itonlyrains
Fish Fanatic
I have my planted tropical tank (~150L) for just over half a year and I'm struggling to keep it nice and clean. So at this stage I'm considering to either completely give it up or change my set up dramatically. Currently I'm spending a fair amount of time maintaining it and, as my my other half said, results are not there 
So the problems I'm facing are (in no particular order):
Frequent external filter/tubing cleaning. I have Eheim 2224 which supposed to be enough for my kind of tank and generally you read stories about cleaning it once in 3-4 month (or even less frequent). In my case I noticed that flow reduces to 150l/h (from about 600) after just 3-4 weeks. I managed to track it down mostly to clogging up tubing which is heavily covered in brown gunk (is that normal or its actually a brown algae/diatoms problem?). The tubing is 12/16mm and I wonder if having a filter that uses 16/22mm tubing would help here. I also think that even within the first week after cleaning I'm not getting anywhere near 10x water flow as recommended for planted tanks (my best is currently 4x). This may also contribute to my second problem which is:
Too much waste in the gravel of the tank. I can cause literally a cloud of waste coming from the gravel by moving my hand over it. I read people do a gravel vac every week or two, but its not strictly recommended for planted tanks. Now I can't easily reach the gravel with my syphon during water changes as there are too many plants, so I'm thinking I need a better flow either via external filter or internal head pump. Does it make sense? Also does it mean I may be overfeeding and it can help feeding less, even though I do not have any water quality issues, everything that supposed to be 0 is zero? Can all this waste down there also contribute to the next problem I'm having which is:
Algae on the gravel/glass. I do not have a major problem with algae, but since my gravel is kind of bright, all brown stuff appearing on it is very visible. May be getting bright gravel was not the right thing to do in a planted tank? As I understand all planted tanks would always have a bit of algae due to light required by plants, so I'm not sure what is realistic to expect here, but I in my son's school they have a 200L tank with similar gravel that is pristine clean month after month (it doesn't have any plants amd I don't know how much light is it getting, but at least I know it should be possible then. They also have some sort of fish that looks like a gold fish, even though its a tropical set up, which takes gravel into its mouth and spits out, so may be that is what's cleaning it). As for type of algae - gravel looks brownish like diatoms and glass is getting a fair amount of green spot algae at a level where gravel stops (on all sides of the tank) and a few places on the glass that faces the window (there is no direct sunlight, but the room is fairly bright). Could it be that too much waste at the bottom actually keeping algae growing? Is there a way to really clean it without taking out of the tank? I should mention that my lighting period is 7 hours and I have 2x35w T5 tubes that are half a year old now without any reflectors (I used to have them but it seems that its too much for the plants without supply of CO2).
Fast growing plants. Its more about the maintenance than anything else. I do not have fast growing stems anymore, but normal/slow plants are growing rapidly as well. I used to have problems with plants not doing so good, but since I removed reflectors, reduced lighting period to 7 hours and dosing micro-nutrients every day (I believe I have enough macro ones ) they are really doing well. So I have to aggressively trim some of them every 2-3 weeks. I can see that even slowly growing ones like anubis spitting out new leaves very quickly. I don't really have more room for reducing the lighting period, so if I wanted to stop dosing ferts I would probably need to downgrade my unit to T8s or something. I also suspect that ambient light, when my lighting is not working, is encouraging more algae (and that's a pretty long period when it starts getting very bright in the room: from about 8am until 3pm when the light is switched on). Could my current amount of light contribute to algae issues? I used to have this set as 10-12 hours and could see diatoms blooming really quickly (like in a matter of days), but now its more of a progressive accumulation over months. Another issue with too bigger plants could be that my fish is no longer able to swim happily. I suspect that my pearl gouramis might not be enjoying many plants around. They used to swim a lot in the open but now mostly hang around in between plants.
Right now I'm thinking that options I have are:
- Empty and clean tank, get dark gravel, replant everything and get bigger filter.
- Empty and clean tank and try to clean gravel as well, do not plant it (or get artificial plants), reduce lighting more (to say 5-6 hours).
- Get bigger filter, change lighting unit to a less powerful one, stop dosing ferts and reduce feeding to once a day (from current two). If this actually works and it becomes cleaner then may be cleaning tank and gravel in the future.
- Any other combination of the above...
- Covert this to marine set up (I know its going to be a lot more expensive, but may be slightly easier to maintain)
- Stop doing all this (sad I know, but if it gives more grief than joy...)
