My Tanks

rajkm

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Been more than a year since I posted anything. Life has been busy and I have been more active on FB groups than forums just for ease of it. Anyways I hope to keep this journal updated frequently.

I am running 10 tanks, 2 emersed bins since I bought my house last year and I’ll try to capture all of them in this journal. However I’ll probably keep it to select few tanks of interest in future posts.

Let’s start this post my least attended tanks because there won’t be too many updates on them.

These are my 4x10g tanks. 3 are shrimp tanks and 1 is pencil fish tank which I got for a deal for my future tank. It will get some plants soon. I wanted to play with sand only substrate so this is my chance

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Another fish only tank is panda loach tank. This used to be my display tank that many have seen on my journals. I like panda loaches and will continue to keep them separate. Hope to find ways to breed them.

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This is one of my 2 office tanks. Its a shrimp only tank with some mosses. Trying my hand at scaping.

The mosses here grow easy and I have about 4 different types in there.

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This is my newest low tech tank. It’s substrate starts with Flourite, followed by old eco complete, the old Amazonia soil and some Flourite sand, and finally Africana. The reason for this substrate layers was because I broke down a few tanks and combined them into this 40b.

The right back corner is a ton of needle leaf java fern I got from Tom. And front is a good amount of buces which I also got from Tom and some others which I bought from many others.

The tank has Rotala Japan Red, Rotala Blood Red in the back, both of which are not at its optimal but growing well. They used to look better in CO2 injected tanks. I have not done any WC on it since I set it up 3 months ago. The nitrate levels are about 15-20ppm and plants are enjoying it. I recently added some Pantanal to see how it does without CO2 in this tank. The plant also has a lot of red root floaters so they help keep nitrate in check.

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Remaining tanks in next post.
 

rajkm

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With my other tanks out of the way, let’s start with my main tank.

This is a 40b farm tank. Currently it has a single 16” sbreef light hanging over it. It contains most of my plants and is probably the one I will continue to monitor regularly and will be of interest.

The tank gets EI dosing with a modified micro. The micro is standard dose of CSMB. I added Fe Gluconate and Fe DTPA to it at 3:1:1 ratio of CSMB. I also added Mn, Mg, B and K to the mix.

The reason for doing so is I have too many plants in this tank, usually I used to see iron deficiency when I did regular EI. Also some of my plants were slow.

The addition of Mn was to manage the ratio of Fe to Mn.

Inclusion of Mg, K and B will be discussed in a different post on this thread.


All plants do well in this tank except for Rotala Red Cross and Ammannia. Still need to figure out what it’s lacking.


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Here is Rotala Red Cross, starting to look happy. This was a few days ago. I think it’s stressed again. We will see

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Some other pictures of the tank


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rajkm

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Next up is my shrimp tank. Here again I am trying my hand at scaping.

Since it’s a PRL shrimp tank, it gets no dosing, and has CO2 at about 20ppm.


The plants color up well due to Nitrate deficiency. I had to lower my lights because the tank had hair algae infestation. The algae is gone but now the plants are throwing greener leafs. I will slowly up the lights to a point where Nitrates are limited but doesn’t cause algae.


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You can see the green leafs on Blyxa Nuvoguineensis now in the above pic.

This is a earlier pic where the entire plant was red

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E. Hydropiper seems to like this setup better

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rajkm

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The farm tank got a heavy trim a week ago and also a second 16” sbreef light.
This is really pushing the tank and I think I am starting tto see certain deficiencies crop up.
Most likely it’s N bottoming out because I can see yellowing of old leafs, more so on slow growers like ferns and Anubias.
I am still dosing EI levels but might have to increase the dosing once I play around with what could be limiting.

The GDA is also making a return on the glass. I hadn’t cleaned the glass for over 4 months because it had zero algae on it. But now I can see slight dust build up. I’ll leave it as is and see if it dies once tank stabilizes.

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Overall the plants are reacting very well to the high light.
Plants have unstunted without any dosing change. Plants are getting redder without actually dosing limitation either (EI is not the problem as people may be preaching).

Maka Red and Wallichii growing fine with CSM+B with some extra Boron, K and Mn
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Ammannia crassicaulis has also unstunted and throwing new leafs. You can see the old growth was dark, twisted and growing BBA.
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Other pics of tank plants
Ludwigia Arcuata
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Rotala Florida
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Liminophila Aromatica “Mini” has turned red from being yellow.
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Rotala mini butterfly has bigger rounder leafs and behind it is an unknown Presicaria/Polygonum
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rajkm

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First a update on my Low Tech tank.
I moved few stems of Pantanal in that tank and I am surprised that it’s not only surviving but growing quite fast. Many people struggle with Panatanal and I know the leafs droop in low CO2 conditions in my high tech tank, but looking at it in my lowtech, it now tells me something else could be the reason for the droop. It also tells me that Pantanal can do just fine without CO2 injection which also means. I can continue to enjoy the plant without it taking up space in my high tech tanks and being super weedy.

