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Ricca Fluitans ( Not growing ) Help

Mark Green

Member
Joined
18 Nov 2008
Messages
185
Location
Israel
Hope some one can help me with my Ricca, i bought back this in december and its still not growing :mad: . I have tied this to some slate with fishing wire which is sitting on the substrate.

I have a JEWEL 125l.

Lights - 4 * 18w. total running time is 11hours. 2 lights on for 11 hours and the other 2 lights come on for 5 hours in the middle of the day .

With co2 injection ( this turns on 2 hours before lights on and goes of 1 hour before lights of) System running at 3 bubbles a second making the drop checker green/yellow . The co2 is injected into a diffuser that is attached to the outtake pipe of my external filter ( ordered this of ebay )

Fert - TPN+ 2.5ML plus TPN AT 2ml a day.

Read on the site how people have no problems at all with Ricca. so feeling a little miffed as to why this stuff hates me so much
 
Yeh its 100% ricca ( Got this from Tropica).

Fish i have 6 Rams and 10 amano shrimp, 1 oto.

Cant say i have seen any of them eating it, but will keep my eye on them.

I have grown floating on the top and it does grow, but very slowly. However since i have put it on the slate it does nothing.
 
I have heard from another great forum that my problems could be co2 or not enough Kno3

so more kno3 will be tried. will keeep you updated.
 
I had great success in the same tank you have with the same lighting when I first started. Make sure the riccia is getting enough flow too, I used it as a carpet and without the filter pumping into it there wasn't much growth. You using just the internal that came with the Rio?
I was dosing DIY CO2 at the time and dosing dry salts.
 
using an external filter ( tetra tec ex1200 ) without the spray bar. should be enough flow.

The outlet is in one corner and directed to the other side of the tank hitting the other side of the tank pushing the tiny bubbles accross the ricca.
 
Mark Green said:
using an external filter ( tetra tec ex1200 ) without the spray bar. should be enough flow.
The outlet is in one corner and directed to the other side of the tank hitting the other side of the tank pushing the tiny bubbles accross the ricca.
Should be fine then, next thing is concentrate on the dosing and CO2, you could always had some EasyCarbo to boost the carbon content of the water. 5ml per day on your tank a 1liter bottle would last about 6 months!
 
Can you could explain the differance between co2 and using Flourish excel ( I have a bottle of this already).

If the drop checker is yellow from using co2 does this not mean that there is enough carbon in the water, and why adding excel would inprove things??

Thx

Mark
 
something ill point out, dwarf shrimps eat riccia,
its a fact, so no 'oh well mine dont' because they do, this will stop it becoming established enough to start growing
 
In my small moss and liverwort tank I have four cherry red shrimp and three amano shrimp, none of which have EVER eaten a single piece of riccia, I didn't even put riccia in there, it came in by accident with some coral pellia and its a weed. I don't want it in there but no-matter how sure I am that I've removed it all there's always some tiny piece that escapes my wrath and infests my tank all over again, it's also hard to remove because it's growing between some of the bushier mosses. This stuff actually seriously P****S me off and i promise you the shrimp don't eat it.
 
Mark Green said:
Can you could explain the differance between co2 and using Flourish excel ( I have a bottle of this already).

If the drop checker is yellow from using co2 does this not mean that there is enough carbon in the water, and why adding excel would inprove things??
A color change in the dropchecker water indicates a lowering of the ph of that water. The dropchecker is a simple pH test. Assuming the water in the dropchecker is distilled water adjusted to a known KH (typically but not restricted to 4dkh) then the reason the dropchecker changes from blue to green to yellow is because of the increasing amounts of Carbonic Acid held by the water. The carbonic acid is created when a small percentage of the CO2 reacts with the water to cause acid formation. The amount of carbonic acid formed is directly proportional to the amount of CO2 that is dissolved in the water.

Excel or it's competitor Easycarbo are more complex molecules than the simple CO2. Few if any acids are formed when these products are dissolved in water therefore they have little or no effect on the dropchecker's ph.

Because of their chemical make up plants can only use CO2 to assimilate carbon. In a similar fashion, you can only assimilate carbon by eating the carbohydrates produced by plants such as pasta, potatos or rice for example. You cannot obtain carbon for example by eating a charcoal briquette.

Many plants are able to use the chemical in Excel/Easycarbo but this is not used directly. various chemical processes within the plant break down the Excel and produce CO2. The CO2 is then used in the same way as if it were absorbed directly from the water. It takes a lot of Excel to generate the equivalent amount of CO2 than can be absorbed directly from the water.

