jamesbarr

ok so my tank has held an NH3/4 value of .25ppm for the last couple days now. The next reading below this in my API test kit is 0ppm. Anything above that will read .25ppm. Would you guys recommend that I continue my daily w/c or should I start to space them out, knowing that the end goal for a walstad is the infrequent/never occurring w/c? In my mind .25 isnt high, or any sort of a spike. Thoughts?

Cool. Ive looked into it, with this perspective in mind and have found that you guys arent the only one not worried about it. Ill begin doing small w/c to slowly return my pH to tap. Todays Walstad tests Nh3/4 .25ppm No2 2ppm No3 5ppm Things are looking up as far as this goes. Day 9. Planted my HM rather than allowing it to float around. Did this yesterday. I anticipate having to trim this one often once its established. Other than that, should be a good foreground IMO

im using tomato jobes. 6-18-6 The thing that really gets me is that the column feeders like me anubius and my java ferns arent doing well, but im dosing water column ferts. The reason that I am fiddling with my pH is because we have really hard water in my town, and from what I understand, high pH will effect the uptake of iron to my plants. Im not sure if this is true or not, its just one of the many things that I was trying to 'fix' in my tank. I feel like Im running out of things to check, which I guess is good, cuz that should mean Im close to the answer lol

OK, so Ive been slowly moving plants over from my 60 into my 20 gallon because they have been in there since I have set it up in Oct and none of them seem to be doing all that well. My tests are consistently perfect, minus my high pH at 7.6. I have all low maintenance plants. Moneywort, anubius, cryptocoryne, java fern. Actually I have some HM in there and its the only thing looking fine and growing. Honestly, Im getting tired of this tank. I have what I believe to be enough light on this tank (i think my HM wouldnt be doing well if i didnt), Im dosing excel daily to the letter on the bottle, Im dosing comprehensive 2x a week, I have adequate filtration. What the heck? My anubius are shedding their leaves way faster than I have ever seen them do in any other tank I have ran in the past. My moneywort doesnt grow at all (it would grow to emmersed in previous tanks), same with my java. Previsouly, I had pygmy swords in there, which I added root tabs for, they did ok for a bit, then nothing at all, then yellowing.... Im having a rough time with this tank. I got it as my first bigger tank. Previously, I had nothing bigger than a 30. I dosed nothing and hardly maintained it. I never tested it, did w/c maybe once a month or less. Ive followed this routine with my tanks for most of my time as a hobbiest. I tried this with the 60, nothing worked like before. So I started to do w/c more often, twice a month or so. Nothing changed. W/c weekly, nothing. Upped my lights, nothing. Increased gph flow with a powerhead, nothing. Began to dose metricide, nothing. Added root tabs, saw some progress for a bit, then my swords went yellow again. Can anyone suggest something that I may be missing? It doesnt make any sense to me. I am buffering my pH at the moment, as of today (since sunday) Im down to somewhere between 7.2 and 7.4 (colour of test isnt quite as dark as 7.4 and not as bright as 7.2). Otherwise on this tank, all my test values are spot on.

Im going to have to slowly populate it off my other planted, since our lfs here in town doesnt sell plants. So until that happens, you are right, I will have to manually manage it, tho my declining ammonia levels over the past couple days give me hope that this tank is on the upswing. Will continue to do ammonia test every other day and ph tests daily. My town has high ph water, dont have an exact measure on it, but its in the high range, so I have to slowly bring it down. Im using acid buffer from seachem to do this. Seems to be working. Im having to do this on my other tank as well. I expect that I will take another few days to a week to get neutral water. Taking it slow.

today test. ph between 7.4 and 7.2 todays ammonia test reads at between .5 and 1 ppm. still high, but way down from the other day at 4ppm Did 25% w/c. Added acid buffer and plan to test pH again tomorrow. close up to show sword developement.

