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Radion fresh water

I was in a similar situation, between 4 and 5 weeks in and really very little growth, some plants like they Hydrocotyle had shed their emmersed leaves and put out submersed leaves, but they were tiny and did not grow larger. My low light plants were growing, but anything that needed light was not. It's really tempting to push the light, but be patient. I kept it at 6 hours, but went from 20% to 30% intensity and I am seeing a little more growth on things like the Hydrocotyle and Alternanthera Reinecki Mini, but I am leaving it at that for a week, then I will try adding another 30 minutes to the duration. Small steps!
 
:thumbup: Keep your CO2 and ferts high. Do a lot off WC and maintenance.
Siphon all the debris and old leaves away (this is were you get algue from, light or not). Look at you tube how George Farmer do this, explains a lot for maintenance.
Read about light in aquariums, the spectrums and the intensity of light. It will explains a lot why some people can grow anything were they lay there hands on.
Remember, light is what plants get's going on, second the equation: light,CO2 and ferts.
Happy reading and growing.

Patrick
 
ian_m said:
Perfect recipe for algae farming :eek:....You need to start much much lower and increase over a period of months as the plants adapt.
Click to expand...
I started at 20% but nothing happening apart from some plants melting, maybe this was due to lack of water changes. I'll get the lights back down to 20% for 4h per day.
I'm on my 3rd water change in 10days. 1200ltrs :( down the drain. Shame I don't have a garden to water
 
My understanding is that 4 hours is the absolute minimum photoperiod that plants must have, can't remember which thread I read that on, was a while ago. I personally started with low intensity, 5.5 hours, then up to 6. I would reduce intensity back to 20-30%, but maybe go for 5 hours. You need to make small changes and observe, it takes time to see the effect, whether positive or negative, from the change you made. Going from 20% to 100% is huge change. Im a really impatient person, I want to see results, I'm really having to reign myself in. Make a small step, observe, make another small step.
 
Rabbit leave it at 100%. The light what you are using is strong but only for shallow tanks, yours is 24 deep. You need the light to get to the bottom. If you dim it, it won't penetrate far enough to get to the bottom. They are making a mistake. How deeper a tank is, how stronger a light needs to be to get to the bottom. Look at diagrams about! (planted tank forum)

Patrick
 
I have had this light running for 10 weeks plus now on my 60cm, it was a mature scape that had the churios ?spelling? (aquasky rip off) previously going very well, however ive really struggled to get the light intensity even close to what i want with this. It is set up on the standard on-tank bracket which holds it too high, even at 100% i cant get fast growth or red stems especially around the edges. Now added the churios back on at 100% and the rx15fw at 100% and going like the clappers.

Current feeling is it lacks real power if used on the bracket and the spread is pretty narrow. Hoping to get a PAR reading fairly soon.
I would hasten to add that unless you are 100% your co2, flow etc is 100% then i wouldnt advise this cranking it right up....
 
Right I'm going run it 100% for 7h per day for one week. Let's see how this plans out.

Trial and error

The radion lights do set 12inch from the top of the tank then it dose have 24inch to penetrate to the bottom.

Plants are waving around vigorously in the curant and c02 is in yellow

My fingers are crossed :)
373700BE-D950-4E39-94AA-D38F3DB3BCB4.jpg

I'll keep a close eye on this, keep the salts going in and get 2 water changes done over the next 7 days
 
It's up to you, but looking at that picture, it looks bright. Like I said before, it's easy to start lower and step up week by week, going high and causing problems will be more difficult to recover from.
 
Build it up, like what I said a couple pages ago. Start around 41/2, 5 hours and increase it weekly by 20-30 minutes to 6-8 hours.
Just use a gentle flow for it.
@ Wisey- I don't want to offend you but what you see is not what plants see or getting out of it for photpsynthesis.

Patrick
 
I'm pretty new to this, tank is now 6 weeks old, but what I have seen is that having CO2 right and EI levels of ferts, then a fairly low light, does not cause plant problems, it just means they grow slowly and don't develop reds, but they don't die or get covered in algae. My point was that it is easier to start cautiously and make small steps each week, than make a big step, then get some algae and have to clean that up and recover from it. I'm essentially saying what you are saying with the duration, I'm just advising caution on the intensity as well. I have my tile 30 cm from the surface which works out as about 70 cm from substrate, my tank is not huge but it is not shallow, TMC Sig 60x45x45. I'm currently getting good growth from my low light plants and slow growth from the higher light plants, but I have no algae apart from a few tiny bits of diatoms on my bogwood. I do also have a bright room though, so my plants will get some indirect light all day, hence why I run CO2 24/7 at the moment and that's been beneficial.
 
