Does Liquid Cabon Inhibit The Cycling Process?

[djl08]

Hi, ive posted in the plants and planted tank section about my amazon swords going brown and see-through! I was told it could be caused by some type of deficiency (phosphate or carbon). Ive been advised to add root tabs and maybe some liquid carbon supplement.

My question is, will this addition of carbon in any way effect my cycle? Meaning will it increase the Co2 levels, hence reduce the oxygen levels within the tank?

Thanks,

- Dj -

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Dj,

I tend to think that one of the lucky things about all the "plant goodies" (liquid carbon, ferts, light) is that they seem to be able to be used just fine along with cycling and other water chem things and one doesn't need to worry about interactions between the two. So I think they're just fine.

Having said that, I leave room that there may be something I'm forgetting or just don't know. I started up doing my plant things after cycling was over on this latest tank.

By the way, my sword is doing great and here's what I'm doing: I dose Excel daily. I dose all my macro and micro nutrients on a mixed daily schedule with the water change at the end of the week to emulate an EI plan. My light runs at about 1 w/g with a 3 hour morning photoperiod and a 4 hour evening photoperiod and its only low-light-easy plants in there - the sword, an anubia, a wendtii and lots of java fern. Every few weeks I push a Flourish root tab directly down low under the swords roots (I also previously used API root tabs for this and haven't seen any real difference between the two.) Its not clear to me that the root tabs are needed at all if the water column fertilizers are dosed in correct proportions and sufficient amounts.. I don't know I just kinda got into doing it.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[djl08]

Aah i see, i dont really know what you mean by macro and micro nutrients though. I really need to do some more research on plant care i think.

- Dj -

 

[waterdrop]

Macro and micro are just fancy terms for dividing up and grouping the things that plants eat to say alive.

What plants take in is kinda interesting:

About 40 to 50% of a plant is made up of carbon, just like animals. Not only that but plants, just like animals need to a fuel to pump around to take energy to their cells. That fuel is made up of sugars, which are mostly carbons and hydrogens and the hydrogens can obviously come from water but the carbon is harder to get. Plants out in the air or that emerge from the water surface can get tons of carbon from the CO2 in the air, but CO2 is much less abundant under the water, and surprisingly, plants have never adapted to that especially well, even to this day. Providing extra carbon as mentioned in previous posts therefor is a primary nutrient concern.

OK, so man dose not live by carbon alone, right? What about the other 16 nutrients (plants need exactly the same ones, except they also need Boron.. weird, eh?) Well, its not divided up evenly. There are three elements that are needed by plants in abundance: Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium. These are the "N-P-K" that are famous to gardeners and are marked on all those bags of fertilizer at the garden shop! They are the "macro-nutrients" ... macro because the plants eat a lot of them! OK, so every species needs different ratios of these but overall that doesn't matter a lot.

So now we're down to another set of 13 elements (thought you'd left chemistry behind in in graduate school, right?) and these are needed in smaller and smaller amounts, down to traces. These are the so-called "micro-nutrients." They (and sometimes the macros too) are usually lumped all together into a liquid fertilizer so you don't have to put little specs from 13 bottles in your tank, hehe...

Now your real homework about this will be to go off and read the pinned articles about "EI" (Estimative Index) and fertiliztion over in the planted section and report back! Personally, I think the practical trick is to look at the various good recommended brands of fertilizers that are available to you (limited availability, that's part of the problem) and determine how much of each element they're going to give you (that's a bit difficult too as you have to take into account how much they're having you dose for what amount of water and they all do that differently... thus making you do a lot of tedius arithmetic!).... but what it all comes down to is not leaving it up to some bottle by some manufacturer but to actually figure it out for yourself and become confident that you really are getting enough of each element into your tank during the week so that its slightly overdosed and then doing the water change at the end of the week that sets you nicely back to underdose so you can start dosing again... that's EI and you're going to read enough about it that you'll understand it more hopefully when we next talk (or when we ask the planted guys, cause I'm a pretty minor act compared to them!)

Gosh, never knew people thought so much about the dirt their plants are eating, right?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

Not a bad description of EI there WD. I use a different regime that would have me doing lots of funny dose measurements but I decided to do the math instead. I made up solutions of N, P and K so that I could just dose the same amount of all three and get my desired ratios. I also mixed up my trace to use the same amount of that solution as the other chemicals. Now when I am dosing a tank I put in 1 ml per 10 gallons per day out of each bottle. Some of the mixes are fairly dilute and others are not but I love to keep the actual dosing simple. In other tanks I am using an El Natural approach where you don't intentionally add anything but fish food. There are lots of ways to set up dosing for different intended outcomes. My artificial fertilizer regime is set up to be more a maintenance dose than a rapid growth dose like IE would be.

