Hi everyone,
excuse my english as i'm from France, i will try to make my best !
to make a long story short, my plant have stopped growing in my new tank.
i'm in the hobby since 2004 with various tanks and fishs and had a planted tank (45 liters) 7 years ago that was running well and without any issue! (i dosed EI in this one, pool inert sand)
in october, i set a new planted tank in my new house, and decided to use ADA amazonia aquasoil.
i read a lot on different website and forum, on how to get the best out of it.
so the tank is 30 gal (but it contain 90 liters in reality), i used 2 bags of 9 liters of aquasoil.
hard scape is only a few dragon stone. fishs are 5 otocynclus, 10 cardinals tetra and 8 amano shrimp
i planted what i think is easy plant : rotalla, ludwigia, pogostmon helferi and erectus, micrant umbrosum, eleocharis mini and hemiantyhus cuba. all this plant i had grown in the past with good success. substrate is 90% planted.
my filter is a oase filtosmart thermo 200 (only blue sponge) with the temp set at 24°c.
Co2 is injected in a diy reactor of my own, i start injection at 9 a.m and stop at 9 p.m (light on at 2 p.m and close at 10 p.m) my ph is between 5.75 and 5.85 when light on (degassed water is at 7.1 ph) i have 2 drop cheker one with a 4dkh that is lime green when light is on and one with a 8 dkh that is exactlly the same color of a 6.8 ph reference solution. so co2 is good.
my light are diy leds strips, 2 of 6000K strips and one horticole strip (blue and red) 24w total , i don't have a PAR meter but it was around 2000 lux at the substrate when i looked with the photone app before i put water in the aquarium.
so i cycled the tank in the dark for 3 week's, used RO remineralized with Cacl2 and mgso4 to have 30ppm Ca and 9 ppm Mg.
by week 3 , i changed 90% of the water and planted it, Nh4 was 0 and no2 the same.
i make 50% water change every week since.
the plants grew well at the start, the h.cuba began to make a carpet, i cut the rotala and ludwigia a few times, the only plant that stunted was the pogostemon erectus (decanenesis), it stay a the same size maybe growing 1 or 2 cm.
i soon started dosing po4 as my hanna checker read 0.05 ppm po4
i started at 0.5 ppm per day but when tested level rapidly fall to near 0 (Aquasoil that bind it ???)
no3 was good at around 10 ppm.
algae started to appear; diatoms first , but the oto clean it rapidly, and now the plants struggle (all of them, except mabe the rotala that continue growing).
at the start of january, i started dosing no3 like EI: 3 ppm per day, po4 : 1 ppm per day , k around 3.5 ppm per day and for micro i use the burr740 recipe : for 200ml container i use: 0.2GR Ascorbic acid, 4gr fe DTPA, 0.3gr Mnso4 h2o, 0.5gr h3bo3, 0.25gr Znso4 h2o, 0.032gr Cuso4 5h2o, and 0.011gr na2mOo4 2h2o.
i use 2 ml of this mix per day with 5 drop of seachem flourish iron (for the gluconate Fe).
with all that my plant have litterally stopped growing, and are covered with all sort of algae (blue green, BBA , and green hair algae).
i have a hanna phosphate cheker and nitrate due to my previous reef tank and read the article of Rocco were he said we can use the nitrate cheker for freshwater with the conversion tool , my results are 15 ppm no3 but phosphate are never stabilized, i can dose 2.5ppm of it on monday morning, i make a test with the cheker in the monday evening and read 2.3 ppm so close to what i dosed and on the tuesday evening my test read 0.2ppm, just 36 hours after my dose ! i double cheked with my salifert po4 test kit and the results are correct!
what do you think cause my plant stunting ? it seem that my aquasoil suck up my po4 and the level always fall short rapidly.
i don't had any salt for the kh, i use 100% RO with Cacl2 to have 30 ppm Ca and Mgso4 7h2o to have 9 ppm Mg, i use kno3, kh2po4 and k2so4 for the macro.
maybe it's Cacl2 that had too much chloride ?? it really drive me crazy as to why my plant have stopped .
if you have an idea ? as i want to give up and use my good old inert pool sand .
thank's
excuse my english as i'm from France, i will try to make my best !
to make a long story short, my plant have stopped growing in my new tank.
i'm in the hobby since 2004 with various tanks and fishs and had a planted tank (45 liters) 7 years ago that was running well and without any issue! (i dosed EI in this one, pool inert sand)
in october, i set a new planted tank in my new house, and decided to use ADA amazonia aquasoil.
i read a lot on different website and forum, on how to get the best out of it.
so the tank is 30 gal (but it contain 90 liters in reality), i used 2 bags of 9 liters of aquasoil.
hard scape is only a few dragon stone. fishs are 5 otocynclus, 10 cardinals tetra and 8 amano shrimp
i planted what i think is easy plant : rotalla, ludwigia, pogostmon helferi and erectus, micrant umbrosum, eleocharis mini and hemiantyhus cuba. all this plant i had grown in the past with good success. substrate is 90% planted.
my filter is a oase filtosmart thermo 200 (only blue sponge) with the temp set at 24°c.
Co2 is injected in a diy reactor of my own, i start injection at 9 a.m and stop at 9 p.m (light on at 2 p.m and close at 10 p.m) my ph is between 5.75 and 5.85 when light on (degassed water is at 7.1 ph) i have 2 drop cheker one with a 4dkh that is lime green when light is on and one with a 8 dkh that is exactlly the same color of a 6.8 ph reference solution. so co2 is good.
my light are diy leds strips, 2 of 6000K strips and one horticole strip (blue and red) 24w total , i don't have a PAR meter but it was around 2000 lux at the substrate when i looked with the photone app before i put water in the aquarium.
so i cycled the tank in the dark for 3 week's, used RO remineralized with Cacl2 and mgso4 to have 30ppm Ca and 9 ppm Mg.
by week 3 , i changed 90% of the water and planted it, Nh4 was 0 and no2 the same.
i make 50% water change every week since.
the plants grew well at the start, the h.cuba began to make a carpet, i cut the rotala and ludwigia a few times, the only plant that stunted was the pogostemon erectus (decanenesis), it stay a the same size maybe growing 1 or 2 cm.
i soon started dosing po4 as my hanna checker read 0.05 ppm po4
i started at 0.5 ppm per day but when tested level rapidly fall to near 0 (Aquasoil that bind it ???)
no3 was good at around 10 ppm.
algae started to appear; diatoms first , but the oto clean it rapidly, and now the plants struggle (all of them, except mabe the rotala that continue growing).
at the start of january, i started dosing no3 like EI: 3 ppm per day, po4 : 1 ppm per day , k around 3.5 ppm per day and for micro i use the burr740 recipe : for 200ml container i use: 0.2GR Ascorbic acid, 4gr fe DTPA, 0.3gr Mnso4 h2o, 0.5gr h3bo3, 0.25gr Znso4 h2o, 0.032gr Cuso4 5h2o, and 0.011gr na2mOo4 2h2o.
i use 2 ml of this mix per day with 5 drop of seachem flourish iron (for the gluconate Fe).
with all that my plant have litterally stopped growing, and are covered with all sort of algae (blue green, BBA , and green hair algae).
i have a hanna phosphate cheker and nitrate due to my previous reef tank and read the article of Rocco were he said we can use the nitrate cheker for freshwater with the conversion tool , my results are 15 ppm no3 but phosphate are never stabilized, i can dose 2.5ppm of it on monday morning, i make a test with the cheker in the monday evening and read 2.3 ppm so close to what i dosed and on the tuesday evening my test read 0.2ppm, just 36 hours after my dose ! i double cheked with my salifert po4 test kit and the results are correct!
what do you think cause my plant stunting ? it seem that my aquasoil suck up my po4 and the level always fall short rapidly.
i don't had any salt for the kh, i use 100% RO with Cacl2 to have 30 ppm Ca and Mgso4 7h2o to have 9 ppm Mg, i use kno3, kh2po4 and k2so4 for the macro.
maybe it's Cacl2 that had too much chloride ?? it really drive me crazy as to why my plant have stopped .
if you have an idea ? as i want to give up and use my good old inert pool sand .
thank's
