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Help please - Plants not going well at all...

psantos

psantos

Member
Joined
7 May 2013
Messages
27
Hey guys.

I've been following this forum for a little while and wanting to start a journal but unfortunately things are not going to well with my tank and I need some help.

I have this tank cycled and planted for over a month now things started off great but for about 2 weeks took a turn for the worst and I'm running out of ideas on what todo so would appreciate some help.

So my setup is as follow:
110L custom made tank
Eheim ecco pro 300
FE custom CO2 injection system
Hydor inline heater
3x TMC MiniLed tile 400
1x TMC Beam 600
1x Hydor Koralia 900 Lph nano circulation pump
1x Hydor Koralia 1600 Lph nano circulation pump
2x automatic dosing pumps
Substrate is Caribbean Ecco-Complete Fine: 3 to 4 inch in the back 1.5 to 3 at the front.

Values:
Water is hard:
Kh: 196.9ppm : 11.0dkh
Gh: 214.8ppm : 12.0dgh
Temperature: 23c
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate 25 /30 ppm (Tap water is 25ppm)

Ferts/CO2/Light:
Lights are on 5h per day
CO2 Drop checker light lime green (3 bubbles per second) comes on 3h before the lights and come off 1h before the lights go off.
3ml TPN+ 2x per day (Total 6ml per day)
Was dosing 1ml Easy carbo per day but since I don't have much algae and was worrying that could be afecting the plants changed it to 1ml every 7 days.

Stock:
6 Celestial Pearl Danios
6 Sawbwa Barbs
8 Glowlight Danios
3 Banded Dwarf Vietnamese Loaches
10 Amano Shrimp

I'm doing water changes twice per week of 50%

So all the plants seemed to being settling down ok and growing quite a bit for the first 3 weeks but for the last 2 weeks they started melting away. First the glosso in some patches and pretty much all of it as gone now. And the stem plants seem to be dying off from the bottom up.

Apart from a bit of algae on the glass and a bit of brown and green patches on the rocks and wood that the shrimp keep well under control there isn't pretty much any algae :-/

All the fish seem happy and are always very active.

So, I've read a lot and can't see where I'm going wrong - What should I do?

This is getting really frustrating - not only there was a lot of money on ALL those plants but also the aquarium looks ugly and not showing any signs off recovering :(

All help is greatly appreciated.

Before:
DSvxA0h.jpg

After:
mZoJgv5.jpg


Thank you
P
 
Hi guys thank you for the replies,

I'm diffusing it through an aqua medic reactor 1000 and I have two hydor koralia circulation pumps helping to distribute the CO2.

My drop checker is quite low as you can see by the picture, and is always a light lime green.
 
psantos said:
Was dosing 1ml Easy carbo per day but since I don't have much algae and was worrying that could be afecting the plants changed it to 1ml every 7 days.
Click to expand...
This was a really bad idea. As mentioned by other posters, the root cause of this decline is poor CO2, so removing this source of CO2 is counterproductive. You need to be adding a lot more daily. Stem plants and HC love EasyCarbo, so this was a complete misdiagnosis.

Also, try moving your lily pipe and and all pumps to the back wall evenly distributed along it's length facing forward to see if you can improve flow distribution.

If your AM1000 has those silly bio-balls inside the cylinder, remove them immediately. That will increase the flow throughput.

You likely have more light than you bargained for. You should reduce the overall intensity by at least 50% either via a dimmer if you have that or by disabling half of the lighting units.

Trim and remove the damaged leaves immediately to enhance flow/distribution around the still healthy leaves.

Is the DC filled with 4dKH water? An injection rate increase is called for, so reduce the amount of time you have the injection on prior to lights on and increase the rate. Obviously, experiment with this when you have the time available to monitor health of the plants.

Did I mention that you need to immediately start daily dosing of EasyCarbo?

Cheers,
 
Hi guys.

Thank you for the replies and help again!

I'm dosing TPN+ which has Phosphate and Nitrates. From what I've read that should provide the plats with the necessary Nutrients or am I wrong?

@ceg4048:
- Thank for the tips - I've restarted adding LiquidCarbo: 2ml twice a day (So 4ml a day total)- I stopped dosing easyCarbo because I was told on my LFS and also read in a few threads that some plants don't like easy carbo at all, including glosso and when it started dying off I worried it was because of to much easy carbo? I've also read somewhere that shrimp might not like it?
- I have TPN+ now at 3ml twice a day (6ml total).
- As for CO2, the drop checker has 4dKH and is always very bright green verging on the yellow! I'm worried to put it higher and the fish suffering from it being yellow? I've read around that if it goes yellow it might kill the fish?

