Decided to research planted tanks

[Colley614]

Hello Everyone,

I've been keeping both freshwater and saltwater fish for nearly 30 years and I've been keeping plants on and off for throughout that time. I've never really done my homework with regards to plants and decided its something I need to learn more about.

When I say I've kept plants they have tended to be something simple I can drop in and let them do their own thing. I tend to keep Elodea Densa as it is one plant I seem to be able to keep with goldfish and it survives. I once set up a planted goldfish tank with Elodea Densa, Java Fern, Amazon swords and Anubias and everything seemed to do well. My definition of well is 12 months plus.

I moved into my current house about 4 years ago and I have been running into problems ever since with Cyanobacteria. I have never struggled with this in all my years until I moved into my current property. I have an SPS dominant reef tank that I grew corals from the size of finger nails to the size of a hand. But then I moved and the Cyano started and I was literally scrubbing rocks and substrate constantly so I dosed the tank with a Cyano remove and it went. However, it slowly began again until I eventually gave in and sold all my coral and fish.

With this I decided to get back into freshwater and set up a Lake Tanganyika tank and a few months after set up Cyano started on the rock. I have since sold most of the fish and kept my Frontosa. I have removed everything in the tank and keep them in a tank that is mostly bare. At the same time I decided to set up a pea puffer planted tank and this is also constanly plagued by Cyano. Every week I start my water change by getting a bucket and removing Cyano from the rock and wood and substrate in sheets. A few hours after the water change and you can see the little bits I missed starting to spread again. It's really driving me up the wall but I refuse to empty another aquarium. I have research Cyano a few times and every tip or trick I seem to try either slows it or is a temporary fix and it starts again.

 

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Welcome to the forum!

Cyanobacteria is often caused by low nitrates. It can also, like most algae, be caused by outbreaks of ammonia - but since you’re doing regular water changes that seems less likely.

What nutrient dosing do you do in your freshwater planted tanks? If your nutrients are insufficient that might be the root cause.

 

[Colley614]

I started the aquarium with compost capped with pea gravel. I have a fluval 3.0 over it and dose with Flourish Excel.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

At the same time I decided to set up a pea puffer planted tank and this is also constanly plagued by Cyano.

Welcome, and a bit of strange question for starters, but what does the media set-up in your filter look like?

One of the main differences between keeping planted tanks and un-planted tanks is that we tend to use the plants to remove the fixed nitrogen, rather than relying on <"denitrification (of NO3)"> in a deep sand bed or canister filter etc.

We don't know what causes cyanobacteria out-breaks (or any other algae come to that) but there is a definite suggestion that cyanobacteria are more prevalent when we have <"higher levels of dissolved organic compounds"> and lower levels of dissolved oxygen.

cheers Darrel

 

[Colley614]

I use the Ehiem pick up 160 as a filter. I bought it more for the circulation than the filtration.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I use the Ehiem pick up 160 as a filter.

Not the filter media then. Can we gave a picture of the tank?

cheers Darrel

 

[Colley614]

Here it is. Please feel free to critique the aquarium in general also.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-4v1RMJbUy/?igshid=1o9s2elqzk5mj

 

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

I started the aquarium with compost capped with pea gravel. I have a fluval 3.0 over it and dose with Flourish Excel.

Flourish Excel is not strictly a nutrient fertiliser; it’s a carbon supplement. Do you dose a fertiliser containing nitrate, phosphate and potassium? If not then this could well be the cause of your Cyanobacteria, especially if the compost is now exhausted.

I would try dosing with TNC Complete, in addition to Flourish Excel. TNC Complete is, as its name suggests, a complete fertiliser that contains both macro and micro nutrients. I’d try this for a few weeks and see how things go.

 

[Colley614]

Flourish Excel is not strictly a nutrient fertiliser; it’s a carbon supplement. Do you dose a fertiliser containing nitrate, phosphate and potassium? If not then this could well be the cause of your Cyanobacteria, especially if the compost is now exhausted.

