lighting/fert help

[iambannana]

just trying to learn this planted tank thing as i go, i have a 250 litre tank thats about 500 high and my lighting is 4x58w t5 ho lamps (came with the tank) 2 are white and 2 are blue. im dosing daily with flourish excel, just wondering if there is anything else i need to be doing? ive got abouyt 12-15 plants in there, i just chuck out the ones that seem to be dying and put new ones in, some seem to go great and some seem to just die.

 

[BBradbury]

Lighting and Ferts

just trying to learn this planted tank thing as i go, i have a 250 litre tank thats about 500 high and my lighting is 4x58w t5 ho lamps (came with the tank) 2 are white and 2 are blue. im dosing daily with flourish excel, just wondering if there is anything else i need to be doing? ive got abouyt 12-15 plants in there, i just chuck out the ones that seem to be dying and put new ones in, some seem to go great and some seem to just die.

Hello iam...

Whoa! That's some lighting you have. You really only need about 2 watts of light per gallon of tank volume to grow most of the aquatic plants on the market. You have twice that much.

Here's my opinion. The lights putting out the blue color are the ones you want. These are likely 6500 to 6700 K bulbs. This color is recommended for planted tanks because they come closest to natural daylight at 5500 K.

The other bulbs can be removed, they're not casting the light down into the tank far enough to do be good for the plants, you're just wasting electricity. You'll still have plenty of light with just the two.

If you don't have the benefit of a lot of fish in the tank, then you need to dose a good commercial fert in liquid, dry or granules. I'd stop using the Seachem product. It's expensive to dose large tanks with it. It has a trace of "Gluteraldehyde" a carbon that can be toxic to primitive plants like ferns, Vallisneria and mosses. There are many ferts available that are as good without "Glut". I like "Yamato Green".

One last thing, your plants and fish too need a lot of pure, treated water flushed through the tank regularly. This replaces healthy minerals in the water. So, remove and replace at least half the water in the tank every week.

Not an authority, just and old "waterkeeper"

B

 

[jlk]

I am learning the lights & plant stuff here, too. You should probably look at the bulbs & see exactly what you have. The blue bulbs are most likely actinic bulbs. I dont believe they serve any purpose in fw tanks beyond asethics/appearance. I have a single actinic bulb in one of my lights because i dont care for the yellowish tint of the 65k bulbs. You may want to consider adding a fertilizer rather than the excel but ill let the plant experts comment on this.

 

[iambannana]

so i have too much light? is that possibly why im forever battling algae? haha oh dear. oh ok i heard that you use that flourish stuff to give the plants carbon if you dont have a c02 system, or will any fertiliser do that? i have 10 neons, 10 black phantoms, 5 zebra loaches, a bristlenose and a betta if that makes any differnece to what i need

 

[jlk]

I am not expert on this but i dose Flourish comprehensive (fertilizer) & occasional doses of flourish excel for carbon (i dont have co2 system). It seems to be enough for my low tech plants. I know the Excel acts as an algacide to some degree but i dont know how exactly this works.

 

[iambannana]

ok so i guess that excel is just a carbon suppliment and i actually need a fertiliser to help out.. ahh more money to spend haha

 

[mudraker]

What plants do you have Iam?

Lighting and fertilization depends on what you want to grow