Would switching off CO2 and reducing light time to 8 hours be able to prevent algae bloom when there is no dosing of fertilisers for a week?
I will do a 50% water change before I go for my trip... Critters should be fine... Only scared of algae... Especially hair and BBA...
Hope to hear from any of your experiences...
One week should not cause too many problems, I went away for two days and it turned into 4 weeks! I was rather surprised on my return to find some, but not a lot of Fuzz Algae and a bit of Stag Horn, BBA, plus Greenspot Algae, otherwise everything seem remarkably ok.
Reduce your lighting a bit, but keep the co2 on and everything should be fine
1 week no probs.
dose your ferts at 1 week dosage after your water change and just go for your trip.
1 week w/o feeding means less worry about ammonia from leftover food or fish poop...
Cheers,
Melvin Lim
Lowering the intensity of the lights (not the light duration...not sure why folks keep reducing that rather then the intensity.) for that week would reduce uptake of both Carbon and nutrients meaning the less need for dosing. (You can get away to about once a week's dosage if the amount of light is near 1.5-2wpg of NO FL intensity...PC lights are about 2x the intensity.).
Regards
Peter Gwee
Plant Physiology by Taiz and Zeiger
How to lower intensity of lights when there is only a single PL tube in the light set?
Stick a piece of paper to cut down the lights? Diffuse it?
Depending on your set-up, you might be able to raise the lights by 2-4 inches to reduce the light intensity?
can try those plastic sheets similar to solar filmsOriginally Posted by valice
Cheers,
Melvin Lim
If it is just for 1 week, IMO, leave everything as it is. Just dose 1 to 1.5x the normal dosage before you leave.
BC
Don't off the CO2 ! (Slow it down may be but never off.)
Instead check there is enough KH to buffer (I will go for 6-8 dH) and let CO2 run. The light period can be shorten if you can't reduce intensity. (may be 20% less in lighting period). Do not feed the fish during this period and don't ask someone to feed on your behalf either.
My thinking is that the system this way will limit the growth by nutrient and ammonia (no fish feeding) so both the plant/algae balance do not tip off although overall growth is slowed down. In fact plant will still win out because they can live on their nutrient reserve in plant tissue and absrob trace from the gravel via their root. Slow but sustaining the "plant-advantages." If you stop CO2 then plant can't even do this or it will drive the ph up as plant use up the free CO2 and to extract bicarbonate, and then algea will win.
Fish is fine in planted tank for a week without added food. They live off snail eggs and bacteria film and their fat reserve. And you shall be surprise plant to see how much the plant grow after your return. I did this before.
Thanx for the information guys... Probably too used to doing EI... Forgot that it is actually normal for people to only dose once a week and yet don't have much of a problem...
Will dose more before I leave... And see how's the progress of the tank after I come back... Will also update the state of the tank after my return for future reference for others...
I would agree with this too. A week is too short to do any real damage if you tank is healty to begin with.
Cheers,
I have dwarf cichlids in my tanks! Do you?
Useful info. I'm just about to leave for an overseas assignment.
Just an update of the tanks after a week's of non-dosing, with CO2 and lights kept at the same level as before...
There were little algae growth, but the plants which required high levels of NO3, like B. Japonica, suffered very badly... So I will dose more in future overseas assignments... Other than that, the ADA soil in one of the tank supplemented over nutrients required.
So like Benny mentioned earlier, 1 week is really too short to cause any problems to the tanks if they are healthy to begin with...
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