Newbie needs help...
12Black
Hi guys...
I'm a newbie in this hobby, still trying to grow a wonderful 19 G planted tank for my first experience. Trying sooooo hard...
Firstly setup in early May 2005, lights only 15w NEC, then almost all plants showed deteriorate conditions, like wrinkle leaves, transparent leaves, yellowish leaves, melted leaves, and plant like sagittaria lost all their 'grass leaves' fast.
My rotala macrandra also lost all their leaves, and looks like their root doesn't grow either. Right now I only have their stem, I don't know if they can recover and grow their beautiful leaves again.
Riccia fluitans never showed any bubbles among them. Only amazon sword seems to have a good condition, though later I found their new leaves seem to lost their chlorophyl, but still good in shape, no wrinkle or yellowish/brownish.
I managed to gather information from the internet, also from this site.
Then I bought liquid fertilizer (TetraPlant FloraPride) and add only half suggested dose, because I planned to add the other half dose between the time to dose it again (sorry if this is confusing, because I don't know how to explain it better, for example : dosing suggestion is 10 ml per month, I did 5 ml on 1st week, then planned to add the other 5 ml on 3rd week).
Suddenly about 1 - 2 days later I found my amazon sword got brownish line in almost their stem (closer to bottom part, near the root, not near the leaves), looked like something broke their stems so I got them out of my tank. I thought it was TETRA fertilizer did it (is it true?), so I never dose it again, and until now the sword still in a quarantine container becoz they had some slime effect or something like that because of the poor water condition, so I can't risk put them in my tank again.
Later on (August 7th, 2005) I decided to re-setup my substrate because I thought I add too little substrate fertilization. I also add more lights and increase the CO2 injection. Right now it seems riccia fluitans love the new condition, they produce a lot of bubble. But the other plants don't seem too happy, coz I still see wrinkle leaves, semi transparent - transparent leaves, curling leaves on their tip. Fishes also look gasping, snail's foot looks bigger maybe a little melted, but so far nothing die.
I added two new plants (I don't know their name), and they show reluctant grow several days later. One with reddish colour shows crack-like pattern on their leaves & turning to yellow / brown, and withered.
The latest, I add java fern, but till now they still look OK.
My big sagittaria & macrandra still haven't recover (I thought it's normal coz the change of condition has just been made).
Below the details of my tank now :
Dimension = 60 cm x 30 cm x 40 cm
Lights = - one strip Atman holds 15 w daylight Phillips 6200k.
- double strip Lifetech holds 18 w NEC 6700k & 18 w OSRAM (Kelvin not written, so I don't know its "K", but I know a LSF displays a very nice planted tank using this bulb)
Lights on at 2 pm, off at 12 pm. (Same with CO2 system & Atman filter).
Temperature = 28C lights off, 30C lights on. When room temperature cooler, tank temp reaches 26C.
Usually tank temp higher 1C than room temp even lights off. Is it okay??
CO2 = JEBO electrolysis CO2 system.
The instructions are all in mandarin alphabet so I don't know if I set it right. The seller said for 60cm aquarium, set it on 3.5 level is enough. I don’t know 3.5 refers to ppm or what? Later on I did PH, GH, KH test, it shows that CO2 level too little so I increase the level to 5.5
Filters = Atman power filter 450 l/h, Jebo waterfall filter 450 l/h
Substrate = vulcanic sand, 5 - 7 cm high, fertilized by Extra Grow soil fertilizer for aquatic plants.
Plants = riccia fluitans, cryptocorine wendtii, sagittaria, rotala macrandra, java fern, aponogeton, the others I don't know their names, some green plants, a red plant, and a new tall plant has reddish colour (I tried to attach a photo of my tank but the file is too large so I'll take a another picture with less pixel to attach here, will do it ASAP).
I had a beautiful lettuce-like plant before, but it died
Fishes = 4 blue neon tetras, 3 orange/fire tetras, 2 slayer rainbows, 1 turquoise rainbow, 1 rummy nose, 1 glass catfish, 4 loaches, 1 gold algae eater, 1 mini pleco, 3 glass shrimps, 4 red cherries, 1 turbo thorn snail.
I'm going to add SAE coz lately I find thread algae live in harmony…
I do 25 - 30% water change on 1st & 3rd week, 50% water change on 2nd & 4th week.
I still haven't add any liquid fertilizer because I just re-setup my substrate so I thought should wait for about 1 month, besides, I don't know for sure which fertilizer should I add in my water tank...
I really don't want to buy false things again, I've spent too many cash.....!! Arrrghhh.....!