I would try dosing with TNC Complete, in addition to Flourish Excel. TNC Complete is, as its name suggests, a complete fertiliser that contains both macro and micro nutrients. I’d try this for a few weeks and see how things go.

I shall give it a go

 

[Tim Harrison]

Welcome
Try adding a lot more plants. Planting densely will add greater biological stability.

 

[sparkyweasel]

TNC Complete is, as its name suggests, a complete fertiliser

Unlike certain other brands that are called complete when they are missing nitrate and phosphate.
TNC Complete is highly regarded, but if you go for a different brand for whatever reason, you need to check the small print.

 

[Colley614]

Welcome
Try adding a lot more plants. Planting densely will add greater biological stability.

I did have a loads of dwarf sag but I decided to pull it out as it was getting really long.

Unlike certain other brands that are called complete when they are missing nitrate and phosphate.
TNC Complete is highly regarded, but if you go for a different brand for whatever reason, you need to check the small print.

I ordered the TNC complete before I replied! Is this the recommended fertiliser?

 

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

I ordered the TNC complete before I replied! Is this the recommended fertiliser?

Yep, it’s good stuff!

 

[jaypeecee]

Unlike certain other brands that are called complete when they are missing nitrate and phosphate.

Or, when manufacturers use words like "comprehensive" when such product(s) may contain negligible amounts of total nitrogen and available phosphate (as P2O5).

JPC

 

[sparkyweasel]

I ordered the TNC complete before I replied! Is this the recommended fertiliser?

Yes, that's the good stuff.

 

[Colley614]

Looking forward to trying it out

 

[Witcher]

Here it is. Please feel free to critique the aquarium in general also.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-4v1RMJbUy/?igshid=1o9s2elqzk5mj

It looks there is a lot of sediment in your tank which leads to:

<"higher levels of dissolved organic compounds"> and lower levels of dissolved oxygen.

I think you'll need to thoroughly clean your tank and/or at least quadruple your plant mass - more plants will literally consume what's leaching from the sediment/substrate and being digested by bacteria. More plants also means more surface for the bacteria consuming what's floating in your tank, it also means more roots actively digging through the substrate and supplying oxygen.

In the meantime make sure nitrogen levels won't reach 0 - if it's not only the yellow hue caused by camera but real or close to real colours of your plants then it looks like low level of nitrogen for a long time - microsorum is usually much darker and its color is an indicator of nitrogen level in the leafs - the brighter the less nitrogen/chlorophyll it contains and usually with low level of light like yours it's usually much darker green. While watching your increased plant mass growing make sure you have good flow (cyanobacteria hate flow and it thrives in stagnant water - it's a colony of bacterias which don't like to be broken)- after few weeks it will be most probably gone without any manual removal.

 

[Colley614]

It looks there is a lot of sediment in your tank which leads to:


I think you'll need to thoroughly clean your tank and/or at least quadruple your plant mass - more plants will literally consume what's leaching from the sediment/substrate and being digested by bacteria. More plants also means more surface for the bacteria consuming what's floating in your tank, it also means more roots actively digging through the substrate and supplying oxygen.

In the meantime make sure nitrogen levels won't reach 0 - if it's not only the yellow hue caused by camera but real or close to real colours of your plants then it looks like low level of nitrogen for a long time - microsorum is usually much darker and its color is an indicator of nitrogen level in the leafs - the brighter the less nitrogen/chlorophyll it contains and usually with low level of light like yours it's usually much darker green. While watching your increased plant mass growing make sure you have good flow (cyanobacteria hate flow and it thrives in stagnant water - it's a colony of bacterias which don't like to be broken)- after few weeks it will be most probably gone without any manual removal.

Any recommendations to what plants to try? I feel like there's too much scape and not enough plants

 

[Witcher]

I'd choose anything which is fast growing, realitively hungry of ferts and oxygenating (ceratophyllum demersum, limnophila sessiflora, cardamine lyrata, ceratopteris thalicroides, egeria densa, heteranthera zosterifolia, hygrophila difformis, limnophila aquatica). The main goal for now is to stabilise your tank biologically, especially by supplying lots of oxygen.