Gsa, Bba

Re: Gsa, Bba

you dont really need to add extra K2SO4, if your doseing KNO3 for nitrates you should be getting plenty of K from that. I dont see that your doseing KH2PO4 at all though. your plants need phosphates to grow, and GSA is almost always due to either low CO2.... a more common problem.... or b low phos. I would start adding some KH2PO4 and see how things look. also double triple check your CO2, make sure its consistant and that there is enough when lights come on, BBA is caused by low CO2 99.9 percent of the time, I have tanks that can be totally out of wack nutrient wise but as long as there is good CO2 there isnt BBA.

 

Re: Gsa, Bba

Well my first advice to you would be to toss the idea of doseing by means of what your test kits tell you. Generally hobby grade kits arnt to good at all and the plants are going to be a much better indicator of whats going on than anything else. Unless you have 20ppm or more nitrates in your TAP, i really doubt your fish alone are producing enough nitrates for a tank with that much light and CO2. I would dose known amount of bother KNO3 and KH2PO4 each week and watch to see if the plants respond to that.

As far as CO2 I use my fish and plants to measure first.... then I test to moniter also. I use a digital PH pen to test my PH reading, I set out a sample of tank water to degas for a day or two, and look for a PH drop of a full ! degree in the tank when lights first come one, and I look to maintain that PH or lower through the entire photoperiod. I use the mist method so keeping the CO2 stable really isnt a problem for me now, though in the past while using other methods to dislove CO2 that was a different story and I would have large PH swings through the day which caused a few problems.

I know you spent a bunch of money on the controller but I would personally run your tank with out it. I know for a fact that for some reason the PH KH CO2 relationship doesnt work with my tap water and at any given week after I do a water change my PH can settle in some where different while adding the same amount of CO2 that I did the week before. there for if your using a controller to hit a certin PH but you have changes in your tap water or something that alters the PH KH CO2 relationship your going to end up with to little CO2.

Hope that helps out

 

Re: Gsa, Bba

I have the same size tank, 29 gallons, and I found that there is a huge difference between using the filter return to distribute CO2 bubbles and using a powerhead with a long horizontal spray bar to do that. Since I changed to the powerhead my plants all pearl, and pearl furiously just before lights out, where they didn't do that with the other setup. All I did was just stick the CO2 tube up in the intake grill of the powerhead and let the little powerhead rotor chop up the CO2 into microscopic bubbles. The spraybar is a 5/8 inch diameter acrylic tube with 10 1/8 inch holes drilled in a row about an inch and a half apart along the length. I plugged the open end with a disk of acrylic. My tank looks a lot better and is a lot more fun now.