I think you have a good amount of light to grow most things that you want.
The biggest single element that will improve your tank's growth will be adding CO2.
While CO2 is not _required_ like in very high light tanks, the benefits are no less impressive and at 2w/gal, the results are very dramatic.
New Folks always try and weasel around the CO2 issue. My advice is to use it, it's easy once set up and is not much hassle if you get a gas system.
Folks will go out and buy a RO system but then say they don't want to do CO2 which is going about the plant thing all wrong. Plants want 3 things: light, CO2 and nutrients. RO has none of those, algae killers/cures/snake oils etc have none of those.
If growing plants is the goal then focus on growing them by giviong them what they need to grow optimally. There are no algae problems if this done and maintained.
A plant is about 40+% dry weight of carbon so add that if you want better growth.
Your CO2 is way too low, you have about 2-4 ppm of CO2, it needs to be in the 20-30ppm range for optimal growth.
KH is a bit too low, add some baking soda to raise it to about 50ppm or 3KH.
Gh is fine.
Add enough baking soda to get 3 KH and then add only CO2 gas to lower the pH to 6.5 or so and keep it there while the lights are on the whole day, not just in the morning etc.
Once that is set, then you can address things like NO3, PO4, K etc.
Don't even think about anything till the CO2 issue is resolved.
KNO3, K2SO4 etc is easy, cheap and no sweat to add.
Since you do good sized water changes rewgularly, you'll notice the pearling, this is likely due to the high CO2 content that is in the tap water.
Only PO4 and CO2 will cause a dramatic pearling event like that generally.
The large water changes will be good later as you dose the K2SO4, KNO3 etc.
Regards,
Tom Barr
The biggest single element that will improve your tank's growth will be adding CO2.
While CO2 is not _required_ like in very high light tanks, the benefits are no less impressive and at 2w/gal, the results are very dramatic.
New Folks always try and weasel around the CO2 issue. My advice is to use it, it's easy once set up and is not much hassle if you get a gas system.
Folks will go out and buy a RO system but then say they don't want to do CO2 which is going about the plant thing all wrong. Plants want 3 things: light, CO2 and nutrients. RO has none of those, algae killers/cures/snake oils etc have none of those.
If growing plants is the goal then focus on growing them by giviong them what they need to grow optimally. There are no algae problems if this done and maintained.
A plant is about 40+% dry weight of carbon so add that if you want better growth.
Your CO2 is way too low, you have about 2-4 ppm of CO2, it needs to be in the 20-30ppm range for optimal growth.
KH is a bit too low, add some baking soda to raise it to about 50ppm or 3KH.
Gh is fine.
Add enough baking soda to get 3 KH and then add only CO2 gas to lower the pH to 6.5 or so and keep it there while the lights are on the whole day, not just in the morning etc.
Once that is set, then you can address things like NO3, PO4, K etc.
Don't even think about anything till the CO2 issue is resolved.
KNO3, K2SO4 etc is easy, cheap and no sweat to add.
Since you do good sized water changes rewgularly, you'll notice the pearling, this is likely due to the high CO2 content that is in the tap water.
Only PO4 and CO2 will cause a dramatic pearling event like that generally.
The large water changes will be good later as you dose the K2SO4, KNO3 etc.
Regards,
Tom Barr
. I am probably goin to get the ultra-life set-up and then get the tank from someone local. I don't know where to buy the parts separately. Thanks for all of your input. I really appreciate it.
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