Cold water planted Nano?

[Manrock]

Riccia - that needs lots of light doesn't it? never had much luck with it in my tank with < 2wpg. My nano is 6gallons with 16w - so >2wp but no CO2. Would it grow so lushly?

 

[jack-rythm]

no far from it.. I grow it in a bowl in my lounge and does fine.. riccia will grow at any light level, I can get it to pearl in my bowl with no fertz, lighting or co2 mine in all my tanks looks wicked and I only do low techs

 

[gmartins]

Just an additional thoughts to my previous post. However the window was open by a few centimeter, but no additional light comes in that time. We had -15C outside and the closest tank to the window had a Super Jet filter which is a steel housed thing (exchange heat quicker).

I guess at night the tank cooled down to 15 and daytime was 17-18C

I found something quickly on google but will seek for the detailed answer for you on bacterial activity vs cold water.

http://www.bioconlabs.com/nitribactfacts.html

Temperature

The temperature for optimum growth of nitrifying bacteria is between 77-86° F (25-30° C).

Growth rate is decreased by 50% at 64° F (18° C).

Growth rate is decreased by 75% at 46-50° F.

No activity will occur at 39° F (4° C)

Nitrifying bacteria will die at 32° F (0° C).

Nitrifying bacteria will die at 120° F (49° C)

Nitrobacter is less tolerant of low temperatures than Nitrosomonas. In cold water systems, care must be taken to monitor the accumulation of nitrites.

pH

The optimum pH range for Nitrosomonas is between 7.8-8.0.

The optimum pH range for Nitrobacter is between 7.3-7.5

Nitrobacter will grow more slowly at the high pH levels typical of marine aquaria and preferred by African Rift Lake Cichlids. Initial high nitrite concentrations may exist. At pH levels below 7.0, Nitrosomonas will grow more slowly and increases in ammonia may become evident. Nitrosomonas growth is inhibited at a pH of 6.5. All nitrification is inhibited if the pH drops to 6.0 or less. Care must be taken to monitor ammonia if the pH begins to drop close to 6.5. At this pH almost all of the ammonia present in the water will be in the mildly toxic, ionized NH3+ state.

So as the above lines describe there's a border below 20C when you see changes with the bacterial activity. On our high energy tank this proven visible effect in a day. Once the tank got heated back above 21C the issues disappeared just as quickly as it comes before

I remember i had a discussion with probably Clive before on low pH vs bacterial activity. Since we're using soft water on our tank with very low pH 5.6 we're facing different issues than others who run only tap water.

Low pH caused similar issue in a high energy tank sometimes like the very cold water.

In this enviroment we clearly seen that the first algae what appears with the above conditions is hair algae. Since we're running same fertilization, water change, maintenance, filtration power, filter medium, light hours and light setup we got to a conclusion there's a connection between too cold water and bad filter performance and low pH (around 6.3 and below) and filter performance.

Now all of our tanks are running at 21-22C water temp and pH around 6.5-6.8
We taking care that water has enough buffering capacity so using GH/KH booster on those tanks which got super soft after water changes and has no decor what increasing the hardness.

Without telling this is all something what usually happens at everyone this was only our conclusion in the past 2 years soft water / cold water activity.

But back to the topic you're fine above 20C under that fishes will be more sensitive to diseases, shrimps will slow down and breeding will stop etc.

Hi Victor. Ok I think that proves the point. Is there any chance that the common nitrifying bacteria can replaced by functionally similar bacteria with a lower temp tolerance? This often happens in natural communities. "Temporal functional redundancy". Will try to check this myself...

Still, provided that plant growth rate is not affected by lower temps and that there is a relatively large biomass, there should be no problems. They do all the filtering needed. My feeling is that in planted tanks, the filter is just a pump... Does this make sense?

Of all the plants I have grown at 12 C (winter months), the only one I found to slow down its growth was Echinodorus tenellus. Healthy but apparently very little growth. All the others were just fine! Cuba, Eleocharis and HM were perfect.

Victor do not judge me bad. I am just trying to make myself clear about this...

cheers

GM

 

[Manrock]

Here are some shots of my classroom, cold water nano. It definitely needs some work and I am planning a re-scape as soon as the hair algae is under control. Put some WCM in yesterday and have already lost one! Water temp is a cool 18C so may need to add a heater (to keep it at 21C).