Tank Look Meh

[Popeye21]

Hi All,

This tank, the only one I have, is 2.3 gallons and set up as a planted nano shrimp tank (aqua soil covered by small gauge gravel) and is about 6 months old. In addition to about 7-10 neocaradina shrimp (hard to count!), I have 2 Neon Tetras and several snails including a larger mystery snail I call Bertha. The attached pictures may be a little out of focus but illustrate my three questions.

1. overall the tank looks a little dingy to me. I have a small hang on back filter and keep the water at 71F. The plants look muted not bright. and the shrimp have not reproduced despite finding molted shells on occasion.
2. Several of the plants, and you can just see it in the picture of the leaf, have darker green filaments growing along the edges of many of the leaves. it also is growing on the moss and the grass type plants and looks like fuzz. Any way to control that? Anything eat the stuff?
3. I noticed the light colored area at the front of the tank. It looks like a fungus of some kind in the substrate. What is that and is it something to worry about?

I also attached the test strip results PH is running about 6.8-7.0 but it's hard for me to tell exactly. I have tried to us API PH UP to get it up slightly, but either I'm not using enough or I'm missing something because I can't seen to raise the PH much...and I don't want a big swing so I've been timid.

Thanks for any well...advice.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Your plants look like there is some nutrient deficiency. There are signs of magnesium, manganese, and iron deficiency. Your test looks to be zero nitrate, which while great for fish, isnt healthy for plants. I suspect the floating plants are just stripping what nutrients are available and causing nutrient issues with the submerged plants.

Are you dosing any fertilisers?

How long is your light on for?

I agree, the stuff down the front looks like mold or fungus. Maybe decomposing uneaten food? Maybe something died? I'd get a toothbrush and try and dig it out at your next water change, and remove it with your syphon.

 

[Popeye21]

Hi. thx for responding. No on fertilizer and the light is set on for 12 hours on a timer.

Would you recommend removing the floating duckweed?

 

[Aiken Drum]

I think a few things might be working against you here.

Plants generally do better in harder, higher mineral content water because thats type of water is more likely to contain the essential nutrients that plants need.

12 hours a day of lighting is way too much. You need to find a balance between light, nutrients and CO2 availability. With 12 hours of light, the plants are being to forced to grow for a long period, but with insufficient nutrients you get unhealthy growth. Couple that up with duckweed being a very nutrient hungry plant, that lives on the surface with maximum light and CO2 and they will just hoover up any nutrients over a long photosynthesising period.

A successful planted tank is about fiddling. Change one thing, see what happens over a number of weeks. Good or bad you know it is down to the one thing you changed. Change things a bit here, a bit there. Give things long enough to react to the change, at least a few weeks.

Things I would do, not necessarily all at once.

Get a decent test kit. With your nutrients being low, you will be doing a fair of amount of testing. Test strips are very expensive per test. They are also unreliable. A liquid test kit like API Freshwater Master Test Kit, while more expensive up front, is more cost effective as it gives you 100s of tests.

Get a decent fertiliser, that has a good amount of nitrogen (nitrate) in there. Something like NA Thrive or Aquarium Coop Easy Green. You want the nitrate up above 10ppm. You will have to figure out a dosing regime to get you up there and keep you up there. You might want to look into a dosing regime called "estimative index".

Cut back on the lighting. 6 to 8 hours a day is plenty for plants. They might grow slower, but slower growth shouldn't be so nutrient deficient.

You could try adding some alkalinity buffer like seachem alkalinity buffer, and a general hardness buffer like seachem equilibrium. The equilibrium will add a lot of the essential minerals that plants need that might be missing from whatever fertiliser you get. You want KH around 3 to 5 degrees of hardness (60 to 100ppm). You want GH around 5 to 8 degrees of hardness (100 to 160ppm).

Get rid of the duckweed, if you can. Duckweed has a tendancy to not be easy to get rid of. Maybe try frogbit that's a bit less nutrient hungry. With less nutrients being sucked up, maybe that will help your other plants.

How is the duckweed doing? There is a method of judging nutrient levels called "duckweed index". The theory is that duckweed growth is a good indicator of nutrient levels, if the duckweed is doing well you can be sure there is enough nutrients in the water, albeit the duckweed may be using it all.

 

[Popeye21]

Yes, the duckweed is flourishing and I have to remove most of them every week or two. I'll cut back in the lighting and see is that actually improves things, maybe also tinker with the intensity level. The water chemistry is my weak link I have NEOTiger KH+/GH+, Aqueon Shrimp Essentials, API Leaf Zone, but with such a small tank, I have been adding minuscule amounts to be in scale with the instructions.

Thanks for the detailed feedback. Any advice on the filamented algae living on the leaves of the plants?

 

[Enchantress]

Get liquid tests, strips are notoriously inaccurate. Don't mess around with the pH, it should be kept stable & fiddling with it will just result in swings, especially in such a small volume of water. Speaking of, 2.3 gal is really not big enough for fish. And tetras are schooling fish, they fare best in a group and a tank that's at least 5-10 times bigger than yours. I would rehome them if I were you & just focus on the shrimp. Fuzz growing on plants is algae, that's down to too much light, like Aiken said.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Any advice on the filamented algae living on the leaves of the plants?

12 hours a day with the light on won't be helping.

 

[Popeye21]

OK I removed all the duckweed (said everyone who then finds duckweed in their tank). I lowered the light duration to 6 hours (+plus whatever ambient light the tank gets), While I research and purchase the recommended supplements, I added the above listed supplements I have on hand in exact ratio for my 2.3 gal tank to increase KH, GH, add plant nutrients; and added a one Weco Wonder Shell natural minerals ...er shell.

Time to monitor and see how it goes. Water clarity looks good and the tank does look brighter without the top cover. I think scaling down the rock sizes and removing a plant from the middle with also be a positive thing. Thanks for the help.

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