Hello Tom, Greg, and the other members of this forum. This is my first post here, but I've been active on the Planted Tank forum for a few months now. I started up my first planted tank a little over a month ago. Everything started out ok with no algae for about 2 weeks. Well, a few noobie mistakes later, and I had to remove many of my plants due to BBA. The remaining ones are still attracting BBA on older growth. I'm using the EI method of dosing, but I would like to arrive at a modified version that is tailored to my specific setup. (medium lighting with high fish load)
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Some specs on the tank:
29 gallon glass aquarium
30" 2X65W Coralife PC (front bulb on for 5 hours, rear bulb on for 5 hours, no overlap)
6700K Coralife bulbs
3-4" Ecocomplete w/ a light layer of peat/mulm as a base
Eheim 2213 w/ inline PVC reactor
Pressurized CO2 at 2-3 bubbles/sec
Fairly high fish load:
1 blue gourami
1 dwarf gourami
2 rummynose tetras
4 cardinal tetras
1 emerald green cory
1 albino cory
1 schwartz's cory
1 german blue ram
4 otos
Water params:
pH - 6.2-6.4
kH - 4-5
gH - 6
NO3 - 10-40 ppm
PO4 - 1-4 ppm
temp - 76°F
Up until this week, I've been dosing:
1/4 tsp KNO3 3X/week
1/16 tsp KH2PO4 3X/week
1/16 tsp K2SO4 3X/week
1/2 cap flourish 3X/week
1/2 cap flourish iron 3X/week
The tank started out with lots of species of plants:
After picking out the ones that succumbed to algae, I'm left with much fewer species and plant mass:
Plants that are doing well in spite of my mistakes:
- Blyxa japonica
- Nymphaea micrantha
- Eustralis stellata "narrow"
- Limnophila aquatica
- Hygrophila polysperma
- Aponogeton sp.
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A few of the mistakes I've made:
- bad circulation causing many dead spots. I think this lead to the BBA outbreak and overall decline of the tank. I had my spraybar pointed at a corner to "avoid disturbing the plants." That was a bad idea.
- early on, I had a battle with ich that I eradicated with 84° temp, malachite green, and aquarium salt. Not sure how this affected the plant health.
- overfertilizing considering the lighting and fish load led to excessive nitrates and phosphate
- may have used a little too much peat under the substrate when putting together the tank
- major uprooting of Blyxa Japonica without an immediate water change has lead to the beginnings of GW
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Additional bad symptoms:
- red plants have been mostly green (e.g., Ludwigia repens)
- distorted new growth in Ludwigia brevipes (Calcium deficiency, maybe?)
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Some new ideas I want to try:
- come up with a better fertilization scheme for my setup
- get some new fast-growers to help absorb excess nutrients
- if current GW situation doesn't go away, get a UV sterilizer, and remember to do water changes after uprootings in the future, and not to uproot too many things at once.
- reposition spray bar to get better circulation in the tank, if that isn't sufficient, add a small powerhead.
- try using Seachem Prime to raise gH to address potential deficiencies
- use CSM+B when the Flourish runs out
- experiment with overlapping the lighting (130W) for a midday high-light period once algae is gone
Thanks for any advice!
- Joe
-----------------------
Some specs on the tank:
29 gallon glass aquarium
30" 2X65W Coralife PC (front bulb on for 5 hours, rear bulb on for 5 hours, no overlap)
6700K Coralife bulbs
3-4" Ecocomplete w/ a light layer of peat/mulm as a base
Eheim 2213 w/ inline PVC reactor
Pressurized CO2 at 2-3 bubbles/sec
Fairly high fish load:
1 blue gourami
1 dwarf gourami
2 rummynose tetras
4 cardinal tetras
1 emerald green cory
1 albino cory
1 schwartz's cory
1 german blue ram
4 otos
Water params:
pH - 6.2-6.4
kH - 4-5
gH - 6
NO3 - 10-40 ppm
PO4 - 1-4 ppm
temp - 76°F
Up until this week, I've been dosing:
1/4 tsp KNO3 3X/week
1/16 tsp KH2PO4 3X/week
1/16 tsp K2SO4 3X/week
1/2 cap flourish 3X/week
1/2 cap flourish iron 3X/week
The tank started out with lots of species of plants:
After picking out the ones that succumbed to algae, I'm left with much fewer species and plant mass:
Plants that are doing well in spite of my mistakes:
- Blyxa japonica
- Nymphaea micrantha
- Eustralis stellata "narrow"
- Limnophila aquatica
- Hygrophila polysperma
- Aponogeton sp.
---------------------------
A few of the mistakes I've made:
- bad circulation causing many dead spots. I think this lead to the BBA outbreak and overall decline of the tank. I had my spraybar pointed at a corner to "avoid disturbing the plants." That was a bad idea.
- early on, I had a battle with ich that I eradicated with 84° temp, malachite green, and aquarium salt. Not sure how this affected the plant health.
- overfertilizing considering the lighting and fish load led to excessive nitrates and phosphate
- may have used a little too much peat under the substrate when putting together the tank
- major uprooting of Blyxa Japonica without an immediate water change has lead to the beginnings of GW
----------------------------
Additional bad symptoms:
- red plants have been mostly green (e.g., Ludwigia repens)
- distorted new growth in Ludwigia brevipes (Calcium deficiency, maybe?)
----------------------------
Some new ideas I want to try:
- come up with a better fertilization scheme for my setup
- get some new fast-growers to help absorb excess nutrients
- if current GW situation doesn't go away, get a UV sterilizer, and remember to do water changes after uprootings in the future, and not to uproot too many things at once.
- reposition spray bar to get better circulation in the tank, if that isn't sufficient, add a small powerhead.
- try using Seachem Prime to raise gH to address potential deficiencies
- use CSM+B when the Flourish runs out
- experiment with overlapping the lighting (130W) for a midday high-light period once algae is gone
Thanks for any advice!
- Joe
