Help device needed.

[Bhu]

Dam iPad auto correction title should read Help Advice needed

So after a successful first 4 weeks I'm now running into difficulties. My cryptocoryne has started to melt. Here is a small video of one of the leaves that is melting also releasing, what I think is O2 bubbles.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f165/Bhujang108/IMG_1545_zpsvjybfujw.mp4

I'm also now getting really bad GSA on my Anubis 🙁 other plants are still all doing fine,

Alternanthera Rosaefolia
Echinodorus Belheri
Echinodorus Tenellus
Ludwigia Peruviana
Valis nana
And all aponogetons growing really well
Liliaeposis Brasiliensis not growing but looking good still
Pogostemon Erectus, growing slowly, but clearly growing.
Java moss growing well
Xmas and weeping moss growing back slowly

All these I'm really happy with...

But my

Cryptocoryne Bullosa just started to melt as the above video with little circles melting away then the rest of the leaf and
Cryptocoryne Undulatus Brown reduced to new leaves only after all the older leaves melted away over 2 days.
Also Anubias barteri angustifolia now has really bad GSA on one leaf and others following and the
Anubias nana bonsai starting to get one or two leaves that has GSA developing. Am just getting some red ramshorns snails so hope that helps, there's already otos in the tank and lots of shrimp.

It's a 150lt tank 55cm cube with twin 600 Aqua grow LEDs approx 100-120 par on the substrate so not overly intense which might explain the poor LB growth

Injecting co2 good lime colour at lights on to light lime when the co2 is turned off at 4pm

Lights on 8am ramped for 3 hours to 100% then on full until 5pm then ramped down to 8 at lights off.

Dosing 15ml of neutro+ a day will start EI soon to replace this.

Tropica black substrate

Temp. 27'C

Water change 75lt / week

Any advice appreciated.

 

[Julian]

What lights? If those are TMC's, 100% brightness will be the problem.

 

[Jose]

Sounds like low phosphates or low nutrients in general.

 

[Bhu]

What lights? If those are TMC's, 100% brightness will be the problem.

But the LB is not growing due to not enough light ! Was chatting with George Farmer and he feels these lights are medium for my set up and that perhaps I need a third! But yes may be lights although they were fine for 4 weeks...

Sounds like low phosphates or low nutrients in general.

Do you mean too high phosphates? I did recently try to raise the phosphates from 2ppm to 4ppm which I did successfully to try and rid me of the other issue I mentioned of GSA on my anubais leaves... As for nutrients I'm dosing 15ml of neutro+ is that maybe too little for this much plant? Maybe I should increase to 20ml? Can't wait to start using EI as I'm sure the results will be better 🙂

 

[Jose]

Do you know how much of each nutrient you are dosing? I tryed to google it but had no luck. You are probably underdosing but I cant say for certain.

 

[Bhu]

Yes I can't find any info on Neutro+ other than "it's all,you need for your plants" lol I'm just concerned on over dosing for my shrimps and fish.

But maybe it will help? Maybe I should just stop using it and go EI but that transition may also cause me die off due to changes in water chemistry...

 

[Sk3lly]

Maybe your co2 circulation isnt sufficient? Sure your at the right ppm as indicated by drop checker but is it getting to all areas of the tank

I also think the lights are running a long time. 12hours in total. I know that 6 hours of that is ramped. Even so a large percentage of those ramped hours will still be at a high lighting level then paired with the 6 hours of full strength. This would be my starting point.

Main causes of algae are too much light and inadequate co2.

Low nutrients will cause it also but youve indicated that you have 2ppm phosphates so you'll probably be ok


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[Vazkez]

I am not near to GF experience but I try to dp the following,

Increase the dosing to 20ml
Move the sparaybar at the back of the tank
Lower the temperature to 24'C (why so high anyway? ) Higher temperature need more CO2
If you increae PO4 too much you will have to increase NO3 as the uptake will be higher...

 

[ceg4048]

It's a 150lt tank 55cm cube with twin 600 Aqua grow LEDs approx 100-120 par on the substrate so not overly intense which might explain the poor LB growth

Sorry, this is incorrect. This is the SOURCE of the problem.

