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Thailandia Sunset

A while ago, I saw Ludwigia ‘Meta’ sell post on facebook with a picture of the large tank, thought the tank look so familiar…then I just discovered this thread again and realised it was yours. Thanks to you, this ludwigia sp. is in thailand and is also available at my LFS :thumbup:
 
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Nont said:
A while ago, I saw Ludwigia ‘Meta’ sell post on facebook with a picture of the large tank, thought the tank look so familiar…then I just discovered this thread again and realised it was yours. Thanks to you, this ludwigia sp. is in thailand and is also available at my LFS :thumbup:
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Some new plant sp is coming in a bout 2 weeks times... but 🤫 it's still a secret.
 
Hanuman said:
Some new plant sp is coming in a bout 2 weeks times... but 🤫 it's still a secret.
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Could you tell me how you are able to get these plants? I really want to get some Echinodorus that isn’t available in the country.
 
Today was the day. I removed the wood holding all the bucephalandra B. Ghost. That thing was a neodymium magnet for algae. Took me a good 3-4 hours between normal maintenance and putting back all the rhizomes on the rocks. A real chore. I chose the fishing line technic. I really hate the white stain that super glue leaves when dumped in water. Prior adding the plants to the tank I soaked all the rhizome in some locally made anti-algea product to kill all the algae on the plants and allow shrimps to eat it. Here is the result:
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Rhizomes are placed so that they grow in the same direction.
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Some baby rhizomes. A shame to waste them so I added them on a new rock.
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Good ridance. That wood is completely infested with BBA and GDA. It will not be used in my tanks anymore. They crumble so easily.
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Now it's time for some JW IE dose. @Wookii
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Nont said:
Do you need permit paper to import plants or just sneak them through?
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Technically yes. A phytosanitary certificate.

Nont said:
Echinodorus macrophyllus, I saw the plant in Thai APC website but never seen it in any of the store.
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If APC has it then it's available in Thailand. You could ask Kawin from Nature Box at JJ. He might be able to get it for you.
 
Something odd has happened this week. My toninas lotus blosson has started melting from the bottom for the past ~4-5 days and I have noticed a sudden increase in BBA on all epiphyte plants. Also, L. Meta has grown substantially slower than every week and some of the E. setaceum is collecting some hair algae. Bucep BG is also collecting BBA 🤬. Pretty much a bad week.
If I have to conclude something is that I probably forgot to add the ferts last week when I did the WC. I don't see any other reason why this is happening since nothing else has changed. Oh yes I did change the light for a P900 Week Aqua, but that was only 2 days ago and this shenanigans started before that. Anyhow I will increase stem mass in the tank to provide more stability and most importantly I'll try not to forget to add the ferts this week!! I will also bath all the bucephalandra into some anti-algae solution outside the tank.


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From Thailand with love and loads of reflections (as usual). I promise one day I'll do things properly and put a black backdrop. Light was upgrade for a Week Aqua P900. So far so good.
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I'm modifying my fert regime from next Saturday onward. All has already been prepared in advance and waiting the next WC. I am moving away from front loading to 3x a week dosing, not because there is an issue but because I have added urea in my new macro batch and I don't want big loads of urea in the tank at once. Therefore I am spreading the load over 3x. This said the urea proportions are quite low considering I am doing a 4:1 KNO3:Urea. Below are the precise numbers for the curious.

MACRO
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MICRO
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Note 1: As mentioned to @Happi in another thread, for this batch I didn't use Ascorbic acid and Potassium sorbate but instead I used Sodium benzoate (0.6gr/L). Let's see how it goes.
Note 2: Fe Gluconate 11% is added directly to the mix. After 24 hours, the mix has time to decant and the solution is then filtered with a coffee filter to its final vessel.