I'm really opened to any suggestions, but would like to avoid going a challenging (or long) route only to find out that its still not working as expected (my family life is struggling as is right now ). Thanks for reading!
So the problems I'm facing are (in no particular order):
Frequent external filter/tubing cleaning. I have Eheim 2224 which supposed to be enough for my kind of tank and generally you read stories about cleaning it once in 3-4 month (or even less frequent). In my case I noticed that flow reduces to 150l/h (from about 600) after just 3-4 weeks. I managed to track it down mostly to clogging up tubing which is heavily covered in brown gunk (is that normal or its actually a brown algae/diatoms problem?). The tubing is 12/16mm and I wonder if having a filter that uses 16/22mm tubing would help here. I also think that even within the first week after cleaning I'm not getting anywhere near 10x water flow as recommended for planted tanks (my best is currently 4x). This may also contribute to my second problem which is:
Too much waste in the gravel of the tank. I can cause literally a cloud of waste coming from the gravel by moving my hand over it. I read people do a gravel vac every week or two, but its not strictly recommended for planted tanks. Now I can't easily reach the gravel with my syphon during water changes as there are too many plants, so I'm thinking I need a better flow either via external filter or internal head pump. Does it make sense? Also does it mean I may be overfeeding and it can help feeding less, even though I do not have any water quality issues, everything that supposed to be 0 is zero? Can all this waste down there also contribute to the next problem I'm having which is:
Algae on the gravel/glass. I do not have a major problem with algae, but since my gravel is kind of bright, all brown stuff appearing on it is very visible. May be getting bright gravel was not the right thing to do in a planted tank? As I understand all planted tanks would always have a bit of algae due to light required by plants, so I'm not sure what is realistic to expect here, but I in my son's school they have a 200L tank with similar gravel that is pristine clean month after month (it doesn't have any plants amd I don't know how much light is it getting, but at least I know it should be possible then. They also have some sort of fish that looks like a gold fish, even though its a tropical set up, which takes gravel into its mouth and spits out, so may be that is what's cleaning it). As for type of algae - gravel looks brownish like diatoms and glass is getting a fair amount of green spot algae at a level where gravel stops (on all sides of the tank) and a few places on the glass that faces the window (there is no direct sunlight, but the room is fairly bright). Could it be that too much waste at the bottom actually keeping algae growing? Is there a way to really clean it without taking out of the tank? I should mention that my lighting period is 7 hours and I have 2x35w T5 tubes that are half a year old now without any reflectors (I used to have them but it seems that its too much for the plants without supply of CO2).
Fast growing plants. Its more about the maintenance than anything else. I do not have fast growing stems anymore, but normal/slow plants are growing rapidly as well. I used to have problems with plants not doing so good, but since I removed reflectors, reduced lighting period to 7 hours and dosing micro-nutrients every day (I believe I have enough macro ones ) they are really doing well. So I have to aggressively trim some of them every 2-3 weeks. I can see that even slowly growing ones like anubis spitting out new leaves very quickly. I don't really have more room for reducing the lighting period, so if I wanted to stop dosing ferts I would probably need to downgrade my unit to T8s or something. I also suspect that ambient light, when my lighting is not working, is encouraging more algae (and that's a pretty long period when it starts getting very bright in the room: from about 8am until 3pm when the light is switched on). Could my current amount of light contribute to algae issues? I used to have this set as 10-12 hours and could see diatoms blooming really quickly (like in a matter of days), but now its more of a progressive accumulation over months. Another issue with too bigger plants could be that my fish is no longer able to swim happily. I suspect that my pearl gouramis might not be enjoying many plants around. They used to swim a lot in the open but now mostly hang around in between plants.
Right now I'm thinking that options I have are:
- Empty and clean tank, get dark gravel, replant everything and get bigger filter.
- Empty and clean tank and try to clean gravel as well, do not plant it (or get artificial plants), reduce lighting more (to say 5-6 hours).
- Get bigger filter, change lighting unit to a less powerful one, stop dosing ferts and reduce feeding to once a day (from current two). If this actually works and it becomes cleaner then may be cleaning tank and gravel in the future.
- Any other combination of the above...
- Covert this to marine set up (I know its going to be a lot more expensive, but may be slightly easier to maintain)
- Stop doing all this (sad I know, but if it gives more grief than joy...)
I'm really opened to any suggestions, but would like to avoid going a challenging (or long) route only to find out that its still not working as expected (my family life is struggling as is right now
). Thanks for reading!
