Starting 75 gallon fishtank

P

pelon_mx

Registered Member
Jul 3, 2009
2
0
0
Monterrey, Mexico
A week ago I started up a 75 gallon planted freshwater tank, after one week I still do not detect amonia, should I wait for water changes until amonia is showing up.
Today I only detected the following
GH=14
KH=8
PH=7.5
Nitrit=0.3
Test methods= Tetra Laboret water test kit

There starting to appear brown spot on the leaves of the Amazon sword plants and around this spot the leaves start to become yellow, as far as I found out on the the net it seems I will have to use some fertelizer (potasium) because the plants are just planted a week ago
Light= 2 t8 lamps, one normal daylight and the other one is an AGUA GLOW, 18000k , 32 Watts each,
fishtank size is:
depth=14"
Height= 20"
Lenght= 60"
 
besides the plants do you have any fish in the tank? if not you need to add some hardy fish or do a fishless cycle with pure ammonia. you need something in there to start your cycle. also 64 watts over a 75 gallon tank is less than 1 wpg and you wont be able to keep the plants with that light, try for at least 1.5 to 2 wpg
 
1) In a planted aquarium, that's medium/heavily planted, you do not need to do a fishless cycle. You can if you want, but it's not necessary. Plants will consume excess waste.

2) Your Amazon Swords are turning yellow from a potassium deficiency AND a lighting deficiency. You may need to upgrade those T8 lighting fixtures to something stronger if you want the sword to thrive. For that lighting fixture, I would recommend you switch to low light plants like cryptocorynes species if you do not wish to upgrade lighting.

-John N.
 
First of all thanks for your replies.
In the tank I have 6 Glofish Sunburst Orange Zebra Danio and 6 Otocinclus in there. Later I found out that this Danios are cloned fish what I really didn't like so much.
So far I understood you cannot play anymore with the watts/gallon rule because the T8 lamps give more light (Lumens), I was reading that they give about 30% more light than the normal T12 lamps, I do not have the information on hand but somewhere I have been reading that with the new light types we should work with Lumens/gallon instead of Watts/gallon. I this case the total light is still on the low side, I'm already looking how to install and additional T8 lamp and changing the daylight lamp for another type.
Today I added some fertelizer (with Potasium) to the tank hoping this will help the Amazon Sword plants a little bit.
Next friday I'll do again a watertest to obtain a new set of water parameters.
Some Sword plants have some small new leaves, If I have the chance tomorrow I'll cut the bad leaves to avoid water polution in the tank.
Until now all fishes seem to be swimming happy around.
 
agreed...my spots went away when i got rid of the stock hood/lighting on my tank and switched to T5 Flora-Glos. I also started CO2 injection which helped quite a bit, and my ferns went from brownish/black to sparkling green in a few weeks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom