Unnamed

[sciencefiction]

I know you guys are very helpful and knowledgeable about plants and I am getting no response elsewhere so I thought I'd post a quick summary of my recent disaster.

I setup a 5f(around 100G tank), 2nd hand cheap tank. It's supposed to be low tech, no injected CO2 for sure, not sure about other options depending on how it goes.
I ordered custom made LEDs which were going to take a while and in fact I don't have them yet two months after.
In the mean time I fishless cycled the filters using bottled ammonia, that was finished ages ago, so I just dosed more ammonia whenever I thought of it.
I mineralized 2x25kg bags of topsoil, two different types-B&Q and Homebase versions
I bought Unipac fiji fine sand for a cap.
And I got red clay to mix with the soil at about 10% of the total amount
Also dolomite and potassium chloride for sprinkling the bottom.
The equipment is:
Eheim Professional 2-1000L/H
APS filter-2000 L/H
V2 TMC Sand bed filter with Eheim 1250L/H external powerhead.
At the moment, the outlets are 3 spraybars along the bag covering the entire lenght.

Plants:
Echinodorus Parviflorus
Echinodorus Rosé
Echinodorus gabrielii
Echinodorus cordifolius (E. radicans)
Vallisneria spiralis(straight vallis)
Cryptocoryne wendtii 'Mi Oya'
Cryptocoryne beckettii "Pink"
Hygrophila pinnatifida
Nuphar japonica
Nymphaea lotus var. rubra
Bacopa australis
Aponogeton crispus
Shinnersia rivularis(Mexican Oak Leaf)
Ludwigia palustris x repens (L. mullertii)
Wood:
Taxiphyllum species "Spiky"
Anubias barteri var. barteri
Microsorum pteropus ''Narrow''
Floaters:
Pistia stratiotes(waterlettuce)
Trapa Natans
Salvinia Minima


Because of the huge delay in receiving the lights, I ended up receiving the plant order earlier. It also got stuck in the post and then spent some time in a bucket hoping I'd receive the lights any day, but I didn't.
So I had to use my last option, which was to use a crappy one 36W bulb over the 100G tank for a week until I receive the LEDs this week sometime hopefully.

I setup the tank this Friday. I made a few mistakes along the way, almost forgot to sprinkle the dolomite and potassium. Then it took so long to be putting the soil, washing the sand, that I ended up with plants spread on a bin bag for ages. I did sprinkle water on them but possibly they spent too long out of the water. So I didn't do much aquascaping, just stuck the plants in so I can fill the tank faster. I couldn't even distinguish between the echinodorus species too, because they weren't tagged. They are all different, two small species and two large, so wasn't sure which one at the back, which at the front, so I just spread them around to see once they grow. At the end, when filling up the tank, I forgot to check the tap water temperature, so ended up bringing down the temperature of the tank a lot.
Today, a few days later, my plants are melting a lot, even hard plants like anubias. I think I may lose a few plants. I am not sure whether it was all the problems with the plants, or the light is just not enough to keep them alive for a few more days, as it's only like 0.3W per Gallon.

Here are a few pictures from start to finish.

The tank cycled with the filters only, soaked the wood too.

Mineralizing the soil:

The paw prints of my helper

About 3/4" of soil

Capped with about 1"(2.5cm), maybe a bit more Unipac fiji fine sand

And finally I put the crappy temporary 36W light(only one bulb works) and the ugly cover(the tank will be open top, but the cover holds the current light

The bad state of my melting plants:

As you can see, several plants are completely melting, including the anubias. The others are the the roots and bottoms of the stem plants: Bacopa australis, Ludwiga and the Mexican Oak Leaf. At the moment there are some stems floating because the base near the root melted.
The Red lotus has no leaves anymore, The Nuphar Japonica has melted all the big leaves but has one small one still healthy.
The rest are still hanging on for now, but then I haven't looked today as I don't want to see really.


