A
Antipofish
Guest
I posted recently that my plants looked "dirty". Clive made the sensible suggestion of being a bit more vigorous with my water changes, shaking up the plants, getting in there and moving the detritus out of the base so it can get sucked out at water change. I have done three such changes so far over a perid of ten days.
However, my plants are getting worse and worse. Even the ones that were previously doing ok (Echinodorus Ozelot and Nymphea Rubra) are now starting to faile. I have holes appearing left right and centre, leaf edges disintegrating and cannot shift this film (I reckon its algae as George suggested, though he said it was associated with new tanks and mine has been running for over three months now so its positively middle aged compared to some of the "pro" tanks we see from some members, who just seem to hit the ground running.
Where I had reasonable growth to start with, even that has kind of screeched to a halt.
I put some lovely stauro in there two days ago from Spyder and I saw holes appearing in that today also !
So here are the stats;
tank: 175L 80cmx45cmx55cm
lights: 2 x 24w (one is VERY dim, the reddish one, and the white one is about 6 months old so not as high output as new and there is no reflectors).
photoperiod: 7 hours
CO2: on 2 hours before lights, off 1 hour prior to lights out. About 2 to 3 bps and the dropchecker is still blue at lights on and rarely gets more than dark green.
Ferts/Liquid CO2: 7ml TPN+ daily and 7ml Easycarbo daily (I saw that Ady34 uses twice this amount of ferts !)
substrate: 1.5cm colombo florabase capped with Unipac 1mm Samoa sand.
Temp: 25c
Filtration: Eheim 2078
planting density: about 70% coverage though plants are reasonably well spaced
plant list: Echinodorus Ozelot, Crypts, Crinum Calamistratum, Hygrophila Corymbosa Siamensis 53b, Stauro, Pogostemon Helferi, few wisps of hairgrass, Ludwigia Galndulosa
fish list: 7 rummy nose tetra, 6 corydoras schwartzi, 3 dwarf neon tetras and one otto.
PLEASE someone tell me what is going on. Im getting really despondant over this right now.
Only things of note is that I did have initial ups and downs with CO2 about 3 weeks ago and trying to gauge it right is difficult. And I was running purigen but have not had it in for the past 3 to 4 weeks.
I personally suspect insufficient and poor CO2 distribution, and possibly lack of ferts. I have noticed with this new Eheim, and it was the same with my G6, that the bubbles come out of the spraybar and remain in higher density at the top of the tank. The spraybar just does not force the bubbles low enough in large quantities. BUT surely the CO2 dissolves in the water and the turnover of the filter recirculates it to all levels ?
However, my plants are getting worse and worse. Even the ones that were previously doing ok (Echinodorus Ozelot and Nymphea Rubra) are now starting to faile. I have holes appearing left right and centre, leaf edges disintegrating and cannot shift this film (I reckon its algae as George suggested, though he said it was associated with new tanks and mine has been running for over three months now so its positively middle aged compared to some of the "pro" tanks we see from some members, who just seem to hit the ground running.
Where I had reasonable growth to start with, even that has kind of screeched to a halt.
I put some lovely stauro in there two days ago from Spyder and I saw holes appearing in that today also !
So here are the stats;
tank: 175L 80cmx45cmx55cm
lights: 2 x 24w (one is VERY dim, the reddish one, and the white one is about 6 months old so not as high output as new and there is no reflectors).
photoperiod: 7 hours
CO2: on 2 hours before lights, off 1 hour prior to lights out. About 2 to 3 bps and the dropchecker is still blue at lights on and rarely gets more than dark green.
Ferts/Liquid CO2: 7ml TPN+ daily and 7ml Easycarbo daily (I saw that Ady34 uses twice this amount of ferts !)
substrate: 1.5cm colombo florabase capped with Unipac 1mm Samoa sand.
Temp: 25c
Filtration: Eheim 2078
planting density: about 70% coverage though plants are reasonably well spaced
plant list: Echinodorus Ozelot, Crypts, Crinum Calamistratum, Hygrophila Corymbosa Siamensis 53b, Stauro, Pogostemon Helferi, few wisps of hairgrass, Ludwigia Galndulosa
fish list: 7 rummy nose tetra, 6 corydoras schwartzi, 3 dwarf neon tetras and one otto.
PLEASE someone tell me what is going on. Im getting really despondant over this right now.
Only things of note is that I did have initial ups and downs with CO2 about 3 weeks ago and trying to gauge it right is difficult. And I was running purigen but have not had it in for the past 3 to 4 weeks.
I personally suspect insufficient and poor CO2 distribution, and possibly lack of ferts. I have noticed with this new Eheim, and it was the same with my G6, that the bubbles come out of the spraybar and remain in higher density at the top of the tank. The spraybar just does not force the bubbles low enough in large quantities. BUT surely the CO2 dissolves in the water and the turnover of the filter recirculates it to all levels ?