REMIN
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SYSTEM SUMMARY - Yes the date is in the future because that's how I roll.
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Today was filter cleaning day + WC. I have been having algae problems for the past two months. It just dawn on me it could be because I haven't cleaned the filter in like over 6 months or more.... So not only did I clean the filter but I also went into full maniac mode and arranged the media vertically so that flow would be less restricted. I had time to kill so had to find something to do! I also removed some bio media as I thought it's not doing much anyway (blue bowl). Now let's hope for the best.
I also started dosing my new concoction with urea. I did a double dose after the WC so that the plants wouldn't be shocked too much after me front loading the tank for a such a long time. Crossing fingers!
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Unrelated picture below. This is Cabomba furcata that I left in a container for over 4 months. Plant is very much still alive. Light is extremely low although it appears bright. The container is usually closed so that water doesn't evaporate. I replanted it today in the tank see if it would grow back to its full glory.
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It's good to share the good and the ugly. Here goes the ugly.

GDA and what seems to be Oedogonium algae have been invading my tank on virtually all plants and surfaces. Even my fast growing stems like L. Meta and R. Bossii or slower ones like limnophila aromatica got rewarded with algae. What I think is happening:
  • Increased light intensity from new light fixture. I had it set at 100% but was higher than my previous Chihiros WRGB. I thought the increased height would compensate. I guess I underestimated the power and overestimate the height. Truth be told I also wanted to increase overall PAR of the tank to improve coloration of my bucephalandra. I supposed I got too greedy;
  • The above then leads to increased CO2 demand from plants. My DC is already yellow so I didn't want to increase it but I should have at least a bit;
  • Filter having been cleaned last week + fertilizer recipe slightly modified (basically less nitrate) + regimen having been changed (moving from front load to 3x dosing) + use of urea are all largely responsible for this algae galore me think.

Mitigation/solution:
  • decreased light intensity 2 days ago by 10 point % + rise the light by ~ 2 centimeters or so. This should ease the situation at least a bit.
  • Increase CO2 by a slight notch;
  • I will still double dose after WC;
  • Trim what is trim-able tomorrow during WC and treat some plants with anti-algae. I tried APT Fix on a small spot and that thing seems to be rather potent, more so than H2O2. I didn't have any shrimp die on me so at least that's good news;
  • Probably add a few amanos shrimps later next week depending how things evolve. I am also looking for a snails specie that won't bulldozer everything like Nerites. I haven't found any so far and I am not very optimistic in finding one considering that the acidic environment will ultimately kill them by eroding their shells. If anyone has suggestions on specific snails I'm all ears;
  • continue observing and treating plants with anti-algae until all this clears out to a large degree. Will probably have to decrease light intensity again but waiting for things to settle first.

Pictures below
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Plants (E. Quin, R. Bonsai) that don't have algae on them is because they were very recently planted.
 
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So far GDA and filamentous algae have not receded. The glass gets covered with GDA only 2-3 days after WC. Sorry for the bubbles I took the shot in a rush this morning. I cleaned half the glass so you could see the difference but the bubbles make it difficult to see. You can see the demarcation though in the middle. GDA is also pretty obvious on the side panels. Never have I had such a bad GDA and hair algae, and to some extent BBA, outbreak in these years.
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Talking about plants:

  • Eriocaulon setaceum has grown at an accelerated rate. So has the attached hair algae. I will probably remove this plant all together as it's a pain to maintain. You basically can't trim it. You need to uproot, cut top and replant. It also grows lots of very fine aerial roots which becomes unsightly once the plant growth tall enough.
  • Ammannia Pedicellata golden: has also grown much faster than where it was in my smaller tank. Not much algae on it though so that's a good thing.
  • Rotala goias: it was planted clean 2 weeks ago and is now covered with algae as can be seen above.
  • Rotala bosii: I trimmed it 2 weeks ago. Growth has considerably slowed down since but that’s expected. This said I see quite some stunting here and there on new shoots. Not something I like to see. The plant will go regardless because I don’t really like it sending uneven sideshoots all the time. Not a predictable shape plant.
  • Tonina lotus blossom: this one has got my head scratching. For the past month and half I have been seeing some random melts starting at the bottom of the stem and then going up. I have had this plant for quite some time so I am unsure what is happening.
  • L. Meta: it’s not growing as I wish despite plenty of co2 and ferts. This plant used to grow much faster and have a big crown. Things are different these days.
  • E. quinquangulare: this one is getting algae every week. I have to remove the outer leaves as it just looks ugly.