I've already bought false bulbs before, too little light, wrong Kelvin (I bought Atman 15000K bulb once), I only bought single strip lamp so I had to buy another which holds 2 bulbs, so right now I have to find ways to add DC fan on top of may tank (since the space all use up by 2 lamps & waterfall filter), coz I think I have to try to lower tank's temp.
In dry season, room temperature could reach 32 - 34C...!!
My tank's water :
PH = 7.5 GH = 3 - 4 KH = 10 NO3 = 10 NO2 = 0
Tap water :
PH = 7.5 GH = 10 KH = 17 NO3 < 10 NO2 = 0
I use JBL 5 in 1 test kit (testing NO3, NO2, GH, KH, PH).
But for PH, I prefer to use MERCK test kit, I find it more accurate I think.
Note that PH is the same between tank & tap water (7.5 too high I think, want to lower it). Is it because the high KH so PH change so difficult, or I have to inject more CO2?
Or is it JEBO CO2 not working correctly? Since I can't read the instruction manual ;((
As for KH, is it too high? I plan to lower it but I can't get information how to lower it without lower GH also. All info from internet, the way they lower KH also lowering GH. With water changing method, my tap water also has very high KH so I guess I can’t lower KH by changing water more often.
GH is low, I don't want to lower it anymore, must increase it, but I think it will increase KH too... ;( confuse... confuse...
That's all, I hope I've writtten all the information, coz I really need advices from you guys what should I do then, so I can have the plants grow lushly & won't lost any of them again, since I already spent many cash & energy for the tank & the whole system, hopefully I don't have to pay a large extra cash again...
Thanks...
Incrediblibly long story. Headache liaoStraight to the point, your lights 15 watts not enough. Get at least 50 watts above for your tank size since your plants are light demanding and you introduce CO2. Don't bother that much about technical aspects of kh,gh,ph...FYI i don't even know and care about GH,KH, etc...only know what is PH
Sorry too long story
Just try to explain what I did, in case there's something wrong that may danger the plants & fishes...
BTW I've renewed my tank's condition like I explained in "my tank details", now I have a total 51 w lights...
Wong, so you never test your KH GH etc, but still can grow a nice planted tank...? How lucky u r
Ok there are several problems here. I think you may have rushed into this hobby, or got misinformed by several LFSes
Firstly, I noticed your CO2 injection system is a very expensive and inefficient one. There has been very few positive reviews on electrolysis products like yours. You may consider getting the popular and reliable CO2 cylinder system. However you mention your Riccia is bubbling. That should be a good sign, and shows that sufficient CO2 levels are in your water.
Secondly, I noticed you wrote "Lights on at 2 pm, off at 12 pm. (Same with CO2 system & Atman filter)." Does that mean you turn off your filter after running it with the CO2 and lights? This is definately not acceptable, because your filter is like the heart of the tank. It's supposed to run 24/7, never stopping except for at most one hour during tank maintainence.
Plus, you mentioned your filter is the "waterfall" type. This is again detrimental to your tank, because it causes splashing of water and it effectively starts removing the CO2 you injected from your water.
Thirdly, you have 51W of assorted light. I don't know about this, but I'd go for simplicity and get a proper light set from NA that can give me 55W with one tube or 72W with two tubes. It'll save space as well, plus you can be sure you're getting the right Kelvin rating (6500K to 10000K is acceptable) However you might just be able to work with the current setup. Look at the tank. Does it look "bright enough"? Are there alot of dark areas? Does the tank look desolate, dark? Do the plants and fishes look weird, like their colour is all wrong?
Fourth, you need to invest in some fertilisers. Tetra Florapride is alright, but read up a bit on fertilisation and what plants exactly need. They need nitrogen, potassium, phosphate, calcium, magnesium, and assorted trace elements. Check your product to see if it includes all of these, particularly in the case of potassium and trace elements.
Since your water is rather hard and alkaline, calcium and magnesium should be sufficiently present. Nitrogen and phosphate wise.. I can't explain it all to you now, but I'll try to do so as you reply and update. It'll help if you did some reading as well, the beginner FAQ at the beginner's section contains a lot of great links. A good site to begin will be Rex Grigg's site.
Lastly, a few quick answers to your numerous questions:
-Fertilisation through liquid fertilisers is necessary here because you cannot depend on the substrate entirely for everything your plants need.
-Your tetraflorapride did not cause the "brownish line" in your sword.
-Several plants wither slightly and "melt" when they are planted into your tank. This is because plants are living creatures and they have to go through acclimatisation like fishes. Cut off the withered leaves, prune them well, and you should see growth when they get used to tank conditions and conditions are good for their growth.
