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Aurora Aquatica

Assuming that the Echinodorus Reni is probably struggling to compete and seeing as the Limnophila was going to come out anyway, I have removed it and moved the Echinodorus a little further back. It's in much more space now, no plants around it for competition, nothing to shade it, being further back its away from the bogwood too which would have contributed to some shading of one side of the plant. I've given it another root tab and will leave it for a few weeks now to get its roots established again and then see how it gets on. Mick from Tropica says it looks healthy, just small and to get bigger it needs better conditions, so hopefully it has more light now. I'm going to move the drop checker back down there now to see how that goes as I suspect that that Hydrocotyle at the front deflects a lot of the flow up above the E. Reni. I did thin out the Hydrocotyle while I was in there and pressed it down in to the substrate at the back. Hoping all these things combine to give it a better chance.
 
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I'm not overly convinced that everything is spot on with either ferts or CO2 or both at the moment. I have lifted off the dosing tubes, set them up over a jug and put a measuring cylinder underneath. My Macro ran this evening and delivered the expected 11ml which gives me 77ml over the 7 days and my EI dose would be 75ml, so that seems ok. I have now set the cylinder up underneath the Micro and will see how much that delivers tomorrow morning.

There is of course a question as to the quality of my ferts, I topped up the two container a few weeks ago and noticed today that there appears to be something settled on the bottom of the Macro and a little also in the Micro but to a lesser extent. I gave the Macro a stir and it brought up some stuff that just does not appear that it is ever going to dissolve, but it does not look like salt granules so not sure what's going on. I'll post a pic in a minute, but not sure how clear that pic will show what I am trying to describe.
 
I checked the Micro dose this morning and that was also 11ml, so I'm getting 77ml per week as planned, so in theory I should have no deficiency...

I do feel that my tank needs more light as my Alternanthera won't turn red, the Limnophila H. grew, but slowly and stayed green and the Echinodorus is really small. I hear of some people running the tile I have at a really low intensity otherwise they get algae, I'm up to 70% now, but I do have it pretty high, so it may be worth me either increasing the intensity further or dropping the tile closer to the surface of the water.

If I do increase light I need to make sure my CO2 is better. I'm also considering putting my skimmer on to a timer rather than having it run 24/7, maybe run it in the night to off gas CO2 and also have it come on a couple of times in the day to remove any surface film, but try to keep more CO2 in water. I also have my spray bar causing quite a lot of ripple, so think I will drop that too. Now that the Aberdeen winter is on the way and the room is not so bright, I may also try to turn the CO2 on 2-3 hours before the lights rather than having it running from 08:00.
 
Another annoyance is my black background is starting to peel. I used the Marina ClearView Adhesive and it worked ok for about 3 months, but then one side started to peel and now the other side is starting to peel. I did try using more glue to stick it back down, but it seems now that its started to curl, its never going to go back on. I'm therefore looking for a new background solution, any suggestions appreciated.
 
It's going to be pretty difficult to get to the back and I am a little reluctant to paint it as I would prefer to be able to change it if I wanted something different in the future. I'm thinking a piece of black foam board might be suitable, not sure how water resistant is, but the back is not an area I tend to get any splashes so might be ok.
 
Wisey said:
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Do you see what I mean? It's almost like wispy strands...
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Looks like some kind of mould.

IME, potassium sorbate + ascorbic acid works very well for mould prevention in micros mix but not in macros.

There are some moulds and yeasts that can detox sorbates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_sorbate

The reason it doesn't happen in my micros may be because some metal in the mix has inhibited those kinds of organism.
 
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xim said:
Looks like some kind of mould.
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How concerned do I need to be? Do I have to throw away the entire batch? A lot of folk seem to use dosing pumps, how do people avoid this?

5678 said:
If I read the above right, are you dosing macro and micro on the same day? I thought that was to be avoided?
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Yup, I bought the TMC dosing pump as I thought it had really granular control, but it turned out not to be the case, it's quite restrictive. I can choose the volume of the dose which I have set to 11ml and I can choose which hours it doses, so basically it's yes or no each hour, 11ml or not 11ml for the 24 hours in the day. I can't set days and stuff like that. It's maybe awesome for Marine where you want little and often, keeping things stable, but it's proved restrictive for my purposes. I therefore can't take days off and have to dose both pumps each day, so separated the doses by 12 hours so they aren't going in at the same time. I brought this up on the forums and quite a few people said they dose together at the same time and have no problems with precipitation. Apparently precipitation is also more likely in hard water and mine is very soft. I don't really don't know much about the facts of this, other people I'm sure have different opinions and experience.

