Is There Such A Thing As A 'highlight' Plant?

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SuperColey1

Planted Section
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You know the saying 'me and my big mouth'. Well I did it again on another thread :rolleyes: and was suggesting that I didn't think there was such a thing as a plant that needed high light to grow, just that highlight can make a plant stay low or change colour etc.

Aaronnorth part agreed with me but said that I wouldn't have a chance of growing Rotala Macrandra under low light so rather foolishly I joked that I would get some and try :huh:. Someone else went on to ask if I didn't believe that plants had compensation points which even after their explanation of what they meant went straight over my head and I thought why not and so here goes another silly thread by me of little interest to anyone wanting to buy fragile plants because they like their pink colour. lol

Off I popped to P@H and bought some cuttings (about 10 for £1.99)

the details are 33USG/125Ltr, 10x lph, pressurised CO2 (25-30ppm), PMDD+PO4 dosing and (wait for it) 0.9WPG T5HO<---wish me luck ;). Photoperiod is 8 hours. I am making no alterations at all from how I have been running it for the last 2-3 months.

I trimmed the bottom of the stem and planted 4 in the front where they will be unshaded and have full access to the light and the other 6 are placed at the back where they are slightly shaded and surrounded by heavy feeding crypts.

My aim is not to prove that they will be an intense pink nor that they turn into a massive bush. The aim is to prove that even under this light, they will grow, look healthy and not curl their toes up and die. I am getting so boring these days. lol.

This pic shows the tank (sorry it is daylight so a few reflections)
macrandratop.jpg


This one shows the 4 at the front and if you look closely you can see the rest through the Crypt stalks.
macrandrafront.jpg


Any opinions on what the results might be? A sweepstake on my chances or just plain abuse will be read with the utmost interest.

I will update weekly for a couple of months before I take the ones at the front out. At this point I will decide wether I want to keep the ones at the back or not. This of course is assuming that they don't die!!! :devil:

AC
 
Nice one, Andy.
Firstly, and I might be wrong, but won't they have to adapt to submerged conditions first. Macrandra always looks so frail when first bought from anywhere (except maybe tropica or dennerle). Therefore there is the initial "melt" before it grows to be considered.
After tha I think with the right CO2 and good ferts it may pull through with the 0.9WPG becuase they are t5 bulbs and the intensity is far better than t8 bulbs (which the WPG rule is based on).
Albeit, the plant may be a big leggy. We shall have to wait and see.
 
Yes. I fully expect it to melt. I also expect them to get a little leggy but not straggly. I guess their colour will be a yellow/peachy colour.

Who knows but thats what experiments are all about. lol

AC
 
Aaronnorth part agreed with me but said that I wouldn't have a chance of growing Rotala Macrandra under low light so rather foolishly I joked that I would get some and try

lol, i didnt know you were serious!

Good luck to you though and cant wait for the results...

How is your water in terms of hardness? i Have heard it prefers soft water and higher CO2 levels.

Tanks looking great BTW. :)
 
Awesome, good luck.

So now I gather that really your only issue is with the use of the rubbishy term 'WPG' leading to stupid suggested lighting set ups rather than the whole idea of 'low light' and 'high light' plants. Wording completely mislead me in that case :p.

WPG really is a useless term, because some places will be quoting from old books and still using T12 WPG values while some make up or adapt their own values based on T8 tubes. T5 tubes are relatively new, and I doubt anyone lists WPG values based on those tubes, but the issue here is just with people not understanding how different light output different types of tubes have, or what 'WPG' is actually based on in the first place.

I'd love to borrow (can't afford) a decent light meter so I could compare the actual light output from the 3 types of tubes.

What we need is for people to start using lumens per square cm like George suggested ages ago like here :rolleyes: .

Never grown R.macrandra before myself, but based on pictures I've seen on the internet I'd guess under the T5's it will grow just as you suggest it might - longer distance between the nodules, with bigger leaves and a different colour. Not very appealing, but as you said in your other post, it probably grows like this in some places in nature.

There are still some aquatic plant's just simply wont be able to grow under this intensity of lighting though...would be interesting to test some of the worst WPG offenders (like the R.macrandra here) and see which ones truly do need high light. Take a while though.
 
You know the saying 'me and my big mouth'. Well I did it again on another thread :rolleyes: and was suggesting that I didn't think there was such a thing as a plant that needed high light to grow, just that highlight can make a plant stay low or change colour etc.

Aaronnorth part agreed with me but said that I wouldn't have a chance of growing Rotala Macrandra under low light so rather foolishly I joked that I would get some and try :huh:. Someone else went on to ask if I didn't believe that plants had compensation points which even after their explanation of what they meant went straight over my head and I thought why not and so here goes another silly thread by me of little interest to anyone wanting to buy fragile plants because they like their pink colour. lol

Off I popped to P@H and bought some cuttings (about 10 for £1.99)

the details are 33USG/125Ltr, 10x lph, pressurised CO2 (25-30ppm), PMDD+PO4 dosing and (wait for it) 0.9WPG T5HO<---wish me luck ;). Photoperiod is 8 hours. I am making no alterations at all from how I have been running it for the last 2-3 months.

I trimmed the bottom of the stem and planted 4 in the front where they will be unshaded and have full access to the light and the other 6 are placed at the back where they are slightly shaded and surrounded by heavy feeding crypts.

My aim is not to prove that they will be an intense pink nor that they turn into a massive bush. The aim is to prove that even under this light, they will grow, look healthy and not curl their toes up and die. I am getting so boring these days. lol.

This pic shows the tank (sorry it is daylight so a few reflections)
macrandratop.jpg


This one shows the 4 at the front and if you look closely you can see the rest through the Crypt stalks.
macrandrafront.jpg


Any opinions on what the results might be? A sweepstake on my chances or just plain abuse will be read with the utmost interest.

