• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Increasing growth rate without more light?

B

Burnleygaz

Member
Joined
21 Jun 2010
Messages
109
Location
Burnley
I`m kinda happy with the way my tank is going so far, no algae that i can see, all my plants are growing steadily, but i would like them to grow a bit faster (at the rate things are going i`ll be waiting 5 months+ for my dwarf hair grass to fill the space i want it to 😛 ).

Tank specs are:

190l corner tank
51 watts of t8 lighting with good reflectors (2x18 watt tubes and 1 15 watt) on for 8 hours per day
tetratec ex 1200 +koralia nano + 1000lph powerhead (every leaf on every plant is constantly swaying , so i think i have my flow sorted)
Dosing wise im adding 1/4 tsp KNO3 + 1/4 tsp KH2PO4 3 times a week and 1/8 csm+b twice a week
Co2 is on about 6 bps, drop checker is yellow where ever i put it. (with 4dkh water in)

Besides the obvious of a longer photo period (and would anyone know how long i could go with before algae joins the party?) is there anything i can do ?
 
Re: Increasing growth rate without more light?

Increasing the photoperiod probably won't give you much more growth, most plants fold up their leaves and say enoughs enough at around 8 hours from my experience.

More co2 and more ferts theoretically should give more but if there's no light there to drive the growth then I suspect the increase would be marginal.
 
The thing with the plants folding up their leaves is that no stem plants i`ve had in there have closed up until some point in the night .. when im in bed most likley heh
 
ceg4048 said:
Hi,
Why not simply add more CO2 and more nutrients if you want higher growth rates?

Cheers,
Click to expand...

Cheers , thats the sort of answer i was looking for , but i fear i`m on the limit of how much co2 i can add as far as my fish are concerned , but i`ll double my fert`s from this week and try raising my spray bar for a bit more surface movement to see if i can get some more co2 in. Other then that i`ll look into a better method of injection rather then my UP ceramic disc 🙂
 
Tom said:
try raising my spray bar for a bit more surface movement to see if i can get some more co2 in
Click to expand...

You're more likely to lose CO2 doing that
Click to expand...

True.... probably easier to just add another 18w t8 tube into my hood/lid , i have a control unit lying about somewhere.
 
I`ve been playing with a needle wheel modded powerhead and raised my spray bar ever so slightly to get a bit more surface movement, and in the last couple of days the dwarf sag has been putting out new leaves that are about 2x the width of the old leaves and they seem to be growing quicker , this leads me to presume that my method of CO2 distibution/injection was sub par ? (i havent upped my fert dosing yet as i want to change one thing at a time to make sure i learn how each change effects the tank)

Before this i was just using a ceramic diffuser , and i couldnt go any higher with my bps or the fish would start migrating to the surface(roughly 6 BPS), im still only at 3 BPS so i can likely go higher still.
 
Yep, congratulations, you've discovered and confirmed the benefits of flow distribution. Only in very rare cases is more light ever required. Plenty of performance improvements can be made by adjusting the physical properties of the tank, kind of like Formula 1 improvements without increasing engine size. :thumbup:

Cheers,
 
Its a definite improvment , all my plants seem to be greener today with much larger new growth , and faster , the dwarf sag used to take about 7 days to get a new leaf from just emerging to fully formed but the new ones that were half out yesterday are now full blown leaves. I think the extra flow + the smaller CO2 bubble size from the needle wheel is really helping , but now i can see that i still have a dead spot along one of the rear walls 🙁 even with a combined flow of over 4000 lph (in a 190l tank) between my filter + extra powerheads 🙁 I shall have to rethink my positioning of everything again i think.
 
Is it the Triangle tank referenced in you signature? That's a tough one to optimize flow in because of the strange shape. You also have that huge piece of wood in there that causes problems for flow.

Cheers,
 
Hi,

I'm interested to understand what you did with the spraybar. Does your Co2 injected water enter the tank through your spraybar? Is it positioned along the back wall? If so, what angle have you found best for the direction of flow from this. You've got me thinking and I think I need to re position mine.
I have a feeling that so long as the surface isn't being broken then the spray bar directed towards the surface at an angle helps accelerate the flow bouncing off the water surface then toward the plants in the middle and to the front of the tank. Hmmm, I need to have a fiddle with my setup tonight 🙂
Cheers

Gavin
 
ceg4048 said:
Is it the Triangle tank referenced in you signature? That's a tough one to optimize flow in because of the strange shape. You also have that huge piece of wood in there that causes problems for flow.

Cheers,
Click to expand...

Yeah its the corner tank , and your right its a p.i.t.a to get the flow right.

