Anything Else I Can Do?

[tennis4you]

I have been using Flourish now for maybe 3 months, I dose twice per week. Seems like the broad leaf plants are doing so-so. Some of them have brown leaves and are not the healthiest, some of them seem to be growing some. The smaller ones are the ones that seem to be growing. Once they get to a medium size they seem to struggle.

The think stringy plants seem to be doing OK and growing fine. The moneywart does decent, I have another kind of stringier plant but I am not sure what it is. It grows nicely.

Overall if the the broadleaf stuff that seems to struggle and it is what I have the most of.

125g tank, probably have about 1.7 watts per gallon. I really want to avoid the C02 right now which is why I kept the lighting below 2.0 watts per gallon.

Any thoughts?

Thank you,

 

[tennis4you]

Thought maybe I should post images of the tank and a close up of the plants too for reference.

Thanks!

 

[SuperColey1]

1.7WPG in a tank the size of yours is classed as high light!!!

In general the WPG rule was calculated with T12 tubes and on an average (20-50USG) tank size.

If your tank is smaller than the average in general you need much more WPG than the rule. If bigger then you need much less.

Add to this the fact that T10, T8 and T5 have surpassed the T12 in terms of efficiency and quality then you can see our frustration with this rule.

As a general guide it is OK but it is very limited in that you have to adjust it for tank size and type of tube used!!

Therefore if you have T8 (1inch diameter) on your tank I would aim for 1WPG if you want to avoid CO2. This would probably equate to a parralel with 2WPG on the WPG scale due to the size of your tank. Also if you don't want to add CO2 then you should minimise the water changes to maintain a reasonably stable CO2 level. Tap water has a much higher dissolved CO2 content than tank water has through its natural gaseous exchange at the water's surface, therefore each water change makes the CO2 rise and then taper off which makes the CO2 in the tank inconsistent. Much better to do smaller, less frequent water changes to keep a constant level.

So with your lights are ther 2 (or more) tubes and can you turn them on and off independent of each other? If so I would turn 1 (or more) off to lower the light wattage a little and then just turn it on when you are taking photos (or have guests around. lol)

Andy

 

[tennis4you]

Yeah. I have (3) 24" long lights that have 48 watts each (they are nice lights). I then have (2) 36" lights behind them that came with the tank and they are crap lights but I keep them on. I can easily turn them off. That puts me at 1.15 watts per gallon. When I turn off the crappy lights you can barely even tell.

 

[SuperColey1]

What is visible to our eyes (i.e. our perceived vision) is not necessarily what the light output is for the plants.

We may not see the difference of the 2 smaller lights due to their colouration etc but they definately will be adding more wattage.

I would personnally stick with the 3 large lights. They will do the job and if you can't notice the difference yourself when they are off then it shouldn't bother you that they aren't on.

It also means that you have less lights to replace every year.

Andy