I measured ammonia and nitrIte, both 0, so even if the soil is releasing ammonia, the filters are clearing that up so not detectable on the test.
The water parameters after the addition of the soil are pretty much the same as my tap and other tanks besides the Gh being 2dGh higher which could be because of the dolomite. The stats are as follows, measured yesterday I think.

Ammonia-0
NitrIte-0
NitrAte-not tested, but 100% water change prior to planting with less than 1ppm nitrAte in tap water(according to the water company)
Gh-14
Kh-8
Ph-7.4
TDS-291ppm(higher than my tap so the soil does leach nutritients into the water column I suppose).

There are no fish in the tank yet.

Is there anything I can do to stop them melt away completely? Is it the shock they experienced prior to planting or possibly the light is too low to keep them alive for a few more days?
I have kind of given up at this stage. I planned for so long, did everything to have all ready on time and not deal with ammonia spikes, but the delay in the LEDs kind of mixed up my plans altogehter.
Thanks for reading.

 

[NanoJames]

Maybe they're just settling in? I wouldn't be surprised if they were grown emersed and are acclimatising to submerged life! They may also be concentrating on putting new roots down and once that happens you might see some new, healthy growth!
Cheers

 

[Steve Smith]

You could drop the water level to help with the light levels if you're concerned that there's not enough light. In reality, things are probably melting as they are probably emerse growth.

 

[sciencefiction]

I hope you are right James. That crossed my mind too, but I've never seen anubias go like this. I bought all my other anubias from the same place and none melted. They have the leaves from over a year ago when I got some for another tank.

 

[sciencefiction]

Ok, I can drop the light level, that's an easy idea. Thanks Steve.

 

[sciencefiction]

I just went to drain some water down to the spraybar level, and the surface now is full of bubbles
What a bugger, I need to try changing the direction of the flow I guess? Point the spraybars further downwards...The plants are so nicely waving the way it is now. I can see even the bottom leaves of each plant(or whatever's left from them) moving
I just don't want to drive the little CO2 out of the water either.
Does anyone think these plants will last another 2-3 days with this much light?

 

[sciencefiction]

I did a tiny bit replanting yesterday. The ludwiga, mexican oak leaf and the bacopa all have melted the bottom of the stems, getting lose and floating. I cut the bottom of the ludwiga and mexican oak leaf and replanted them. The bacopa is impossible to mess with because it's falling apart totally. If one survives I'll be happy. The anubias has melted all it's leaves. I left a couple that aren't completely gone.
On a positive note the nuphar japonica has a couple of new leaves growing and I saw new leaves on some of the echinodorus and aponogeton crispus.
The good part is there's 0 mess with the soil at the bottom. I am yet to experience any clouding when replanting. It's almost like it isn't there.

 

[sciencefiction]

The plants are still poor, most of the stem plants died but there are a few pieces surviving and growing. I did kill a floating plant, replaced all the anubias as it melted and the bacopa and ludwiga are questionable. At least I've got the LEDs on and from today they are officially suspended. I also received my hanging planters today so I'll get a few emmersed plants going to try out. One peace lilly is already in, but just hanging in the water at the moment.

I've got a question about how much light to give the tank. The lights are 45x3W=135W of LEDs. According to the guy that made the lights, compared to normal fluorescent they are 30% stronger, so about 180W light. The tank is 100G. I am not going to inject CO2 and you can see the distance the lights are from the tank at the moment. They are set on 7.5hrs a day.
Should I decrease the light amount? There's still no algae but I ran only two thirds of the lights on 7hrs closer to the water surface(more than halfway down from where they are now) until today.

 

[NanoJames]

Are you dosing CO2 at all? If you are I don't think you would need to worry too much about algae. If not then you would probably be fine anyway with the amount. You could always add a few shrimp or catfish if you are worried about anything!