- I have removed all the dying leafs I could. Some plants I've even removed and replanted the ones that still seemed to have some life on them.
- I've removed most of the Glosso as there where barely any green leafs in most of it :(
- I've also turned one of the TMC 400 tiles off - This is 50% of what TMC recommended me for my aquarium size? Might turn another one off tonight though :-/ - I will try to get one of those dimmers so the light is evenly distributed- They are freaking expensive though at over £100! :(
- I will remove the bioballs from the CO2 Reactor tonight.
- Has for the lily pipes, I can't really move them from where they are due to the tank setup (It's inside a fireplace!) but I've moved the 1600lph pump to the back pointing towards the front (And the lily pipe) close to the surface blowing the water that comes from the lily pipe all over the aquarium (Hopefully). I've removed the pump I had on the left end side has I think it might have been doing more bad then good as it was blowing water away from the plants towards the water intake from the filter. Ltes see if this helps.

What do you think?

Cheers
P
 
psantos said:
- As for CO2, the drop checker has 4dKH and is always very bright green verging on the yellow! I'm worried to put it higher and the fish suffering from it being yellow? I've read around that if it goes yellow it might kill the fish?
P
Click to expand...


My dc is yellow and the fish appear to be ok, I have read that some prefer to push it until there are signs of distress from the fish but I would rather not.

On a 90l (45 cms deep) I am running 2 x 400 minis at about 8cms above the water, at 60% for 6hrs and although plant growth is slower than the previous 2 x 25w T5's there have been no other issues.

I managed to get a 2 channel TMC controller for around £50 on ebay, you might want an 8 channel they seem to go for around £70 when I was looking, still rather a lot of money for what it is I feel but I do like the ramp up and down feature as I believe do the fish.
 
I see! So if I understand correctly there is enough CO2 (As per the drop checker) for the amount of water in the tank but because the light is too much for the plants they would need more CO2 then I can inject in the water (before harming the fish) to have enough to do the photosynthesis properly and so are dying off - Is that correct?

If so I will remove the beam600 and keep the 3 tiles and buy a light dimmer...

Wish I knew that before I spent £80 on the extra Beam (Damn TMC!) and could have spent that on a dimmer :( is there any way to deam the TMC 400 tiles without having to buy their £170 (For more then 2lights) controller?
 
I'm no expert but I think that is correct.
I did briefly look for other dimmer options but could not find any on my short search and being impatient opted for the quick (and expensive) fix.

I suppose you could run 1 at 100% and 2 dimmed at <50% with a 2 channel controler
 
psantos said:
I've restarted adding LiquidCarbo: 2ml twice a day (So 4ml a day total)
Click to expand...
I don't think this is a good idea from a CO2 perspective. If your target is to add 4ml per day then as far as the plants are concerned, it would be better if they saw 4ml when the lights go on. There is no point adding 2ml in the morning and 2ml later in the day. Lights on is the most important time for CO2. By the time you add the second dose the damage due to insufficient CO2 would have already been done. Glosso and just about all stem plants have a very high tolerance for Excel. Your LFS is incorrect.

If your CO2 is being delivered by the lily pipe, and if you put it close to the surface, then you will simply be sending your CO2 out into the fireplace. I don't see that arrangement as an advantage at all. You would be better off routing the piping to the back and using a spraybar on the back wall. CO2 has to be delivered to the bottom of the tank, not the top.

Both liquid carbon, as well as CO2 are toxic to fauna. In the same way that you must be careful to avoid toxic levels of the gas you must be careful to avoid toxic dosages of the liquid. You'll have to experiment with both products to find a level that is good for plants but that is not toxic to the fauna.

If you are using TPN+ and if your tap water is not high in nutrients then you might have to use 2X or 3X the amount specified on the bottle. You did not specify exactly what type of algae you were experiencing. The fact that the fauna eat the algae is no consolation because algae results from poor plant health. If the fish eat the evidence, you will still have poor plant health but the evidence simply disappears. This is like sweeping dirt under your living room carpet.

You have several options available if you do not want to spend money for a dimmer. You can use floating plants to block light entry into the water column, you can use darkened acrylic (or any type of barrier such as cheese cloth) to block light entry into the tank, or you can raise the light to reduce the intensity.

