20 gallon long

[The boring name]

Ok so I have a 20L with a finnex 24/7 planted + running 7 hrs a day on a timer. Sand substrate with osmocote tabs and running pressurized co2 injection. Dosing a dry mix of macro and micro nutrients from the planted aquarium everyday and dosing phosphorus every few days. I have water wasteria, Amazon swords, bannana plants, a few anubius, and some cryptocoryne beckettii. Do I have all my points covered or am I missing anything?

 

[ZxC]

Water change cycle, kH, gH, pH, what sources of nutrients and how much, color spectrum.

Check out rotalabutterfly nutrient calculator to help make it easy to figure out how much you are dosing.

 

[The boring name]

Every 7-8 days on water change, pH is 6.5-6.0 depending on time of day due to co2, let me see if I can pull the list and amounts from the website. And any waste from 10 zebra danios and 12 neon tetras. Color spectrum is set to Max. Not sure on gh and kh, haven't tested it in a bit.

 

[ZxC]

You'll want at least a 1.0 drop in pH from CO2.

Up to 1.3 peak pH drop

 

[The boring name]

Gotcha will do. Thanks

 

[ZxC]

Gotcha will do. Thanks

Trust me, I had my head buried in the sand for YEARS thinking I was getting enough CO2 into the water because my drop checker was green and the plants were pearling.

Once I found/was talking to a few very experienced and innovative planted tankers, they got me on the >1.0 peak pH drop (I was running about 0.6 max drop) and the entire tank improved, algae dissipated and the plants are doing fantastic. We can blame bad plant growth on plenty of things, but good CO2 levels are now on my "must have" list.

Be cautious though, pushing CO2 limits does have consequences. 1 slip up could mean you gas the tank. I recommend running an air stone on a timer for night time to ensure the tank has plenty of O2 throughout the evening/night.