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Structured Jungle !

swackett

Member
Joined
29 May 2008
Messages
449
Location
Surrey
Hi,

After posting many questions throughout the forum I’ve decided to start this journal to document the life of my second planted tank!

Tank: 60cmx30cmx46cm Juwel Rekord 70
Substrate: ADA Amazonia 2
Lights: 4x 24w T5 Aracdia luminaire
Photoperiod: 2 x 6hours with a 2hour overlap
Filter: Eheim 2324
C02: JBL easy set 2
Diffuser: Rhinox 1000
Fertilisation: EI

Plants
  • Glossostigma elatinoides
    Echinodorus tenellus
    Rotala macrandra (green form)
    Rotala sp.(green)
    Ludwigia arcuata
    Micranthemum micranthemoides
    Eleocharis vivipara
    Cryptocoryne wendtii 'Green'
    Cryptocoryne petchii
    Java Moss

After reading numerous articles from Amano and reading and studying his Natural Aquarium World book 1, I’ve decided to try and get a kind of structured jungle look with this tank... Well I hope so anyway!

After getting everything I needed from my LFS (MA @ Morden) I sat down to what seemed like an afternoon of planting Glosso, Glosso, more Glosso, oh, and a few stem plants :) This is the bit I like, deciding on what to plant and trying to imagine what the whole scape could look like once it has grown in.

This time I planted without water in the tank which made the whole process so much easier, I used an atomiser to keep the plants and soil damp during this time.

I planted on Sunday and dosed trace and macro mix, so far I’ve carried out 50% water changes each day and dosed macro on Tuesday after WC and Trace today after WC.

Here is a picture of tank so far, I've noticed the Rotala sp. and Ludwigia arcuata have already started to show signs of growth and so far no algae (fingures crossed)

Juwel_2Jul.jpg


Steve
 
Hi,

This is NOT meant as a criticism, just a personal observation on the title "Structured Jungle" To me the word structured and jungle sound like a contradiction in terms. Structured being ordered and regimentated and jungle being wild and spontaneous. Looking at the layout as you have it at the moment it looks "Structured" and sort of well planned out.

No doubt later when things take off it might look a bit more "Jungly"

I think I know what you were aiming at :? It will be interesting to see how this one pans out. My money is on more structured and less jungly!

Cheers,

Steve
 
Looks a good start to me. I think any tank with Crypts in will turn out jungly as long as they are growing well. Await a crypt appearing where it wasn't planted, even the opposite side of the tank (or even right at the front. Doh) They have a habit of spreading in spasms. All of a sudden several pop up then nothing for a month or 2 then up pop a few more. lol

I quite like the look here myself.

I think the Rhinox2k may be a little large for this tank though. Their suggested tank sizes are a little off IMO. I tend to find in my 80cm tall that I would've been better with a 1000 or a Nano but the 2k does work. just that it doesn't give the full circle effect whereas when I tried a Nano it gave the look you see in all the advert pics. lol

Good luck though and keep us posted on the progress. be interesting to see what observations you have with the Amazonia2. Most reviews I have read is that 1 is much the better!!!

Andy
 
Thanks for the replies guys, I had a few algae issues with my other tank that I have seem to have gotten on top of now thanks to Clive's advice, just hope I can keep the algae at bay this time.

Steve wrote:
This is NOT meant as a criticism, just a personal observation on the title "Structured Jungle" To me the word structured and jungle sound like a contradiction in terms. Structured being ordered and regimentated and jungle being wild and spontaneous. Looking at the layout as you have it at the moment it looks "Structured" and sort of well planned out.

Steve you are dead right, however I kind of like the tension between the words structured and jungle :) At the start it will be inevitably structured, but as the tank evolves then it will slowly get more "jungly" in nature as the plants take over.

Andy,
Yeah maybe the Rhinox is a bit on the large size for the tank, will see how it goes.

As far as the Aquasoil goes, I did notice it tends to depress when you push the plant in with tweezers, when you then let go of the plant it just floats back up again as the soil does not flow back in. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but did not have a problem when planting in tropica substrate and sand in the other tank.

Cheers

Steve
 
Andy,

Just looked at the Rhinox and invoice from AE and it is the 1000 version I have (not sure why I thought it was the Rhinox 2000) :?
 
Well thought I post an update....

News is not good having issues with algae :twisted:

The tank has now been running for just over 1 week now and I have been doing daily 50% water changes, last Thursday then I started to do a 50% change every other day.

Lighting was on for 10hours (2x24w T5) with 4xT5 on for 2 hours mid way through, water temp was 26 degrees. Co2 drop checker is yellow using kh4 solution

I've been using a test kit for NH4 and NO2 and have seen the NH4 drop for 1ppm to around 0ppm today and NO2 rise from 0ppm to 5ppm. I know some people do not believe in test kits, but I am using them as an indicator for tank cycling.

algae1-1.jpg


I started seeing a bit of this algae a few days ago and removed it and started daily water changes again. I've reduced the photoperiod down to 8 hours and have removed the overlap so the tank now gets a constant 48w. I've reduced the temperature to 24 degrees (after reading Dan's article in PFK this month).

I think the problem is my dosing, as I have been doing 50% water changes daily should I immediately dose trace and macro, so for this tank 20ml macro and 10ml trace?

Is there anything else I need to do?