I am also trying to stick other plants in there and test how they perform. Not sure what’s working in this tank but my other low tech tanks have not performed the same.

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rajkm

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Long post of update of my main farm tank. Lot to chew and I am sure some will think I am crazy, but do read and research.

I had said I have upped my Boron content, dropped GH levels on other posts. It seems to be working. Many plants has unstunted as mentioned above and the trend continued.

I did have some stunting again on red cross but I found that I had not set my PSI levels in regulator correctly since change of cylinder, upping the CO2 fixed it.

Another thing I notice that slower plants like Red Cross or Ammannia tend to lose color when my weedy plants are overgrown. Which could mean limitation os some sort.

I have been playing with my micro mix. My previous mix had the additional B, K and Mg (K and Mg in to compensate for GH booster drop). With this mix I added 2 more things I have been playing with.

First is use of Molasses. It on its own ha s not helped unstunt plants, but what I know of molasses is that they use it in hydroponics for root and fruit boost. Also this was a test to see if Seachem Advance can be replaced with this. The only advantage I have seen from Seachem advance is increased side shoots and I want to do that without spending money of it. So decided to sue molasses.
Is it helping? I don’t know, but my plants are well rooted and do branch a lot more. Plus it promotes the growth of bacteria. I have been dosing my molasses mix for sometime and had not seen any negative effects so I’ll continue to do so.

With my current mix I also introduced humic acid. Many are recommending using Flourish for Micros so I was reading into what the mix could be. While the ratios are different and it’s leaner, one of the constituents is Protien Hydrolysates which I believe is nothing but humic acid. Also Seachem Flourish stains the droppers, same way as humic acid does. So I decided to introduce that in my mix.

Why am I doing so much B. I’ll post that on a later day once I Advance this experiment.

So let’s see some pictures. I have posted my mix below.

Let’s start with Wallichii. It was first to unstunt on my dosing regime and continues to do well
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Ammannia Crassicaulis, some twisted leafs, I added a little GH booster this week to see if it helps. You can also see Cuphea right below. Cuphea keeps stunting and recovering on new leafs. Still something to fix.
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Rotala/Cuphea Red Cross, wasn’t doing well for a month but suddenly stunt and now recovering. I think it was CO2 issue, we will see.
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Rotala Ramosior Florida, and a comparison pic of Rotala Ramosior Cramer which is new to the hobby. Only me, Vin and couple others have it I think. It was found by Chantz Cramer and named after him.
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Rotala Macrandra Variegated has been quite happy. My favorite Macrandra ever.
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Full tank shot
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40g tank
Micro - 1000ml - 10ml daily dose (note I changed my K to include some KCL to add come Chloride and see how that works)
Ascorbic Acid - 0.5g
Potassium Sorbate - 2g
CSM - 23.19g
Fe - 0.1
Mg - 0.021
B - 0.012
Mn- 0.029
Mo - 0.0005
Zn - 0.006
Cu - 0.001
dGH - 0.005
Fe Gluconate (12.46%) - 6g
Fe - 0.049
Fe DTPA (11%) - 5g
Fe - 0.04
MnSO4 - 2g
Mn - 0.04
S - 0.03
Boric Acid (H3BO3) - 0.113g (113mg)
B - 0.15
MgSO4 - 50g
Mg - 0.65
S - 0.86
dGH - 0.15
K2SO4 8.44g
K - 0.25
S - 0.1
KCL - 7.22g
K - 0.25
Cl - 0.09
2 teaspoon Blackstrap Molasses
Humic acid as per directions on the container.
 

burr740

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Wow how have never seen this journal before today?? Really good stuff man, very interesting. You just cant do this type of thing on Facebook.

Who knew Pantanal could grow low tech!! Thats crazy

Ive been wanting to try humic acid to see if it makes any difference. Read good things and seems like it could be especially useful with inert sub. Can you point to anything specific it did or were there a bunch of other changes going on when you first started? What kind exactly (brand) are you using?