 

[sciencefiction]

Thanks NJ.
Nope, no CO2 at all. I am hoping of some sort of Diana Wastad tank effect, hopefully the soil and fish waste will work as intended. I am glad the light isn't too much. I'll know in a week I guess. I need to keep it high too because of the emmersed plants I am going to add.
Corys and shrimp will be the main addition once I get off my lazy bum and transfer them from my other tanks. And I've got ottos and some snails(nerites and red ramshorns) to go in too but I'll wait a while for these to make sure they've got something to eat in there naturally, at least for the zebra ottos.
At the moment there're are just a few platies, and the pond snails that seem to have flown over from my other tanks

 

[flygja]

I would suggest to leave it as is and tweak later if necessary. For instance if you start getting high-lighting released algae such as BGA or severe GDA/GSA. The floating plants you have should help to diffuse some of the light intensity too.

 

[sciencefiction]

Thanks all. I'll leave the lights this way then.
The floating plants are doing great as they are the only plant I transfered from my own tanks and hasn't suffered a transport/lack of light damage but they have confined themselves to one side only where I've lowered one of the spraybars. I can't decide how much surface movement would be ok. I was thinking at least in the beginning I need enough until the tank is more stable, then start lowering it to preserve the little CO2. It's still just gently waving, nothing much at all.

Some pics of my salvinia minima:

 

[sciencefiction]

And another happy plant that went from this:

To this in the space of 8 days and this picture was taken 5-6 days ago so it's even better now.

 

[faizal]

Hi & welcome to the forum . They do look like they are perking up now.
Well i think you could always break the water surface with bubbles coming from an airstone (or 2 in the case of your big tank) for about 3-4 hrs when the lights are off. The extra O2 might even be beneficial for the plants during the lights out period.

I would lower the other spraybars a little & add more floating plants to cover up about 50 % or so of the water surface. How long are you running the LEDs for? My previous non co2 tank seemed to tick along nicely with just 3 hrs of photoperiod a day.
This would also be a good time to add more plants. From what i've learned,...in a non co2 tank, it's always better as a beginner to plant heavily from the get go even though your tank is fully cycled. The ones that i found easy were various types of Crypts and anubias. Vallis should work well too. Nymphae rubra is also cool.

What is the name of that plant in the last pic that you have posted? is it nuphar japonica? If it seems to be doing well,..why not pick up more of those & just start planting more of them around the tank? Later once the tank & plants have truly settled you could remove them as you please & add other varieties that you might want to try out. The problem that i faced with my non co2 tank was not all the plants that i fancied worked for me.. Lots of people have great success with ferns ,..but mine just bombed. So i think,...the thing to do is stick with easy low light plants & stick in as much varieties of them as possible & see which of them do well in our tank & work from there. Once we know the kinds of plants that work for us (in our non co2 tanks) we can then focus on the aquascaping part of it

 

[faizal]

Echinodorus amazonicus is also a nice plant that seems to do well in many non co2 tanks with soil substrate. i never had tremendous success with this but it's worth a try too.

 

[sciencefiction]

Thanks Faizal. The lights are on for 7hrs. I was going to increase yesterday to 7.5, but set the timer back.
I actually started the tank with 20 varieties of plants to see what will grow and what not and besides the front part of the tank I actually planted all other areas to the point that they were almost on top of each other and had no place to grow but the plants are so bashed up and melted so much that one can't see it on the pictures. Besides the front of the tank which I was hoping to keep a bit clear, there actually isn't room for other plants. I tried squeezing a bit of hydrophila as fast grower and at the moment it's behind the log in between some echonodoruses, literally squeezed and overshadowing them so I am a bit afraid I'd sacrifice some plants for others if I start putting more.
I've got echinodorus amazonicus planted in my other tanks but I've got several echinodorus species already in this tank so it seemed like too many of them. If they all decide to grow big, I'll have no room for anything else.

What is the name of that plant in the last pic that you have posted? is it nuphar japonica?

Yes it is. I can't pickup anymore unfortunately because they don't sell them around here and it was a bit expensive to order online.

