Garhan

In the past raising discus fry, angels, and killifish I always added java moss, or hornwort, or najas,(what ever I had available) and or Java ferns. Not to reduce nitrates but to give cover and a place for fry to forage on rotifers that accumulate on the plants. Nitrates are controlled with regular water changes as recommended by most breeders and/or breeding books.

I agree with all the previous statements. I agree more so with Milan as a substrate that is CEC capable and iron rich will allow you to grow more varieties and much healthier balnts with considerably fewer micro nutient problems in the short term. Again a scheduled fert dosing program designed specifically to your tank is required to maintain healthy growth with minimal algae issues.

Hey Milan, In the jelly pack do you notice any small specs especailly after it has been around for a few days. If so it is snails. Do they crave C02 like I need a choclate bar, well I dont know. Garhan

Generally filtration in a plant tank has no bearing on fish volume rule of thumbs. i.e. !" per fish x amount of gallons. With filters for planted tanks the general rule is 3 to 5 times the volume of flow to the size of tank volume. Most tanks have a theoretical tank volume as opposed to real volume. so, for example I have what is called a 40 gallon (US) tank. The true volume when you measure the inside length x side x height and calculate out the total square useable inches which include about 1" below the top of the tank is 36. 67 US gallons. Actual 1 " below the tank top is not useable without sepage from the top trim. Therefore I would need +/-37gallons x 3 or 37 x 4, or 37 x 5 gallons of flow. Flow is more critical in delievering nutients to the plants.

Leaf die off is not total uncommon to healthy plants. Out with the old and in with the new. Like you did, just cutoff the dead leaves. I would be more concerned if the plants old growth started showing signs of pin holes in the leaves and then those holes get larger. traditionally that would be a k problem. Check out the following, not sure if it still works. http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_nutrient.htm

Welcome to the board. I am also in south Edmonton-millwoods to be specific. :welcome: Garhan

Swords also generally do not melt. Well at least from what I have raised it has never happened in +/-20 years. having said that I have had 2 experiences where there was a severe die off of swords, but I think that can be contributed to 50% water change of very cold tap water during the fall or winter months. Again looking at the EPCOR water resources site our water currently is running at 0 to + 2 degrees at full volume. The swords ended up loosing there colour and then slowly faded away to where the only thing felt was a skeltal structure of fiberous viens.

Your current lights of 60 waats for the 50 gallon is very low. Remember the minimum requirement on medium size tanks (20-90) is 2 watts per gallon.

I have been doing this for years with my discus, wild angels, Geophagus, Cardinals,Rainbows, Catfish and any other fish I keep. I do although add Naturose, B12, C, D, and E vitamins to the mix and a multivitamin sometimes. I have never lost a fish to this diet and it has produced great looking fish and very healthy fish. I also like the price. Often I get the same ingreidence in a raw state.To me it is a much better a diet than just 1 food base, whether only flake or only Mysis even. Yes I like Mysis, the point is vary the diet. All my fish in any of my tanks will eat Flake, home brew fish foods or Mysis, Bloodworms, etc. It makes it easy to use up excess foods or when I run out of 1 thing or the other. They dont hesitate to grab and eat the next morsel thrown in the tank. Life is good !!!

Talk about an over reaction to 911. Stump Remover is the same thing as KN03 and works just as well. You can also try Apache Seeds on 149 Street and Stony Plain Road.

The KN03 you can get west of Dad's store with other ferts at the Hydroponics shop. It is about a block west of Henry's on the southside of the street across from Vienna Bakery..

Cool Ask away at your lesure. garhan

http://www.jbjlighting.com/rel_prod_regulator.html here is a proper regulator if you go pressurized.

Absolutely. And I know you do.

Go to BE Electric Ltd. or Commercial Lighting ltd.. You can find both in the White Pages . But they are on the southside.

oh it is correct, just read the fine print on the package labels. I did yesterday and it definitely has a phosphate base.

