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help with giant val

fz1ben

Member
Joined
24 May 2013
Messages
97
Hello guys I'm trying to grow a large bunch of giant vallis at one end of my tanganyika tank,it's doing ok at the minute but not great.
The substrate is pool filter sand to which I added some api root tabs to a few months back. They are sending out runners but growing slowly. The lighting is aquaray led's and they are set quite dull about 50%, however I have a tile directly above the vallis which Is also set to 50% due to staghorn algae growing on the leaves close to the surface.

Any help or advice to get this growing well would be fantastic,not sure wether to up the lighting or add more root tabs or if there's so thing else I should be doing
Cheers
 
About 2 months ago,
ph 8.2
kh 15
gh 19
temp 25c
weekly 300l water changes

I don't dose any ferts at the moment as the fish are very sensitive and mostly wild caught. I'd rather dose the substrate if that will work
thanks for reply

Oh the tank is 2ft deep if that helps
 
Sounds like they could be to starting to establish. I found that they always do well faster after melting down and if they don't melt down they look weak for a few months.
What species fish do have ? I like African tanks.
 
Do you think changing the light intensity would help? The leaves are getting covered in staghorn

I have
16 cyprichromis leptosoma"untinta"
3 altolamprologus calvus
A pair of j.regani kipili
1 lamprologus tretocephalus
pair of eretmodus cyanostictus
5 syno petricola
 
Lower your light intensity; it's almost certainly the cause of the staghorn algae. Vals aren't demanding of fertilisers, so there's no need to worry about that.

How frequently are you changing the water?
 
If you lower the light, you reduce the demand for CO2. There's little point in bothering with injecting CO2 for the sake of Vallis, so just knock the light back.
Just nip the effected leaves off at the bottom and go from there.
 
I'll lower the light intensity and trim the leaves as suggested, co2 is not an option due to the fish. The tank holds around 600l of water and I change 250/300l a week. So you don't think root tabs would help?
 
co2 is not an option due to the fish
Why ? CO2 until it gets high say 40-50ppm has no effect on the fish. CO2 does not affect O2 levels for the fish. At high levels it affects fish as the partial pressure of CO2 prevents the fish expelling CO2 from their blood, regardless of O2 levels.
 
I keep wild caught tanganyika cichlids they are mega sensitive to any change and need stable conditions, it's a 6ft 600l tank so I don't want to be pumping in co2 for 10 giant vals. Some of the fish (eretmodus cyanostictus ) need tons of oxygen so I have two very big filters making tons of surface agitation so it would out gas pretty quickly.

I'm after a good way to get the vallis growing well but as this is a fish tank first I have to work around them. Thanks for the help so far, how much light will be enough to keep them growing?
 
Hey fz1ben, I've struggled with valis (standard variety) in my large low tech tank with play sand as a substrate. It sends out loads of runners but stays small and grows slow. Eventually old leaves would die off but new runners kept popping out. I tried root tabs and EI dosing. And have played around with lighting a bit (not much though) but have not had any joy in the long run. Crypts and Anubias do well in the tank on the other hand (although very very slow growth). Not sure if this helps but I suspect there is very little available CO2 for them. Either that or they don't like the sand substrate?
 
I use it another planted tank but cant in this one the calvus are known to be stupidly sensitive to it, I know people have dosed 2l per 100l and they went belly up within a few hours.
 
Probably just not enough nutrients in the water. All plants need nutrients even vals and you seem to be doing a lot of water changes so....you are removing everything the plants could use.

I wouldnt add liquid carbon in such a big tank and especially since you have giant vals (they have been said to be sensitive to liquid carbon).

Your best bet is at adding ferts to the roots of the plant. I think this will take a few weeks to show some effect.
 
Could you recommend a good root tab? I have a large bottle of neutro plus from aqua essentials could this be injected under the substrate with a syringe or is that a stupid idea?
 
Yes this will just leach into the watercolumn. Ive used the root tabs sold for terrestrial plants without a problem. Someone else could recommend a certain brand.
 
Also I would think about dosing the water column. There is no risk in doing this correctly.
 
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