Greener than the greenest of greens

[JamesD]

Hi Peeps

Long time lurker, first time post

A quick question, really. How is it that many of the photo's here, elsewhere and in the magazine have planted aquariums that are insanely green.

While being relatively new (2-3 months) I am finding it hard to achieve that 'super green' look. I have been doing the right things (I think) but I am yet to achieve that 'wow' factor.

Currently I have:

125 litre juwel tank
Pressurised CO2 that comes on 2 hours before lights and off 1 hour after lights out
8 Hours of light per day (its the standard juwel lighting)
I change 50% of the water weekly
I am dosing with ferts that contains trace elements daily
My CO2 drop checker (I put the bromo blue in not the stuff that came with it) is displaying the green 30ppm
I have two power heads which is circulating the water very well, one is high and another down low
I have a glass difuser situated in a location where the fine bubbles are getting blasted around the tank before reaching the surface
I am ensuring that my filter is in tip top condition, I took out the Carbon layer in the filter
I did not use any substrate, I have a mixture of sand and 4mm gravel

The plants are going nuts, but they just don't have that special green. This set up has been running for around 3 weeks. Some of the leaves started to yellow which I trimmed back and new growth appears to be good. Am I just being really impatient?

I could upgrade the lighting to T5 but after reading a number of posts this is not the first thing to look at.

Some people here just manage to maintain that look from first planted right through all the stages. Any advice would be great.

 

[ceg4048]

Hi,
Your nutrient content and schedule are extremely vague. Green comes from Nitrogen so without knowing what you NPK and trace dosing is it's very difficult to determine. Leaves turning yellow are a signal that the Nitrogen levels are poor.

Cheers,

 

[Radik]

And some people like to use Photoshop to make green greener and more vibrant also your monitor may not be set to accurate render colors

 

[Garuf]

I think the reason is more likely to be using bulbs with very high spikes in the green part of their spectrum, as ceg points out though, yellowing is a sign of an underlying issue.

 

[JamesD]

ceg4048 I am dosing 15ml of Aqua Nourish+ daily.

Radik: I thought that may also be the case, I didn't want to suggest it at first. I am a designer and have unleashed the photoshop whoop ass many times before but didn't want to believe this was the case on some of the photo's! Are people shooting in RAW format also?

Garuf: So it is possible to get T5 bulbs (if I were to upgrade) that are bias towards providing this effect?

Thanks for the replies so far guys.

 

[Garuf]

Yeah, most daylight tubes have high green specturms and are available without upgrading, which would be a poor move as you're already struggling with deficiencies.

 

[JamesD]

A quick and dirty pic of the progress so far



p.s. Background, yeah I know, it will be gone soon!

 

[JamesD]

I swapped my lights over for some T5 Arcadia Plant Pro's. There is a noticeable bias towards the green spectrum. All of the plants now have that lush and rich green colour now.

 

[hotweldfire]

What's the wood on the left?

 

[JamesD]

I have no idea, I got it from my LFS, it just said "Twisted roots"

Next time I am there I shall ask for the name

 

[Alastair]

i think your lighting looks fine, i run juwel lighting too, but removed the nature tube as it was too yellow for my liking. the daylight tubes brigthen things up and plants look much greener. i also run an extra arcadia plant pro for a burst, but if these are used on there own they are very pink .

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

That is nice wood for the want of a better phrase I have two tubes above my tank and one is more aimed towards marine with a higher K and the other a floraglow which while still encouraging growth enhances colours. When I have this on it's own I notice how much better my plants look. Other than that your plants look relatively healthy, if there is no veigniness if that's a word your lights may have a lot to do with how green the plants look.

This is worth a look http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/lighting.htm