Okee, it's fair to explain it futher. I normally stay away of discussions of giving advise to people. But now I see people going on a route that is not right path to follow for having a nice and a good aquarium. I think that some advise giving about light and how to use it is missing the point were it's supposed for, growing plants.
Now I'm not saying that I'm a expert but I have done a fair amount of reading over this subject and this is what I would advise you to do to.
Look up:
  • Par values versus waterdepth
  • Par values versus beam and spread
  • Light intensity and amounts of lumens
  • Light spectrum for (water)plants.
  • Led beam and CRI values of different types
Further:
  • High light does not get algue growing, bad maintenance does.
  • Algue belongs in aquariums. You want to keep them minimal.
  • Plants need light to grow. Especially red and blue, not the colors which we see or want to see.
  • Leds aren't as strong or perfect as we think in comparison to example T5.
  • Light behaves differently in water then in air.
  • All plants have different needs. Learn what they need or look it up.
  • When you dim light, it will lose very quickly it's energy and becomes inefficient.
I think, if you take the time to read a little over the subject, you will understand why some people can grow anything and others not (or just grow algue).
So I think you have re-think about what people were telling you to do. Do plants need time to adapt? Yes. Weeks or months? No way. Plants can grow as fast as there gen's are telling them. Just look in the nature around you and see how fast plants can grow.
Turn the questions around: You suffered melt of plants in the lower regions. Why? Look at somebody how has no problem at growing this plants. Ask him the how he does this.
Wisey, I don't want to offend you but look at your scape. Undemanding, low-light plants stand in the place were the light is the most strongest. The plants how need the strong light are in place were it's far less. I hope I start you thinking and start looking at scapes in a different way (how are they build, were to place plants, which ones,ect).

Patrick
 
I'm here to learn, so happy to take advice. Can you clarify what you you mean about my plant positions please? I specifically put the Alternanthera Reineki Mini which needs more light at the centre of the aquarium, directly under the tile and where there was nothing to shade it. The majority of my plants don't need high light, I put in the Hygrophila which likes light to get the best colour in a position where it would get light and provide some shade to my Anubias. It needs work to thin it as it grows so quick the the lower leaves don't get as much light.

The plant I had trouble with was the Limnophila H. Yes, this does need light, ok, its not in the highest light area, but its a tall stem plant so needs to go at the back. My tissue culture plants put out new growth but the bottom melted, these were only an inch high. Since planting the Tropica stems a week ago they have put out loads of new growth and seem to be doing really well. Was that a light issue or a tissue culture issue? I don't know? It could also be a CO2 issue as I had less stability when I first started and had not moved to 24/7 at that point. All I know is that with stable CO2 and Ferts, but not high light, that plant is now growing nicely, but not fast.

I'm tempted to increase my intensity again as it has been a week at 30%, but most people on this site apart from you advise caution and patience, so for us newbies its hard to know what is best. I do personally feel that light is my limiting factor at the moment as my tile is high and my intensity low. I also notice that my plants at the front lean towards the window at the far side of the room which suggests to me that my dominant light source is the window that gives them low light all day rather than the 6 hours of the tile in the evening. They don't get any direct light from the window, it does not fall on the tank. It's hard to know whether to increase intensity, lower the tile (will I then get darker corners etc), but what ever I do, I try to do one step at a time rather than do two or three things so I know what change I made gave the result and I try not to push too hard too soon as that's what everyone seems to caution against doing.
 
Wisey, about your plants it is better to do it in your journal but there is nothing wrong with your tank. I only think, if you were doing a rescape should you place the wood with those plants, on the same place? Would you give the plants a different position? And if so why?
Back to the light. You don't need to believe me but start reading about the first five points I was giving to you. In just a couple of articles you will see what I mean. About the others, I and Iain Suth. said something about the light. Do you hear them now? Why? Look at somebody's tank, there journals, you get the point.
Start reading about light and go with your feelings.
In the featured journals you can find a lot of information about tanks,set-ups and also your light.

Patrick
 
Patrick, I would welcome you comments on my journal, that's why I started my journal, for feedback, so please do discuss these things there. You are right in that my Anubias gets a lot of light, but it's where the wood fits in my tank. That's why I added the Hygrophila to shade it. It's a learning process for sure.
 
I don't understand your comment about Ian Sutherland though. Ian is also advocating low light. Pretty much everyone on here pushes the low light, Ian, Clive, people with thousands of forum posts, so who do you believe?

I'm happy to go read on your subjects and will do so over the weekend. I've increased to 40% tonight as its over a week since I went to 30%.

Rabbit jumped from 4 hours to 7 hours with 100% intensity. That's a 75% increase in duration, not a small step. Even you said that he should only go up in duration to 5-6 hours. I don't know if you read Rabbits earlier posts, but he's already lost £100 worth of plants. I'm just advocating a little caution. Swinging from 20% to 100%, 4 hours to 7 hours. It just seems counter productive. I don't want to see him loose another load of plants.
 
Personally I saw nothing wrong with your advice Wisey. This hobby is all about opinions. A disagreement doesn't always mean your wrong


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Have you been reading or googled some of the points of my earlier post? Please do, specially the one about par versus depth, that will give you some insight were we are talking about.
Have you read the post of Iain good? Because he is now using at his 60, his aquasky rip-off together with his radion-15. He is also saying that the radion isn't as strong as what people believe. Now Rabbit has 800 liter of water, more than 10 times the amount of the 60 from Iain with just 3 Radions and 60 cm of depth. I find it curious that some people suggest to dim to 20%. What I even find more curious that nobody looked at the lumens or par (maybe they don't no what it is). In the T5 time if somebody said he had around 0.3W p/liter at 100%, would you then advice him to dim his light to 20%? Do some calculations and find out why I'm saying this (Yes, there are some thumb rules for it, like the watt pro liter rule for T8/T5).
Rabbit probably lost many plants because they were getting not enough light in my opinion (maybe your m.c. also) That's why I said something about it, many posts ago. Dimming light to very low levels is not the way to go, you should look in duration. Dimmed light lose his energy very quickly and therefore his intensity.
I think you have to look closer to nature, large swings appear there also and very natural with no bad consequences in your question about change.
I don't say you are wrong but there is far more to it. Many people just think light is light but it isn't. You need to do your homework for getting good results of it.

Patrick
 
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