added hygrophilia pinnatifida and bacopa monnieri to the tank. stem plants are recommended for high nutrient up take so i added them. Like them anyhow. Also bought a test kit, turns out my parameters are all crazy out of wack. ph 7.6, ammonia was high along with all the preceding values. Did a big w/c. Just rollin with the punches:)

hmm, maybe im in luck with my other one already, guess ill have to see. Thanks jay

i think im in business cavewise, any idea on sexing them?

cool thanks for reassuring me. Maybe I can find him a lady and have some tiny pleco babies

started last sunday. my camera on my phone doesnt seem to pick up my swords for whatever reason, but the are spaced out about 1.5-2 inches apart. theres a bunch of junk floating about cuz i just planted a few more plants in there.

anyone?

ckmullin is definitely right about the plants. choosing plants that will propagate themselves is for sure good advice. When I suggested using lots of plants at once, I forgot that I have been using the same sub for a few years now. Its quite loaded with mulm by now and that allows me to do this approach. My advice of heavy planting straight away is probably not the best now that hes mentioned it. You mentioned doing an amazon biotope. These tend to do a lot of blade plants, and they tend to fill in the gaps pretty fast. Good call Mullin.

ok, so Ill try my best to answer you. Others will likely fill in the blanks. All of this is from my experience or research so results may vary :P As mentioned above, substrate can get crazy. People put all kinds of stuff into their tanks and a good deal of them get spot on results. IMO its all about the husbandry. Some substrates take more maintenance than others. As you mentioned above, its all in the research you do about it, or how much you feel like doing. I personally have never used flourite. My recommendation came from the countless beautifully planted tanks that I have seen over the years that have used the stuff. The concept is that the nutrients are made available to the plants immediately through the substrate, rather than with dosing where it has to get there through the water column first. This doesnt mean that you cant or shouldnt dose on top of that. It will all depend on what you are wanting to grow and how fast you want it to happen. It will also depend on how much you want to do to your tank after its set up. As for how much, I imagine that there is some kind of prescribed amount per gallon or to a specific depth inch wise, tho I cant speak to that for sure. Flourite does have a reputation for being rather colourful when you first add it to your tank set up, but from what I understand, there are ways to mitigate that. Others will be more helpful in that department. Co2 is something that most hobbiests are going to have an opinion on. Mainly, where to get it from. In my past, I ran a 15g, moderately planted. I dosed Flourish comprehensive but no Co2 or Excel. This tank is the bar on which I measure all my tanks. It looked super, at least to me. Now, you say that you are thinking that you want to go heavy planted. On this, you have a couple options. You can go pressurized (lots of equipment), diy Co2 (cheap but not super consistent), you can dose Excel/Metricide (daily dosing, excel is expensive) or you can rely on your fish to get the job done. These options are things I would read about. Only you know your character and what you want in your tank. You ask about filtration. I might stir the pot on this, maybe not. This is the way that I look at things, and I know it will be contrary to what some may say, so again, I recommend that you read up on this and figure out what you think is more up your alley. IMO filtration in a planted tank should be for water clarity and nothing else should be needed. If you have the right ratio plants:fish one should take care of the other. This is easier said than done sometimes but with some patience a person can get it figured out. I like the idea of starting out with too many plants and adding fish since plants tend to take longer to get established. In this way, you can 'over filter' your tank. Once its cycled and the plants begin to use all the nutrients in the water, you can figure out through water tests if your plants are getting rid of all your nitrates. If they arent, you can either feed your fish less, add plants, get rid of fish or start doing more scheduled w/c. Once you seem to achieve this equilibrium, you can begin to gage your success on the look of your plants. If they are taking up all the nutrients, but appear to be languishing, you can add more fish, feed more, do fewer scheduled w/c or begin to dose your tank with ferts. I realise that this approach is relatively meticulous and can take a lot of time, just the way I like to do things. I hope this helps in some way. Make sure you post a thread of you progress when you do get it going