Sometime when things are stable you should try lowering Mn back down to 3:1 or 4:1. I ran 2:1 for probably a couple years, also what I started out the custom mixes with. Because that's what you see in all the crop studies. I could tell an immediate difference by lowering it, specifically it seemed like Fe became more efficient. A few others rolling their own have noticed the same thing

Now, it might be a different story using edta Mn, but the non-chelated version is probably able to be absorbed very rapidly, so less is more. Just a theory obviously

I dont believe we can put much stock in crop studies as far as ratios translating to our tanks. Nutrients react differently in soil than in water. Plus the dramatic PH swings we induce every day has a big effect on availability and longevity of things. It doesnt matter what's in the dosing bottle if one thing is more available than another, lasts longer, etc. The best ratio is determined by what happens in the water, not whats in the dosing bottle.

Maybe I missed it, how much Ca in the 40B? Any Mg in the tap or does it all come from the micro mix?

That Mac variegated I dont think is as happy as you think it is. It's a nice and big but of the leaves are curled pretty bad especially on the edges. The leaves are flatter when it's truly happy.

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You should put some Ludwigia sp red in the tank (super red mini). It's a known B hog and one of the best general indicators Ive ever seen. It's quick to scrunch its little face up when something aint right and just as fast to straighten out again. I'd be curious to see how it grows in there

Again fascinating stuff. I look forward to reading more about the B thing and how you arrived at these levels.
 

Greggz

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40g tank
Micro - 1000ml - 10ml daily dose (note I changed my K to include some KCL to add come Chloride and see how that works)
Boric Acid (H3BO3) - 0.113g (113mg)
B - 0.15
Very interesting journal, and lots of good looking plants there.

I'm confused on your B dosing.

If I enter in H3BO3 with your parameters above, I get B at .0013. 113MG is a very small amount into the mix. Yet you have it listed at .15?

I know I must be missing something?
 

rajkm

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Very interesting journal, and lots of good looking plants there.

I'm confused on your B dosing.

If I enter in H3BO3 with your parameters above, I get B at .0013. 113MG is a very small amount into the mix. Yet you have it listed at .15?

I know I must be missing something?

I am confused now too

My formula was as follows. I calculated it for 20ML doses for every other day, but I dose 10ml daily.
What am I doing wrong?
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rajkm

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Looks like you missed a decimal point or two

View attachment 14296

I found the mistake. I forgot to add the % sign to my Molar Mass when I calculated Boric Acid which essentially takes it down by 100.
I am gonna make a new mix. The last time I used rotala butterfly to calculate, this time I depended on my spread since I was adding other stuff.

I will make a new mix.
 

rajkm

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So....are you still gonna add .15 daily?
Yes. that was the original test. Finding the limit of B toxicity.
I am actually going to make a separate mix for B so I can test for 0.1 again and then back off from there to find my limit.

I know towards the last 3 weeks, some plants were showing issues before I made my new mix.
Ludwigia Spaherocarpa and some others were showing some stunting. Checked with Vin and he thought it was not toxicity. time to retest. because right now its doing well, so if I start adding again, and if it stunts then I can use that as my indicator.
I do have one stem of Ludwigia sp Red too, I will use that.

Anyone wanting to play around with the spreadsheet for dosing calculations or add your custom ones, here is the link. You can find the mass (%) using many site for any fertilizer you use.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ihmvvryc2c94wu/Solution Calc.xlsx?dl=0
 
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burr740

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Are you trying to run B equal to Fe? Based on the essential elements needed for plant growth in relation to Mo (the lowest) where Mo = 1
 

rajkm

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Are you trying to run B equal to Fe? Based on the essential elements needed for plant growth in relation to Mo (the lowest) where Mo = 1

No.. the idea for me is to find the ideals using following chain of biochemical sequencing which puts Boron as one of the first activators of the sequence along with sulfur. I am trying to find the limit of Boron for my tank, then assuming I have enough silica in soil, adjust Ca until they are not competing each other. Macros I am not worried of, but after that Mg will be next to adjust.
All other micros I am not considering much of at this point but will be next in list to refine.

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http://www.millenfarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Biochemical-Sequence-Article.pdf
 

msb

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Such nice purple colors in the farm tank. I hope the Rotala Ramosior Cramer becomes easily available in the hobby.
 

Greggz

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I am confused now too
Listen, I don't want to be a kill joy, but when I saw the pics of your Macranda V, I was very skeptical of the dosing you listed.

Dosing daily at .09 nearly killed a bunch of plants, Macranda V. being number one.

I'm at .045 daily, and think I may be able to go at .055 daily, but that is pretty near the limit in my tank. At least the point where the negatives outweigh the positives.

Curios to to see where this goes. IMO, B has a pretty high level of toxicity, so watch closely.
 

Greggz

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I give it a week before something bites the dust at .15 daily. :)

Cant wait to see what happens though! Might cause me to rethink some things...
I'm less optimistic......thinking more like days.

But who knows. Either way should be very, very interesting