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!
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....
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,