Very little plant growth, can't figure out why :(

[Caliban07]

yesterday and the day before I was trying to use the glass diffuser... this morning I swapped it out for my other air stone. so today's also the first day that CO2 has been successfully coming out.

I turn the air stone off when I get up, and the lights come on a bit later so the current plan is:

7:00ish - air stone off
8:00 - lights on
4:00 - lights off
sometime in the evening - air stone back on?

it's 3:30 now and the drop checker has turned a mostly green blue-green.
maybe I don't want to worry about making it more efficient?

Sounds like a good schedule. Maybe you could have the lights come on at 9 and off at 5. This would maybe allow more co2 to build up before lights on and maybe by the period end you might have a green drop checker. If you have liquid carbon you could add this when you turn the air stone off. This would give the plants some form of carbon as the injected levels build up and reduce algae at the same time.

Keep us posted on growth.


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[Shadey]

cool. can do!

ty

 

[Caliban07]

Any improvement?


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[Shadey]

Any improvement?

in some ways, yes....!

The stem plants in the back right are growing really well! They are starting to branch out and grow across the top.

however, you can see a smaller version of what I had assumed was the same type of plant, and it hasn't grown much at all:

this little plant grew from a fragment that was left of a plant that died, and it was sort of doing well, but you can see that it has holes in some of the leaves now:

misc crypts. in general they are doing well, but I still have a leaf melt off occasionally.

this is growing... up? I'm not sure if it's a very ambitious HC or a very sad star repens. I have ONE 2-leafed sprig of monte carlo somewhere. The nerites and/or the shrimp are constantly uprooting most of the groundcover plants, so its hard for them to grow.

I haven't gotten around to ordering a test kit, but at a guess I would say that the CO2 is helping, but I'm still short somewhere on nutrients. :/

 

[Caliban07]

Yeah growth do look a little uneven. But as the plants get bigger and closer to the light they begin to grow faster. There does seems to be the odd browning. Have you tested your nitrates and phosphates. When I added liquid carbon these parameters hit rock bottom in a few days because I wasn't dosing anything. The plants used up these macros that had built up in a no water change tank at such a rate of knots it made me realise how important they are.

How much excel are you putting in?

In general is say there is definite improvement.


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[LiQuiD]

I would say that it's usually light or carbon, but since we can get fertilizer salts so easily these days and many people are doing EI or some derivative, we rarely see nutrient deficiencies. EI basically eliminates the potential for deficiencies, by design, for only about ~$15. It should definitely be on the short list of recommendations.

Getting ready to buy dry ferts for the first time. Can you recommend a good place to buy, what to buy, and good weekly regime for a 75gal w/C02 inj? Many many thanks in advance.

 

[Fresh2o]

GLA or Green Leaf Aquariums for dry ferts (EI or PPS-Pro).


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[Shadey]

Yeah growth do look a little uneven. But as the plants get bigger and closer to the light they begin to grow faster. There does seems to be the odd browning. Have you tested your nitrates and phosphates. When I added liquid carbon these parameters hit rock bottom in a few days because I wasn't dosing anything. The plants used up these macros that had built up in a no water change tank at such a rate of knots it made me realise how important they are.

How much excel are you putting in?

In general is say there is definite improvement.


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I'm going to probably pick up a test kit on the next paycheck.

I do think from watching it, that it's probably okay to dose 2x a week, so that's what I'm going to do for now (for macro/micro liquid ferts). Excel I started off dosing once a day, but I've really fallen behind.

with regard to the uneven growth, it's kind of weird, because at the very back behind those stem plants that are doing well, where it should be relatively dark, are 3-4 of them that are about halfway up the tank now, and they started from little tiny sprouts at dirt height. those ones are doing much better than the ones that are at the back in the middle of the tank.