New with plants and not faring well.

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JustinKScott

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Mar 14, 2011
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322
I am experienced fish keeper, bu tI've been battling with algea and no growth in this tank now for way too long. I know I've made a lot of mistakes, and am learning more and more everyday. I'm trying to figure out if I have a nutrient deficiency or a light problem.

I don't know how to figure out how much light I have in my tank and if I even have enough.

I have 6x 54w t5 Ho bulbs 5 are daylight one growth. The tank is a 180gallon and 2feet deep.

I know watts per gallon, but I understand that doesn't work so well on deep tanks.
 
T5HO lights put out pretty good PAR, especially with good reflectors. The tank depth shouldn't be a factor here. Big tanks like yours don't follow the Wpg guidelines very well. You can achieve a specific lighting level with fewer Wpg than with a 55g. Wpg is really just a rough guideline we use because the actual light metrics are a pain to measure. A PAR meter would help a lot, but they're expensive.

Providing that you're leaving the lights on 8-10 hours a day and you're not trying some crazy high-light plants, I think you've got a nutrient deficiency rather than a light deficiency.
 
You are probably right.

Nutrients.. I have done a terrible job with them.

I used play sand for the bottom which I know is purely silicate and of no use to the plants.

Last week I put on a layer (bag) of activ flora, I have two more bags to put on. I put on a bag of medium gravel (1/2" round gravel) on the 1/3 with active flora.

My LFS has flourish on back order for the last 3weeks. But before that I was dosing pretty regularly typically every week or every other week.

Three days ago I put on yeast/jello co2 system. It has not been effective to change the ph at all, so I believe it is worthless. I have a lot of left over co2 equipment from other projects and will setup a compressed system by end of week.

Plants are a few swords, tiger lotus, java ferns, Anubis, moneywort, and duckweed. So nothing special.

Duckweed is happy and lush and multiplying, I keep the population down so as to not block the light.

Lotus is the only plant that is doing ok. Leafs are bright and growing without algae.

Everything else is stunted with algae, the moneywort is the strangest. The top leaves are green and seemingly happy, but the mids and bottom leaves are shriveled and dead.

The glass, decorations are growing green. Water has very very light green tinge.

It's been like this since I upgraded to the high output lights, so 4-5 months or so.

My water params are: (using API master kit)
Ph 7.8
Ammonia: .25. Never goes up/down
nitrite: 0 never goes up
Nitrate: 0. bimonthly water changes keep it @0 with a swing to 5-10.
Phosphate: .5
Can't remember gh/dh from the other day; but it is nicely buffered hard water.. Like 75-150.
Temp 79.1 +\- .2 degrees

Filter: 2 fluval g6s.
 
Should mention I have a very large community, nearly 70 small fish. I used Aq advisor to stock my tank... So the bioload is ok, but I'm at my limit.
 
Plants IME make good use of n03, mine seem to fall between 20-30ppm at any give time and they're the least harmful to fish, so that's something to consider. If you run any air stones, they do cause the c02 to offgas faster, as well as open top tanks.

My plants do pretty good without ferts or c02 in gravel. I did just start to use Flourish Excel at 1/2 dose twice a week, but just as a mild compensator due to yellowing tips on a couple onions, etc. Seems to be doing something, but we'll see.

Not sure what would cause the algae you're getting, except to suggest a cuc of some kind. I run 2.5wpg and don't have an issue with it except on my tank glass a bit and a scraping during PWC gets it.

Sent from my Epic 4G using Aquarium Advice App
 
Yea, I understand I should keep the nitrate a little higher.

Was using airstones, but shut them off a week ago.
 
I'm also just starting with plants, though i have a smaller tank 12 g and i'm using a homemade CO2 difusor with yeast and sugar and its working pretty good. Maybe, and I hope somebody steps in if i'm wrong but you need a lot of CO2 for your tank how did you have it set up?
 
I have a 2 liter yeast diy using jello as fuel. It produces 3bubbles every 3-4secs.

I have it routed to an airstone, covered by a sponge filter. The sponge filter seems to just reconstitute the fine bubbles to several larger bubbles. If it was even slightly working id take the sponge off.
 
andresdeo said:
I'm also just starting with plants, though i have a smaller tank 12 g and i'm using a homemade CO2 difusor with yeast and sugar and its working pretty good. Maybe, and I hope somebody steps in if i'm wrong but you need a lot of CO2 for your tank how did you have it set up?

I don't use c02, but looking forward to what info comes your way on the subject. Sounds like the homemade set up works for you. Is that the 2L bottle & Gatorade DIY set up I've seen here?

Sent from my Epic 4G using Aquarium Advice App
 
From what i've read and seen on Youtube you might need Two two litre setups to change the ph in your tank, maybe 3. Bottled CO2 is pretty expensove here and the yeast method does woork you just need to keep an eye on your ph until you get a hang of it. Maybe you could start with 1, then add the second a couple of days after so when the first runs low the second one will still be there. My mix lasts for about a week and a half. How did you build yours, make sure there are no leaks. I'll take some pictures tomorrow so you can see it.
 