Cheers,
 
ceg4048 said:
If your CO2 is being delivered by the lily pipe, and if you put it close to the surface, then you will simply be sending your CO2 out into the fireplace. I don't see that arrangement as an advantage at all. You would be better off routing the piping to the back and using a spraybar on the back wall. CO2 has to be delivered to the bottom of the tank, not the top.
Click to expand...

I can look into trying to find a solution to adding the water to the back trough a spraybar, but if the lilypipe and my circulation pump weren't sending the CO2 to the bottom of the aquarium would the drop checker be light lime green? I have it 3 inches from the substrate in the opposite side where the flow is going when entering the tank (The flow goes from the right to the left and the drop checker is on the bottom right)? As you can see from the picture attached in the first post 'After'. Ignore the drop checker on that pic was moving it around to see if the levels where the same everywhere...

Regardin Ferts I'm dosing more then twice of what they say in the bottle already - 6ml a day which is 42ml p/week - In the bottle they say to dose 5ml p/week for 50L which is 10ml in my case so I'm dosing 4x times more of what they recommend!!

Regarding Algae, I only have a little bit of green spot algae on the rock, wood and glass and I've spotted a few little bits of brown algae in the Glosso and the wood, but not that much really.

What are your thoughts?
 
ceg4048 said:
I don't think this is a good idea from a CO2 perspective. If your target is to add 4ml per day then as far as the plants are concerned, it would be better if they saw 4ml when the lights go on. There is no point adding 2ml in the morning and 2ml later in the day. Lights on is the most important time for CO2. By the time you add the second dose the damage due to insufficient CO2 would have already been done. Glosso and just about all stem plants have a very high tolerance for Excel. Your LFS is incorrect.
Click to expand...

And thanks for this tip! I will change the dosage of easyCarbo to just before the lights come ON 3ml per day - Do you think this amount is ok?

On theire website it says:
aquarium with only a few plants : 1 ml per 100 litres daily
aquarium moderately planted : 1 ml per 50 litres daily
aquarium heavily planted : 1 ml per 25 litres daily

Mine is probably around medium planted I guess?

Thank you
P
 
You need to ignore those numbers because whoever came up with them does not have your tank with your flow, or your lighting, or your problems. Do not become trapped by numbers. Use whatever value works in your tank without doing damage to the inhabitants. From the photo you posted there is a serious CO2 shortage so you need to use the maximum amount of liquid, gas and flow while at the same time reducing the light energy to as low as intensity as you can.

The same can be said not only of the TPN+ dosing, but also the dropchecker color. Guidelines are good starting points, but no guideline can take into account every permutation, so you need to discover what values work for your situation. Sometimes you can get away with less than what the guidelines suggest, but more often you need to use more. Again, you want to avoid toxicity so you have to be careful how you administer both the gas and the liquid. If you see toxic symptoms do an immediate large water change.

Problems like these are the primary reason I advise people to not stock their tanks with fish in the beginning. Now you have a CO2 problem but your corrective actions are handcuffed by the presence of fauna, which limit you ability to take extreme measures to solve extreme problems. So putting fish in the tank that supposedly are "clean up crew" turns out to be an very bad idea because clean up crews can only clean up the residue of the problem. Fish cannot solve root cause of plant health issues.

Cheers,
 
Fair enough! :)

So from today will change the following:
3ml of TPN+ twice a day.
Add 4ml of easyCarbo before the lights come on (Will do this and keep a close watch of the aquarium to make sure there isn't any strange behaviour in fauna).
Reduce the light to 3 tiles and reduce the intensity.
Remove the bioballs from the reactor to try and increase the flow from the filter outlet.

If this doesn't resolve the problem I will have to try to get the water intake to the back of the aquarium trough a sprybar (This has to be the last resort as the only way to do it would be running some tubes inside the aquarium to the back which would be all visible! I don't have much space left on the top area of the aquarium as it is inside a fireplace).

Hope this is going to help :-/

Thank you for the adivce.
 
My mates tank, normal low tech tropical, had yellowing bottoms of plants after he had replaced the fluorescent tube. New one much brighter. He was adding some, tropical tank plant food, whatever that was but plants still yellowed.

When visiting I dump 100ml odd of my macro EI mix...and bingo week or two later green plants. He now doses occasionally with some macro Ei mix and plants appear fine, but terribly slow growing compared to my high tech CO2.
 
psantos said:
3ml of TPN+ twice a day.
Click to expand...
This is another area where you can simplify your life.There is no need to do this twice a day. Add the total amount once a day, and it can be done any time of the day that is convenient for you.

Cheers,
 
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