My other option is to use that formula which allows you to mix up a single macro/micro solution, I think you add something which stops precipitation, then I could run that from one pump and maybe dose some liquid carbon with the second to try and get more carbon in there.
 
Wisey said:
How concerned do I need to be? Do I have to throw away the entire batch? A lot of folk seem to use dosing pumps, how do people avoid this?
...
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No, you don't have to. It's still usable as long as it's not clogging the pump.

People add about 20ml liquid carbon for a 500 ml solution to prevent it.

I'm using standard 3% H2O2 with the macros (don't use it with micros and don't mix it with ascorbic acid),
currently at 15ml for 500 ml, cheaper, can keep it good for about a month. Might need to add more for longer period.
 
xim said:
People add about 20ml liquid carbon for a 500 ml solution to prevent it.
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So I just add 20ml of my liquid carbon when I mix up my macro solution?

Do you think dosing macro at 17:00 and Micro at 05:00 daily is causing me any problems? If so I guess the all in one with ascorbic acid and potassium sorbate is my way forward.
 
Wisey said:
So I just add 20ml of my liquid carbon when I mix up my macro solution?
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Yes, you can use it with micros too if you want, unlike H2O2 which can destroy chelating agents in the micros and oxidise ascorbic acid.

Wisey said:
Do you think dosing macro at 17:00 and Micro at 05:00 daily is causing me any problems? If so I guess the all in one with ascorbic acid and potassium sorbate is my way forward.
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I always dose both at the same time, everyday, no problem. :)
 
Thanks Xim, I'll stick with my current dosing regime and add some liquid carbon to the mix,

I think I am going to increase my tile to 80% (and sort out all my timers from the daylight savings change) then monitor and see how things go. No algae at all at the moment. I'll tweak my CO2 at the same time and add a timer to the skimmer to reduce off gassing during the photoperiod.
 
Why is it that a whole patch of S. Repens is doing fine, no changes in the aquarium, then a few random stems decide to melt at the bottom?

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I removed the stems that were melting in the pics above, now 24 hours later 3 more stems next to where the ones that were removed from are melting too :(
 
tim said:
Hi wisey, melt usually indicates a co2 shortfall, did you increase your light intensity ? If so you may have needed to increase your co2 injection rate.
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In the end I didn't get round to changing the light so that's why I didn't understand why melt had started.

I've now had a CO2 disaster. I'm going away at the weekend and as the cylinder was looking low I decided to swap it over to ensure there was a fresh supply while I was away. I switched it over last night, but have never quite been happy with how my solenoid fits to the regulator so had undone and refitted that connection. I thought it was connected properly but got home tonight to an empty cylinder.

Thankfully I have another spare, connected it up and got out the soapy water and sure enough that's where the leak was. I took everything apart, put it all back together then I was tightening the needle valve on to the solenoid and disaster struck. I guess that's only supposed to be hand tight?

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The amount of swearing involved was high! I've switched off the lights, added some liquid carbon and will be on the phone to CO2 art for a replacement solenoid and needle valve first thing in the morning. All being well they can get it to me Thursday and I can set it up in the evening before I go away for the weekend on Friday morning.
 
I ordered a new solenoid and needle valve yesterday and CO2 Art shipped it straight away on 24 hour delivery. Unfortunate this is Royal Mail we are talking about and all they managed in 24 hours was from Milton Keynes to the South Midlands depot!

I'm now stuck without CO2 until Tuesday night as I go away on holiday tomorrow, get back Monday night and will get the parcel at work on Tuesday. I guess all I can do is leave the lights off for the 4-5 days and hope for the best. I've been dosing liquid carbon with lights off the last two days, but I can't dose while away.

My S.Repens is melting, I guess that will all be dead and gone when I get back. Hopefully the Anubias and Microsorum survive being low carbon users. The Hygrophila is showing signs of being unhappy, so have to see how that goes.

It looks like I'll be redesigning and replanting a lot of areas from scratch once I get back from holiday, disappointing, but nothing I can do.
 
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