one thing that I didnt know is that if you go too deep with the sand, you will get anaerobic areas. I experienced this in my tank. In those areas my plants wouldnt grow. Mind you in that area was something like 3.5 inches of sand but it should be known. It even seemed that the mts stayed away from there as well. It was under some rocks. Lesson learned. I should also mention that I have read that the compost thing is only a bad idea if bought commercially since a lot of compost companies will put additives in their compost to enhance the effects of their product. If you google it, there are countless formulas that people swear by for their tanks, formulas that many others would counter with various lists of potential cons. Since this is your first planted tank, I would recommend a more common substrate, one that will allow you to rule out other factors in your set up. Many plants will grow more than adequately in gravel, but if you are looking for a more comprehensive suggestion, I would throw Flourite out there as a suggestion. ADA has a pretty sweet system out there too. Good luck with you plants! It can be a rewarding part of the hobby!

my albino hifin pleco has red on the outside of his fins, and in his cheeks. I have another one in the tank, its totally normal looking. No other fish seem to be suffering in anyway..... Can anyone tell me whats up?

i have it running now. I wasnt too sure whether I really liked the look at first, but I think its growing on me. Especially when I see my plants looking better in there after 2 days than they did after months of being in my 60. Im still not too sure what was/is missing from the 60...but thats another thread. I think that I will end up making another tank like this one in the future. Only Im thinking that it will end up as a biotope. More likely amazon. The look of the water if very close to that of an amazon.....Makes me pretty excited. Ive always wanted to do a region based aquarium. This is definitely inspiring me .

Anyone out there doing this? I started one on Sunday night. Just looking for someone else who has tried this out? Also, if you are familiar with the method, you will know that the tank is heavy in tannins. The water chem is supposed to be similar to blackwater. Not exactly but close. Any one know what kind of fish would do well in a 20 gal blackwater? Im wondering about serpae tetras or something else close to that size. Thanks

cool thanks for the tips I have some heminathus micranthemoides that I am told will grow in a bush in low light and can be more of a foreground in a high light. its trending toward the foreground more than a bush, staying low and looks like its spreading, so I think Im into the higher light bracket. I have been dosing excel daily so far but am going to try to reduce it down from 6ml daily to 3ml daily if I can get away with it. Im not too sure how that will go but we will see how that goes.

thanks jason. I thought that the wpg rule was out tho? is there a way to apply this to t5?

Im just curious, at what point will lighting begin to bleach plants? In my case is the K going to be the limiting factor or the wattage? If I have 6500k t5 bulbs and one t8 at 18000k is the par going to be stronger because of the kelvin or because of the wattage? Im having a hard time hashing this out.

welcome aboard. glad to have you! Make sure to put some pics of your tank in the picture threads!

Hello all, As usual, Im exploring the wide world of the au naturel. I have been reading about people using peat moss in their tanks to lower pH. Apparently Iron can become unavailable to plants if the pH of the water is to high. First off, is anyone doing this? And secondly, what kind of precautions would you recommend for someone trying this method? In particular Im interested in putting it in a filter, or hanging in the tank in a nylon. Any experience with this approach would be nice to hear about. Thanks again for letting me learn from you. James

ummm.........shhhwing? lol at least for her tanks!

Im currently using excel. I followed the bottle instructions when I got it this past weekend. Seachem recommends 5ml per 10gal for the initial dose. then 1ml per 10 gal daily or every second day there after. Ive been dosing it everyday at 5ml so far after the initial dose on Sunday night. So far things are looking only tiny bits better. Leaves are looking slightly greener and perkier. Im trying to make sure I dont fall into the placebo effect. My tank is 60gal but im too lazy to do the single thread measurement. Im thinking that if they are recommending everyday to every other day then Im not doing any damage by under dosing a ml per day. Im not sure if Im planning to continue doing this forever or not, I may change it to 6ml every other day instead once things get going nicely. Ive also increased my light. Im now running a double t5 (reg output) fixture with 2 daylight bulbs, along with my t8 with the 18000k bulb in it. Im thinking that Im good for light, maybe creeping into high light? Im not too sure how to tell when Im at each level of light. Hopefully Im not doing anything wrong. Im kind of venturing into unfamiliar territory with carbon....