It seems that you might be confused with how a planted tank is setup and worked on. I'll provide some pics of my own 2ft tank setup if you'd like to see them.
Thanks for the advices Terence...
BTW u're right the LFS got me confuse & misinformed
For the lamp/bulb issues, my tank is only 60cm length, so it's impossible to have a bulb bigger & longer than 20w lay down on top of the tank...
About filter, I use 2 filters, the one is Atman that goes off while lights off, the other is Jebo waterfall filter (this one always on 24/7).
Well I use these 2 filters coz some1 told me that I should get a cleaner water, so he suggested waterfall system; than I got info that CO2 smoke which come from the electrolysis system will be more effective if we blow it with waterflow comes from power filter... That's why I still use Atman power filter too (I bought this earlier than Jebo waterfall).
Besides, 1 LFS displays a nice planted tank with their power filter blows CO2 smokes comes from electrolysis system. They said it will help CO2 spreads to the entire tank...
One more thing, I set the waterfall to minimum flow, so they don't do too much water surface movements.
OK I'll start looking around the FAQ, and pay more attention to the fertilizer as you suggested too...
Will love to see your tank's pics...
Hehe...sorry about last night...i din't read ur thread carefully as i was about to get KO
Anyway, I noticed someting weird...lights on 2 pm of at 12 pm...meaning you run the tank with lights on for 22 hrs/day? Or it's a typo 2 pm- 12am?
If it's the latter, I suggest you change ur timing to 9 am to 6 pm instead. At night around 9pm or so, do you noticed that your R.macrandra of any other stemmed plants have folded their leaves and goto sleep? If that's so, that's because your plants biological clock is same as us human. We need to rise at sunrise and sleep after sunset.
Like Squee mentioned, your waterfall filter doesn't provide the correct circulation flow in your tank. Get those internal filter instead. The best circulation would be that the outlet is about 1 inch below the water surface flowing parallel to the water line. And the inlet would be below the outlet, at the bottom, thereby creating circulation. Read the word circle, cycle.
I've noticed that you stay in indonesia, perhaps your water quality is very much diff from ours. I don't bother about gh/kh as I find our waters just nice to grow anything.
Meanwhile, it's also best to post a clear picture of ur setup. That way, I can assess it better.
Hi Angel,
In this case, you could try to get PL lighting for your tank. PL tubes are much smaller than FL ones and you can easily fit 72W on your 2ft tank. ( it's like that in my case )
Pic of PL lighting set
I'd just use the Atman power filter. 2 filters for a 2ft tank is overkill, and the Jebo one removes CO2 anyway. You should transfer the filter media from the jebo one to the Atman one and just use that filter 24/7. It saves power, space, circulates your water, and probably more efficient than the Jebo one. You're right about the circulation of the CO2 bubbles too.
Pic of the fans
Pic of the top setup
Pic of the whole tank, I try to keep things simple (minimised equipment in my tank, try to focus on the plants rather than have the whole tank look like some storeroom) You can also see the CO2 diffusor that I use for my 2ft tank at the right side, near the inlet of my cannistor filter. The output of the cannistor filter is on the left. Lights and fan are on top. Wires and pipes are all hidden by the black background.
Hope they serve as a reference for you. Welcome to AQ btw
Wong,
Yeah I meant 2pm - 12am.
I get home around 5 pm everyday, go to bed about 12 am, so I think I better turn the lights on 2pm-12am, that way plants can get 10 hours photoperiod, and I still can enjoy my tank view till bedtime. If I set lights off at 6 pm, then I only got 1 hour enjoying my tank
So wat do u think...?
I think plants will adapt to the time lights on to do photosynthesis, so we can freely arrange when the lights on & off. Is it incorrect...?
Yes I place my internal power filter just like you said. Ok I'll put away the waterfall filter & see wat happen then...
About picture, I've just tried to attach it again, but it's still too large (file size = 107 KB, I've set the pixel & quality of my digicam to the most minimum), AQ said maximum filesize is 97.5 KB.
How you guys attach your pics? Like Squee did...?
Is it becoz you have smaller file size, or maybe there's other way to attach?
Squee,
Nice tank set...!! But I have to check the prices of PL + hood first, I've spent enough cash you know...
Could you explain the fans setup please...?
Yeah I'll remove the Jebo filter.
Still reading rexgrigg's articles as you suggested...