Good start. remember that the fert programs are usually designed around fully planted tanks. Therefore you may want to only use 30% of the suggested volume in your tank until the plants get thicker. Try to put a plastic plate over the discharge of the filter. Can I assume it is an AC. If so the plate will not allow the outflow water to disturb the surface as much. Milan did this and found a reasonable increase in his C02 ppm count. That had previously been unable to get to the desired ppm range of 20-30 ppm. i have to chukle to myself as I just put another 38 watt light on my 10 gallon. It now has 76 watts/ gallon....lol Good luck. Garhan

Home depot and pay to much. You have some Rhonda ?

As of today we have had our first entry under the new small and large tank catagories. It is a small tank in the less than 30 gallon size. It is very nice and all the information requested was filled out correctly and appropriately. Now, hopefully there will be more entries to come before the end of the deadline as posted in the original and follow up comments in the PLANTED TANK CONTEST topic. Good luck to all, Garhan

I went to BA to check out the Discus Buffer Seachem product, just for my own curiosity again. Dont use this in your planted tank. It has a phosphate base and will considerably alter any of your fertilizing program. Again it is not required for Edmonton tapwater for either discus or plants. Garhan

Someone else on AA also did an overdrive and dam well nearly burned down his home. For only 2.4 more effectiveness. I run 50 gallon tanks, 30 and 60 gallon systems and either use 1 or 2, 4x ballasts in a T-8 and in the furture will use T-5's. But for now they are T-8's and are very effective. Bulbs are 6700 k full spectrum bulbs purchased at HD or Commercial Lighting Ltd.

With a 5 degree hardness on the KH in Edmonton, which is very close to idea conditions for discus in a general setting. See Epcor website for dailey water quality reports. I have raised loads of discus, which include wild stock. Outside of breeding I just have always used conditioned tapwater. What I mean by that is . It is prestaged in a large plastic garbage can and is warmed to room temperature. I declorinate it and then it is entered into the tank. Nothing fancy and no BS about discus need special water. Dont use the discus buffer it is a waste of money. If you go into breeding then you need to setup R/O or not. Breeding in Alberta has been done successfully either way.

To me with the introduction into the new tank, all is in disarray. Once they begin to settle in then they will reestablish a pecking order. I have seen this behavior with both my domestic and wild strains of angels. Often they are territorial and will defend there posts. Sometimes they even will kill each other off. But in the most part there is a pecking order and this ususally will straiten out after some time. Even if they are both males or females.

Lights should run from 10 to 12 hours per day. More hours doesnt make up for anything short in light requirements. Less is used sometimes to combat specific algae problems. you probably most likely have a nutrient defiency problem and not the abundance issue. Old news used to say to much ferts or nutirients new information leans towards lack of nutrients, because the plants arent getting enough to out grow the algae. What are your water parameters...this is critical and needs to be tested for anyone to be of help to you, otherwise we are just shooting tin the dark. Garhan