Some plants are not able to perform the chemical conversion to CO2 with Excel and as a result, this chemical is toxic to them. Plants such as Riccia, and lower plants such as algae have a toxic reaction to Excel/Easycarbo but most highe plants respond well. Since the CO2 extraction occurs inside the plant there are no acid reactions externally to affect the waters pH.

Hope this clarifies. :D

Cheers,

Cheers,
 
Hi Mark,

I've read all the posts in this thread.

1. I agree shrimps do not eat the Riccia, they may graze on it looking for traces of algae but they won't be eating the Riccia itself. I keep loads of Riccia with Amano shrimp and cherry shrimp no problem at all.

2. Your CO2 at three bubbles per second sounds plenty enough to me and the amount of EI dosing should not deter or enhance the growth rate.

3. The biggest indicator to me that my Riccia is flourishing is when it pearls with hundreds of tiny bubbles from photosynthesis. This does not happen all the time with my Riccia but most of the time.

4. The time when it occurs the most is when I do a large water change with RO water or tap water. When adding the new water, especially RO, I add a liquid KH buffer from SERA and also add SERA Mineral salts. Within an hour the Riccia is fizzing away like mad and by the evening it looks as if it is covered in snow. It usually trebles in size in terms of growth over the course of a week.

5. So I would look at your KH and GH levels, your water change regime volume etc.

Have a look in the journals section at the post marked 'Fallen Wilderness' See some of the photo's there of the Riccia pearling. By the way the mineral salts are not actually salt as in sodium chloride, and they would not necessarily have to be from SERA, it is just that they work for me.

Good luck, let me know how you get on.

Cheers,

Steve.
 
A color change in the dropchecker water indicates a lowering of the ph of that water. The dropchecker is a simple pH test. Assuming the water in the dropchecker is distilled water adjusted to a known KH (typically but not restricted to 4dkh) then the reason the dropchecker changes from blue to green to yellow is because of the increasing amounts of Carbonic Acid held by the water. The carbonic acid is created when a small percentage of the CO2 reacts with the water to cause acid formation. The amount of carbonic acid formed is directly proportional to the amount of CO2 that is dissolved in the water.

Excel or it's competitor Easycarbo are more complex molecules than the simple CO2. Few if any acids are formed when these products are dissolved in water therefore they have little or no effect on the dropchecker's ph.

Because of their chemical make up plants can only use CO2 to assimilate carbon. In a similar fashion, you can only assimilate carbon by eating the carbohydrates produced by plants such as pasta, potatos or rice for example. You cannot obtain carbon for example by eating a charcoal briquette.

Many plants are able to use the chemical in Excel/Easycarbo but this is not used directly. various chemical processes within the plant break down the Excel and produce CO2. The CO2 is then used in the same way as if it were absorbed directly from the water. It takes a lot of Excel to generate the equivalent amount of CO2 than can be absorbed directly from the water.

Some plants are not able to perform the chemical conversion to CO2 with Excel and as a result, this chemical is toxic to them. Plants such as Riccia, and lower plants such as algae have a toxic reaction to Excel/Easycarbo but most highe plants respond well. Since the CO2 extraction occurs inside the plant there are no acid reactions externally to affect the waters pH.

Hope this clarifies.

Cheers,

Cheers,
ceg4048
Moderator

Big thx to ceg4048 this has cleared a few holes in my thinking on co2 and to why we use it.

So I would look at your KH and GH levels, your water change regime volume etc.
Cheers,

Steve.

Every week a do a 50% water change, which should be enough i hope, however should i do 2 * 25% water changes a week so i replace some of the minerals i would get from my tap water so its an even spread over the week and not all in one go when doing 50%??

I also thought it was not so important to worry about KH and GH levels in a planted tank and that we should concerntrate more on CO2 and the dosing regime.

if im dosing 2.5ml of TPN+ and 2ml TPN AND 5ml of KNO3 a day, could i be missing something that would be important to a health looking tank with growth from all my plants (This day will come :D )

Thx for every ones input put so far ( I just keep on learning every day)

Mark
 
I follow Clives guide on mixing my EI dosing mix based on a 40 gallon water volume. As a result I dose 100ml of the liquid mix every other day, and 50ml of the trace element mix on the days in between. You really need to get your head around the quantities of dry powders needed to make up the volume for 1 litre of the finished solution. Read Clives first article on EI dosing. If you get stuck pm him and I am sure he will advise you further.

Also calculate what your watts per gallon is for your lighting.

I would stick to the 50% per week water change, although some people prefer 60% per week. I suppose it depends on whether you are using tap water or Revers Osmosis (RO) water, and how much your RO filter produces.

Find some RO mineral replacement powder, do the water change, keep up the CO2 and watch what happens.

Cheers,


Steve
 
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