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Sam's nano journal

Themuleous

Member
Joined
6 Jul 2007
Messages
4,121
Location
Aston, Oxfordshire
Just thought I would start a journal for my nano. I've used the rocks Dave had at the gathering to create the scape, sorry dont have pics at the mo but will get some up this evening.

The real reason for the journal is that Im growing HC emersed, to get a nice carpet before I flood the tank with water and to see if it really is as easy as Tom Barr says!

Quick list of the spec.

Tank - 24x8x8"
Substrate - Tropica plant substrate under unipac black quarts gravel
Lighting - 2x24 T5 - 1x Arcadia plantpro, 1x Giesemann midday, for 8hrs
Water - there is about 1.5cm of water in the tank kept just below the top of the substrate. This is straight tap (has lots P and N in it) with added P, N, K and a lot of TPN. This is also the solution I spray onto the plants.
Maintenance - The top of the tank is covered in cling film to help stop the plants drying out and I give the whole tank a good spray with a mister once a day with the fert laden water when I get home from work. I also blow into the tank to replenish the CO2. I might at some stage try adding CO2 via my pressurised system to see it it makes a difference to growth. ADA AS seems to be the substrate of choice for growing plants emersed and I have heard of people soaking zeolite in normal plant fertiliser to get lots of NH3 into the substrate. We will see how well my substrate does, I'm hoping spraying it regularly will make up for the initial lack of nutrients in the gravel until the plants reach the tropcia plant substrate.

The tank has been running for 4 days now and the plants seem to be doing OK, no obvious signs of change, but it is early days.

Pics later, any comments/suggestions greatly received :)

Sam
 
Might sound stupid when I say this but from a medical point of view there is no need to blow the CO2 into the tank unless you are a chronic smoker for the last 60 years and smoke 50 a day who had COPD and retain lots and lots of CO2.... The CO2 in the breath you make is minimal and doesn't make much of a difference in comparison to that of the atmosphere.
 
You do have a point, my only reason for doing it is that the tank is covered within cling film to stop the plants drying out and I got to thinking that over time the CO2 levels in the air will get reduced and you're breath is 4% CO2 when you breath out compared to 0.04% in the air. I guess it cant hurt if it does no good :)

I should have added that the tank was covered, will edit the original post.

Sam

EDIT - I know HC is rather boring for emersed growth - its been done many times, but I had hoped to use UG, but the shop forgot to add it to the order from Tropica. Hopefully I'll be getting some in the new year :)
 
Just wondering if you are circulating the water and if you do how are you doing it because the water column is only 1.5cm tall. Is it possible to have no water column in the tank when you are doing this. I was thinking of setting up a similar tank but instead of having a column of water not circulating, I was going to go for soaking damp top soil in a nano tank with 11w on top of it.

And wouldn't be 48w light a little too much for a tank that size. I'm just worried that without CO2 injection in the water, the algae might get a hold on the plant before they can grow out of the water and obtained co2 from the air.
 
That's the beauty of this method, as the water level is kept below the level of the substrate algae cant be an issue as any water based algae isn't going to get any light to grow as its below the substrate :) The plants are also out of the water, IE on top of the substrate so algae cant grow on them either. The pics I post later should help you see what I've done.

I dont circulate the water, dont think there is any need too.

48w is a lot, but its what I used previously. When the tank is full of water this much light just means I have to be very careful about doing my water changes. Tom says he's used this method with full sunlight, doesn't get much more intense than that! :lol:

Sam
 
Some pics as promised :)

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Leftside-resize.jpg


Rightside-resize.jpg


Comments welcome

Sam
 
Sam,

I have just fished a load of HC out of my Iwagumi(?). Do you want some?

Dave.
 
Quick update after one week. You can see a very slight growth in the HC, it with have needed a bit of time to adjust and grow roots, so Im not worried yet. I spay the tank one or two times a day and siphon out any excess water to keep the level below the substrate. The gravel seems to be staying damp at least so that's good. Dave Spencer very kindly gave me some more HC so I've filled in the gaps. Anyhoo, nothing much else to say :)

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Leftresize.jpg


Rightresize.jpg


Sam
 
Update pics as of 31st Dec, 2 weeks in.

Growth is not as good as I had hoped and the older leaves are dieing off which I wasn't expecting thinking a lack of N so have ordered some NH3 so use in the water I spray on it, but tis still early days.

Full tank from top

Abovefulltankresize.jpg


Right side

Rightsideresize.jpg


Left side

Leftsideresize.jpg


Sam
 
That's surprising Sam, I was expecting more growth too. Maybe it is the ferts, although is it somewhere warm as it's got no heater???
 
I'm trying my little HC emersed pot as well. but I'm going with top soil and it's growing really well

IMG_0304.jpg


So far no fertiliser or CO2 involve in it. Hopefully it will grow a full pot of it before I propagate it to my tank.
 
about 2 weeks. They never get to stay in my substrate if I plant them single stranded. So whatever that come of floating around get planted onto the little tub.
 
Just thought I would log the fact that the emersged growth wasn't happening, I reckon because of the inert gravel not being able to supply enough nutrients. I'm going to try it again at some stage using bonsai gravel which is supposed to be very good and cheap :)

So as of tonight I've flooded the tank and will be running it EI to see if I can actually finish the scape as I like the rock placement and its worth a try for a few weeks as I'll not be able to re-scape it for a few weeks anyway due to a lack of funds (two new cats for the misses xmas present ;))

Will keep you posted on how it goes. I've not actually changed the fact the the gravel is inert so we'll see if a decent water column fert regime keeps the HC happy. I know people who've grow HC in sand so it is possible :)

Sam
 
Re: Sam's Nano Emersed HC journal

Lets have an update Sam, I can't wait to see it all now its fully grown in.
 
Re: Sam's Nano Emersed HC journal

seeing as there are no fish in there just use some baby bio or similar terristrial fertiliser to enrich your substrate

andrew
 
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