My comments below in blue.

You are probably right.
My LFS has flourish on back order for the last 3weeks. But before that I was dosing pretty regularly typically every week or every other week.

- Look into dry ferts. They're a lot cheaper than Flourish. I got mine from this place: Planted Aquarium Fertilizer - Home for a good price. I couldn't imagine buying Flourish for a 180g.

Three days ago I put on yeast/jello co2 system. It has not been effective to change the ph at all, so I believe it is worthless. I have a lot of left over co2 equipment from other projects and will setup a compressed system by end of week.

- Good call going with the compressed setup. A 2L yeast-based CO2 generator doesn't do much for a tank that large.

Everything else is stunted with algae, the moneywort is the strangest. The top leaves are green and seemingly happy, but the mids and bottom leaves are shriveled and dead.

- My moneywort did that when I had it in a tank with insufficient light. Maybe your duckweed is blocking more light than you think. Maybe it's a nutrient deficiency.

It's been like this since I upgraded to the high output lights, so 4-5 months or so.

Filter: 2 fluval g6s.

- High rollin' there! :pimp: How do those filters work? They intrigue the engineer in me. Then the pinchpenny in me smacks the engineer back to his senses.

Should mention I have a very large community, nearly 70 small fish. I used Aq advisor to stock my tank... So the bioload is ok, but I'm at my limit.

- I wouldn't trust AqAdvisor any further than I can throw it when it comes to stocking limits. If your tank doesn't see any more than 10ppm nitrates with PWCs every two weeks, you've got plenty of room for more bioload. If more fish would make the tank physically crowded, thats another story, but with regards to bioload, you're not maxing out the tank yet.
 
Moneywort: so you think I have a light deficiency too? I'll just try to solve the nutrient problem first. I understand co2 as much as watch the ph & get a Drop checker installed. But how do I test for the other nutrient levels? How do I know they are good to go?

G6s; I watched for eBay deals and online sales. The pair of them cost me maybe $500-600. I understand some people have paid more than that for just one! I actually love the unit and would never use anything else.

The benifits are:
Mechanical cleaning is a snap. I hate cleaning other filters, took so long and so messy. I can do a full cleaning of both units in under 6minutes!

The flow rate read out is amazing. I just keep an eye on that and if it ever falls below 100%; I do a quick clean. So much easier and more effective than guessing based on how much water is coming out of the return.

Bio/Chemical scheduler is also something j can't live without. It alerts me when I tell it I want to refresh the filters... So 6months for the bio and 30days for the chem. And since everything is compartmentalized I never bother bio unless I want to.

Temperature graph is also useful, as it tells me what happens to temp when my lights go out... Realistically it tells me when I don't have sufficient heating or I have a crappy heater. (I recommend the aqueon pro 250)

Bioload: then why can't I bring my ammonia below .25? I guess it could be from the unhappy plants..
 
The lighting seems ok, maybe the depth is an issue I havent been able to find a related article. Dont think its a nutrient issue either because you just recently added some and if you plants arent growing that fast its unlikeky it all went away. If you do go with compressed CO2 good for you, for a tank your size it probably is the way to go. In the meantime if you want some help with your homade let me know.
 
I also think the lighting is fine if you don't have a thick carpet of duckweed. My moneywort turned into 8" long sticks with a few green leaves at the top under insufficient light. Losing leaves may be a nutrient problem.

I think you're getting false readings on your ammonia test unless you have dead fish or rotting plants in the tank. Even a small dead fish probably won't be noticed in a tank that large. Two G6s should be plenty of filtration for the tank.
 
Well I installed the co2 system tonight. Had no idea how to set it, turned it on what I thought was slow... 15 minutes later checked the ph, dropped from 7.8 to 6.5!!!

I've shut it off & turned on my bubblers... Will check again in 5.


The co2 bubbles are very small like a millimeter, how many per second should I target?
 
Try 2-3 bubbles per second and get a drop checker. That way you'll know if you have enough co2 or not. Usually a full point drop in ph is 30ppm of co2 (ideal amount) but not always. :)
 
So its been 45min with full o2, no co2, and as much agitation as I can muster... Ph is still 6.6

What should I do?

Justin
 
Start with 1-2 bubbles per second. But dont turn it off all the way and then back on. The sudden ph changes are as bad as a low or high level. If you lighting is good the CO2 should be consumed by the plants so the ph level should not change that much.
 
So trying to figure out what got me into trouble...

I'm using the little airstones as the co2 diffuser.. But they are really really fine, so fine that they dont produce bubbles until I'm dumping (apparently) way too much co2. Below the bubble point they are simply (one to many) 1mm streams of gas.

What should I do to judge the quanitiy of co2? I'll order a drop checker, but until it arrives, what should I do? Keep it turned off?

Ph is now @6.8..

I've turned off the o2 and got the surface back to normal. Set the co2 to one stream.

Fish seem unaware of the changes.
 
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