Thanks guys for helping, I'll keep posted...
wow...gh and kh so high? where in singapore are you? :O
i beg to differ, but with such test results, i feel you should pay at least *a little* attention on your water parimeters.
yes, the ph is slightly high as well, though im quite sure u can bring that down by increasing your CO2 (not sure how that injection thing works though). if your kh buffer is so high, i can imagine it would take quite a lot of CO2 to bring your ph down...?
im not big on scientific names so i dun recognise many of the plants you have. but as a *general* guide, most plants prefer a water composition with a ph of around 6 to 6.5, and a kh of around 3 and 4 (so can u imagine your kh 10?
then again, these are just guides, i once had a planted tank that was doing alright with an alarmingly high gh level of 15, and no one knew why or how it got there (my tap water is ZERO for gh).
i think your immediate concerns should be to lower the temperature of the tank, and perhaps do something about the kh.
No, they don't prefer a certain pH as you mention. pH/KH is a acid/base relationship used for determining CO2 and nothing else. Plants needs are universal...Light, CO2 and nutrients.im not big on scientific names so i dun recognise many of the plants you have. but as a *general* guide, most plants prefer a water composition with a ph of around 6 to 6.5, and a kh of around 3 and 4 (so can u imagine your kh 10? )
Regards
Peter Gwee
ahhh thanks for that clarification. i must have been reading the wrong publications all this while! lol
Mmmm...that is weird. You should have a pH of 7-9 from the tap...maybe a tad lower or higher depending on the amount of CO2 in the water with equilibrium to air. I'll suspect your test kit...pH of 3...coke?Originally Posted by _Uncle Party_
Regards
Peter Gwee
Mmmm...that is weird. You should have a pH of 7-9 from the tap...maybe a tad lower or higher depending on the amount of CO2 in the water with equilibrium to air. I'll suspect your test kit...pH of 3...coke?
Regards
Peter Gwee
haha my mistake. pH is 6.
Yes. Just keep the lighting hours stable and they will adapt to it.
Regards
Peter Gwee
It's correct.
Some use Photobucket, Imageshack, or other free picture hosting websites. To upload to AQ, you need a rather small file size.
Thanks for your compliment, that tank is rather new so I'm hoping it'll bloom in the future
It's up to you whether you want to spend more money or not. The CO2 set you have seems to be working fine for you. It's only the lights and ferts I guess.
Read about the fans setup here
Have fun
Last edited by |squee|; 21st Aug 2005 at 01:59.
From what I understand from your post, you did ur tank about 3 months ago, sometime in may this year. Yes, your plants can adapt from 2pm to 12am. But when you buy new plants from LFS, they are normally attuned to normal office hours like us 8-5. If you introduced it to 2pm-12 am timing straight away, the beginning part when they rise do not get enough light and hence they just grow ugly. Especially if yours is a newly setup tank, the tank parameters may not have stabilise for plants to get acclimatised.
Try doing this
Reset most parameters, by doing a 70% water change. Drain to 30%, remove as much algae as possible. Then slowly add in water to 100% in a duration of say 1 hr so as to not stress your fish.
Add in 1/2 the recommeded dosage of Tetra Florapride. If those plants are dying, they probably won't grow fast enough to compete with algae. Get about 6 pots of prolific fast growers you can get hold of. Example, Hygrophilla sp, rotala sp. FYI, I have used Tetra Florapride before and I find that they just work the same as any commercial liquid fert. Liquid fert is very important!
Fish load enough, wait till your plants blossomed then get more. 4 cherry shrimps not enough, anyway they aren't very good eaters. Get about 20 yamatos if you can. Or those more common algae eating shrimps, not ghost!
As for fan, best if you can get one, but might be noisy. Less noise ones usually not as strong but able to bring down by 1 or 2. But then again, I managed to get plants going at 31 or even 32. It's just all about lighting and fertilisation (ie. liquid fert & CO2). Nothing much really at this point of time.
To kickstart plants into gorwing mode with 50 watts of light, you can also try not to fill up your water to the brim. The less water height, the more energy your plants will gather. Maybe can try using half the height of ur tank 1st.
Hi guys, just try to upload my tank's photo at PHOTOBUCKET : http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...n/Imgp0337.jpg
hi there,.... i think i got one answer also, your plants are still in POTS ! heheh u need to unroot them then stick it into the gravel that way ur plants can take root. And also 30 is too high a temp to keep all those plants u are trying to maintain. In my opinion, nothing beats press. CO2 so u had better consider that too. Yeap , hope this helps
Mostly the plants are not in pot.
Maybe just two of them still in pot, and the two are in good condition up till now.
Maybe the temp.
Still working on it. Thanks for the advice
That's a nice tank! Clear water that I can somehow never achieve. Sigh.
Hope it works out well for you. Don't hesitate to clear any doubts with us.
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