My tank is lacking something

[TammyLiz]

Hello all. Its been a long time since I've looked in here. It looks like a lot of you have some very nice low tech tanks so I thought I'd see what you can do to help me with mine, which is certainly lacking something.

The tank is 55 gallons, no CO2 injection, 2 32 watt T8 tubes, clay based "soilmaster" substrate. Set up in February '06.

Here is a total plant list:

-water sprite (added last week--doing fine so far)
-italian val (added two weeks ago--has sent out five little runners but has not added any height since I bought it at 5 inches tall)
-java fern windelov (beginning to show some browning on oldest leaves, have had this for about 10 months)
-java fern ( browning leaves, holes in leaves)
-lily that has been allowed to send up floating leaves (there was a major die off of about 60% around a month ago but it has since replaced all leaves--I'm thinking this might not have been a good thing but I'm not sure)
-anubias (this is not doing well at all. I've had it for 6 months and it has almost completely died. There is only one leaf left on a 2 inch rhizome. it had some sort of rot a few months ago and I had to cut a lot off)
-corkscrew val (doing fine, looking healthy, no lost leaves, but not spreading)
-java moss (looking a little brown)
-hornwort (I removed this a couple months ago but I guess a little piece must have been left in since I now have a three foot strand of it)
-wisteria (keeps loosing all but the top leaves but I think its mainly because my gouramis are eating it)

There is some BBA on the driftwood and a coconut cave. (I'm planning on removing that and doing a hydrogen peroxide treatment on that, which I have heard kills it) GSA on the glass that I scrape off when I do water changes.

After all that it sounds like the tank is horribly ugly but its not that bad I just need some more growth. I'll see if I can post a picture.

I have not added ferts to my tank before because I'm afraid of algae, but I'm seeing deficiencies and a lack of growth and am getting frustrated with losing leaves. I was thinking to just get some seachem flourish and see what happens with that but is that a bad idea? Any suggestions on lighting etc are welcome as well. I warn you, though, I'm on a limited budget so anything expensive will have to just go on the wish list for later.

 

[Purrbox]

With your current lighting it would be a good idea to start dosing both a good trace mix (like the Seachem Flourish) and Potassium (Seachem Potassium, K2SO4, or KCL ie NoSalt). These will help to provide the nutrients that are not generally in sufficient quantities for our plants straight out of the tap. Depending on your Bio Load you may need to look at dosing Nitrates and Phosphates too, test results for both would help us determine if this is necessary.

You biggest problem is your combination of plant selection and light level. You definately have low light, but many of your plants would be considered medium light. This explains why many of your plants aren't doing much or are loosing leaves. The easiest solution would be to get a second pair of light strips to put accross the top of the tank. You may need to switch to a glass canopy if your tank currently has a "Deluxe" plastic canopy. Another relatively inexpesive solution would be to ODNO your lighting. Basically for about $8 you can replace the ballast and drive extra energy through your bulbs to get more light. If you search the forum you should be able to find lots of instructions on how to do this.

Bumping your lighting up to about 110 WPG combined with ferts should get you the growth you are looking for while keeping the tank relatively low maintainance.

 

[JDogg]

yea would suggest looking into ferts...the cheapest would be to order from gregwatson.com

KNO3
KH2PO4
K2SO4
CSM+B

would be the usual full compliment of dry ferts... if you are not willing to do dry then i would recommend seachems flourish liquid ferts

you have ~1.7 wpg that is a good low light tank... you should be able to grow some common plants, but they will grow slow.... and not all the onse you have currently

if you want faster growth your can alway up you light and add some CO2...but that is more $

the cheapest way would be to keep the lights where you have them and start dosing a few dry ferts...

 

[Purrbox]

JDogg - I'm a bit confused as to where you are coming up with ~1.7 WPG from 64watts of NO Flourescent over a 55 gallon tank. By my calculations this should be closer to ~1.2WPG, which still has a lot of room for improvement before requiring CO2.

 

[TammyLiz]

Thank you both very much.

Nitrate is plenty high enough for now, around 40ppm (higher than I'd like for my loaches). I am not sure what would happen with nitrites if I started dosing other ferts and ended up with more growth, and possibly doing more frequent water changes if I get that python I've asked for for Christmas. Currently 30% biweekly, although I used to do it weekly. By the time Christmas comes around I'll be eight months pregnant. The further along I get the harder it is to carry those buckets around. As of now, I wait until my husband can help me.

I don't know about potassium because I don't have a test kit for that.