Cheers,

 

[Bhu]

Ok I'm going to reduce the lighting.

Can you please recommend a better schedule and intensity.

The temperature is for those 2 guys on the left in my avatar. I know I know it's not the best set up but we love them and dont want to get rid of them.

Thanks for the advice... I'm going to start by reducing the full exposure time and intensity.

My fears are that it will mess with the plants that are growing well...

 

[Sk3lly]

Ok I'm going to reduce the lighting.

Can you please recommend a better schedule and intensity.

The temperature is for those 2 guys on the left in my avatar. I know I know it's not the best set up but we love them and dont want to get rid of them.

Thanks for the advice... I'm going to start by reducing the full exposure time and intensity.

My fears are that it will mess with the plants that are growing well...

Well light schedules will vary depending on a range of factors.

I have a very high powered light on my tank. Kicks out great PAR. Shipped from the states.

I ramp from 0 to 80% over 2 hours. Then 80% for 3 hours. Then ramp down 80% to 0 for 2 hours. Even this might be too much though. Monitoring if i get any gsa back. Ive improved circulation and im going some way to improve my co2 diffusion


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[Bhu]

Well today, the melt seems to be stopping! I did a huge 75lt water change on Sunday and maybe this has helped also. 2 things I did that may have contributed to this.

1) I dosed over the specified amount of liquid co2 ot try and kill some BBA on bogwood and GSA on anubais leaf.
2) I dosed KH2PO4 to try to increase the PO4 from 2ppm to 4 ppm which did increase to 4ppm so got that right using the James Calculator. I did this for 2 days until the PO4 was up to 4-5 ppm

Maybe this water chemistry change combined with the high demand from the lights caused the melt?

 

[ceg4048]

Hi Bhu,
Melting plants have nothing to do with water chemistry change and has everything to do with poor CO2.

Firstly you would do well to examine this first basic chart:


People run into trouble once they have lighting that is outside of the blue zone.
Your lighting schedules must take into account these zones of Low, Medium and High PAR because PAR levels drive CO2 uptake requirement. So when your light is too high without attention to CO2 availability the plants will suffer. See http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/what-causes-leaves-to-melt-and-what-to-do-now.20421/ for more details.

I found a more specific chart from Hoppy (from his TPT thread http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=184368) listing the measured PAR output at 100% for some popular LED models. Your model may not be on the chart but it will at least give you a general idea:


People really should to pay more attention to this data because light intensity is the source of many problems due to it's direct effect on CO2 requirements.

If you want to solve your problems of melting then control the PAR levels using the PAR at substrate level as a proxy for the rest of the tank.

Cheers,

 

[Bhu]

Hi Clive

Thanks for this. Realistically Im running only around 70 to 80 PAR (TMC claim that one is 61 PAR at a height of 400mm in the air, now they dont mention water! which will take a lot away as will the glass drip trays, I have 2 of them so max is 122 and mine are 150mm higher) at the substrate which looks to be medium light. Also as im ramping my lights and co2 starts 3 hours before lights come on that's a total of 6 hours of co2 fine mist going into the tank before the lights reach this maximum par. They then stay there for 4 hours and the co2 runs that hole time and turns off 1 hour into ramp down. I turned the co2 off at this point as the drop checker was going into the yellow value by then. The only thing I can think of is that the flow is insufficient to distribute or dissolve all the co2. I will be adding a further 1000lt/h but feel this will be mad as the plants will be swaying all over the place! I will go and reads the 2 links now that you posted and report back when things stabilize more, which they seem to be doing as the melt has stopped phew! Now just to deal with GSA on the leaves! 🙁

 

[ian_m]

Now just to deal with GSA on the leaves!

You can't really, other then remove them. I have had slight success using diluted liquid carbon with GSA on anubias leaves, but too weak nothing happens, too strong it kills the leaves.

 

[Bhu]

You can't really, other then remove them. I have had slight success using diluted liquid carbon with GSA on anubias leaves, but too weak nothing happens, too strong it kills the leaves.

