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Please help on a new setup

jarthel

Member
Joined
12 Nov 2009
Messages
212
Hello. I started planting around 2 weeks ago. But I'm getting lots of decaying plants and possibly algae.

1. Here are some plants which seems to be very dirty. I'm not sure if these are algae or decaying plants (could be a mixture of both?) how do I clean these? I tried a gravel vacuum pump but it cannot remove the stuff in the plants. also is there a way to make the tank squeeky clean without dismantling the current scape?

2. I planted 4 species on the tank.
- Nymphoides minima (similar to lotuses) where 4 plants died but the remaining 2 seems to be doing okay.
- Marsilea hirsuta - seems to be doing great. new leaves are sprouting all over except that the leaves seems to be goind up instead of growing prostrate? (not sure of the term).
- limniphila fagrans - some stems has died but I'm getting growth on the rest
- valisneria caulescens - seems to be doing okay except that I'm getting decay on some leaves. any thoughts?

3. I'm also getting lots and lots of surface film! it's probably due to all decaying plants. I've made some changes to my outlet so hopefully that will fix it.

4. I haven't bought a test kit so I cannot test yet. But I'm getting a "stagnant" water smell on the tank. The last water change was last Thursday (around 4 day ago). The smell I'm getting is the same smell when I decided to test the new bought canister. I just filled the tank with tap water (no conditioner was added) and run the filter. After a few day, the tank smelled. Any idea what could it be?

Thank you very much
 
Hi..

Do you have CO2 or any fertilizers on your tank?

What is the size of the tank?

Do you have a filter of any kind?

If the water is smelling, then something is rotting on it, this may be the plants..

The best way to clean the tank would be to take all the plants out, and keep changing water, also use a good filter.
 
tank equipment and fertilizing regime is in my sig
 
jarthel said:
tank equipment and fertilizing regime is in my sig
OK, I just checked the sig. Bingo! Here is the part that's killing you:

light: 2x54W T5HO+2x 150W MH = 400 megawatts of nuclear holocaust :woot: - this is unsustainable unless you inject biblical levels of CO2. Fix this and you will fix your problem.

Cheers,
 
ceg4048 said:
jarthel said:
tank equipment and fertilizing regime is in my sig
OK, I just checked the sig. Bingo! Here is the part that's killing you:

light: 2x54W T5HO+2x 150W MH = 400 megawatts of nuclear holocaust :woot: - this is unsustainable unless you inject biblical levels of CO2. Fix this and you will fix your problem.

Cheers,

not all of that is turned on though.
1st hour to T5 + 6hrs of halide + 1hr of T5.

The halide is about 43cm from the water surface. Should I bring it up?
 
Yeah, but at some point they are on at the same time right? When that happens you are overwhelming the plants with photon torpedos. Do you see that decay? That tells you that that particular plant is unable to produce enough sugar fast enough to live on with that level of lighting. More CO2 is needed to produce the sugar fast enough to compensate for the metabolism rise caused by that level of lighting. You can think of this as the plant cannibalizing a leaf to feed it to the other leaves. All that surface film? If Amano were to see that he'd likely coin the expression Git Hara-Kiri - because the plants are spilling their guts out.

I really don't know how high those halides need to be in order to re-establish some sort of control. Try putting them on the roof would be my guess, because they are just over the top mate :crazy: Can you disable one bulb at least? As I said before, you need to either inject more CO2 or start adding Easycarbo/Excel if you don't want to kill the fish with more injection.

Until you have better control of lighting you will lose control of plant health. You simply don't need that much light unless you are prepared to walk the CO2 tightrope... :thumbdown:

Cheers,
 
Hi Jarthel,

I got just about 100w on my 120L tank, and I got good results, although I need to keep an eye on nutrients and CO2, as some of my anubias have one leaf or other with green spot algae.

Ceg is right, turn of one of the halides and see if that helps, you got nothing to loose right?

Otherwise get floating plants, they will shade the others, although they will also consume lots of more nutrients, as CO2 will be unlimited for them.

By switching off one of the halides you will also save money on electricity, which is nice.. :D
 
ceg4048 said:
Yeah, but at some point they are on at the same time right?

I changed my lighting schedule. 2.5 hours of T5 only + 3 and 10 minutes hours of halide only (5 minutes overlap on start and finish. I added the overlap because I suppose the halide needs to warm up first) and 2.5 hours again of T5 again. But in saying that, the T5 and halide was NEVER on at the same time.

I also changed my filter outlet. I decided to use the spray bar with water disturbance on the surface. no surface film now.

It seems much better now!!!! the water is much much clearer. Hopefully, the plants on their way to recovery!!!

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the help :)
 
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