This is my tank... what am i doing wrong ?

bellazeus

bellazeus

AC Members
Feb 7, 2008
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Australia
Stats:

36 gallon
Substrate: gravel with Flora root.
PH : 5.5 to 6.5 depending how close to a water change I am..
Nitrate :30 odd... again depending how close i am..
Ammonia :0
Nitrite:0
Co2: i think is about 8
Hardness: gh 5 kh 15 ? (tho i think my kh test kits is off as i never got the starting colour so im not sure how accurate this is :( )
Lights : 72 watts
Temp : between 24 and 29.. its an eternal struggle for me to try and keep it close to constant on 27.

Pic of tank..

DSC00696.jpg


I just cant get anything to grow apart from my bacopa. Im pretty sure I have a few bog plants on the right.. which ill pull out when they start dying off.. and my anubis broke off when i was rearranging my tank but the root ball is still in the stump so maybe it might grow back. there is also a few plastics in there.
All my vals and wisteria java and amazon swords are all slowly dying :(

I use flourish excel once or twice a week. dont want to over do it since ive read it can melt vals.
Im so sick of spending time and money and nothing good happens :(

Im sure im missing something as i cant even get algae to grow :grinyes:
 
Sorry should have put that in op... 10-16 hours a day... try to keep it close to 10 but until i get some timers (i live in the middle of nowhere) i can only turn them on and off when i get home from work.
 
API nitrate kit and the rest is redsea fresh lab
 
The others dont look too bad cos i took them all out yesterday and pulled all the dead stuff off. I was really surprised at the nitrates too.. i checked last week and all was under 10... i did a 40% water change yesterday and get 30 today?!! who knows. i tested it twice too.
 
Bell:

Nice hat!

Mg has was more experience than I but several items.

When Mg said "the kh and ph doesnt add up" I am fairly confident that he was referring to the Gh and Kh values which you reported.
Kh is included in Gh and hence the Gh value should always be higher than the Kh value.

I partially disagree with Mg on the timer.
I am like you and the lighting period varies from 10 to 14 hours.
If this variability of the lighting period has caused stress to my fish or plants I have not been able to observe it.


Additional Items

Plant growth is principally based on the feeding, lighting duration (previously addressed herein), lighting intensity, lighting quality and fertilization protocols.

Feeding
I did not observe an algae growth in your tank from the photograph which you posted.
IMHO I would increase feeding slowly until algae appears and then very slowly decrease feeding until the algae substantially goes away.
Some algae should always be present on the large rock and large wood depicted in the photograph.

Lighting intensity and quality
From your photograph I believe that you have a T5 lighting fixture with two 10000K bulbs.
A problem with your plants may the fixture or the bulbs.
I would not worry about this now (please refer to fertiliztion below).

Fertilization
What are you using for fertilization and how often are you fertilizing?

Quick synopsis
IMHO let's concentrate on fertilization and not on increasing the depth of your gravel or retrofitting your lighting.

TR
 
MG... my gravel is 2 inches at the front and over 3 at the back.. the tank sinks a fair way into the stand :)

Thanks Jones... its my mclouds daughters impersonation ;)

The lighting is 3 t5s.. one 30 wt 6,700 and 2 10,000 21wt.

By increase feeding do you mean the fish ? ok.. i didnt want to let the nitrates go through the roof. There is the tiniest amount of bright green algae on some of the rocks.. but it is minute.

As for ferts...Im not using any... after going to 6 different LFS and being told that my substrate, fish and excell (once a week) would be more than enough i gave up trying to find anything else.
 
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