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15 UK Gallon rescape journal

Fern..think I have had it about a year now, maybe a little less - it is still a single Tropica plant, I have never had plantlets from it to speak of. I remove dead leaves but have yet to trim the rhizome though that is getting close after giving it a good checkover last night, getting massive behind the wood!
 
nry said:
Camera is a Kodak SLR-type, a few years old now. I think the issue is more down to the lighting on the tank - once things bed in I may try some pictures with reduced/different tank lighting as that should reduce the washout of detail and over saturation of green. Name the software and I can probably access it, loads of stuff at work.

Hi,
You can really do a lot of recovery with Photoshop. The latest version is CS3 but any version will do. Photoshop enables you to alter the color balance and retrieve the sharpness of the images that the camera steals due to some of it's color filtration. There are plenty of other programs but Photoshop seems to be the standard by which all others are measured. an example of what you could do to clean the photo up is provided below: Now, remember I can't see the tank in real life so I just guess at what it might look like if the highlighted areas weren't clipping in the yellow.



Another ting you can do, if you have the ability to "spot meter" is to spot meter the highlighted areas in manual mode and use those exposure settings for the shot. It darkens the rest of the image but it keps from blowing out the highlights. It looks like when I did the corrections the worst hit areas turned white. This is called "clipping" which digital cameras do when the data is overloaded they just go to white.

Cheers,
 
Blimey - we do have Photoshop available at work, think it may be CS2 - I shall have a play around, that altered picture is much better though it shows up my slightly shakey hand! May 'borrrow' the camera tripod again when things have grown in.
 
Not much to see beyond a modified Juwel hood!
 
I'll take a photo next water change (usually Monday night), ripped all the Juwel stuff out, bolted in two T8 tubes with reflectors in simple terms!
 
Keep forgetting to take some piccies of the hood, I will try to remember on Monday at water change time - again!

Current played with piccies, used Paint.net which is free, made a little difference I think, need to remember to hunt out Photoshop at work and see how that goes.

Current growth:

normal_CurrentGrowth.jpg


Close up of my rasbora maculatus (and some HC too!):

normal_RMacCloseup.jpg


HC growth is doing really well, it is certainly growing more quickly directly beneath the light tubes, will probably need to trim some areas in the next week or so. Will use any trimmings to flesh out the slower growth areas towards the left/right edges o the substrate.
 
Question - does an increase in surface scum suggest nutrient deficiency? I started half-dosing EI for this tank a good few months ago when plant mass was very low, the period when the UG was doing nothing at all. Having added the HC, parvula etc plant mass is now continuously increasing and I have noticed an increased amount of surface scum building up - wondering if upping back to full EI dose is worthwhile, I dropped down as I was beginning to get a bit of hair-algae developing which has pretty much gone (though two little clumps have no started to grow), perhaps the signs are pointing towards upping the fertilisers?
 
Surface scum is related to CO2 deficiency as well as nutrient deficiency. So is hair algae. Nutrients don't cause hair algae, so dropping down when you saw the algae was an inappropriate action. Try adding more CO2 and more nutrients as well as increased water changes. Doing half EI is like eating half your meals or like earning half your salary. Likewise, the disappearance of the hair algae is not related to you cutting of the nutrients. This is an optical illusion which causes many to draw a false correlation between nutrients and algae. I know this sounds obstinate and it's easy to be skeptical when you are looking squarely at your algae and shaking your head with dismay.

When a plant faces a deficiency it calculates that it cannot sustain the same biomass and continue to survive. The result is that it cannibalizes itself. Weaker leaves and stems have important compounds withdrawn and sent to stems and leaves that are more likely to survive. As this breakdown occurs the proteins, enzymes and lipids/fatty acids which cannot be reconverted or transported efficiently (i.e the energy required to reconvert or to transport is too high) are jettisoned into the water column. This results in the protein scum that we see at the surface.

Add more CO2 - lots more, (or supplement with Excel/Easycarbo) and dose appropriately. Within 3 weeks you should see the scum start to disappear and your plants will look better as well.

CO2 and Nitrogen are coupled so that an increased uptake of one leads to a demand for uptake of the other. This is not surprising since both are required for photosynthesis. Nitrogen is used to produce the chlorophyll which in turn uses [light + water + CO2] to produce carbohydrates.

This is why playing around with half this and half that more often than not creates problems. Ensuring that your plants have more than what they need, especially Carbon and Nitrogen, will give you a better chance of success.

Cheers,
 
I dropped to half-EI as much because I had so few plants, one large windelov fern, a little vallis and a single pot of very very slow growing UG.

I'm on water change day so I'll start back with full dosing again as of tomorrow.
 
Hc needs trimmed in the centre, it is growing like mad there but a fair bit slower around the left/right of the tank where there is less direct light.

Vague mental debate about ripping the windelov out and going for some stem plants but not sure. Quite like the slow growth of the fern as it keeps maintenance down, but wondering about other options. Leaving it for a good while yet anyhow. Fern needs a good trim too, getting a lot of die back on older leaves plus the thing is getting really big! I was debating entering some comps with the tank once the HC carpet is complete - don't want to trim the fern back and find it doesn't fill in sufficiently before the HC does. Still not convinced on the Jaqno but no alternatives for now.
 
Re:

George Farmer said:
I'll be meeting Oliver at Interzoo in Germany next year so will ask him, in my best German!

As far as im aware Oliver knott may be doing some tanks for the tropica stand but is not doing a talk. Have you heard something different George? would like to time my visit to meet him too!
 
Little hint to me is to clean the filter more often and replace the filter floss pad monthly too (or rinse it anyhow). My water has been a bit misty recently and after a filter clean last night (putting off because of faffy Jaqno) it is now crystal clear again :)

For reference I found a cheat way to stop the Jaqno nicking the water/air when priming my TetraTec - I cleaned the filter and then refilled it with dechlorinated water before re-attaching to the pipes. No need to prime :) Yay, dead easy!
 
Hi nry, very nice mate i like the look of it very much, i used to have a lot of surface scum when my plants were first planted, but after reading an aqua journal i upped my dosages to suit the fast growth and now i dont have any to speak of,regards john.
 
Cheers John - I used some kitchen paper to remove it at the water change this week, there was a fair build up of it, rather oily in my opinion. A few days later and nothing has yet returned so fingers crossed. I did up CO2 and ferts this week aswell, probably a combination of low ferts and CO2 due to increased plant growth, never seen as much pearling as I have at the moment, even my windelov is going for it!
 
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