Thanks for your help

Steve
 
some may disaagree, but ive found on my last 2 setups that running lights for 6 hours per day for the first few weeks helps no end! and with the size of your tank i'd run just 2 of those lights.

all 4 is asking for trouble. check out my journal, its similar spec to yours.

im in to my second week too.



viewtopic.php?f=35&t=1953&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=110

it might help, it might not.
 
any NH4 in the tank could cause this.. is the AS leeching? is this a totally new filter setup as well?

the AS can leech NH4 for a while to start with, but your water changes should reset this.

Any time you do a WC you should obviously redose immediately.

Id turn the lighting right down until you fix the problem, cut the burst out in mid period, itll just drive things like crazy.

To be honest, Im of the opinion (alot may disagree) that lighting bursts are bad.. plants get used to a nice, regular environment.. the plants will take time to adjust to a sudden increase in light, and that will probably take longer than the time you have them on for. Then they take time to readjust to the lower level.. I realise that in the wild they have varying conditions, but they also have much bigger bodies of water together with other algae reducing factors.

In my experience, any changes in regime, altering co2, ferts, lighting can all cause out breaks as you take the plants out of their acclimatised environment.. they take time to adapt, in which time algae runs wild.
 
Thanks for the reply saintly, I'm going to start using only 2 lights at at time and will try your advice of 6 hours a day for lights, however what about dosing, how do you dose?

Any suggestions / help on dosing anyone?

Thanks
 
Hi Matt,

Yes the filter is brand new, I am doing full EI on this tank, with 70 l and are following the calculator quantities (20ml of macro 3xweekly and 10ml trace 2 x weekly). However I have not been dosing both macro and trace after each water change. I removed most of the algae and then did a 50% water change, followed by a 20ml dose of macro and 10ml dose of trace.

Should I dose this quantity after each water change?
 
it sounds like a combo of a number of issues.

firstly, the filter is cycling, so you have NH4..
secondly, the Aquasoil is also cycling, so again you have NH4,
thirdly, no ferts in the water column at all times. (so the plants arent taking up what nutrients there are, thus allowing the aglae a feeding fest on what little there is)

just to clarify, you say your doing full EI, but you said you dosed 20ml/10ml? what are you dosing with? remember EI is designed for dry salts, or solutions made from dry salts to an EI formula.

others may notice other things from their own experiences to add to this, but those Ive stated could certainly cause issues.
 
It is always a good practice to dose immediately after a water change. It's pointless to reduce the nutrient concentration without bringing it back up to EI levels after the water change. The idea of the water change is to reduce the NH4 concentration, not the nutrient concentration. It must be restored after ridding the tank of NH4, organic waste and algae spores.

You should also specify exactly how you prepared your solutions, otherwise ml values are ambiguous. How many grams or teaspoons of which powders did you add to how much water? Then we can make sense of the ml dosages.

Cheers,
 
Hi,

I have the following dry powders from AE; KN03,KH2P04,MgS04, and trace

We put the following into 400ml of water and are dosing 20ml 3x a week
3 3/4 tsp of KN03
1 1/4 tsp of KH2P04
10 tsp of MgS04

We put 1 1/4 tsp of trace (CSM +B) into 200ml and are dosing 10ml 2x a week.

This should be inline with the output from the calculator.
 
not sure about the Mg (and someone check my maths)

3 3/4 tsp of KN03 = 19g so (19/400)*20 = 0.95g (your dose)
1 1/4 tsp of KH2P04 = 6.78g (6.78/400)*20 = 0.339g (your dose)


now.. EI according to nutricalc for your tank (c.86ltr) says.

1.17g NO3 (x3)
0.33g PO4 (x3)

so your dosing doesnt seem far off at all (I think!). So it looks like its the issue of not dosing after WC thats causing you no ferts.
 
Thanks Matt,

Yeah I think the problem is my dosing, I'll dose daily amount of trace and macro after each water change from now and monitor what goes on in the tank.

There is plant growth in there though, just noticed some of the Tenelus have grown 6cm long runners already :) and the glosso is starting to send out runners :)

How long would you recommend I do daily 50% water changes and What quantity of ferts should I dose after each water change ???
 
mmm, still having issues with what I think is Rhizoclonium algae growing in the tank.

I've also noticed that new leaves on the Ludwigia arcuata seem to be small and shrivelled up - Does anyone know what this could be a lack of? The Rotala sp green is growing nicely and the glosso is happily sending out runners everywhere.

Has anyone any experience in planting in ADA Amazonia 2, I'm finding it very hard to keep the plants in the soil after planting as the soil does not flow back around the plant very well.

Thanks
 
Yeah I do a tiny bit, Dan did the majority of it though. I know what you mean, I tried to bury in a rock and it just compressed down lol.
 
swackett said:
mmm, still having issues with what I think is Rhizoclonium algae growing in the tank.

I've also noticed that new leaves on the Ludwigia arcuata seem to be small and shrivelled up - Does anyone know what this could be a lack of? The Rotala sp green is growing nicely and the glosso is happily sending out runners everywhere.

Double you dosing, remove all affected leaves religiously, add a bit more CO2 and take another reading in 3 weeks.

Cheers,
 
Lisa_Perry75 wrote:
Yeah I do a tiny bit, Dan did the majority of it though. I know what you mean, I tried to bury in a rock and it just compressed down lol.

That’s exactly the issue I get, I use tweezers to plant the stem plants, but the tweezers just compress the soil and plant just floats back to surface when I let go of it !! :?

Clive Wrote:
Double you dosing, remove all affected leaves religiously, add a bit more CO2 and take another reading in 3 weeks.

Cool thanks for information Clive I really appreciate the feedback. I've reduced the photoperiod to 6 hours, do you think I should keep it at this or increase it?
 
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