Which plants are you foreseeing having issues from the lighting even after I start to dose some ferts? Any growth in my tank is very slow now, and that doesn't really bother me, but I don't like it when they die back as fast as they grow, or when they don't grow tall enough to fill up the area I want them for, which is what happened with the wisteria. Its still to early to tell with the water sprite, but there has been no die back yet, and several new shoots are curling up from the bottom. And should I expect the val to stay short in these conditions? I had 15 watts over a ten gallon with some corkscrew and it lost leaves as quickly as it sprouted new, but it does OK in this tank as long as I don't let the KH go all the way down to nothing (although not much new growth, maybe three leaves a month from the whole lot!). Should I expect the same from the italian?

I will check that out about adding a new ballast, or possibly consider adding one more tube if not. There should be room in the hood. I don't want to do CO2 because I feel like it would be too much expense (injected) or too much hassle (diy). I just don't have a good feel for what is a good balance of lighting, plant selection and mass, and fertilization without the CO2. I'm sure its a learned thing but I want to escape mistakes so badly.

 

[Purrbox]

Vals: Medium Light
Wisteria: Medium Light

Watersprite: Medium Low Light

Java Ferns: Low Light
Java Moss: Low Light
Anubias: Low Light

Lilies: ???

Basically anything that is low light should be fine in your current setup as soon as you get the dosing balanced. Anything that is marked Medium Low Light will be borderline and have slow growth. The remaining plants that are marked Medium Light will probably never do well under the current lighting.

There isn't a test kit for Potassium. Luckily it's nearly impossible to overdose, so you really don't need a test kit. Just add more if your plants are showing Potassium Deficiency symptoms. A normal starting dose is 10-20ppm over a week. This can be all at once right after a water change, or several smaller doses throughout the week.

A phosphate test kit can be handy. Seachem is the best hobbiest grade test kit at the moment according to those in the know. Generally this is one of the tests that isn't included with your basic master test kit. Since your Nitrates are currently around 40ppm, you probably have plenty of Phosphate as well. Keep an eye on them though once you start dosing Traces and Potassium, as your plants will probably start using more Nitrates and Phosphates as a result.

As long as the Anubias rhizome is still firm and hasn't been buried in the substrate, it should come back around given some time. They are very hardy plants that can endure quite a bit.

 

[JDogg]

JDogg - I'm a bit confused as to where you are coming up with ~1.7 WPG from 64watts of NO Flourescent over a 55 gallon tank. By my calculations this should be closer to ~1.2WPG, which still has a lot of room for improvement before requiring CO2.

he said he has t8 bulbs...my understanding has been that a t8 is worth 1.5 t12 (t12s are used for the wpg rule) so...

(32 x 2 x 1.5)/ 55 = 1.745454545454545... wpg

maybe i have been doing it all wrong 8O

Vals: Medium Light

not to contradict you, but i have sucessfully grown a jungle val at < 1 wpg with not ferts for a period of 6 months before i upgraded my lights...

 

[Purrbox]

I never could keep it straight whether it was the T12's or the T8's that the WPG "rule" was based off of. Based on the sampling in Wizard~Of~Ozz's Article, the efficiency increase of T8's over T12's is only 141%. These are rather low samplings, so the it's at best an estimate. This would still only result in an ~1.58WPG equivalent. Once you take into account the length and width of the tank, it's knocked down closer to ~1.5WPG equivalent. So still some room for improvement without going high tech, but not as much. Of course there could be some extra room depending on how good the reflectors are on the current fixtures.

All of the the lighting levels for the plants were taken from PlantGeek.Net. As with all things there are exceptions. There are many instances where people have grown plants with significantly less light than they "require", but this is definately not the norm and they usually don't thrive. The symptoms that TammyLiz described for both the Wisteria and the Vals are in line with plants that are not receiving enough light to be able to thrive.

EDIT

Just found where you were getting the 149% efficiency difference from. That particular number is based off of the comparison of two specific Phillips Deluxe Bulbs. This was used to give a concrete example in the article about the differences in efficiency that the different types of bulbs have. Unless you have the specific Lumens output for a bulb, you are better off using the efficiency differences from the chart which is based off of a sample of bulbs and gives a much more representative number for comparison. This is especially true since the Phillips Deluxe T8 bulb had the highest Lumens output of all the T8 bulbs. Off course the numbers would be even better if we could convince someone to take the time to research more of the available bulbs to find out their Lumen output levels so that the numbers would be based off of an even larger sample.