The GDA and filamentous algae I am seeing are mostly due to the use of urea + filter having been cleaned 2 weeks ago.

I’ll give it one or two more weeks before I make drastic changes, like changing the substrate or changing my formula by removing urea from the mix altogether. I could also shove some root tabs everywhere see how that goes. I can also still decrease the lighting but I have 2 plants in there for which I really need to have high light for coloring reasons so I don't want to lower light too much. In the meantime I will add a few amanos to clean up the hair algae and perhaps 3 more otos to help cleaning the GDA/BBA on the plants. The only oto I have is basically 24/7 with a belly as fat as my thumb so I suppose there is enough food for a few more fish. I am tempted to also add one or two small bristle nose plecos for full GDA eradication in the upcoming weeks. I could then add them in my outdoor pond where they will live happily ever after. In fact I already have an L144 in that pond, but he is a maniac and likes digging around so don't want to use him. He is too big already.
 
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Quick update.
We have lift off. GDA is now very faint after 4 days of WC. This is great and I attribute this to one thing: decreased urea dosing. On my last water change I only single dosed instead of the double dose I did since using urea in my fert mix. This solved my problem but it's not ideal for me. A single dose means a rather lean dose after WC and this is specially not good on a substrate that is depleted. I have two options. Either redo my fertilizer mix and exclude urea altogether (or greatly reduce urea in the KNO3:urea ratio) so I can more heavily dose after WC or change the substrate (or load the soil with those APT root tabs I have, but this is usually short lived).
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The algae on the back panel is normal. I haven't cleaned it in 3 weeks as it is not very visible when looking from the front.
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Not sure where to post this so I am posting here in my journal as I don't think a new thread is justified for this.
So I re-stocked some Calcium Sulphate as I had finished my stock, except this time I didn't buy from my usual supplier. I just bought some from an online store which did not mention what hydrate it was. It was just sold as Calcium Sulphate. I assumed it's the dihydrate form as the description of the product says it's Gypsum and also food grade. That's the hydrate used in the food industry. Anyhow, suspicious as I am, I needed to carry out some test to make sure I was getting what I paid for.
So I did the following:
  • Batch 1 with old product: added 1gr of CaSO4*2H2O in 100ml of RO water then measured TDS @ 2128
  • Batch 2 with new product: added 1gr of CaSO4*2H2O in 100ml of RO water then measure TDS @ 1728

That is odd, in principle should be roughly the same but there is 400ppm gap there. I measured multiple times in the span of 15 minutes and results were replicable and consistent. So then I wanted to make sure I had the same hydrate by testing the hardness of the water. In order for my strip test to pick up the levels I had to dilute the above mixtures. I simply took a 6ml syringe of the solutions and added them each in 100ml of RO water. The results are below. As can be seen both solutions provided the same hardness. I know these strips tests are not accurate but I think it's good enough for the purpose. The only conclusion from all this is that my old CaSO4 is not as pure as I thought it was and probably contains some unwanted impurities which bump the TDS.

Moral of the story: I'll only be buying food grade CaSO4 from now on.
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Hanuman said:
  • Batch 1 with old product: added 1gr of CaSO4*2H2O in 100ml of RO water then measured TDS @ 2128
  • Batch 2 with new product: added 1gr of CaSO4*2H2O in 100ml of RO water then measure TDS @ 1728
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Hi @Hanuman, I am wondering about this one. 1 gr would be hard if not impossible to dissolve in only 100 ml of water (CaSO4 solubility 0.26 g/100ml), and if it did, 1 gram of CaSO4(2H2O) in 100 ml would give you ~2300 ppm of Ca and ~1900 ppm of S.

Cheers,
Michael
 
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