Looking for EI fertilization advice for medium-light tank with high fishload

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

 

Re: Looking for EI fertilization advice for medium-light tank with high fishload

Thanks for the fast response, Tom! I'll try your suggestions. How about the dosing?

I was thinking of cutting down the frequency of macros dosing to twice a week due to the high fish load and relatively low lighting. What about micros?

Is KNO3 dosing unnecessary due to fish poop in a fully stocked tank? Or maybe I should cut it down to 1/8 or 1/16 tsp, instead of the full 1/4 tsp I was doing previously.

 

Re: Looking for EI fertilization advice for medium-light tank with high fishload

I was assuming my L. repens is green due to a combination of:
- excess Nitrates
- not enough light
- color temperature too low