The ones that i found easy were various types of Crypts and anubias. Vallis should work well too. Nymphae rubra is also cool.

All of these are planted in the tank. Hard to see, I know The valis is at the back first line half melted. The anubias I purchased melted too and I replaced it with cuttings from my other tanks. The nyphae rubra bulb melted and is refusing to grow. I've got also several bulbs of aponogeton crispus that seems to be growing after melting completely, but they are still small. And there are two types of crypts spread around the tank, the Mi Oya has melted down to almost nothing and just has some very frail new leaves.

At the moment I am hoping that my well cycled filters will keep the balance right. There's no ammonia or nitrItes at all and no algae so besides the plants, the tank is doing fine and the fish are happy.
I can transfer some plants from my other tanks and plant the front temporary. I really wanted to avoid that as I am sick at looking at the same type of plants. I've got tons of hydrophila, echinodorus amazonicus and dwarf sagittaria but two of these are quite invasive. I've got a lot more of salvinia minima too.
I'll be adding more emmersed house plants in the next week or so too.

I've got 3 low tech tanks with inert substrate that are doing fine with periods from 6-8hrs a day, but the variety of plants are limited to very easy ones.

 

[sciencefiction]

Just a small update. The tank is slowly picking up.
The problem is that I have the plants all over the place and it will need some sort of redoing. Especially that I realized I had the small echonodorus species at the back and the large ones at the front Next time I'll request the plants to be labelled for fools like me I managed to move some but have to wait for the rest to figure what I want to do.

At the moment, I am not certain if it's an issue or not but the top leaves of the plants are growing kind of reddish including new leafs on amazon swords I moved just a few days ago. They've got so many red veins on them they look reddish. The hydrophila pinnatifida and corymbosa too, so is the aponogeton crispus green which looks a brown variety at the moment but I ordered the green one. I'll see what happens as it's early to tell, maybe they'll recover the colours.

Here is a video with my corys moved in and having a party:

 

[sciencefiction]

I was also wondering if my red lotus bulb does have any chance of recovering. The leaves fell off and it hasn't grown anything in weeks. I check it from time to time and feels hard on the touch so it isn't rotting yet but maybe I lost it?
My big anubias melted completely including the rhizome and all anubias in the tank now are cuttings from other tanks I have. Also one of the aponogeton crispus bulbs melted the leaves after I moved it a second time,stopped growing and the bulb fell apart literally so it's possible my lotus will follow its fate but I am still hoping as I can't purchase one here.

 

[sciencefiction]

Just an update on the tank. It's been a slow progress since planting 3 months ago.
Please ignore the aquascaping as I was more concentrated in making those damaged plants grow, rather than anything else. I haven't had issues with algae thankfully except for a tiny amount of diatoms that appeared at some stage when I transferred too many fish at once. These were cleaned by my ottos, snails and bristlenose pleco pretty quickly.
The tank is a breeze to keep. I've done a few water changes only and have not have to clean the glass or anything. The fish seem happy and my adult sterbai corys are breeding regularly.
It has a long way to go yet, but I am happy that I was able to save and multiply most of the plants. I was nearly left with nothing after the initial mass melting.

This is a picture from the 29th April 2013

And this is from today 16th June 2013, less than two months apart:

And a quick video. It's showing my recently planted glosso bits at the front at some stage, which surprisingly are growing horizontally(no ferts no CO2) I hope they keep it that way

 

[sciencefiction]

Some pictures from today below. I have a problem now that the middle plants have grown faster than the background plants. There's vallis at the back, some echinodorus species that are supposed to grow tall, aponogeton crispus(which has flowered by the way),etc..but they are still small where some other plants which I foolishly put in the middle, have grown way too fast and grow too tall. I can of course trim until I see how it looks once the rest grow. Patience

Anyway, a couple of pics:

The glosso is still growing horizontal but the malaysian trumpet snails have dug up some of it in places: