[Greggles]

Long story short, i changed over to a medium to high tech tank almost 18 months ago to grow healthier and different plants and I basically can't grow anything healthy besides rotala and sometimes ambulia. Its getting to the point that it's not worth the hassle and I'm going decommission the tank for a while.

Blyxa japonica - dying/most died 2 months in
Pearl weed - dying/ dead 2 months in
Hydrocotyle Tripartita 1 month lost all leaves.
Water wisteria no growth 2 weeks in
Lace fern no growth melting 2 weeks in
Monte Carlo all died off in for months.
Hair grass - covers in algae and died off. In for months
Riccia grew for a little then died off.
Even java moss is dying off!

Tank info:

-180 litres - 140 litres of water after deducting substrate rocks etc.
-Running for afew years.
-Pressurised Co2 at a high rate continuous line of bubbles. inline diffuser (yellow drop checker and 1.2 pH drop) co2 comes on 2 before lights on and off 1.5 hours before lights off. Only recently moved to a pH controller (1 week ago) desperate move really.
-chihiros WRGB Slim. Purchased in December as I thought lighting must of been my issue. Has to introduce 2 hour ramp up and down as the light is so strong and was having somee algae issues. 8 hours total with max being the following settings.
58% red 47% green 47% blue.
Low due to alage issues. Slowly increasing.
- 2x filters totalling 1700 litres an hour so just over 10x capacity per hour.
-Surface skimmer.
-temp 26 degrees Celsius.
- Aqua Natural Diamond Black Quartz substrate.
-flourish root tabs.
- Full EI dosing.
-Currently do 60% weekly water changes and feed every 3rd day and following dosing:

All dry dosing dosing 3x a week:

kno3 1710 mg
k2so4 686 mg
kh2po4 261 mg
mgso4.7h20 2.84 grams
Aqua green amgrow trace element mix 373 mg
Wondering if it's my trace mix so thinking o trying flourish comprehensive at EI levels for a while to see if there is a difference.

resulting in:
Nitrate - 7.5ppm
phosphate 1.3 ppm
potassium 7.5 ppm
Mg 2 ppm
Fe 0.2
Mn 0.1
Zn 0.02
B 0.02
Mo 0.01
Cu 0.01


Anyway if any one has any idea what could be going on please let me know.

Photos in next post. Tank photo always looks better than what it's actually showing up close

Regards,

Greg

 

[Greggles]

Plants have further deteriorated since photos.

 

[mistergreen]

That is weird. Make sure your water doesn’t have sodium salt in like run through a softener or is naturally salty. It causes imbalance in the nutrient uptake. Really hard water will have the same effect. You don’t need that much co2 btw. It’s a waste and you’re breathing in greater amounts of co2. 25ppm co2 is fine.

 

[Steven F]

Nitrate - 7.5ppm
phosphate 1.3 ppm
potassium 7.5 ppm
Mg 2 ppm
Fe 0.2
Mn 0.1
Zn 0.02
B 0.02
Mo 0.01
Cu 0.01

It might be helpful to point out that you are missing several nutrients from the list:

Calcium, sulfur, and chlorine should be on the list. Calcium and sulfur are macros. Chlorine is also a nutrient is between phosphate and iron. pLants don't like pure chlorine (it will kill them) but instead prefer potassium chloride, Calcium chloride, magnesium chloride.or sodium chloride. Typically Ca, S, Cl are in tap water so many people wrongly ignore them. Calcium dose should be less than K but more than Mg and P. you want 3 times more calcium than magneisum. What are GH (general Hardness, detects Ca and Mg only), and KH (carbonate) levels of your tap water?

For your macros you are not listing nickel. Nickel is the least used plant nutrient. only about 0.001ppm is needed. I don't know of any fertilizer that has it. All fertilizers assume it is in your tap water. Any KH in your water would react with common fertilizer ingredients such as zinc sulfate and copper sulfate. So a micro fertilizer should use chelated nutrients. I cannot find much about your fertilizer bit it does say it uses chelated nutrients. But no ingredients are listed. Also many fertilizer use Fe EDTA which is only stable at a PH of 6.5 or less. If your PH is higher you will have no iron available to plants. Your fertilizer is Fe HEEDTA. I am not familiar with it and I don't know what it usable pH range is.

So based on this Flourish Comprehensive will probably not work well for you since it uses all sulfate ingredients and uses iron gluconate which is only stable for about a day. I would not recommend Flourish Comprehensive.

Your CO2 drop checker should be lime green. Yellow means your CO2 is too high. The lime green color occurs at 30ppm CO2 in the water.. That is about 3 times higher than you would get with well aerated water The only issue with CO2 is that you have too much and if it goes any higher you could kill your fish.

As to your light it is probably OK. But in my experience you only need white and red LEDs You could turn off the blue and green LEDs if you want.

Overall most EI problems are caused by nutrient deficiencies in the fertilizers, Not CO2 or light. Unfortunately you photos don't provide a clear clue as to what your issue or issues are. So the only thing I can think of right now is check your tank GH and KH, and PH with and without CO2 and verify you have sulfur and calcium in your water. If you want to try a different micro you can try this one. The iron in it is good to a PH of 7.5 and maybe even 8. Tom Barr used CSM+B as his micro and this product is basically a modified CSM+B.

 

[Greggles]

It might be helpful to point out that you are missing several nutrients from the list:

Calcium, sulfur, and chlorine should be on the list. Calcium and sulfur are macros. Chlorine is also a nutrient is between phosphate and iron. pLants don't like pure chlorine (it will kill them) but instead prefer potassium chloride, Calcium chloride, magnesium chloride.or sodium chloride. Typically Ca, S, Cl are in tap water so many people wrongly ignore them. Calcium dose should be less than K but more than Mg and P. you want 3 times more calcium than magneisum. What are GH (general Hardness, detects Ca and Mg only), and KH (carbonate) levels of your tap water?

For your macros you are not listing nickel. Nickel is the least used plant nutrient. only about 0.001ppm is needed. I don't know of any fertilizer that has it. All fertilizers assume it is in your tap water. Any KH in your water would react with common fertilizer ingredients such as zinc sulfate and copper sulfate. So a micro fertilizer should use chelated nutrients. I cannot find much about your fertilizer bit it does say it uses chelated nutrients. But no ingredients are listed. Also many fertilizer use Fe EDTA which is only stable at a PH of 6.5 or less. If your PH is higher you will have no iron available to plants. Your fertilizer is Fe HEEDTA. I am not familiar with it and I don't know what it usable pH range is.

So based on this Flourish Comprehensive will probably not work well for you since it uses all sulfate ingredients and uses iron gluconate which is only stable for about a day. I would not recommend Flourish Comprehensive.

Your CO2 drop checker should be lime green. Yellow means your CO2 is too high. The lime green color occurs at 30ppm CO2 in the water.. That is about 3 times higher than you would get with well aerated water The only issue with CO2 is that you have too much and if it goes any higher you could kill your fish.

As to your light it is probably OK. But in my experience you only need white and red LEDs You could turn off the blue and green LEDs if you want.

Overall most EI problems are caused by nutrient deficiencies in the fertilizers, Not CO2 or light. Unfortunately you photos don't provide a clear clue as to what your issue or issues are. So the only thing I can think of right now is check your tank GH and KH, and PH with and without CO2 and verify you have sulfur and calcium in your water. If you want to try a different micro you can try this one. The iron in it is good to a PH of 7.5 and maybe even 8. Tom Barr used CSM+B as his micro and this product is basically a modified CSM+B.

Thanks Steven.

Found some details of my water supply. not sure if calcium hardness is the figure I'm looking for calcium? Since i do weekly 50 percent water changes wondering if i should add some anyway.

Total Hardness 35 - 49 (mgCaCO3/L)
Total Chlorine 1.18 (mg/L)
pH 7.69 - 7.95 (pH Units)
Total Dissolved Solids 122 (mg/L)
Alkalinity (Total) 34.7 (mgCaCO3/L)
calcium hardness 23 - 38 mg CaCO3 /L
magnesium hardness 7.3 - 21.0 mg CaCO3 /L
magnesium 1.75 - 5.14 mg/L
manganese 0.0011 - 0.0071 mg/L
nitrate (as NO3) 0.15 - 0.62 mg/L
nitrite (as NO2) 0.003 - 0.106 mg/L
phosphorous <0.002 - 0.003 mg/L
potassium 0.64 - 2.18 mg/L

Regarding iron and PH. Is it the ph pre co2 or the ph during co2 injection that i would consider when picking the type of iron?

Took you advice and did a GH KH test.. although im not exactly sure if these figures point anything out.

during/end of co2 period:
kh 4
gh 8
ph 6.6

Tap water
kh:3
gh:4
ph: 7.8

Kind Regards,

Greg

 

[Steven F]

calcium hardness 23 - 38 mg CaCO3 /L
magnesium hardness 7.3 - 21.0 mg CaCO3 /L

These are adequate Ca/Mg levels

Regarding iron and PH. Is it the ph pre co2 or the ph during co2 injection that i would consider when picking the type of iron?

I would use the highest value. Most people turn off CO2 at night. Mainly as a conservation measure. If you do this your nighttime PH will increase. This would cause a significant loss of iron at night. based on your numbers you have two choices.

1. Add a different type of iron.
2. Leave your CO2 on all the time.

Assuming you don't want to run CO2 24hr a day. you could try fe EDDHA. it is good up to a PH of 10. th Fe DTPA (whichI use)probably wouldn't work well for you since it is limted to about 7.5. There is however one issue with EDDHA, it is a red dye. however you reduce your Fe dose to 0.05 the color of the water might not be noticeable.

Thatsaid I don't see any indications of iron deficiency in the photos of your plants.

The only remaining issue possible Issue is sulfur. If you can get a small bottle Seachem potassium you could try that (it's Potassium sulfate. The other option is to try adding a little bit of magnesium sulfate. of Epsom salt MgSO4. You should be able to find that in a store or pharmacy. Be sure you buy one without any dyes or fragrances.