But some people don't get GSA at all! And many in the US are all ranting how raising PO4 has got rid of GSA on their leaves. Is this just a placebo fairy tale?

 

[ian_m]

And many in the US are all ranting how raising PO4 has got rid of GSA on their leaves. Is this just a placebo fairy tale?

Didn't work for me. You need to remove the affected leaves and sort out reason why it appeared in first place. In my case moving the anubias to a lower light area (under supporting brace) and has stayed GSA free.

 

[Bhu]

Hi Clive

Do plants use the blue and red parts of the spectrum to do different things? My lights are very week in the red section of the spectrum. Could this cause problems or are plants happy to grow on in just the blue? Is there no problems due to red wave length deficiency?

The videos on the links are fantastic by the way. really makes it clear what's going on.

cheers

Bhu

Didn't work for me. You need to remove the affected leaves and sort out reason why it appeared in first place. In my case moving the anubias to a lower light area (under supporting brace) and has stayed GSA free.

Mmmm ok well mine are already under supporting braces and I will have to take a lot of leaves off now 🙁 I have some ramshorn snails coming I might just spend a few days constantly putting them on the leaves I want cleaned lol ha ha ha

 

[parotet]

Hi Clive

Thanks for this. Realistically Im running only around 70 to 80 PAR (TMC claim that one is 61 PAR at a height of 400mm in the air, now they dont mention water! which will take a lot away as will the glass drip trays, I have 2 of them so max is 122 and mine are 150mm higher) at the substrate which looks to be medium light

This looks to me like enough light to suffer algae blooms unless you have a perfect control on other issues. Co2 would be the first thing to check for sure. Such a deep tank can make more difficult the flow. To reduce the co2 demand a good solution is to decrease the amount of light. You shouldn't make your plants struggle under very low light, but it looks that if you have these PAR reading at the substrate they won't suffer for this reason. If you have high to medium light PAR readings at the substrate, imagine the photobombing plants are suffering on the top...
Ph readings will probably give a lot of useful information. You can check this way if your co2 diffusion is good enough for that light level. Once again the more light the more perfect reading you should get. No room for mistakes.

I will be adding a further 1000lt/h but feel this will be mad as the plants will be swaying all over the place

Is this the 'official' output of your filter? If it is filled with media it would be probably delivering 500 lth or less, which is not really too much if you're playing that hard with light. Try to leave only 1/3 of media in the canister. If you're purchasing another filter try to achieve the 10x rule of thumb. If your tank has 155 liters, you should have filter delivering 1550 lph

Another important thing IMO: you do not know what you are adding to the tank regarding ferts. 'Everything your plants need' or similar messages are far from being informative. Probably should do for a low light tank, but not for yours. You definitely need to provide enough nutrients to your plants following the EI methods or other ones you prefer, but not knowing what you dose is not the way to go. It's like driving a formula 1 without knowing which fuel your car has.

In other words, more light implies necessarily a better knowledge, control and management of your tank. When light is not that high, there's room for little mistakes. Therefore, you can try to have a good control on all this (filtering, flow, co2 diffusion, etc.) or decrease a bit your light to reduce this demand. IMO doing both things works best. It gives you a comfortable safety margin while you solve your problems.

Hope it helps.

Jordi

 

[Bhu]

The extra flow is from a power head with a spray bar...

See here...

http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/is-this-flow-too-much.34821/

Yes it's a real pain with this Neutro+ but it was recommended by the guys I got the plants from at AquaEssentials. They seem like good people who know what they are talking about but for sure the EI is the way to go. I'm really looking forward to starting this and soon...

The tank is deep but it's a cube so the flow is very circular and easy to see. Especially with the fine mist of co2 being injected from the filter. You can clearly see that the fine co2 bubbles are getting everywhere.

Most of the tank is going great such that I've had a good bucket of cuttings from several plants to keep them under control.

There's a definite stop of melt now and that was before I reduced the lights. But I've still reduced them to give the plants less strain on production. Anyhow I'll be keeping you all informed how it goes. I've got a diary of day to day and pictures to start a journal so all these events as well as then old will be there...

Thanks again for all your inputs, help and advice

Best wishes

Bhu