Planted Tank Frustrations

M

MidnightPyro

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Jun 21, 2005
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I've visted a few other planted tank forums in order to get advice on growing plants. I've been trying to do it for about 6 months now, and I've had kind of minimal to medium success, although at this point I'm really starting to get frustrated and I could use some suggestions on what to improve.

The tank is 29 gallons.
Until last week, I've had inconsistant fertilization inside my tank with 2-3 week periods between phosphate/nitrate/potassium dosings and then I ran out of fertilizer, so there was a 4 week period when there wasn't anything in the water. Since then, with some help, I've setup my own fertilizing regime.
I dose 20 ppm of nitrate (KNO3), 2 ppm of Phosphate (KH2PO4), and enough K2SO4 to get my Potassium levels to 20 ppm also. Twice every week I dose .2-.3 grams of CSM+B Plantex Formula from Greg Watson.

I dose Flourish Excel 3 times a week (~5 mls.) and I run a DIY CO2 with the Hagen Cannister/Ladder and an additional 2L bottle. The Hagen was only bringing CO2 levels up to about 7-8 ppm according to the pH/kH relationship, so I recently added an extra 2 liter bottle to hopefully get more CO2 in the water.

My substrate is about 50% Eco-Complete/50% black aquarium gravel. I like the look of the black gravel on top and the ease of cleaning it compared to the eco-complete. I figured that the Eco-Complete would provide nutrients to the plants roots when it rooted into the eco-complete due to the eco-complete's higher CEC than regular aquarium gravel, although I'm not too sure if my idea is working or not.

Current plant residents include:
Corkscrew Val
Jungle Val
Java Moss (which is doing quite well)
Bacopa Colorata (not doing well at all, on the verge of death)
Water Wisteria (not doing too well either)
I just added:
Egeria Najas (not too sure how it'll do)
Ludwigia Repens
Ludwigia Ovalis
Hygrophilla (Difformis and 'Sunset')
Red/Green Cabomba

Lighting is a 65 watt 6500k/10000k PC Sattelite Fixture over a standard 29 gallon tank.

Any kind of suggestions or help would be appreciated. :bowing:
 
What specific problems are you having? Algae? Plants dying, or just poor growth? That would help us try to target specific things.

Certainly stick to the regular fert routine. It does the plants little good if ferts are sporadic, but the algae will love you. Do you test fert levels in the tank before adding? What you are adding would be good target concentrations for the tank, but are you always starting from zero? I find that occasionally my plants will use NO3 faster than PO4, so I account for that slightly in what I add.

Other people swear by it, but I find the Excel worthless. I also had problems with low CO2 with DIY (which is essentially what the Hagen system is). I have really had to keep on it to get levels close to 20 ppm. That has had greater results for me than dosing Excel ever came close to though.
 
Yes, it would be a help to know the exact nature of the problem.
IME, Micros should be dosed daily and so should Excel for each to have maximum effect. I find that Excel is a good additional shot of carbon for my plants, and dosed regularly (daily) a hedge against BBA.
I agree with EcoPit in that consistent dosing and knowledge of your water's values are two very important parts of the equation.

Len
 
Water's values are as follows:
Out of the tap it's 7.8 pH, 8 kH, 0 nitrate/phosphate

The aquarium very rarely has any nitrate in it. Occasionally the test kit will show a shade of nitrate (< 5 ppm), but outside of that, there's no nitrate. Phosphate levels are also at 0.
The plants are sucking up nitrates at a higher rate than I'm dosing, so I'm increasing nitrate dosing to 30 ppm 3x a week.

My major problem is poor plant growth. I wouldn't say the plants are dying, they just have an unhealthy appearance and very poor growth. I have a bit of green spot algae but I normally just take a magfloat once a week, otherwise the tank is spotless.

I just did a water test on my current tank water. the KH of 5, the extra 2L DIY Bottle crashed the pH to 6.0, which according to CO2 chart puts CO2 somewhere at 150 ppm. That's a heckova difference between the 5 ppm I had before, but I'll most likely step up and run just the two liter bottle instead of the Hagen unit + 2L bottle, because a pH swing of 1.4 with a kH of 5 must be a heckovalot of CO2.

I did a 25% water change (instead of my weekly 50%), brought the pH back up to 7, dosed the macro nutrients, and hoping to survive the planted tank rollercoaster.
 
PH swings can be hard on your fish, I would add some crused coral to your filter to keep your PH around 7.2 if it is around that out of the tap.
 
justintoxicated said:
PH swings can be hard on your fish, I would add some crused coral to your filter to keep your PH around 7.2 if it is around that out of the tap.
Click to expand...
Its not the pH swings that are hard on the fish, its changes in osmolarity. There is no chance of keeping your pH pegged to the tap when you are also actively trying to knock it down a full point.

You weren't getting very much CO2 before and the Excel dosing was very light. I'd do at least 5 ml a day. You can adjust the Excel dosing to try and balance out the fluctuations in the DIY but I think their recommended dosing is a little low (ie. based on fairly light planting: adjust accordingly).

Pressurized is breathtakingly predictable if you decide its an option.
 
so it is ok for the fish if your PH changes from 6 to 7 every time yo do a water change?
 
Water changes don't produce swings quite that dramatic but if the KH and the GH in the tap are more or less similar to what's in the tank changes in pH due to CO2 levels rising and falling aren't going to stress the fish out.

Its the changes in osmolarity that fish find stressful. Going from hard water to soft water can stress a fish out. It messes with their body chemistry. It not the pH swings, its the KH (and GH) swings.
 
Sounds like your lighting is a little on the low side for some of those plants. That may account for some of the poor growth.

Mark
 
A bit of an update here. I backed off on the macro fertilization on advice from others to just 20 ppm of K, 25 ppm of Nitrate, and 2 ppm of Phosphates once per week.

I've started micro fertilization at .1 grams of CSM+B about 4-5 times a week. I'll also add some Flourish as it has a bit more stuff in it than CSM+B :p:

As for the CO2, the CO2 system seems to be pumping away. KH has remained relatively stable at 5 degrees, and pH seems to fluctuate between 6.5-7.2 which according to the CO2 chart is 10-40 ppm of CO2. I don't have a CO2 test kit, but the 2L bottle is the only thing I know of that can cause such pH fluctuations. Atleast the positive is I know there's some CO2 in the water for the plants :p:

The Hygrophilla 'Sunset' and the regular Polysperma stuff is growing like a weed. The cabomba is growing decently. For some reason the jungle and spiral val is struggling. The bacopa isn't doing real well, but it is shooting off new healthy growth. Still rather small, but atleast it's doing something besides dying. ;)

As far as the light goes wesleydnunder, I've recieved mixed input about that. According to the wpg rule, it's around 2.1-2.2, but it is a PC light. Although I don't really expect an explosion of growth with plants everywhere, I hope it's enough light to atleast get decent growth.
 
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