Where To Start?

[Themuleous]

Hi folks

I’ve only ever kept (well tried to keep!) planted tanks and found this forum recently. I have read the pinned articles by George which have provided me with a lot of info and advice on how to achieve the best from the plants I have. But I’m not really sure how to implement all this new found knowledge.

My tank looks like this at the mo , and I don’t know really were to start to get it working better. Apart from the fish and size sats on my signature, the rest is as follows:

GH - 5
KH - 3
pH6.8
CO2 - 14ish using a Nutrafin yeast type and been running 6weeks (although refilled twice)
Phos - 1ppm
Nitrate - over 40ppm probably more like 80ppm
Lighting - 3x 18w (2 are Zoomed Max plant growth although these are a year old and probably need replacing now.) all with reflectors.

Plants - 2x Amazon swards, 1x Echinodorus 'Ozelot' (Green), 1x lace plant

I also have 9 algae shrimp, are these vital?

Maintenance regime - 25% water change each week, using 100% RO water with added Kent RO Right. I dose each week with Leaf zone and according to the instructions (i.e. 12.5ml) No other fert is used.

The plants might look like they are big, but the Ozelot last year was nearly out of the water!

If anyone has some advice on how to get this going I would be hugely grateful.

A few questions I do have are:

I have reduced the surface water movement to increase CO2, but a scum has developed, is this bad? Should I remove it and if so how?

When you carpet the tank with plants, how to you clean the gravel, I was under the impression that it was vital to reduce the risk of it turning anaerobic (I clean my every 2 weeks)?

I don’t have that much algae by there is some on the silicone as I don’t clean that because I’m afraid I’ll rub it off! Does ‘no algae’ mean literally NO algae?

Lastly, the lace plant in only 8ish weeks old, but is very holey, what could be causing this?

Sorry to be so demanding! But I've seem all the great pics you people have and the excellent advice you seems to give and wondered if you could help me out too.

Cheers

Sam

 

[karlp]

Well I'm fairly new to this too, so it's a bit a case of the blind leading the blind (but hopefully it'll prompt some other replies).. but a few things I have learnt...

Thick carpet plant - Don't gravel clean it. Detritus becomes part of the fertilizer, however loose stuff isn't good, so just run a digit through the carpet carefully to get the loose detritus suspended in the water before the water change.

Scum removal - Can upset gas exchange at the surface. Either up the surface movement or use a surface skimmer (but be warned I've read the Eheim surface skimmer also sucks in small fish).

Lighting - You don't say how big the tank is, but 3 * 18W doesnt' sound like a lot for good plant growth.

Water Changes and Ferts - Most swear by the Estimative Index (EI) method, which uses weekly 50% water changes dosed with macro nutrients and then a schedule during the week alternating macro and micro nutrients. For a heavily planted tank you need more ferts than you are currently using. Also you'll need a nutrient rich substrate e.g, gravel mixed with laterite or eco-complete or the like.

Nitrate - Sounds very high! You might want to try to get that down to a more manageable 20ppm, which is still good for plants but shouldn't harm the fish.

Cheers

Karl.

 

[Themuleous]

Karl,

Sorry knew I'd forget something! Tank is 30" X 18" x 12" so not massive but would like to think I could do something a bit better with it.

Cheers for the advice,

Sam

 

[karlp]

Aha. That puts you at 1.9 Watts of lighting per gallon, which should be about right for fairly slow growth with relatively low ppm nutrafin CO2. If you were going to go for higher CO2 levels, then you'd want higher light levels.