads of ferts and a big water change. Well I know, and I know you know, its not as basic as that. And that is why I have had to deal with many people trying to get EI right. Because EI to the nubie or the non ppm/science waffle waffle, minded people is not black and white like some science, techie peeps see it.

That post, to me, finally admits that EI is still a case of balance and its not about throwing everything you have at the plants all the time from the day dot. Come on, its not that simple.....

Nice post Clive. :thumbup:
Thanks mate. It's no secret that a high tech planted tank takes a lot of work. That's why some people decide to try low tech, to fit in with their busy lifestyle. Barr had never implied that his dosing technique made growing plants easy all by itself. What he said was that the technique made the dosing regime easier and cheaper. It's easy because you just add a couple of powders with no need for testing. At the time, he developed these dosing principles people were manically trying to control nutrients with testing, restrictions and all sorts of harebrained schemes. Since most people now are new to this hobby they do not have the sense of history and they therefore cannot have the proper perspective or the proper context. Dosing regimes in the 1990's was a very complicated affair. All one has to do is to read the posts on The Krib to get an idea of where we were in those days.

You still need to pay attention to the other things associated with plant keeping. You can still get algae if you don't pay attention to the other aspects of plant husbandry. This was never in question, and algae is only one type of failure mode - other things can go wrong that have nothing to do with either nutrients or dosing regime. But people become fixated on nutrients.

The Matrix tells our brains that nutrients cause algae, so it seems everyone is born with an ingrained fear of nutrients. That's why many of the posts you read seem to ignore all the other aspects of plant husbandry, because things have descended into a battle between nutrient haters versus nutrient lovers.

Lost in the heat of battle are the fundamental truths, which blinds us from being able to isolate faults that develop in our tank systems. Learning how to grow plants means understanding how to differentiate between dosing issues, flow issues, lighting issues, CO2 issues, maintenance issues and so forth. Inattention to these other areas can cause plant health failure regardless of the dosing program.

Cheers,
 
Clive, I'm once again totally gobsmacked by the amount of time and effort you are prepared to spend helping people like me with the hobby. After reflecting on your post, I was stunned by how accurately you diagnosed the errors I made that led to the current soggy mess I'm in. I'm certain you're right that what I've got is the result of poor application of EI, a heavy-handed approach to adjusting light levels and a complete ignorance of the need to beef up plant vigour and SLOWLY increase light levels after the holiday-time reduction.

What I find intriguing is that, once I'd arrived at a stable balance of light/nutrients/plant-mass/flow, it all seemed easy. Yet that balance was actually on a knife edge, and as soon as I slipped off it I was punished severely.

I've now got to decide whether to try to resurrect the existing aquascape, which will be fascinating, or create a totally new scape, but using the existing hardscape - which will also be fascinating. As a terrestrial gardener I always consider plants to be cheap for the amount of joy they bring, so I'm leaning towards a new planting scheme, just to see how different it looks, and whether the same hardscape can support a wildly different planting scheme. Moss and stems only, anyone?

Don't you just LOVE UKAPS? :thumbup:
 
Hi Tony

Real life has intervened rather over the last few months. I eventually stripped out all the plants, then decided it wasn't worth replanting as we're off to Oz for several weeks in December/Jan (I know many of you would have easily managed a complete rescape in that time, but there you go). My local fish shop has agreed to take my livestock and donate it to a deserving youngster. I'll then shut the whole thing down, and start again in mid-Jan. Seasons greetings to everyone!
 
paul.in.kendal said:
My local fish shop has agreed to take my livestock and donate it to a deserving youngster.
What an extremely generous and kind offer. Seasons greetings!
 
paul.in.kendal said:
Hi Tony

Real life has intervened rather over the last few months. I eventually stripped out all the plants, then decided it wasn't worth replanting as we're off to Oz for several weeks in December/Jan (I know many of you would have easily managed a complete rescape in that time, but there you go). My local fish shop has agreed to take my livestock and donate it to a deserving youngster. I'll then shut the whole thing down, and start again in mid-Jan. Seasons greetings to everyone!

Hi Paul
I know what you mean about life getting in the way ! Have a great trip and I look forward to the new journal in the New Year :)

Tony
 
seasons greetings to you, just read through the journal and really enjoyed it.

looking forward to your next.
 
After a MUCH longer break than expected, I'm now starting to resurrect this tank. First job - fill it up with water and check all the systems work. Second job - re-read my own journal and try to work out a schedule to turn a rather smelly dormant tank into something beautiful again! I'll take photos and start a new journal in a day or two.
 
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