Medium Light/Medium Tech Problems

[rcherry]

Hello,

I just started up a medium light / medium tech planted tank, and I had a few questions.

I've got the Current USA Satellite Freshwater LED + running on the tank, and according to manufacturer specifications this puts out 36 PAR at 12" . My substrate is slightly less than 12" away from the light, so I'm assuming I have slightly above 36 PAR. The light is actually pretty cool, it's got a few different features to play around with, but I leave it on the pure white setting and then I add the red LEDs and a touch of the blue LEDs. From what I can tell, those are the spectrums plants like best. I also have the light on for 4 hours in the morning, off 5 hours in the afternoon, and back on 7 hours in the evening.

I ordered some dwarf baby tears, dwarf hairgrass, giant hairgrass, java moss, and dwarf sag to get started. I also added a RCS that was berried, so I have (as far as I can count) 6 babies and one adult RCS running around. All of this was added on November 1st. It's been one week, and I've had decent results so far. I've been dosing according to the Seachem daily dosing chart, although I didn't have Iron or Phosphorous until today (maybe that caused my issues). I also don't dose the Trace, from what I can tell, it's the same as the Flourish that I dose.

My first question is, should I be testing the fertilizer levels? I've tested pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, GH, and KH, but none of the ferts (besides nitrogen). How will I be sure which fert is lacking, or which I'm overdoing? I'd rather lean a little towards overdoing it since I'll be doing ~40% water changes every weekend as a reset for the system.

The second question is, as of today, I'm noticing one or two spots of algae on the acrylic, along with some algae on the dwarf sag. One bunch of the dwarf baby tears is also looking slightly yellow, and a couple of spots on the other bunches are sligihtly off as well. The dwarf hairgrass is sending up some new sprouts, the dwarf sag is sending out some runners, and the giant hairgrass is sending up some new sprouts as well (although a few strands are dying).

Basically I'm looking for suggestions, I'm pretty new to the world of fertilizers and anything above low light plants. I'd like to avoid CO2 injection if possible, it's an open tank and I have some of the giant hairgrass growing out the top. I'd also like to try and get my tiger lotus to flower someday, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I'm willing to throw up some pictures if that helps or if anybody is interested. Thanks in advance for taking the time to read my long *** drawn out post.

 

[Rivercats]

With that lighting your really need to use liquid carbon or CO2. Also dry ferts would give you a more balanced macro and micro fertilizing regime.

As for the algae you are running lights a long time even with the 5 hour siesta. I would cut that 7 hour evening lighting down to 4 hours. Do you know what type of algae you have? Algae comes from an imbalance between lighting, CO2, and ferts.

As for testing I test weekly my nitrates, phosphates, gh, and kh. Once month I test ph but IMO the gh and kh are most important. In a planted tank you want a level of 10-20ppm nitrates and 1-3ppm of phosphates.

 

[rcherry]

Thanks for the tips, Rivercats.

I actually do does Excel, I'm hoping that's going to be sufficient as a source of carbon. The tank is reasonably small so it won't get too costly to dose this way.

I'm lucky enough to have access to a biochemistry pipette to dose my liquid ferts, I can get down to the 1/1000 of a mL so I'm confident in the amount I'm dosing, as long as the liquid I draw up is consistent.

I was afraid my lights wouldn't be strong enough for the dwarf baby tears so I was leaving it on a little bit long, I'll see what kind of a response I get from less time.

 

[Rivercats]

In that amount of light you need to be dosing liquid carbon at 1ml liquid carbon to every 2g of tank water. With liquid carbon you need more than the recommended amount in what Seachem calls high production tanks. I've done a lot of research and experimenting with liquid carbon and higher light, higher bioload, the more plants, especially fast growing ones, all require dosing liquid carbon at higher amounts daily. I've dosed 1ml liquid carbon for every 1g of water for well over a year in one of my tanks. The way you know if you've actually overdosed and added more liquid carbon than the tank can handle is you will see the tank cloud up shortly after dosing and it will be clear the next day.

Also if you want an even cheaper liquid carbon which I use, get some Metricide 14 day solution. A gallon costs about $27 shipped and is roughly double the strength of Excel. Mix the Metricide 14 at a 1:1 ratio with RO or distilled water and dose as you would Excel. This mix is 1.8% Glut whereas Excel is 1.5% Glut. I use old Excel bottles to mix, store, and use for dosing. Metricide is also sold in quarts.

 

[Brian_Nano12g]

Yes... I recall when I started my first high tech tank with HC. It started off well.. all I was dosing was flourish and leaf zone. Then it started to yellow. I discovered I was really low on nitrogen. I switched to PPS-PRO (thanks to Rivercats' suggestion) and my HC thrived nice and green.

I recommend the PPS-PRO pack from GLA (green leaf aquariums).

 

[rcherry]

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated. I'll let you know if the uber high doses of Excel pay off. Everything else is looking great besides the HC. Will the high doses of Excel have any effect on the RCS or their breeding success? Once the shrimp population is large enough I plan to add a school of microrasboras and a breeding pair of German Blue Rams. I anticipate the rams to pick off some of the shrimp babies, but I'm hoping I'll have enough coverage with the HC, dwarf hairgrass, and java moss that a self sustainable population will remain.

 

[Rivercats]

Go slowly upping your liquid carbon and watch shrimp. It never bothered my shrimp but better to be safe than sorry.

Also I'm not sure I'd put such small nano fish with a pair of rams.