UPDATE
Happy New Year to everyone!
Finally I am here to report about my tank. It has been a very long and intense couple of months. I have been crazy busy at work during this time (due to the Christmas season), so I was unable to post any updates. But I could experiment a lot with my tank, and the situation has improved a great deal...
I have been trying basically 4 things:
1. Finding the best balanced trace mix for my tank
2. Lowered overall macros
3. Increased light in the front of the tank in order to have a better light distribution (which also increased PAR)
4. Reduced plant mass and increased "elbow space" between plants.
And the results have been great for almost all plants.
On the traces side, after a lot of tinkering, I settled with the following reduced dosing which I have been applying daily for the past 2 months:
Fe DTPA 10%: 0.12 ppm
Mn: 0.03 ppm
Zn: 0.03 ppm
Cu: 0.0012 ppm
Mo: 0.0009 ppm
Ni: 0.0003 ppm
As always, no Boron because of high concentration in my tap (0.15 ppm). This regime hasn't changed for the past 2 months, it has been working well and I have settled there because I tried other things such as lowering macros and increasing light. As you know, "one change at a time!"
Macros: I have settled in the past 6 weeks with a reduced dosage of the following, dosed once a week on WC day (just after WC of course):
NO3: 18.36 ppm
K: 20 ppm
P: 3.44 ppm
I know that may sound low to many, but it has been working great for me, and some plants just "woke" up after months of much higher dosing such as my loved Ambulia and AR (!!). Maybe too much NO3? Or K? Or the reduced traces above? No idea, but this lower regime definitively worked better for me.
Also, in the past 3 weeks, I have increased light by adding a T8 tube on the front. Yes, I am still using a mix of 5 T8 tubes and a LED light which in total gives me around 90 PAR at the substrate, now on the front where AR is located. I have also gradually increased the light peak time of a couple of hours, and that seemed to have helped AR very well.
The last beneficial change I made 3-4 weeks ago was to reduce plant mass of around 30-40%, leaving more "elbow" space between group of plants. And everything improved pretty quickly. I think the more space helps with water/nutrition/Co2 distribution as well as the reduced plant mass helps with less competition. I am starting to think that there are some kind of trace elements in the tap water that get depleted faster if plant mass is too high, before the next WC. Lower mass, less risk to deplete those traces before the next water change. Maybe it's just a wrong idea, because I know many people using just pure RO can grow plants great with just regular trace dosing, but that's the only logical explanation for my tank I could come up with. If you have a better idea, please, let me know!
So... without further ado, here are the pictures showing the improvements:
Ambulia finally woke up from a sort of "hibernation" lasted several months:
AR is finally growing, and the red is there!
Stauro just took off growing like a weed which I need to harvest like wheat every 2 weeks or so:
The increased light seems to help L. Red a great deal:
Even though L. Repens would probably need even more:
Limno is another weed that need to be trimmed regularly like a bush:
Cabomba Furcata is redder than ever:
And Anubias is growing much faster, it looks like higher light is just giving it even more boost (and I don't see any negative effects of higher light if not a little bit of GSA appearing on older leaves, but well worth it anyway):
I must say that the only new negative aspect besides little bit more GSA on older Anubia leaves, is Valisneria Americana which go hit a little bit. Less growth and a little brittle leaves. I think the following factors played negatively for that plant (which you can see in the back of the full tank pictures below):
1. When I perform WC I also add regularly about 4gl of RO water, which is not much, but done it regularly after months, has lowered the hardness of the water from KH7-GH13 to KH3 and GH7, which probably that plant don't like that much (in my experience Vals thrive best in harder water).
2. Combine the above with increased growth of all other plants, and you have a suffering Valisneria. Maybe I am wrong, but that's the only logical explanation I could come up with for that plant (which is really currently the only one not doing great on this tank).
Now, for the weeks ahead, I plan to keep this regime even though I am aware that the lower micro dosing could be detrimental in the long run, but I'll watch for any signs of deficiencies or issues coming up because of that.
What I like the most of these past 2 months of changes, is the fact that increased light just brought good things. Better growth, redder plants. I have been so afraid to increase light in the past years, and I finally see that if you have a balanced and sustainable "diet" for your plants, you can really try to push the accelerator with more light, and wonders start to happen... I didn't know I had a Ferrari under my feet until I pushed that pedal! But as always, with high light comes higher responsibility... and more "daily" attention is needed since everything just goes faster, and the tank can head down faster than before so... let's be just aware of that
Finally some "full tank" pictures to have an overall picture of the current situation:
Left side of the tank:
Right side of the tank:
And for the shrimp amateur, look at this Red Cherry clearly mutated into something really interesting:
What the heck of a shrimp is that? Half read half transparent...
Well, awaiting for your thoughts and comments, it's been a fantastic journey!