Frustrated again with plants

Frustrated with plants

Well, I have spent a lot of time and money trying to get my tank to allow me to grow plants but I just can't seem to get it right. I built a new light fixture (per Rex Grigg plans) which has 220w of light and I run it 10 hours a day. I have co2 injection at several BPS and the plants are continuously putting out o2. My tank is a 75g. I bought ferts from Rex Grigg. I bought Red Sea Nitrate and Phosphate test kits. I bought a wide assortment of plants from various LFS's I built the Rex Grigg Reactor. I reduced my fish population although some will say it is still too massive. I have 13 clown loaches, 3 yoyo's, 2 polkadots, 2 cory's and a redtail shark. I added the co2 first with no noticeable improvement. I later added the 220w light fixture and bought more plants. I bought 50 stems of egeria densa and they took off. I was excited and cutting them back every 3 or 4 days and replanting the cuttings. My other plants - a few crypts, vals, java moss and undetermined red leaved plants survived but nothing spectacular. I then bought Rex's ferts and made the solutions and bought the test kits he recommended. All of a sudden my egeria densa started browning up and almost seemed to be disintegrating, the java moss has all but disappeared and again the other plants are doing nothing spectacular. I know everyone will suspect the strength of my solutions but I checked and rechecked my ingredients before making the mixtures. I added per Rex's instructions which match Chuck's planed aquarium calculator. Here are some specs: Temp 80, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 15, Phosphate .5, KH via Tetra 3, KH via API 5, GH 0, pH 6.5, O2 8. From what I can tell all readings are in the suggested range. My biggest disappointment came after adding Rex's ferts. I once before had a major plant loss when dosing with Flourish and Exel. I do weekly 50% water changes and will not be doing it again until Saturday or Sunday. I think I will hold off on adding any ferts. I'm just so frustrated after all the money and effort I have spent. I have talked to fellow aquarists at fish auctions who have success with plants and some of them seem to do NOTHING special and yet they have success. I try to do everything PERFECT and have no success. What am I doing wrong?
 
OK, so here's how I would go about next if you told me to take over care of this tank. Most people make the mistake of tweaking too many things in an attempt to get a "balanced" planted tank. Changing more than one variable at a time will not solve your problem, but will cause more confusion and headaches.
1) Make sure the CO2 is outputting at a stable rate. I would even turn it down a little if it means that I can keep it on 24/7 w/o hurting the fish. CO2 variable taken care of.
2) Reduce the lighting period down to 7 hrs to start using a timer. You went from low lighting to fairly high lighting and a long 10 hrs period which introduced other problems. Lighting variable taken care of. We don't know if this will be the right level yet, but it's a start.
3) Stop dosing any fertz at this time and go back to changing 25% of the water weekly. You had a large fish load releasing plenty of nutrients into the water column for the plants. Why add more fertz at this time? Lets see if the current stock of fish right now is fertilizing the plants adequately. A 50% water change may introduce excess phosphates and what not in the tap water to the tank and changing its parameters. If you had RO water, I would say do your water change with that for several weeks and just observe plant growth.
4) Remove all dead/decaying leaves meticulously, on a daily basis if possible. Also remove any leaves that are covered in algae and remove any plants that are deemed hopeless. We do not need decaying matter providing more nutrients for algae to grow. Also pruning the plants gets rid of weak parts and allows that plant to concentrate on putting out new healthy leaves that will use the available nutrients more efficiently.
5) Stop using your test kits at this time. It'll just keep you second guessing yourself.

Replenish your Egeria plant stock. You can also get water sprite and penny wort. When those two plants begin to grow like weeds, the conditions are good for more than 50% of the plants out there. For the next 2-3 weeks do nothing else but sit back and observe the plants. See if the Egeria start to grow again. As for your crypts and other heavy root feeders, you can use root tabs. I make my own from Riiz's recipe in this forum. I think it's stickied in the DIY section. But don't do this yet until 2-3 weeks have passed. At the end of 2-3 wks, let me know how the plants are doing. We can start tweaking one variable at a time at that point. GL and be patient.
 
