3 Month Old Tank

[Blueram man]

This is my first post and first attempt at a planted aquarium.

I have attached a picture of my aquarium.

I am running pressurised CO2, Fluval 206, and an OTL LED light. The light is on for about 7 hours a day I have seachem fluorite black sand and brown fluorite. There is white sand at the front and down the middle. I feed plants with full range of seachem plant ferts ... Let me know your thoughts and ideas would be appreciated. Do I need anything else to add to this to make it better.

I would love the plants to flower.

The moss doesn't look great and needs to be better. Tips and help please

I will try to carpet at the front when I know I have overcome any algae issues. Any ideas appreciated.


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[Delapool]

Are you seeing any algae? I thought it looked pretty good.

 

[Blueram man]

Yes I get algae on the glass I think maybe light maybe on a touch too long. Not sure what type...

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[Bert2oo1]

Yes I get algae on the glass I think maybe light maybe on a touch too long. Not sure what type...

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Most tanks will get abit on the glass here and there. Just scrub it off before water change each week. Lighting should be no more than 8 hours a day. Tank looks really nice u should be proud of it


30g planted, 90g Oscar tank

 

[Delapool]

I agree. I probably clean the glass every few weeks for green algae. If you are not growing algae (foremost) and you are growing plants, then I think a win. What sort of plants do you have in there?

Some plants I find just will not grow, get eaten or sit there for a month acclimatising to the water. Despite others taking off like weeds.

One I would look into is dry ferts which are very cheap compared to liquid ferts. I'm assuming here the seachem ferts are liquid ferts and copied in a link on dry ferts in case of interest.

http://greenleafaquariums.com/aquarium-fertilizers-supplements/micro-macro-fertilizers.html

 

[Blueram man]

Thanks for your comments.....Yes I'd love to know more about dry ferts......I have cabomba growing really well...hygrophila corymbosa which looks well but not growing it has shot roots out but doesn't grow I've had it about 2 weeks...pygmy chain swords grows really well ...Tiger lotus grows but is small is this the bulb being small and will it get bigger....mayaca fluvitalis which grows really well...I have another hygrophila but I forget the name that's growing well....alternethera reinikii not sure that's spelt correctly... it used to grow loads but has kinda slowed up loads I have had to propagate it so maybe something to do with it...it's still growing though and has roots....
I have an Amazon sword which doesn't grow very well at all.... I have recently put a root tab in... I have taxiphyllum barbieri which seems to be OK but doesn't look how some I've seen ... I have monte carlo which died back but is growing again now I think it was my fault.....I also have water wisteria.... temperature is 28 C....i'd love to get them to flower...

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[Barliman]

You've done a beautiful job with that tank, really lovely.

What size tank is it? 30 regular?

My tank was pretty algae-free until the fourth month, when 2-3 different types sprouted "out of nowhere." Like you, I've been using the Seachem line pretty much as directed. When the algae problem started, I did some research and learned Seachem's dosing are geared toward low-medium light. My tank is medium-high, so I was effectively starving my plants of certain chemicals.

I'm not saying the same thing will happen to your tank, but, looking at your plants, it looks like you're running higher light, so you may want to watch out for similar deficiencies, especially carbon, which the plants need to grow.

All that said, I keep looking at that picture, because that is one pretty aquarium.

 

[Caliban07]

I agree this is a really carefully laid out tank that looks really nice.

Cabomba is a great plant but it grows so fast. I advise replant in the tops and discarding the bottoms to keep them looking nice.

What is the back central stem plant? It looks more like limnophila aromatica to me. It lovely anyway.

Alternanthera a renowned for growing slowly. If they don't get enough of everything they eventually start losing the redness of the lower leaves and they start to self prune.

Amazon swords are one of my favourite plants. I have an affection for them because I have killed so many trying to get them to grow like I have seen them. In my opinion they are robust when you can get them to grow because they can store carbon well enough to get through some minor shortfalls but they are quite flimsy at competing against other fast growing stem plants.

Never had tiger lotus, it looks nice.

Water wisteria is another fast grower but not s great competitor.

Do you have a drop checker or ph pen? Do you know what your estimate co2 ppm is? I think you could use more with Estimative index dosing.

Also, how have you arranged the flow around the tank and what is the flow rate? Creating brilliant hardscape layouts such as yours look good but can some times deflect or obstruct a good amount of flow in the tank and you can end up with dead spots.




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[Blueram man]

These are exactly the things i need to know thanks.....Yes I think it is limnophila aromatica... I have a drop checker and recently put my CO2 level up which seems to of helped.. what is Estimation index dosing?... I do have a died spot at the front where all the dirt collects...I bought a ehiem power head but had trouble with algae so I removed it ....this was before I was dosing so much should I reintroduce. I am running high light.....the tank is 800mm x 400mmx 450mm so about 40 gal 180 ish litres ....the light is OTL LED 80Wish so about 2w per gallon..... oh yes also have crypt wendtii.....

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[Caliban07]

I would put the pump back in and have it pointing the same direction as the other filter outlet.

EI in a nutshell: increased light intensity = increased nutrient requirement

experiment whereby the fastest growing aquatic plants were placed in a tank with unlimited co2. The light was increased until a level was achieved where further increasing the light did not increase the uptake of nutrients. That level of lighting was 6wpg and the nutrient requirements of the testers growing aquatic plants at 6wpg were:

20ppm nitrogen per week
30ppm potassium per week
3ppm phosphate per week
0.5ppm iron per week
10ppm magnesium per week.

Therefor because no one has anywhere near 6wpg of light if we put these values of nutrients via dry salts weekly the plants will never be limited in any nutrient. At the end of the week you change 50% water.

The dosing is normally spilt in to 3 days per week to equal the above totals.


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[Blueram man]

Ah very interesting ok....

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