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Please help - All plants fine except Vallis - No Excel

Crawdaddy

Member
Joined
13 Sep 2012
Messages
60
Location
London
Hi all,

The title is pretty self explanatory. Basically I'm having a problem growing Vallis (Red Vallis Spiralis) which is driving me nuts. I understand for most people it grows like a weed so it's irratating the hell out of me.

I have Vallis spread all along the back of my 24 inch tank. The leaves seems to continually turn see-through before droping off. At the moment it is one or two per day. Also looking at the substrate the roots don't really seem to be spreading out like I would expect.

I have java moss, annuabis, and 4 x different species of crypts that are all doing fine - not overly demanding I know. The tanks has been running for over 4 months now so it's not a case of adjusting to a new tank and I don't use easy carbo or excel.

I am running:
- A 67l tank
- Pressurized CO2 fed through a inline diffuser, drop checker running lime green
- Fluval 405 cannister filter, outflow fired accross the back of the tank where the Vallis is
- Dosing estimative index*
- Medium to high light for 6hrs**
- A nutritious substrate (columbo i believe).
- The PH is quite low (between 6.8 and 7) due to the substrate
- Temp is 23 degrees

*I do not use excel or easy carbo. However for my micro dosing I have been using up some seachem flourish I had lying around.

**This part is a slightly unknown quantity. I'm running a daylight lamp which apparently gives 75W of normal light energy (Kelvin: 6500K, Lumens: 900, CRI: 85 Daylight - Day Light Tube - 11W fits PL lamps D33040 and D33041 £ - Intertools Online | from Interhire of Ilkeston) which is very high but I have the lamp set 14 inches above the rim of the tank and about 15 inches above water level.

Does anybody have any idea where I'm going wrong?

Cheers
CD
 
Have you grown it sucessfully before?
Hard or soft water?
I was under the impression it prefers harder water, something to do with being able to utilise the carbonates (not too sure about the science bit)
 
According to Thames water i'm in a hard water area...

... but no i've not grown it successfully before. This is my first crack at a proper planted tank. The only thing i've really grown with any success before is annuabis and algae! :)
 
This indicates poor CO2:
The leaves seems to continually turn see-through before droping off.

This is entirely irrelevant:
running a daylight lamp which apparently gives 75W of normal light energy (Kelvin: 6500K, Lumens: 900, CRI: 85 Daylight - Day Light Tube - 11W fits PL lamps D33040 and D33041 £ - Intertools Online | from Interhire of Ilkeston)

This could be the source of your problem:
Medium to high light for 6hrs

Try adding more CO2.

Cheers,
 
Okay thanks for the diagnosis. I knew I wasn't exactly saturating the tank with Co2 but I was under the impression my plants had fairly limited requirements. I'll crank the CO2 up as suggested.

"Medium to high light for 6hrs - This could be the source of your problem"

Do you also recommend perhaps raising the light/shortening the time period? What would be the detrimental effect on growth of the other plants? (I forgot to say i'm also trying to grow a hairgrass carpet - which is progressing slowly to say the least).

Thanks for the help guys. Really appreciated.
 
That makes two of us.

It's an 11W daylight tube that is allegedly the equivalent of somewhere between a 60-75w tungsted bulb (depending on who you believe). I've been using the 60-75w figure as the bench mark when trying to judge how strong my lighting is - hence why my lighting is now 15 inches above the tank rim.
 
Hello,
The inflated number is not real, in the sense that the PAR value emitted by the bulb is an objective number, whereas what you "see" as being bright is not really related to what the plant "sees". You should ignore those numbers and only pay attention the wattage of the bulb, Pink bulbs and blue bulbs of the same wattage will look dim to you because your brain tends to ignore these colors, however it pays much more attention to yellow and green. That's why hazard vests are normally yellow/green which "appears" bright to us. Bulbs marketed as X watts but bright as Y watts equivalent contain a lot of green whereas incandescent light bulbs emit around 90% of it's energy as infrared, which you cannot see at all, and the rest of the emissions are red and orange. So it's very easy to make a florescent bulb that looks as bright as an incandescent and which uses a lot less energy to do so.

