[Wet Thumb Forum]-really bad plant problem

[darren_in_the_marsh]

problem solved! My tank is back from the dead! (well, almost)

I will leave the punchline for the end, but also must state I am not out of the clear yet.

1. The clue that led me to the path of discovery, was the brief period of growth following a water change.

2. Test/Clue was to run all my nuts to zero and work them back up to the recommened values we all read about. Result: nothing! Growth was still almost non existent, even with all the macro and micro nuts in good order.

2. Third clue: All my snails had disappeared, and two introductions of amano shrimp were dead within days!

My first guess was a issue of toxcicity, perhaps copper, but later I would receive the latest issue water quality for SF,CA and copper is almost nonexistant in the water supply, however can be detectable come from corrosion of household plumbing.

So what do snails, shrimp and water changes have in common?

The answer:
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CALCIUM!!!!

Its like the wonder nutrient for my tank! The water here in SF is incredibly soft (in fact, there our water has nothing in it; no K, NO, Ca, PO, Mg, Fe, KH) and with the addition of KENT marine liquid calcium, growth of plants has been phenomenol. I suspect, after a water change, of which I do 20% a week, the small pulse of growth that was visible was the small addition of Ca, but not enough to sustain growth.

So all is well, and the plants are growing well once again. Also, digging through an old box of tank parts, I found an old bottle of Equilibrium which local aquarists use to reconstitute Bay area water. Anybody else use this product?

I haven't pruned my tank in months, how exciting!

Darren

[hubbahubbahehe]

Darren, you are confusing me, brother.

you said in your first post that you were already dosing liquid calcium.... ???

so it's hard to discover that it was a calcium problem when you said you were already adding it...

anyways, what else is wrong? anything else we can help you with?

[djlen]

Just following this thread(with interest) and would like Roger(who I consider a wealth of info) to critique Darren's very thorough clarification to his original post.
This is how all of us neophytes learn.
Or was it just an issue of Ca?

Len

[darren_in_the_marsh]

Thank you for noticing this contradiction with my posts which I obviously need to respond to. What I failed to state was that I was dosing very little calcium (several drops a week) and upon a dramatic increase to several ml/day, did I see an obvious return to growth.

I hope this clears up the confustion!

I noticed you are posting from Fremont, do you as well have very soft water, and if so, do you supplement calcium or magnesium?

Darren


<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Algae Grower:
Darren, you are confusing me, brother.

you said in your first post that you were already dosing liquid calcium.... ???

so it's hard to discover that it was a calcium problem when you said you were already adding it...

anyways, what else is wrong? anything else we can help you with? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[bharada]

Another Fremont resident here. I don't know specifically where Algae Grower lives in Fremont, but in my area the water from the tap has a GH of 13-14 and KH of 8. I do dose Mg as it seems that there's a lot more Ca than Mg in the local water supply.

[hubbahubbahehe]

hi guys. My fremont tap ph comes out 8.0-8.2 and kh and gh come out to 10-12 for both. yea, we dont' get the soft water but for some reason sf folks get that so they have to add baking soda and calcium and magnesium. Bill, do you use fremont water straight from tap and use co2 to lower the ph?

[hubbahubbahehe]

Oh , Darren, so one more thing..everything's great now right?

If so, that would be great to hear!!!! very exciting! and we'd love to see pics of your revived tank.

[bharada]

Yeah, I use straight tap water in my tank. Out the tap it's pH is 7.6. I lower it to ~6.8-9 with CO2.

[darren_in_the_marsh]

Here is an Ophoto link, not sure if it will work:


SF tap water has a mean general hardness (as CaCO3) of 51ppm. Dont know how to convert that to GH scale, but out of the tap its around 2 as is the KH (sometimes 1). I therefore dose heavily with baking soda, and still trying to get Ca and Mg right (which should be 2:1 ratio?)

http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=6tnn91u...&x=0&y=-hlhwwk



<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Algae Grower:
Oh , Darren, so one more thing..everything's great now right?

If so, that would be great to hear!!!! very exciting! and we'd love to see pics of your revived tank. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[magicmagni]

Darren,

I have been following this with great interrest since I also have very soft water here in San Bruno. Here as far as I know we use 80% water from Hetch Hetchy reservoir (same as SF) and 20% city well water. My KH and GH are only 2'. My ph out of the tap is close to 8, but sitting for a while settles to around 7.4 I have noticed Ca deficiacy in my ANubians and swords mostly and have been using Kent GH+ to boost my GH to 8' and use seachem alkaline buffer to bring my KH to 5' and seems to be working ok. Just picked up some SC equalibium which I will try this weekend instead of the Kent stuff so I guess we will both be trying this stuff out. FYI the equalibium has potasium in it, but I'm not sure how much.