 

[JDogg]

I never could keep it straight whether it was the T12's or the T8's that the WPG "rule" was based off of. Based on the sampling in Wizard~Of~Ozz's Article, the efficiency increase of T8's over T12's is only 141%. These are rather low samplings, so the it's at best an estimate. This would still only result in an ~1.58WPG equivalent. Once you take into account the length and width of the tank, it's knocked down closer to ~1.5WPG equivalent. So still some room for improvement without going high tech, but not as much. Of course there could be some extra room depending on how good the reflectors are on the current fixtures.

All of the the lighting levels for the plants were taken from PlantGeek.Net. As with all things there are exceptions. There are many instances where people have grown plants with significantly less light than they "require", but this is definately not the norm and they usually don't thrive. The symptoms that TammyLiz described for both the Wisteria and the Vals are in line with plants that are not receiving enough light to be able to thrive.

EDIT

Just found where you were getting the 149% efficiency difference from. That particular number is based off of the comparison of two specific Phillips Deluxe Bulbs. This was used to give a concrete example in the article about the differences in efficiency that the different types of bulbs have. Unless you have the specific Lumens output for a bulb, you are better off using the efficiency differences from the chart which is based off of a sample of bulbs and gives a much more representative number for comparison. This is especially true since the Phillips Deluxe T8 bulb had the highest Lumens output of all the T8 bulbs. Off course the numbers would be even better if we could convince someone to take the time to research more of the available bulbs to find out their Lumen output levels so that the numbers would be based off of an even larger sample.

so basicly you are saying that i should not count a t8 as 1.5 time a t12? even if ime a 32 watt t8 will grow plants better then the same size 40 watt t12... when both have the same k temp...?

 

[rkilling1]

so basicly you are saying that i should not count a t8 as 1.5 time a t12? even if ime a 32 watt t8 will grow plants better then the same size 40 watt t12... when both have the same k temp...?

I don't want to but words in anyones mouths or posts. , but I believe what Purrbox is saying is that we should be using a more conservative number when converting to lumen output. Instead of using 1.5 we should be using 1.4. That 149% was based on two bulbs of the same brand and therefore not a true comparison of T-8's vs T-12's.

so 2 x 32 x 1.41 / 55 = 1.64 WPG. That's not bad. That will grow a nice selection of plants without adding CO2.

Now if you where to add another ballast as Purrbox has mentioned earlier.

2 x 32 x 1.41 x 1.7 (ODNO) / 55 = 2.79 WPG now we are talking the need (maybe) for adding CO2 and ferts and what not. The ballast is 8 bucks at home depot.

 

[JDogg]

so basicly you are saying that i should not count a t8 as 1.5 time a t12? even if ime a 32 watt t8 will grow plants better then the same size 40 watt t12... when both have the same k temp...?

I don't want to but words in anyones mouths or posts. , but I believe what Purrbox is saying is that we should be using a more conservative number when converting to lumen output. Instead of using 1.5 we should be using 1.4. That 149% was based on two bulbs of the same brand and therefore not a true comparison of T-8's vs T-12's.

so 2 x 32 x 1.41 / 55 = 1.64 WPG. That's not bad. That will grow a nice selection of plants without adding CO2.

Now if you where to add another ballast as Purrbox has mentioned earlier.

2 x 32 x 1.41 x 1.7 (ODNO) / 55 = 2.79 WPG now we are talking the need (maybe) for adding CO2 and ferts and what not. The ballast is 8 bucks at home depot.

ok... lol so now that we are done splitting hairs
for the benefit of the OP...
you have a nice low/medium-low light tank
can grow a fair range of plants
probably do not need much in the way of ferts, but maybe a little would help get some growth
and probably do not need CO2

did i get that all right Guys and Gals?

 

[TammyLiz]

Hmm...well, if I didn't need much in the way of ferts and the lighting is OK then why am I having so much trouble? I def. need some ferts (not sure how much), but the question seems to have changed to do I need more lighting as well, and how much.

Maybe replace one of my bulbs, too. They're getting a little old. Right now I have a 3000K bulb and a 6500K bulb in there. I like the way it looks with the two together. I have an extra one of each already. BUT, should I just put two of the 6500 instead of having one of each?

That ballast from Home Depot sounds great if I decide I need more--anything under $10 is attractive to me . It sounds like I might end up with too much light this way, though, and need CO2, but is it something worth trying to see what happens or is that just asking for trouble?

 

[rkilling1]

That 3000K bulb might be your problem. You should go and get another bulb in the 5000 to 10000K range. I would dose a trace fert and a K fert weekly.

EDIT: pick up the bulb at home depot or lowes not at a fish store. The LFS cost why to much. I just picked up a GE aquarium 24" T-8 bulb at lowes for 6 bucks and at my LFS the wanted 19 bucks for pretty much the same bulb!