In any case, since we are not talking about 75 watts T5, which would have been totally insane, and instead about a more reasonable value then we need to look more closely at your distribution of flow and CO2. You need to show a picture of your installation because the description is vague.

Cheers,
 
Ah and there was me thinking all this time that I was going rediculously overkill on the lighting. Thanks for the clarification. So with that in mind, presuming we are actually talking comparatively low lighting levels, should i actually be droping my lighting height? Or, taking into account a potential Co2 dificiency, would you say it's about right where it is?

As for the Co2 distribution/flow. Here's the tank:
tank2m.jpg

As you can see inflow and outflow are situated back left (as you look at it). Filtration is a fluval 305 (sorry i mistakenly put 405 above). Tank dimesions are 24w x 12d x 15h (67litres) so reasonably high flow for size. Flow runs powerfully along the back, sweeps round the front right corner bending the hair grass there and then slows by the time it gets to the front left. The front left corner is the most stagnent part of the design, but frustratingly the Vallis that is there, in front of the drift wood, is doing okay. Not really growing mind but it's not shedding leaves. The Vals situated along the back left, under the outflow are the worst affected although the problem isnt isolated to them. as mentioned before the crypts on the back right are going great guns.

As you'll probably notice the drop checker is slightly dark green. I've knocked the Co2 back the 2 days because i've got an overly docile new puffer fish and i was afraid I was gassing him. I'm not, so i've increased the rate. The checker will be more lime tomorrow, although i've not been running it in the yellowy green zone that some seem to favour. Regardless the Vallis problem has been going on for a while not just the last couple of days.
 
Hi,
As you mentioned, I'd leave the position of the light where it is for now and tackle the issue of the Vallis. The absolute last thing to do when addressing plant issues is to increase the lighting energy, that's for sure, because more light just amplifies whatever problems you have along with amplifying the growth rates.

Assuming that the DC has 4dkH water, and assuming that's the color when the light are first turned on in the morning, the color seems OK to me. The only thing that looks a bit problematic is that the Vallis appears to be pummeled by the filter output. I can see some of the fronds leaning over to the right, which is generally not good. You might try sliding the pipe more towards the front so that the fronds are not being pummeled.

I'm uncertain, but there is a white blob right next to the DC and it seems as if the diffuser is right next to the DC, which might corrupt the DC reading. If that's the case then it might be better to mount the DC as far from the diffuser as possible.

Cheers,
 
Hi I agree with ceg4048 on the flow across the vallis. It's looks a bit harsh. The lighting looks weak in that pic,but don't take my advice on lighting.(check out help lighting a two ft cube)as above get everything else right first seems to be the best advice which is what I'm doing at the moment. Stick with it its going to be a nice set up .
 
Ceg:
Yes it is 4dkH and yes the DC tends to run a this colour (or slightly more lime) from lights on to lights off. The white blob you are refering to is either a suction pad for the DC, a rock or a fish. The CO2 is diffused by an up atomiser into the outflow of the filter so is on the other side of the tank.

Right, so i've knocked the light height up another inch, cut the photo period by 30mins. I've cranked up the CO2 and will aim for an even limier lime green. I'll also try moving the DC about, especially over to the left of the tank to make sure my levels are consistent. Finally i'll see what can be done about the aggressive flow accross the top of the Vals at the back. Perhaps i'll move the out flow to flow across the foreground or even deflect some of it off the wood.

I'll give all that a run for a while and see how I get on.

Many thanks for your time and advice.

Kap: Cheers for the advice and kind words. The foreground actually looks a bit sparse in that photo compared to real life. If I can get the hairgrass carpet bursting into life I it should look stunning. But i'll worry about growth when I've cured death. Thanks for the heads up about the other post, I'll read that properly later. I think keeping the lighting weak might be the order of the day at the moement though until I get the vals sorted.

Thanks all
CD
 
By the way just one more quick thought on this that i forgot to mention which might have an impact. As i mention in my OP i am dosing EI with the micros being flourish. Since I believe this contains Magnesium Sulphate i kind of put 2 and 2 together and left out the Magnesium Sulphate out of my Macro mix. Was that a stupid move? Could that have an influence in the above?
 
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