[wrkucera]

here are the quick details;

120 pounds of flourite
co2 injection about 20+ ppm w/milwaukee regulator and ph controller
rena xp2 canister filter
55 gallon standard tank
good water circulation with minimal water surface agitation.
coralife freshwater lighting, 4x 65 watt at 5700 K. 12 hours of light totao with 3 hour mid-day rest period.

15 male guppies
1 yo-yo loach
6 corys's
1- amano shrimp
I feed about 6 millicrams.

ligjt is suspended w/ 4 inchies above surface.

I have been tol it was a ablot of light for this size tank. I f so can anyone tell me about how much light I am avtually using. and how much dry fett I need? I feed rebularly for the fish.

I have water wristera, alternathera reineckii, cryptovorine wendtiii greeed ludwigia repen, a couble echindorus speciies. Anubia bateris and petite. baocopa caroliniana, and monorrieri.


I use Hikari samll food about teastoon a day.

Is my light too much?

 

[wrkucera]

Sorry about all the typos' on that post, I feel really bad about it, I had been drinking too much vodka and OJ that night and sometimes I just type in the dark....

It happens...

As a matter of fact I was surfing through the posts and completely forgot I posted this in the first place.

As to the replies and everything, Thanks on the insight and opinions are greatly appreciated and to answer many of you, Yes, I have quite a bit of algae. More than what I wanted really. (However for me it is awesome to turn on the lights before dawn and see a huge population of the malaysian trumpet snails. Some of them are an inch in length as well!!! Yes I love the Anubias plant species, even as slow as they are. yes they have algae all over them. I remembered that when I bought the plants, that they wouldn't be very light demanding, nor co2 demanding as well. But I did what I did anyway because I'm impatient at times. My poor theory was to dose the heck out of it, crank out the co2 and light it like crazy to accelerate growth.

Today while I was painting over at a nursing home, An electrician and I were talking about lighting, and how plants use light. His info was stated as, "during lighting periods, the plants are photosynthesizing but they are mainly creating sugars and such, blah, blah, blah. During the lights out period is when they actually "grow". Is this correct?

Mind you when we were talking about plant growth, we were talking about methods on growing a certain kind of plant that is not in water, not related to fish aquariums, and a whole lot about how to cultivate cannabis. He explained to me (because he is an electrician) that he would actually tap the power line coming into his house before it hit the "meter". Thus avoiding suspicious energy use for the marijuanna he was growing. Then again, energy theft would be the least of his concerns if the feds actually found out his "reasons" for doing such. :spy:

 

[wrkucera]

I'm not sure I read your post accurately, but if I did: a teaspoon a day of any kind of fish food is too much in a 55 gallon tank. A Rena Filstar XP2 is too small for that size tank, and XP3 would be the smallest you should use. You need enough surface ripple to easily see just to be sure you get good oxygen exchange for the fish. You have twice as much light as is desirable for that size tank, unless you suspend that light about a foot above the water, where you waste most of the light in spillover. And, to measure how much CO2 is in the water, read http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...aquarium-projects/32100-diy-drop-checker.html. The CO2 controller will not be adequate.

Hoppy thanks,

If you were wondering I do listen and read carefully at times. A part of me makes it challenging to say, screw it anyways, I'm gonna use all 260 watts and find a way to make it work. It's just the stubbornness in me. From what I remember, Somebody else told me the same thing concering the too much light issue. So let's say I raise it a foot above the water and now I have "waste" or spill over (I have the light suspended anyways from a chain system that allows me to adjust the height). I do have 5 other smaller aquariums configured in a way that the light is no more than 5 feet from the 260 watts. From what you're saying hoppy, is it possible that this light can help support the other smaller tanks, for which I do absolutely no dosing or co2? they all contain the same plants as well. This would be great news if such because the other tanks all are using their own light source. I have 60 watts out of 2x T-8 bulbs AND a combined 80 watts from the T-10 fixture, just for the 2x20 gallon aquariums that sit side by side. the 2x10 gallon aquariums have their own 60 watts of T-8 Lighting. All these lights are standard 4 foot length fixtures utilizing the 5600 kelvin lighting from aquarium and lighting stores. Its sounds to me that I'm just wasting electricity...