Relapse tank

[Maxplantinstitute]

Everything is not dialed in yet.
Bba

Green dot and dust alge

Smal critters in the substrate (probably harmless)

And the a.r.pink did this again. Twisted distorted growth tip

This is the latest fts.

The ceratopteris on the left switched places with the vallisneria on the far right. I don't want a plant with any massive root system to burst the wood corner, and the vallisneria will look great in the flow once it fills the shelf.
Nymphoides hydrophylla Taiwan in the middle is a bit large again. And the right portion of it grew too big and shades the moss so I am pulling that out.

Now I can try out something else in that opening. Maybe something that is max 6" tall.
Here is the rest of the room.

 

[Maxplantinstitute]

Hi all,Feed them a food with some carotenoids in it, and they will colour up. "Astaxanthin" is the ingredient you are looking for./QUOTE]
Great info. It seems three of the foods I have contain Astaxanthin.

And that pic of the male cacatuoides is two weeks old. He is looking a little less washed out now. I will try and catch some live food for them once the snow is gone, but the mosquito population doesn't boom until mid June here.

 

[Maxplantinstitute]

Is this possibly micro related?
I did try out a new mix when this happened again.

I also got some mean voracious man eating SAE attacking my hands every time I reach into the water.

Wood covered in moss, infested with H.tripartita during water change.

 

[Maxplantinstitute]

I am still here. Not updated lately becouse I have been busy with my other money pit project.

This is 27. April


This pic is from 12.may
Vallisneria on the right have filled in nicely.

I increased potassium and the plants went from pale green to a deeper green. Staurogyne repens got trimmed and grew oblong leafs again.
Decreased magnesium, got holes in leafs. Increased magnesium and things got better.
I was upping Phosphates to ~1.8ppm every day and still getting black spots on the floating plants. So I tried to decrease phosphate and this problem got much worse.

Smal holes and melting leafs

So I am back to blaming phosphate for these symptoms.
I tried dosing csm+b so it would add 0,2ppm Fe and a.r.pink curled it's growth tips AGAIN.
Every week I have to trim and trow/give away plants. I basically only have fast growing plants, good co2 and good light so maybe this is just too much growth. Am I not able to keep PO up with this much fast growth?

 

[Maxplantinstitute]

I finally got these black spots figured out.

It turned out to be linked to my soft tap water. It went away once I upped the amount of gh Booster.
I re-arranged some in the tank.
N. Hydrophylla Taiwan is moved to the rear, a.r pink is moved to the far left (trimmed way down for the moment), two newcomers, trying c. Wendtii tropica in the senter midground.

Ranunculus inundatus and hygrophila compact.

I was trying out less micro fertz and got pinholes in the leafs. That got better once I started dosing micro/iron in smal daily doses.
I still get some green algea.
Bba is almost completely gone and I think it is somewhat related to the new filter rutine. I have two external filters and every two weeks I clean one of them. This removes a lot of organic waste from the system.

The monte Carlo carpet is getting a bit thick. It is one year old and is starting to lift. I have never trimmed it. It just grows so compact.
What can I do to keep it anchored?
Sprinkle gravel on top of it maybe?
Or do I just pull it all out and replant?

 

[Maxplantinstitute]

My co2 system is finally complete and running without any leaks.

It took a whole lot of time, parts and headscratching to get everything to fit together properly


I started out with my old aqua medic regulator and a atomizer in the tank.

Since this reg has a fixed output pressure, I had a hard time getting it running like I wanted. And somewhere along the way this turned into a real project with upgrades in all elements involved.


First I purchased I used, cheap "oxy turbo" regulator with a solenoid. This regulator worked pretty good, but I could see that the flow increased as the tank pressure dropped.

I took this as a warning of EOTD and started looking for a better reg.


The regulator I am using now is an old AGA welding regulator I purchased used. It is a single stage reg. with a output gauge in liters/min.

To fix this I simply hooked it up to my bicycle pump in order to "recalibrate" it. Market it for 10 and 20psi with a permanent marker right on the glass of the gauge. Ballpark accuracy will do.

The solenoids is three way clippard et3m12v. Three way means it vents out backpressure from the lines when it closes. I also fitted one of these to the aqua medic regulator.

I use a Cole Parmer 5-60ml/min flow meter right down the line from the regulator, and the needle valve after the flow meter.

This is a great flow meter and much cheaper (used on £bay) than the Dwyer option.

It is a bit harder to find the right one since cole parmer makes so incredibly many flow meters in so many versions. And the first one I bought had a leak somewhere that almost drove me mad trying to get this whole system leak free. This is the reason I ended up with three regulators and a bunch of extra parts.

If the float bounces even a little bit there is a tiny tiny leak somewhere.

The valve on this flow meter is marked L and is a low sensibility valve that is to coarse for fine adjustment.

So fine adjustment is done on the Swagelok ss-4bmg vcr metering valve. This thing is 5" tall and weighs a ton. And since I bought the vcr version I also had to get adaptors for normal tubing.

There is no way this thing could hang on to the small 10-32 threaded clippard solenoid on the regulator so it has its place upside down under the tank.

This needle valve is just awesome. One gentle touch and you can see the flow meter change from 20 to 21ml/min. and back if you want.


The last components is a one way valve and the cerges reactor built from a water filter housing.


So there it is. I now have a great functioning reg, flow meter, quality metering valve and reactor, two spare regulators and a drawer full of spare parts.

Things are slowly improving in my tank. I got co2 figured out and reduced the light intensity a bit.
Algea is almost all gone.
Still trying out different sources for gh/kh and fert tweeking.
I think I am closing in and will try to post some plant pictures later this week.

 

[Maxplantinstitute]

I finally got these black spots figured out. View attachment 127971

WRONG
I still don't know what causes this. Might be calcium, might not.
I add more than enough Mg and potassium. In fact I Dosed so much potassium last week that I think it might be interfering with Mg availability.
But I just do not know if Ca is inhibiting Mg. Or Mg is blocking out potassium. seems like I still have the same imbalance I have had for almost a year.

Hygrophila compact still gets pinholes.
Salvinia get brown patches.
Ranunculus is curling it leaves.
My Pistia gets melted white patches/pinholes.
And alternanthera reineckii pink is still curling it's growth tips once In a while.
Both Cryptocoryne species look great. Hardly any algea or damaged leaves.

Algea is almost all gone thou. Just a little bba on the spray bar.
I have thinned the vallisneria and replanted the monte Carlo carpet.