Recent changes I've made and their results (lighting/ferts)

[7Enigma]

So I've had a mild bout of GW that just would never go away. Even after diatom filtering to a crystal clear tank, a couple days later here it comes again. I also seem to see a deficiency that makes no sense on my dosing and numbers. I dry fert dose frequently and do 50% PWC's once a week on friday, and have DIY CO2 that is now pretty consistent with 2 2L bottles, one being switched out each week. I've got a pressurized system in the mail!

I have a 65w CF light over my 20gallon high tank. I used to have it come on at 6:30am, go off at 10:30am, back on at 1:30pm, and off at 9:45pm. This was so I could actually appreciate my tank, but I had wondered if it was causing problems.

I have now switched to the lights coming on at 1pm, and off at 10pm. The CO2 comes on about 30min before lights on, and stays on for about 45minutes after lights off.

I've also started dosing MgCl even though my GH test says 10degrees. I have a sneaky suspicion that my deficiency is either calcium or magnesium and I have a bag of MgCl (since everything else is dosed above what is considered normal dosage), and I supplement the DIY with Excel so I find it hard to believe carbon is an issue.

So here are the results:

-I am still seeing deficiency symptoms but will give it another couple of weeks as the new growth does not show these. I have not seen any more algae which tends to show itself after the deficiency symptoms start (mainly staghorn which is forever present in my tank in small amounts)

-The GW is gone. This could be from a shorter lighted period, or from eliminating the siesta. Frankly I don't care.

-The biggest benefit (and most obvious)? The plants are growing much slower now. It is so nice NOT to have to rip out a huge clump of stargrass at each water change. Now I get an extra 1/2 week. This also my prevent the GW as I'm not disturbing the substrate as often.

 

[7Enigma]

Surprised I didnt' get a single comment, oh well.

Update now a week later. New leaves/growth shows NO deficiency signs and my slight GW and algae issues are also all but gone.

Since I didn't only change 1 variable I cannot say for sure but my gut tells me the Mg and Ca where to blame. I wish I had never had a GH test kit in the first place, that would have forced me to EI dose them and wouldn't have had a problem.

My Riccia unfortunately doesn't seem to be doing so well (not growing and slowly turning yellow). I have removed 1/2 of it to the QT tank that is low light and seems to baby along things that don't like my main tank. The christmas moss is doing incredible and I have a piece of "driftwood" that I'm curing to use as a tree in the tank. I hope to have that up and running in the tank within a month (probably another week of drying, then boiling and a quick dunk for a couple days in the QT tank for the snails to test it out, then into the main tank).

I had planned on tying moss and riccia to it so it looked like a living tree, but it might only be moss if the riccia continues its decline....

 

[GlitcH]

Was the pressurized CO2 a xmas gift? You're gonna love it.

So your killin my Riccia huh.......lol.

If it's cuz of the light........you could float it for a while till i bounces back.

 

[dapellegrini]

Glad to hear I am not the only one.

I also have hard water (measures over 200ppm) and thought I could skip the Mg/Ca thing too... Seems that things are happier now that I does Barr's GH Booster on PWC day. The water hasn't turned to stone as I theorized it might. LOL

 

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

I'm wondering if the lighting didn't play a bigger role.. Assuming this is a high light tank, putting the lights on for 4 hours, then off, then on for 8 hours.. that's a lot of light, and quite the "dark" period (this is the point where plants do a lot of their work).. Essentially, you could have been tricking the plants into thinking 2 days had past.. Also you did have the lights on for 12 hours a day, and you broke it up so the plants wouldn't even "close up"... this would have also caused massive consumption of ferts..

just my disorganized thoughts.. congrats on getting it sorted out.

 

[7Enigma]

Wizzard,

I can see both sides of the story, but have concluded it was the Mg and Ca deficiency. I could definitely do an experiment going back to the previous lighting period and see if the problems come back, but frankly I hate messing with my digital timer. It's behind the QT tank, and isn't really easy to change.

Again it was a deficiency, not an overgrowth or anything weird like that. I was heavily dosing ferts, and once I went with 2 2L bottles (one changed each week) the CO2 portion of the dosing should have been consistent (along with Excel dosing as a safety measure). That only leaves traces not supplied by my water/food/CSM+B (I was also occasionally dosing Flourish comprehensive thinking there was another trace element that the CSM+B didn't have), and GH related nutrients. Since I had the GH test and saw 10degrees, there was no reason at the time to doubt there was WELL in excess of both. After getting the local water report which showed very little Mg and ~30ppm calcium I began to wonder where this number was coming from.

I assumed somewhere between the treatment plant and the house obviously, but thought it was usable and real. Seems this whole time I've been futzing around with upping CO2 and probably "overdosing" on potassium and traces (symptoms looked like potassium or iron deficiency), I should have just dosed the full complement of nutrients.

Anyways, the pressurized setup was a gift to myself. I just have to get a tank and I'm ready to go...

 

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

I cannot say for sure but my gut tells me the Mg and Ca where to blame.

-The biggest benefit (and most obvious)? The plants are growing much slower now.

Just saying the lighting caused the faster growth, and this would in turn cause deficiencies. Wasn't disagreeing, just trying to point out that very fast growth causes things to change suddenly, and deficiencies become more obvious quicker.

 

[7Enigma]

I cannot say for sure but my gut tells me the Mg and Ca where to blame.

-The biggest benefit (and most obvious)? The plants are growing much slower now.

Just saying the lighting caused the faster growth, and this would in turn cause deficiencies. Wasn't disagreeing, just trying to point out that very fast growth causes things to change suddenly, and deficiencies become more obvious quicker.

Completely agree, but if you check the other thread in this forum my dosing amount and frequency would be considered above normal. Also (didn't think of this until now), I previously had a 50/50 bulb in and the plants still showed these symptoms (this would be much less light than now even with the increased duration). Pretty much since the start of my planted hobby fast growers have shown symptoms that I just couldn't beat. I was adding everything my test kits told me I needed...

 

[zenkatydid]

unless the tank is in a completely dark room during the day, it would have been getting more light than the hours you provided it. in my experience, algae can get light from ambient, while plants seem to only be able to utilise the directed. case in point: i have bga growing underneath my gravel, facing out to the room-lit side of the tank. tank lights don't reach it, it's pure ambient light feeding it.