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Advice for setting up my next planted tank.

FishBeast

FishBeast

Member
Joined
27 May 2009
Messages
264
Location
Australia
Basically my question relates to lighting but I have put it here because there are other factors which come into play.
Any advice is welcome but basically my question relates to lighting.

Cheers!

500 LTR (132 gallon US)

Filtration: Canister 5500 LTR/HR 10.5 filtration turnover.

Total water turnover with wave maker: 17500 LTR/HR, 35x

Substrate 3.5 cm's ADA amazon II normal with kitty litter and osmocoate in the deeper bits.

C02: pressurised

Ferts: Will be my suppliers pre-mixed ferts in liquid form.
http://www.aquagreen.com.au/plant_data/ ... r_Pee.html

I will also be dosing my suppliers gluteraldehyde mix aswell.

I have 312w T5 lighting available but I am hesistant to use the lot of it and I need to know if 156w or 1.2 WPG is enough or whether I should up it to 1.7 WPG, or go the full 2.4 WPG?

Would I be better off going any combination of these with some kind of burst during the middle of my light cycle? What effect can come from using the full amount of light I have available?

It will be a glosso carpet with "trees" shadowing over alot of the glosso. Most of the plants will not be fussy over light except for the glosso. I am a little concerned that the glosso won't have enough light under the shadow of the "trees". Bare in mind that the trees will not fill in for a fair while.

This will be a very heavily stocked tank.

23 rainbows
3 columbian tetras
2 empire gudgeons
5 siamese algae eaters
as many shrimp and I can get big enough so they aren't eaten
10 khuli loaches
10 threadfin rainbows

Plants so far:
Glosso elatinoides
anubias nana
various mosses
pogostemon heliferi
some sort of hairy grass

Thanks guys!
 
Sounds like a great set-up to me!

My advice regarding the lighting would be to go for the lower intensity option first and see how you go. With good CO2 and nutrient/circulation you may be surprised at what little light glosso will carpet at.

If you do struggle with the lower light then you could consider replacing the glosso with Marsilea. This is a slower grower and less demanding, but gives a nice carpet with a similar leaf shape.

The risk, always, with adding more light than necessary is potential algae issues.

In my experience it is wise to run the minimal light necessary, then once the tank is mature, you can up the lighting if you fancy faster growth or wish to grow more demanding plants.

Of course, running more light will likely require more CO2 and nutrients (and electricity!) to compensate, so consider this for long-term running costs. It will also increase maintenance frequency and time.

Your algae risk is also increased with higher lighting if you stock heavily with fish...

All the best with the set-up and please run a journal if you can. :)
 
Yeah, I agree totally with George. More light = More algae.

Also, it states in the webpage you listed for your fertilizer:
General information: It is a liquid inorganic fertiliser made up with chelated trace elements, nitrogen and potassium. It has no phosphates and therefore relies on fish excreta and fish food for phosphates.
Click to expand...
Someone needs to tell the Dinosaur Pee-Pee Company that relying on fish waste and fish food for your PO4 under high lighting and CO2 enrichment is really dumB. That probably explains why Dinosaurs are extinct. :?

Cheers,
 
ceg4048 said:
Yeah, I agree totally with George. More light = More algae.

Also, it states in the webpage you listed for your fertilizer:
]Someone needs to tell the Dinosaur Pee-Pee Company that relying on fish waste and fish food for your PO4 under high lighting and CO2 enrichment is really dumB. That probably explains why Dinosaurs are extinct. :?

Cheers,
Click to expand...

I have checked my cupboard and noticed that I have a heap of mono potassium phosphate. This is what I need to put into the tank isn't it? I will have to store it in a different liquid bottle than the dinosaur pee right?
 
Hi mate,
It's unusual to have KH2PO4 just hanging around in a cupboard unless you live on a farm, but OK, that's very lucky. I see no reason why you need to liquefy it. A 140 G tank will swallow 1/2 teaspoon of powder 3X per week without any difficulty, and will probably ask for more under your Klingon lighting levels, no doubt.

Cheers,
 
Oh, OK. Ummmm.....just as a mini reality check, are you getting this PeePee at a reduced price? I mean why would you go from dry powder dosing, which is the absolute cheapest way to dose, to buying pre-mixed liquid, which is the most expensive way to dose?

I checked the price of the PeePee. It's $6.60 per 125 ml. That means it's $53 per litre, shocking, and yet you still have to add KH2PO4. If they are marketing this product using a urine analogy then it might imply that they are mixing Urea powder with water. They might even be using ammonium nitrate. I'm pretty sure you could buy urea powder or ammonium nitrate for lots cheaper. The advantage of urea or ammonium nitrate over Potassium Nitrate is that you get more Nitrogen bang for buck. But still, the powders are much cheaper. The advantage of Potassium nitrate is that there are no toxicity issues.

It also looks like they added green food colouring to the mix for special effects - or that might be the colour of the trace element powder they used in the mix. The marketing guy must have gotten the idea from watching Jurassic Park III. I love the scene where that kid uses T-Rex pee to scare off the smaller dinosaurs. Cool!

Cheers,
 
I will give it some more thought. I have enough dry salts to get me by for a while whilst I decide what to do... I found that saucing my salts last time cost an aweful lot because I had to get some of it from your side of the world.
 
Oh wow, mate, that would explain things. I just can't believe that you'd have that much trouble finding KNO3/KH2PO4. You should be able to find these at the garden centres, laboratories, or even ebay-Australia. I've even seen EI combo Packs for sale on ebay-New Zealand. Farmers uses this stuff by the ton, so check a farming supply outlet.

Cheers,
 
yeah it sux pretty bad... I searched for it locally last time around and aswell as ebay and had no luck... I just did a search for it again on ebay and sure enough 2 came up in the UK.
 
Hmmm, maybe try a few different search terms. For example KNO3 is also known as "saltpeter". I've read that this is found naturally in the ground in Northern Australia. KNO3 is also the active ingredient of "Stump Remover".

For Phosphate you should look into the enema products at your chemist. "Fleet Enema" is a popular medicine used to encourage bowel movement and it is Sodium Phosphate. Because of the Sodium, this is often referred to as a saline enema product. Talk to your chemist.

Although Sodium is not desirable, the dosages will be low enough so you can get away with this. If you talk to the chemist.

Also check out hydroponics supply outlets. They have to use nitrate and phosphate salts in order to create their products, but even if you have to buy their branded products they ought to be a lot cheaper than Dino PeePee.

Cheers,
 
i'm still chuckling about the name dino pee. :)
 
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