[i am using one of the popular bubble ladder CO2 injection systems from the LFS. It says it's good for 20 gallons so I am sure I need more CO2 to achieve the recommended levels. I have had the ladder set up for two weeks but it's only in the last week that it really started pumping out CO2 at a steady rate and that the bubbles stopped getting stuck on the way up. In this last week I have seen a tremendous jump in the amount of plant growth. If that small amount of CO2 is enough to make the plants shoot up that quickly I can just imagine what would happen if I had 3 ladders for the recommended 60 gallons of CO2 production. At the same time though the display tank at the LFS has only one ladder for the same tank as I have and it's flourishing. The LFS recommended I don't buy another CO2 ladder as one is sufficient. Do you think I should use what I have or should I get more CO2?] have you read the C02 teatise it is used by most popular aquatic plant sites. [/second to last question (really!) is with lighting. My tank came with two Life-Glo 30W bulbs for the hood. The LFS seller told me this was less than the ideal wattage per sq/foot but that it would suffice for my needs. Should I get better lights or will I get healthy if slower growing plants out of this? I can always get bigger in 6 months when these lights begin to fade. QUOTE] Most of our plants come from the tropics and there light needs are based on the sun output at the tropics or are they. Here is how it was explained to me and I use this as a guideline. If you take a standard 55 gallon tank you would have to have 660 watts of light over it to equal what you get in the tropics. Now, let's take a more reasonable figure of lux on a square meter say 75,000 lux. Using this figure we come up with 117 watts over the 10 gallon tank and 353 watts over the 55 gallon tank. Now I know some people who are using over 300 watts on a 55 gallon tank and getting some great plant growth. I also know one person who has used 72 watts over a 10 gallon tank and gotten great plant growth. But these very high light tanks are hard to keep balanced. So let's use a known example. Let's take a 55 gallon tank with 220 watts of light. I think that everyone will pretty much agree that you can grow anything you want in this tank. This tank has right about 30 lux per square inch of surface area. If we take that number and apply it to a 10 gallon tank we end up with a recommended high light value of 6000 lux or 71 watts!!!!! Note all these lux values for light are taken from the 6700k bulb sold by AH Supply. So to make it short you would have to have 71 watts of light over a 10 gallon tank to get the same effect you would have with 220 watts over a 55 gallon tank. Now I know the 10 gallon tank is almost half the height of the 55 so you will be able to get by with a bit less light than that. But it does I think show why the watt per gallon rule really doesn't work that well on smaller tanks. And to prove this point let's look at a larger tank where we know the watt per gallon rule also breaks down. Our example here is going to be a 125 gallon tank. It's pretty much well known that if you hit 3 wpg on a tank this size you can grow anything. So what kind of lux value does that give us? 24 lux per square inch. Compare that with the 55 gallon tank which has right about 30 lux per square inch. Pretty close. So what I am going to propose is that instead of thinking in watts per gallon we instead think in lux per square inch. Or LSI. And let's look at these figures based on a 55 gallon tank with 110 watts of light (low light), 160 watts (medium light) and 220 watts (high light). Low light is 15 LSI Medium light is 22.4 LSI High light is 30 LSI So your bulb selection will be a key issue. I have custom built most of my tank lids to accomadate these requirements. You have the idea tank size at 48" I believe, correct me if I am wrong on the tank length. There is a broad selection of bulbs in T-12, T-10, T-8 and now T-5 or T-3. But more importantly is the k output selection for this length of tube. Also because it is the most popular size on the market it usually makes them more cost effect. Prices will vbary at commercial electrical distributors from 4.00 to 15.00 per tube. Sure beats the 30-40 dollar tubes at the LFS. Reflectors are also very critical. The best price concious product is the mylar sheets that you can purchase at your local hydroponics (pot growing) stores. Or reflectors from the electrical distributors again, but they are a bite more pricey. [Now for the final question! It's worth bonus points. I am torn right now between getting a Discus/Cardinal Tetra tank or going for an Angelfish/compatible schooling fish. (I would like Altum but they are fragile and aggressive) What plants can I get away with in either case? I would like to go for a combo of long swords, broad red leaves, undecided medium plants for the middle and some sort of carpet plants for the front. I know that most cichlids are carnivorous so they shouldn't be eating the plants, but who knows what could happen? ] from my experience with SAC, or AC types they will all eat plants. The apistos or microgeophagus are generally better that geophagus or Africans. But you arnt going to Africans with plant water needs anyways. Middle plants there are several beautiful plants from Spiral Val, crypts wendetti, Indian Star Grass, Hygrophilias, Ludwigia's or Rotalas etc..as for foreground Echinodorus quadricostatus, Echinodorus tenellus or Sagittaria platyphylla, Lilleopsis mauritiana, Lilaeopsis brasiliensis which would be native to some discus waters sheds. I hope this helps and brings out many more questions.... Garhan