 

[TammyLiz]

OK so I'll replace the 3000K with another 6500K and see if the vals won't do better.

I looked at them again this morning and it looks like there are two more plantlets starting. Its certainly not hesitating to spread. It still doesn't look any taller, though. Each plantlet (besides the two new ones) is between one and two inches tall. So the plant is not doing that bad.

I do get my bulbs from Home Depot. Well, I think I got the 6500K from Lowes and the 3000K from Home Depot. Anyways...I agree, its silly to pay more than twice as much for a bulb that varies only a tiny bit in the spectrum. In your case, more than three times as much!

 

[JDogg]

if you do not plan to upgrade the lights then you could probabaly get aways with oh say 1 tsp of K2SO4 (if you go with dry) and then some trace, (CSM+B Mix) dosing once a week with your pwc...

i would wait to upgrade lights until you get the ferts under control at your current light level... then you can play with the ferts at the new light level

 

[TammyLiz]

That looks like sound advice to me, JDogg. I think I'll take it. I was feeling nervous about changing too many things at once.

So I've replaced that 3000K with a 6500K and will order some ferts. I'll let you all know how it goes. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions.

 

[Purrbox]

Rkilling, you summarized what I was trying to say very well. Thank you.

TammyLiz, I think you'll like the look of the two 6500K bulbs even better although it may take a little bit of time to get used to. The other thing to keep in mind is that you need to be swapping out the bulbs every 6-9 months as the color spectrum will start breaking down and cease to be as beneficial to the plants even though it looks the same to our eyes. Since you mentioned that the bulbs were getting a bit old, this could easily be part of the problem.

As far as the Vals not getting any taller, it could be that the particular variety that you are dealing with simply doesn't get very tall.

For Ferts I would recommend the following:
Traces - Dose to 0.1-0.2ppm of fe once a week
Potassium - Dose to 10-20ppm once a week

This should help your plants to perk up a bit more especially with the newer bulbs.

 

[JDogg]

Rkilling, you summarized what I was trying to say very well. Thank you.

TammyLiz, I think you'll like the look of the two 6500K bulbs even better although it may take a little bit of time to get used to. The other thing to keep in mind is that you need to be swapping out the bulbs every 6-9 months as the color spectrum will start breaking down and cease to be as beneficial to the plants even though it looks the same to our eyes. Since you mentioned that the bulbs were getting a bit old, this could easily be part of the problem.

As far as the Vals not getting any taller, it could be that the particular variety that you are dealing with simply doesn't get very tall.

For Ferts I would recommend the following:
Traces - Dose to 0.1-0.2ppm of fe once a week
Potassium - Dose to 10-20ppm once a week

This should help your plants to perk up a bit more especially with the newer bulbs.

the 1 tsp of K dry i suggested should give you ~13 ppm K in your tank

 

[TammyLiz]

I was by the pet store today and picked up some flourish while I was there. Eventually I will likely get some dry ferts but since they are not available right in the store, I figured I would get some of this. Unless someone has a better idea, I guess I'll just go with the instructions on the bottle. It says I should use a capful once or twice a week. I hope I'm not shooting myself in the foot by starting this way instead of dosing things individually.

And Purrbox, my bulbs are 10 months old, so overdue for a change. I was thinking I'd just do one at a time. Maybe one now and one in a couple of months? Is this a good idea? Or should I switch them both now? I guess I should have switched one several months ago, and the other last month.

 

[czcz]

This is a good no-registration dosing calculator to get the ppm targets above: http://www.fishfriend.com/fertfriend.html

If you prefer an Excel spreadsheet, Zezmo's is linked in the fertilization sticky.

I know I'm not Purrbox, but new bulbs is a good idea.

I don't want to but words in anyones mouths or posts. Razz , but I believe what Purrbox is saying is that we should be using a more conservative number when converting to lumen output. Instead of using 1.5 we should be using 1.4. That 149% was based on two bulbs of the same brand and therefore not a true comparison of T-8's vs T-12's.

Only for clarity, almost all T-8 at 3-5ft length have fairly close lumens/watt ratings, and I am confident Ozz and others could increase the sample size with fairly close conversions. An exception to this is one sample from Busko's article with ~60lumens/watt. The difference between 1.4-1.5 watts T-12/watt T-8 is ignorable: all the math and contributions by our members still only provides a guess to effective lighting. It is notable/interesting however that the above conversions are comparable to other standards, such as Fitch's analysis of Amano's lighting.

"Equations are the Devil's sentences."

IMO/HTH