Planting advice needed.

[sudz]

Alright, i have a 24inch deep 44 gallon, with a 96 watt PC (6700k bulb) in the hood. I could only fit 18 inch fixtures, so i got the highest possible wattage i could get feasibly.

Now... The tank has NEVER been good for plants.

The only thing that grew nicely was watersprite, and it ended up nearly taking over the tank, and i stupidly got rid of it.

I added a few fish a couple months ago, and ever since, chunks go missing out of plants. I'm trying to determine the prepetrator:
Could it be a blue gourami, or some false SAE's, Congo Tetra's, or dwarf Neon Rainbowfish?

I have yet to catch one in the act.

Either way, even BEFORE someone got an appetite, the tank has never flourished. I dose Excel, Have eco complete substrate, leave the lights on for about 10 hours.

Algae is in check, i have to wipe the glass with a magnet scraper maybe once every few weeks, to get the "foggy" algae off it. The tank is moderately/heavily stocked with fish. The temp is around 82-83*F

The plants i put in usually stay alive indefinately... but never grow. Or if they do, its slowly, and a fish comes along and feeds on the new bud :-(

Any suggestions? Should i start dosing something new?

Anyone know of a fast growing, lower light ground cover plant?

 

[JDogg]

well 2.2 wpg is descent, medium light, you should be able to grow a fair bit of plants with that... but if the tank is 2 feet tall you do not have 2.2 wpg at the bottom for your ground cover... not sure but if you at 1 wpg worth of light at that depth you should be doing good...

you are dosing excel i see, that should help... have you considered switching to DIY CO2?

you maybe want to look into dosing ferts... if you are dosing excel..you might be adding enough C to be running short on something and thus not getting growth...

can you give me a quick run down of you tests?

PH
KH
GH
NO3
PO4

you should be averaging 10-30 ppm NO3 and 1-3 ppm PO4

as far as who is eating your plants... i have heard of congo tetra nibbling on soft plants...

also check for snails...

 

[sudz]

Phosphate is 1ppm
PH is at Over 7.2, under 7.6 (probably 7.4 lol)
Nitrates at 40 ppm (highest ive ever seen... I attribute this to a recent digging /upset of the substrate by me)
KH is at 10 Degrees
GH is at.... *edit... I read the instructions wrong* ... about 15 degrees GH.orrrr 255 ppm. From my understanding, thats Very hard, but GH isn't as important as KH?

 

[JDogg]

NO3-PO4 is a little out of wack... i like to see about 10 ppm NO3 for every 1 ppm PO4

you might want to start dosing a little micro mix, like CSM+B or Flourish Comprehensive... as well as K

based on your KH and PH numbers you are only getting about 12 ppm CO2... you would be better off with over 30 ppm CO2... still thinking DIY might be for you..should get more growth, but you will have to start dosing for sure...

 

[sudz]

I do have the hagen bubble ladder, but i know its too small for the tank. I really should bust out the 2 liter bottle on my power head again.

I think i will do that!

As for the nitrates, i disturbed ALOT of muck the other day, the tank went foggy for a few hours until the filter could get rid of it. I blame that for the nitrate spike. 2 weeks ago, it was at 5ppm. I'll do water changes to get that down.

 

[rkilling1]

As for the nitrates, i disturbed ALOT of muck the other day, the tank went foggy for a few hours until the filter could get rid of it. I blame that for the nitrate spike. 2 weeks ago, it was at 5ppm. I'll do water changes to get that down.

FWIW, I would rather have my NO3's at 40 PPM then 5. A good range is 20-30 PPM NO3. If you try and maintain 5 PPM, you had better have a very good NO3 kit, not an AP or test strip one. That and you should probably be dosing NO3's everyday to maintain 5.

Why is 5 so bad, First off the AP NO3 test is notorious for reporting a false positive when the NO3's are that low. ie the test kit reports 5 PPM when if fact there is 0. Once you bottom out on NO3, aglae will soon follow. Even if your test kit is spot on, who's to say that the plants will not consume all of the NO3's before you test again?

 

[sudz]

It used to hover around 0. I started getting BBA, lots of spot algae, and some hair algae as well. I started dosing KNO3 for a few weeks, Bought some more fish (always the solution... "theres a fish for that!" lol) and started dosing excel. Never had an algae problem since.
HOWEVER< i just lengthened the light cycle, so we'll see if that upsets the balance.