Gfish

No, i`ve gone from a ceramic disc diffuser to feeding my CO2 into the inlet of a needle wheel modded powerhead, much much smaller bubbles + the added benifit of an extra 1000lph of flow 😛 ive got my spray bar along one wall pointing slightly towards the surface for a bit of movement , with 1 powerhead down low blasting my co2 accross the front wall , a korilla on the opposite side aimed down towards my filter inlet and then a 3rd powerhead thats aiming back towards my first one along the other back wall now

Awesome paint skills! :

flow.jpg

CO2 goes into the bottom left powerhead
 
Well, as a general rule I try to avoid placing pumps in opposite directions because this almost always results in some degree of flow cancellation.

The pump that's shown at the top apex aimed along the length of the spraybar should instead be aimed along that right wall. Likewise, the pump at the bottom right apex cancels flow from the spraybar. It would be better theoretically if all pumps were placed so that their flows were more or less in the same direction as the spraybar and were at the same or similar height as the spraybar. You cannot play ping-pong or relay with flow. All must play together...

Cheers,
 
It must be hard to get a good direction of flow set in this shaped tank. But I imagine the flow from your spray bar will naturally come toward the point and then get blasted in opposite directions, and downward and back. With the position of the pump at this point, so long as it's mid height or so and pointing it back along the upper right wall in the pic, then I think it would meet your other pump which should ideally be placed low firing current below the spraybar and toward the lower far left point of the tank. That would be my way to start here, but if you say your getting good circulation and distribution of CO2 then thats great. 🙂

I'm having a hard enough time understanding flow in my own regular oblong shaped tank. With my long spraybar across the back wall pointing down at an angle of 30 degrees from surface (I've not tried anything different yet) toward the high plants in the middle Ive been left with where to place my other filter outlet. So I've aimed it near the surface and across the front of the tank, which seems to work quite well in that by the time it reaches across to the other end and hits the corner it's main flow is lower and then is pulled around 90 degrees and down toward the far left corner where one of my intakes is.
I also have a Newave 5500 pump that's mid height on the left side wall pointing across into the back far right corner where the other intake is.

So the effect seems to be from the spraybar my co2 injected water is pushed toward the area where
Most of my anubias and java are then when it reaches closer to the front its picked up by the flow of the other outlet and circulated around and down where hopefully it hits all lower plants and 3 onion plant bulbs.
What do you guys think?

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit by the way 🙂

Cheers

Gavin
 
ceg4048 said:
Well, as a general rule I try to avoid placing pumps in opposite directions because this almost always results in some degree of flow cancellation.

The pump that's shown at the top apex aimed along the length of the spraybar should instead be aimed along that right wall. Likewise, the pump at the bottom right apex cancels flow from the spraybar. It would be better theoretically if all pumps were placed so that their flows were more or less in the same direction as the spraybar and were at the same or similar height as the spraybar. You cannot play ping-pong or relay with flow. All must play together...

Cheers,
Click to expand...

The picture isn`t a very good representation of the layout as its 2d. Spray bar is near the surface , pump on the left corner is my needle wheel with the CO2 going in , this is practicly on the substrate , the one on the bottom right corner is mounted up high but aimed down towards the middle of the tank roughly , and top right is really low aswell. Would probably wise to mention that the water is 20 inches deep from surface to top of the substrate aswell.


The biggest problem is because of the shape of the tank the flow from the spray bar has around 5 inches to go before it hits the front glass at the shortest point and 27 inches at the other end, also with the front glass being curved the flow from the short end travels along the glass instead of being pushed down as you would expect in a regular shaped tank, these 3 things mean that filter flow alone tends to just make a nice little eddy in the middle of the tank.

Now that i think about it i thing the only configuration i havent tried is everything pointing in the same direction....
 
You actually should have excellent results since what you are doing is also something Tropica suggest as well as myself.
Light limited growth. So CO2/nutrients are both entirely independent.


Regards,
Tom Barr
 
If you pump enough fluid in a single direction within a container the effluent will automatically find its way into areas of low pressure.
Click to expand...

Now i`ve read this it makes perfect sense 😳 i shall be re doing my powerheads tomorrow.
 
plantbrain said:
You actually should have excellent results since what you are doing is also something Tropica suggest as well as myself.
Light limited growth. So CO2/nutrients are both entirely independent.


Regards,
Tom Barr
Click to expand...

I should (from what i`ve read over on your forum and a few others).....if my CO2 is perfect , which i do not think it is yet, nutrients are (hopefully) not an issue as im dosing EI levels for a 225 litre tank. I`m starting to belive light is overrated as some of my e.tennulus has decided to put out runners into one of my plecs caves , to me it looks completley dark in there but it seems to be growing as fast if not faster then the rest of the new growth which is out in the open :lol:
 
Moved the additional PH`s around when i done a waterchange yesterday, flow actually appers better then before with every single leaf of evey plant swaying madly , might get away with removing one now. I feel rather stupid for missing the obvious really, one to chalk up to experience 😳
Another plus point is today i got home to be greeted with pearling plants for the first time ever, which is quite a nice bonus 😛
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top