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A New Beginning (New Pics & video 10/8/2016) - 180L

Hi All. Its been a long time since I provided an update.

Essentially its taken me a while to get to grips with the right levels of light from the LED fixtures but I think I've now settled on each light running at 15%. Unfortunatly I pretty much cooed all of the plants and had very few survivors but I have made progress and I've seen slow but sure growth on the few plants I had remaining so now I'm more confident I'm doing things right, I'm going to redesign the tank again. I was doing something wrong with my EI dosing as well which wouldn't help. I was not dosing MGS04!

I'm ditching the cat litter as its just too light to keep anything planted for a decent amount of time to allow the roots to take hold. I've gotten myself some Tropica Plant Growth base substrate and I'll be capping that with Limpopo sand. I've heard good things about this combination! I'll be re-using the rocks I have in there as well as supplementing with some Redmoore wood I've gotten from eBay. I hope this will make the scape look a bit more natural.

All being well I'll be doing the transformation over this weekend so I'll be sure to document and upload the pictures here as i do it!
 
It's been a long time since this was updated and that's because it has taken until now to get somewhere with my growth. Essentially I believe the problem was down to too little light so that the plants were almost dormant. So contrary to my post previously, the 15% lighting stopped the plants melting but offered nothing to help them grow. I've now got up to 30% with decent signs of growth. I also had some CO2 issues where I was getting inconsistent results where some days I would have the right bubble count and the next it would have slowed down a lot. To fix this i had to up the working pressure and now I'm hitting an almost yellow drop checker every day with around a 1.1 to 1.2 drop in PH.

You can see the discussion of my plant growing progression with LED lights here: http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/too-much-light-really.38504/

So i loaded up on lots of new plants, salvaged a few of the old ones and I go again. The baseline is as shown below. Growth will be closely monitored on this!

23714110033_4d099e04a4_b.jpg
DSC_0422.jpg by Lee Parsons, on Flickr
 
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Just when I think I've turned a corner it seems I hit a problem again!

Today I've hit the first sign things are still not right. After coming home from a weekend away my Blyxa has shed a lot of leafs. I'm not sure if this is a reaction to being transported or not though however it has made me paranoid. I've seen signs of new root growth in a couple of pieces I replanted earlier in the week. Everything else seems to be OK at the minute. I have got a night green drop checker so I think CO2 is ok but I am still only running 25% intensity on my lights which makes me wonder if the Blyxa is not getting enough light or something.

Any suggestions?
 
So 2 weeks on, I'm even more confused than what I was before. I've not noticed any growth really other than some new roots form the Blyxa. That said, the Blyxa is shedding leafs but not melting at the stem. My CO2 level is such that fish gasp at the surface and I've had a casualty which was probably caused by this. My flow is better than ever with clear movement on all my plants, some even too much and they are leaving over in the flow. My Micranthemum Monte Carlo is just sitting there and doesn't seem to be spreading but it certainly is dying off as its remaining vibrant green.

My lighting is currently at 33%. I am considering upping this some more to around 40% to see if it triggers growth.

Would the collective recommend this? Or is there something else causing my lack of growth?
 
Can you set one strip lower than the other? Perhaps one at 50% the whole photoperiod and the other at 100% for a couple or three hours? I dont think you need constant intense light but having a couple of hours of "full sun" each day has always worked well for me.
 
WE HAVE PROGRESS!!!!

I'm glad to report that I have noticeable growth since upping the lighting. I had a couple of strands of hairgrass in there which sat doing nothing for months but during yesterdays water change I notice it had put runners out. I'm now running all lights at 40%. I find it odd that this level has started growth as I had put the lights on to this level when I first started the tank and the plants melted. I can only assume there was something CO2 related causing the issue when I set the tank up. I'll give it another week and I'll get another picture up here so show the growth.
 
I think you can increase your light levels. Assuming that I had one of these grobeams over a 40L tank at 40cm from the substrate and at 100% and still the light was not enough, I would recommend that you increase the light intensity 5%-10% every 10 days until you see growth that you are happy with.

In my own personal experience I think there is a misconception that the whole lot of TMC lights are very very powerful. Don't get me wrong, I love them, but they are not that powerful where someone needs to use them at 10% or at 40%. Maybe at the begining at 50% but then just up them.

Thanks
 
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