I will update weekly for a couple of months before I take the ones at the front out. At this point I will decide wether I want to keep the ones at the back or not. This of course is assuming that they don't die!!! :devil:

AC
^^^^^^^^^^


LOL...Tthat plants will melt like plastic hitting my stovetop....lol....but, that's just my opinion, and I am no expert.
 
threefingers - the WPG rule is one of my pet hates. Not for what it represents but because of the fact people still warble on about it continuously when someone asks 'what do I need' or 'why is this plant dying'. The world would be a great place if people would sit back and just try a low light setup first and move upward from there rather than 'I just setup my first planted tank. I have 5WPG of T5HO'.

People seem to be very accepting of the advances in lighting technology having done away with the need for high light but the Americans still seem obssessed with huge swathes of light above their 'daily pruned' setups. lol

However I am just trying to say with this that when someone says your plant has died because it needs X amount of light that they are wrong. It has died because something was not right but not necessarily the light. It may be it needs high nitrates or high CO2.

Some people refused to believe I had only 0.9WPG when they saw the growth rate and healthines of the Blyxia in my previous setup but it looked better than a lot of theirs. lol

I think Tom Barr said a par meter is the only real way to measure properly the light. Either way I think its easier to just buy cheap, then trial/test things, get a handle and then progress rather than spend, spend, spend on your first and then have to downgrade.

Aaron - Are you asking me what my tests read. lol. I have no idea of the water hardness. George's is high and I am in the same area so I guess the tap is hard with high nitrate and phosphate. high in calcium too looking at the build up in the taps and kettle. dropchecker is mid green so I would say 25ppm ish.

p.s. Last time I had Macrandra in this same tank I had 0.91WPG of T8. No knowledge, a snakeoil cheap fert and DIY Co2. Result - It melted and I whipped it out within a month. lol. However I also had Blyxia Japonica in that same tank and with the same result. melted and whipped out. Hopefully the success now with Blyxia will replicate to the Macrandra here.

When I finish these 10 famous stems will be auctioned off for the charity 'my pocket' (per stem. lol)

AC
 
I thought I would just add a picture just incase the Rotala is succesful and anyone thinks that I have been saying 0.9WPG and adding 4WPG lol.

This is the inside of my hood. 30W T5HO 4500K at the top. 18W T8 6500K at the bottom. The 6500K is there more for photographing because it balances the colour out better for a camera. Therefore even if I were to use both I would have 0.9WPG T5HO and 0.6WPG T8
lightsinhod.gif


One change I have made today, not because of the experiment, is that I have moved my diffusor to underneath the powerhead because where it was in the front left didn't have the circulation it used to have due to the prolific 'slow growing' Cryptocoryne Spiralis which was messing about with the flow in that corner. With it being underneath the powerhead the bubbles are sucked in and then the needlewheel (I doctored the impellor a few months ago in another trial) chops the bubbles up further.

AC
 
WPG really is a useless term, because some places will be quoting from old books and still using T12 WPG values while some make up or adapt their own values based on T8 tubes. T5 tubes are relatively new, and I doubt anyone lists WPG values based on those tubes, but the issue here is just with people not understanding how different light output different types of tubes have, or what 'WPG' is actually based on in the first place.

As long as peopple know that the wpg was based on T12, i am sure that common sense would tell you that T5 are more powerful/ output more light. It is quick & easy calc to get a basic understanding of light levels, why bother with the hassle of getting a par meter etc (unless you have one!)
The world would be a great place if people would sit back and just try a low light setup first

How would you tell someone to have a low light set up? if i was giving a reccomendation, i would use wpg (after taking into account the size of tank & T rating) then give them a number of watts to stick too. I dont see how other there is to do it?
 
I would always say buy a tank and use the stock lights. Get a better bulb if necessary but use the stocks and then go for easy plants, get a basic knowledge then decide where you want to go from there.

As long as the stock lights are 1WPG (T8 low, T5HO medium) then is still not overly high.

Too many people go planted and immediately bang 3WPG+ CF/T5HO above and then a few weeks later are asking the usual questions. I blame the americans but then I do for everything. lol (They are obsessed with light though)

AC
 
As long as peopple know that the wpg was based on T12, i am sure that common sense would tell you that T5 are more powerful/ output more light. It is quick & easy calc to get a basic understanding of light levels, why bother with the hassle of getting a par meter etc (unless you have one!)
The whole point is that it's not just based on T12 any more, it's all mixed up.
Most good sites tend to forgo it and just say 'high light' 'med light' or 'low light', but that's too general because most people have no idea what it means. For example you get people who think they have 'high light' because they have replaced two standard T8's with plant growth tubes.

Just wait until more people start using LED's, even more inaccurate :D.

Luckily it's not really to big a deal, most of the time it's just £1.50 bunches of plant that are wasted (and not corals), but it's a shame when people avoid plants because they keep dying due to inadequate lighting, or get excessive algae and deficiencies because they don't realise what their light levels are at.
 
most of the time they dont allow the more common secies that are grown emerged like echindorous sp, and crypt melt etc, they just suspect they have died for something.

I blame the americans but then I do for everything. lol (They are obsessed with light though)

:lol: they are always getting 'bullied' by us!
 
This is by no means an insult, merely an observation, but the Americans do seem to have caught the "high light" bug. The urge to add more and more light is incredible.
 
i think that most people are pretty much clueless when it comes to lighting. I have a T5HO system that is technically about 1.5 WPG over my tank (its a 75 gallong). But is that still low light? Is it high light becuse of the more advanced bulbs? I have no idea. At this point, i just go with trial and error when it comes to plants.
 

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