I was under the impression that people tride to keep phospates down... How do you raise them?

To get that proper mix... should i do a 50% water change and throw in some KNO3? I have a fair amount of fish in there:
1 Rainbow, 1 loach, 1 gouarmi, 3 neons, 3 Black Phantom Tetra's, 2 False SAE's, 4 Congo Tetra's 3 cherry barbs, ... i think thats it. lol.

I've mixed a fresh batch of yeast/sugar/bakingsoda, and its bubbling away, through my powerhead. the bubble ladder is going at about 1 bubble per 2.5 seconds.

Since its been a while, I've drained an inch out of the tank for the night to let the HOB filter let some surface agitation. I know they'd be fine... but i'm still parinoid because usually there is less than a cm distance from the top of my tank and the canopy. Not much fresh air. Anything else i should do? I'll keep the nitrates above 20 from now on (woo hoo! less water changes!

 

[czcz]

Also, it becomes easier to crash NO3 for color once you've been dosing a while. I agree completely with rkilling1, and suggest you dose high to make your life easier and keep algae away. Then when you're in the swing experimenting becomes more fun with higher rewards.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Along with PWC's, you may need to start dosing all the ferts. The ferts I use is from Greg Watson. Here's all you would need to get, and with the 1lb baggies, a single bag will last about a year, maybe longer if smaller dosing is needed.

KNO3 - Nitrate
KH2PO4 - Phosphate
K2SO4 - Potassium
CSM+B- Traces

Also, you asked about a ground cover. I'm sure Purrbox would agree, E. Tiandra is an excellent choice. I really like the stuff myself. Another is clover, but I don't like that near as much.

 

[sudz]

Hey lonewolf! Thanks for that advice! What does E. Tiandra look like? google isn't coming up with any results :-(

 

[Purrbox]

Try searching for Elatine Triandra, amazing what one little letter can do to thwart a search.

 

[sudz]

OH its beautiful!!!! I must try it! lol. Now... to wait until i see it at a local store, and scan A.A's Classifieds...

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Here's mine....
Yes, it can grow thick too....

 

[GlitcH]

Sudz,

While everyone else is covering the fert side of things.
I'd like to know more about your lights.

Is it DIY?
Is your reflector clean?
Exactly how many 18 inch bulbs make up the 96 watts?
Any chance of uploading a picture?
And finally how old is the bulb?

 

[sudz]

Uh, It is a Coralife setup. The glass isn't sparkling clean, but i wipe it down with a wet cloth. It seems to turn white from deposits overnight. I'[ll take a picture(s)...

Its a square pin bulb, a single one with 4 tubes, 6700k variety, and its just over a year old. I read a site that says PC lights should basically be replaced when they fail. They still output over 80% of their light after burn-in period. The light is still painful to look at, lol.

Uhhh, I removed the one piece of glass from the actual light unit, as the tank has glass in the canopy. (no moisture gets to the lights) I also wanted to do this, because the fans that came with it, were VERY noise. I disconnected them, and opened the bottom, and the thing just gets warm to the touch. Appears to be fine.

 

[GlitcH]

Hah.........I have the same fixture.
The fans on mine are starting to get noisy too.

Well it looks like your lighting is fine....probably.
I'm not crazy about that hood though. [looks like it may be blocking significant amounts of light but it's hard to tell]
It doesn't look like you could go with no hood cuz the fixture seems to small for that but you may want to look into a glass top if the dosing doesn't help out the plants.
To check if the hood is blocking significant light, just hold the light in place over the tank without the hood [ use at least 2 people for this ].
If the tank seems a lot brighter, I'd look into a glass top.

HTH

 

[sudz]

Well... ya learn something new every day... while looking at "planted" discus tanks, i read that some plants just don't like to grow in warm tanks. Considering this tank is 83-84 all the time... Could that be my problem?!

 

[Glenc]

Those temps could be your problem.
I've read that Amano keeps all his tanks at 26C, 78-79F
84F is to hot for many plants for to long a period. Many will melt on you. I found that out while heating up one of my tanks to kill ick. Got rid of the ick, but alot of the the plants suffered badly. That was only a couple of weeks of high temps, around 85F.