 

[djl08]

hmm, so what type of products contain these N,P, k and trace nutrients?


- Dj -

 

[OldMan47]

Trace comes in a product called CSM+B, Nitrogen comes in KNO3, the potassium is in K2SO4 and the phosphorus is in KH2PO4. All of these are sold as dry chemicals that you add to pure water to get the solutions for dosing the tank. After mixing, the CSM+B needs to be kept refrigerated or you will get a fungus growing in the liquid. If that happens anyway, I run what is left through a coffee filter and it usually lasts without a second filtering until it is gone. I mix up about 500 ml of my mixes at a time so that I am not constantly messing with it.

 

[djl08]

Great, cheers Oldman.!

Will look into this when i get some time later on.

- Dj -

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, the least expensive and best in many ways is to gain the understanding and do your dry mix-ups from scratch like OM47 is describing and variations of this info can be found in many threads associated with the planted tank forum.

Dj, since you are in UK I believe, you have access (unlike me and OM47, unless I'm missing a source..) to a product called TPN+ which lately seems to be a very popular recommendation from the planted tank hobbyist members. I'm not sure of the complete details of whether the takes care of virtually all the macro and micro nutrients other than carbon, but I think its close. So you'll want to be paying attention to whatever thread searches you can turn that up in over in planted.

As OM47 mentions, there's a difference in the overall amount of fertilization needed I believe depending on how much you are "pushing" the plants with light. You have to pay attention I think with the EI reading and other thread reading not to get confused between the discussions pertaining to tanks where bright lights and pressurized delivery of CO2 are way out there in the fast-growth area versus, for example, below 2wpg plus liquid carbon and easy-plants where everything is moving slower. Hope this makes sense, I'm not very good at it myself!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

I am actually using pressurized CO2 on a tank with only 1.6 WPG and getting very nice results but my NPT also does very well at about 2.5 WPG and no CO2 or artificial ferts. Each method has its own requirements and it is a terrible idea to try mixing them very much. I gave up on EI because I could never figure out how much to overdose my tank and was not ready to do a 50% reset water change every week just to be able to trim lots of plants every other week. When it comes to high tech plantings you need to remember, I am no way as familiar as the plant people are with proper techniques. I am basically at a beginner level and would not even try EI without lots of help.

 

[djl08]

Hmm, well i believe i only have around 1.8WPG (imperial gallons), and im not using C02 nor am i adding anything other than API leaf zone. Which i have been told doesnt contain any phosphate or carbon.

I had a go at reading the EI article, and it all seems a bit complicated for someone who has only just got into the hobby. I mean, yeh id like my plants to flourish have a beautifully planted tank but i dont think id like to dive into adding anything other than off the shelf products to my tank. Not just yet anyway. Which is why ive been having a look at this rather convenient product.

http/www.aquaessentials.co.uk/index.php?...roducts_id=2786

Any thoughts on this.

- Dj -

 

[aaronnorth]

i answwered this in the question about your swords

getting enough of each element into your tank during the week so that its slightly overdosed and then doing the water change at the end of the week that sets you nicely back to underdose so you can start dosing again... that's EI and you're going to read enough about it that you'll understand it more hopefully when we next talk (or when we ask the planted guys, cause I'm a pretty minor act compared to them!)

that isnt the primary reason for doing water changes. It is mainly for removing algae spores, ammonia and organic waste produced by plants due to the fast growth as they excrete proteins etc which contribute to biofilms which help with algae growth. Hence why it algae appears on older leaves due tto a biofilm and other microorganisms building up

 

[OldMan47]

Thanks for stepping in Aaron. I was starting to get in over my head except for the particular methods that I use.

 

[waterdrop]

I had a smile all during my water change this afternoon Aaron, thinking "good, even more reasons why doing this is good" ... I actually couldn't remember whether it was a swordplant question from Dj or from me where you answered as you were referring to (?)

wd

 

[aaronnorth]

it was from dj's thread, i have just copied & pasted the answer, first part is Radar's post, 2nd part is mine

Radar - Liquid carbon doesn't put any carbon dioxide into the water. It adds a carbohydrate that the plants can utilize the carbon from, replicating CO2. Neither liquid carbon or CO2 gas injection will slow down the cycle.

Aaron - agreed. Even if you did add CO2 gas then it doesnt replace Oxygen in the water - it is possible to have a CO2 & O2 enriched tank at the same time.