J,
Thank you very much for your advice. I will cut back on the lighting when I get home tonight. I failed to mention that I had my co2 on a timer to come on a couple hours before lights came on and go off before lights went out. I can go 24 hours if you think that is better. The fish seem to be very happy at the moment. I also used to do 25% weekly water changes until I read somewhere about doing 50%. I will go back to 25% - it's much easier also. I didn't mention filtering but I run an Eheim Pro 2 with spray bar directed below the water surface and also an Aquaclear 110 at the other end of the tank. This tends to roll the surface of the water. I have been going into the tank daily and picking any dead leaves and debris out. My filter intakes get clogged quickly and especially now since things seem to be disintegrating. Although I normally do my water changes on weekends, I may just do one tonight to try to get things back on track a little. Thanks again.
 
i hate to hear of you plant trouble especially with the money and time you have invested. i'm one of those plant keepers that does nothing to my tanks, but my 55 and 75 are full. not the fastest growth in town but all thriving. wish i could help ya some way but i have no ideas
 
It sounds like a micro-nutrient toxicity issue to me. Many of the micro-nutrients if too high can become highly toxic. Boron is commonly found in water systems and is highly toxic in high enough quantities. Depending upon the species of plants that you have in your tank they need micronutrients in different levels. By dosing for macros using the recommended mix you might have been overdosing the micros. In order to find out for sure you'll need to have the water tested by a qualified agricultural lab. The test usually runs around $50-75 per sample. Personally I'd just cut back on the fert dosing and see what happens.

You've spent a ton of money on this tank and obviously want to grow big beautiful plants but I agree with jptjpt that you need to back off a little. Growing plants and not algae is a balancing act. No two tanks are exactly the same. You'll find all sorts of formulas and information online and in books. These are useful as a baseline but tweaking them is absolutely required. It can take years of constant slow tweaking to be able to make a beautiful planted tank. The pictures that you see online of gorgeous planted tanks generally take years of experience to achieve. The more patient you are with it and the more time you give the tank to settle the better you will become at growing the plants. The reward when you finally get the feel of how to do it is very rewarding.

I've got three planted tanks in my garage right now.

The 15 gallon is almost algae free and is full of swords and bacopa. It's really starting to look incredible.

One 10 gallon currently has moderate algae problem (steadily reducing) and has lotus, wisteria, and elodea growing very well. This one is starting to look very promising.

The other 10 gallon has lotus, Java fern, and some bacopa. It is a absolute algae nightmare. It's got a least 10-15 different species of algae in this tank. All other imputs are practically identical. Same substrate, fertilizer, and light levels as the others. I'm thinking I'm going to have to toss most of the plants in this one out and start again.

Eventually I'll have the nerve to set up the 80 gallon planted corner tank in the family room that my wife wants. Maybe in another year or two after I get this friggen 10 gallon looking good I'll give it a go.
 
could it be something in your water supply? for the plants to be doing well then suddenly start dying i would think something a little more sinister was going on other than "having too much ferts" <this is something you want Check out Estimative Index

our water supply from time to time puts aluminum sulfate??? in the water... it was nasty stuff and started to kill my plants and made my fish ILL and i mean ILL

i actually believe that having NPK and trace in abundance is what you want to be shooting for... that way you are not limiting your plant growth and the plants will out compete the algae for nutrients
but this is an excess of each of these nutrients... not having a limiting factor other than light Co2 NPK and trace all in abundace and co2 is one of the most important to have in the right amount, consistant and distributed well

Estimative Index is based on having excess nutrients and that is what i use... it works GREAT and its formulated for the person that does not have a means to get test kits for their water...also it revolves around a weekly 50% waterchange
i personally like dosing dry ferts...
 
Last night I cut back my lighting cycle to 7 hours and lowered the co2 injection rate while at the same time extending the injection to 24/7. I did not do the water change I had hoped to but it will get done this weekend at 25%. I'm wondering if I may have contributed to the problem by constantly replanting my cuttings from the Anachris. Is it possible to have too many plants in a tank to the point that there is not enough nutrients for all of them or to the point that they are crammed and restrict water movement and thus again not getting the nutrients? If your tank gets well stocked what are you supposed to do with the cuttings? I have no handy LFS or fellow aquarists to donate my cuttings to. While it is possible that my water source has changed something, these problems appeared almost overnight when I added the new ferts. I really hate adding anything to my tanks anymore. I used to have lots more fish but my nitrates were 40 plus and algae was king. I had a really nice setup recently with all my fish and I now wonder if perhaps the fish load would have been sufficient to feed the plants. I feel on one hand like I am close to success but I also feel close to giving up as this is too complex. I want to enjoy the tank but not be a slave to it. My wife's clown loaches are the prime reason for having the tank. My desire for nice plants is secondary. I had hoped that I could make both work together. thank you all for your suggestions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom