Journal Ben's Plant Pharm 2.0

[BenB]

Seems like the perfect place to put in a very large aquarium!!! Look that direct access to water and drainage!

I mentioned your suggestion.
When you're with someone who is British, a sailor, and used to play rugby, you get used to a lot of short words that rhyme with truck, punt, and split.
I heard a lot of those.

 

[Count Krunk]

Ya fookin wut???

 

[BenB]

Ya fookin wut???

Well, in north Yorkshire, they don't say consonants in the middle of many words. So it was more, Ye right daft Fuh-in punt.

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

NY has joined the chat

 

[SkaleyAquatics]

I mentioned your suggestion.
When you're with someone who is British, a sailor, and used to play rugby, you get used to a lot of short words that rhyme with truck, punt, and split.
I heard a lot of those.

Honestly when I move my desk 6 inches. Which will move the love seat 6 inches closer to the TV in the basement to accommodate another aquarium im going to hear it. So I completely understand.

 

[BenB]

Starting Vacation
Tomorrow I'm headed to the mouse house and Universal for 2 weeks. I'm a bit nervous about my tank since its a fight with the diatoms to start with. I'm not worried about most things, but I have a few harder to get plants, and I don't want to have to find them again. I don't want to pay the money either. So, for the duration, I'm....

• Taking Rocco's advice and lowering my light. I'm going down to 50%
• A friend is coming every few days to dose the tank.
• I've added some fresh aquasoil around the hard to get plants. My tank has Control Soil, but I have one of those small 2L bags of APT Feast, and it's worked perfectly to scoop bits out and put around plants. It's resealable too. I recommend if you need something for that purpose.
• I've added some extra K since the aquasoil is still sucking that down.
• My E quinguangulare was just starting to perk up, so I hate to neglect it.
• I'm hoping the reduced light will help deal with the algae.

The good news is that this storm coming up the coast isn't going to cause us much trouble. Earlier in the week I was starting a small panic. The central part of NC was expecting a foot of rain. With that, it wasn't the aquarium I was worried about so much as my house.

I'll let you know how everything goes. Other than the glass being covered in algae, I hope everything makes it through.

 

[techman81]

Leaving aquariums is like leaving loved pets it seems. Even the pros go away for a week and come back home to algae madness. Spring and fall are my camping seasons, but now that I have a few tanks going, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of being away for week at a time.

 

[BenB]

Post Vacation
If you recall I was going on vacation for 2 weeks and stressing over my tank. Mostly I just wanted some difficult-to-obtain plants to make it through. In the end, while the glass pic doesn't look great, everything did much better than I expected and I'm pretty happy. Once I get the glass cleaned, it will be in good shape.

Recap

• I was would be gone 2 weeks.
• I reduced the light to 50% of normal.
• I placed a few spoonfuls of APT Feast around the bases of my plants of concern
• I topped off Ca, K, and Mg
• A friend was coming about every 4-5 day to dose macros and trace.

How Did It Go?
Overall

• You can see in the pic below, Cyano took over. There is also some GDA and diatom algae on the glass. Blue Slime Remover stuff is on order, but now I'm not sure I'm going to need it. It's OK. It will be good to have on hand.
• The good news is that while the glass was covered, the water and most of the plants are algae free except in the tops.
• Even the diatoms are gone.

The "Difficult-to-Obtain" Plants

• Bad: Synogonthas Vichada: It's not dead, but it's in bad shape. It might be dead soon. Possibly it didn't tolerate the reduced light?
• Good: Xiris Red: It's green and not red, but seems completely fine otherwise.
• Good: Blood Vomit: Seems to be fine. I thought the reduced light might kill this one, but it didn't. A good bit of algae in it.
• Great: Erio quing: It didn't miss me at all. In fact, it was glad I was gone. I came back to plants with multiple growths. I can't believe how good it did. I can't help but feel that while high CO2 is a requirement for this plant, high light might not be.
• Good: Misc. Stems: All are fine and mostly algae free except for the tops. I cut the tops off. Everything grew a bit leggy in the lower light, but that will change. The Rotala Florida looks best of all.

What I've Done

• Light has been increased back to 75% of my usual. I'll slowly ramp up to 100% over the next week
• The front glass and some of the sides were cleaned of algae. There is so much gunk and this made such a mess that I didn't want to do it all at once.
• Plants were topped, some algae manually removed.
• 80% water change, which is a pain with bathroom remodeling. Buckets suck. Will probably do 2 more this week.
• Ferts replaced.

Thanks to Rocco and Winston for some suggestions on what to do.

 

[techman81]

Based on that front glass, that friend's name wasn't Jackson Pollock was it?

Hard to believe that was just after 2 weeks. I'm afraid to ever leave my tanks for a few days now.

 

[BenB]

Based on that front glass, that friend's name wasn't Jackson Pollock was it?

Hard to believe that was just after 2 weeks. I'm afraid to ever leave my tanks for a few days now.

I already had a bit of Cyano going. The surface skimmer clogged up and I think it allowed the cyano to go crazy with reduced gas exchange and water movement. Winston (from S21Aquatics) said that Vichada often has cyano in the crown and it did the day I received it. So it already had it's foot in the door.

Honestly, again, the glass is bad, but the stems are all in good shape. Just needs a bit of work and a few water changes.

Hmmmmm... as I think about it, reduced gas exchange might have caused the CO2 to build up and that's what made my quing take off.

 

[Sb1415]

Post Vacation
If you recall I was going on vacation for 2 weeks and stressing over my tank. Mostly I just wanted some difficult-to-obtain plants to make it through.

Recap

• I was would be gone 2 weeks.
• I reduced the light to 50% of normal.
• I placed a few spoonfuls of APT Feast around the bases of my plants of concern
• I topped off Ca, K, and Mg
• A friend was coming about every 4-5 day to dose macros and trace.

How Did It Go?
Overall

• You can see in the pic below, Cyano took over. There is also some GDA and diatom algae on the glass. Blue Slime Remover stuff is on order, but now I'm not sure I'm going to need it. It's OK. It will be good to have on hand.
• The good news is that while the glass was covered, the water and most of the plants are algae free except in the tops.
• Even the diatoms are gone.

The "Difficult-to-Obtain" Plants

• Bad: Synogonthas Vichada: It's not dead, but it's in bad shape. It might be dead soon. Possibly it didn't tolerate the reduced light?
• Good: Xiris Red: It's green and not red, but seems completely fine otherwise.
• Good: Blood Vomit: Seems to be fine. I thought the reduced light might kill this one, but it didn't. A good bit of algae in it.
• Great: Erio quing: It didn't miss me at all. In fact, it was glad I was gone. I came back to plants with multiple growths. I can't believe how good it did. I can't help but feel that while high CO2 is a requirement for this plant, high light might not be.
• Good: Misc. Stems: All are fine and mostly algae free except for the tops. I cut the tops off. Everything grew a bit leggy in the lower light, but that will change. The Rotala Florida looks best of all.

What I've Done

• Light has been increased back to 75% of my usual. I'll slowly ramp up to 100% over the next week
• The front glass and some of the sides were cleaned of algae. There is so much gunk and this made such a mess that I didn't want to do it all at once.
• Plants were topped, some algae manually removed.
• 80% water change, which is a pain with bathroom remodeling. Buckets suck. Will probably do 2 more this week.
• Ferts replaced.

Thanks to Rocco and Winston for some suggestions on what to do.

View attachment 10982

View attachment 10983

How much ppm of No3 did your friend dose in total ? Did you check a No3 level before the water change ?

 

[BenB]

How much ppm of No3 did your friend dose in total ? Did you check a No3 level before the water change ?

He came by 3 times and dosed 13ppm each time along with 8ppm PO4, 15ppm K and 2ppm Mg.
I dosed a bit above that before I left.
I didn't test the water. I'm too exhausted from the travel, and I felt like everything is screwed up and out of whack anyway. I wish I had thought about it though. I could always have taken a cup out and tested it in the next couple days.

 

[Sb1415]

He came by 3 times and dosed 13ppm each time along with 8ppm PO4, 15ppm K and 2ppm Mg.
I dosed a bit above that before I left.
I didn't test the water. I'm too exhausted from the travel, and I felt like everything is screwed up and out of whack anyway. I wish I had thought about it though. I could always have taken a cup out and tested it in the next couple days.

Got it. Curious to see if maybe a 1:1 % lowering of the fertilizer to the light would have helped. This is actually a good example in my mind, maybe one has to plan for vacation 2-3 weeks before the trip to see how the tank would behave to the changes. We can always do a big or frequent water changes in the trial period.

 

[BenB]

Well, I need help. I’m a bit at the end of my rope.
I really don’t know what else to do. I’ve changed one thing or the other one at a time slowly over a period of weeks and the algae just gets worse.

The diatoms are taking back over as a brown sludge coating everything, plants and substrate. There is also cyano which gets worse without removal and gda on the glass. Everything is back the way it was before I went on vacation. At least I don’t have green spot, clado, or thread algae.

Light: Chihiros PAR 120 under light tested with a PAR meter.

CO2: I tested today. It was 80ppm + tested with a LaMotte test kit when the lights came on. I stopped at 80 because there was no reason to waste more reagent. I also decreased the rate a bit because there is no reason to waste CO2. I have no livestock.

Water Change: I usually do 50% weekly, but I did 3 large ones last week after my vacation.

NPK: I mix my own. 15ml gives 6.5ppm NO3, 4ppm PO4, 7.4ppm K, and 1ppm Mg. I do a double dose after WC and a single dose every 48hrs thereafter. My aquasoil is still absorbing PO4 as best I can tell, but I think that is slowing down.

Ca/Mg/K: After > 50% water change I dose 1tsp = 20ppm Ca, 1tsp = 10ppm Mg, and 0.5tsp = 29ppm K. I dose half that with a 50% water change. These are all on the upper end of the EI range.

Micros: I dose Burr Fertz. 2ml twice weekly. I’d rather do 1ml 3x weekly, but my pump does 2ml.

KH/GH: I haven’t tested in a while, but the KH is usually 0-2 and GH 10-12

Yesterday, 10/22/25 would have been my second single NPK dose since WC. Before I dosed, my NO3 was 13ppm and my PO4 was difficult to read but 1.5ppm +. So it would have been 13-8-15 on Sat, 6.5-4-7.4 on Monday, and 6.5-4-7.4 on Wednesday. Testing done just before dosing Wednesday.

I gave in and dosed some Blue-Green Slime earlier today.

I didn’t expect my NO3 to be so high.

Edit: A few hours later here I'm looking at the new growth and not so much at the algae. The new growth at the tops of the R macrandra is massive. Maybe I just need to relax a little. I've been pretty patient trying to tweak slowly and give it time. We'll see. I'm not throwing in the towel yet. If you look at the journal Plant Pharm 1.0, you see I've had so much worse. But it gets old after awhile no matter how patient you try to be.

 

[BenB]

So I Figured It Out

When no one replied to my request above for help, I had 3 thoughts.
1. No one likes me
2. The above looks good and no one has a clue either
3. It’s such a disaster, no one wants to deal with it.

I was reasonably confident it wasn’t #1, and I knew my parameters looked good, but I was out of things to try. My tank was getting worse and worse, and nothing was working.

The answer was, none of the above.... It was my temperature.

When I originally set this up last year, I had an Oase thermo filter. It was set to 79F which seemed too hot. I have no livestock, and after posting about it, everyone agreed I could turn it off. Later, I switched to a smaller filter without a heater.

As the weather cooled, I grew tired of putting my hand into cold water. I have ice cold hands already. I ordered a heater, ironically only because my hands were getting cold. In the days waiting for it to arrive, it occurred to me, maybe my water was too cold for the plants. Could the cold be slowing their metabolisms to below optimal thus preventing them from fighting the algae? I got really excited. I never check my temp, and my thermometer said 17C (62F). My house isn’t that cold, but the tank is on an outside wall near a window. Through a search I found some anecdotal info about planted tank temps and got optimistic that this could be it.

Interestingly, in addition to the algae, my tank had almost stopped pearling despite plenty of fertilizer and CO2. Within 24-48 hours of getting the heater, the water was back to looking like champagne.

Ironically, I’ve wondered for weeks if my problem was that I didn’t have fish. In tanks with fish, the waste nutrients might be the little something I wasn’t getting. In a way, it’s true. If I had had fish, I would have had a heater.

I hope to post a picture soon and update with what I'm doing. Things are turning around fast, but I', having a had time doing maintenance. We got a major part of the remodeling finished, but there is a lot to clean up.

This is a good lesson for us all. It's not always the NO3, light, or CO2.

 

[Kwyet]

I’m glad you figured it out (I had no clue)!

 

[techman81]

When no one replied to my request above for help, I had 3 thoughts.
1. No one likes me
2. The above looks good and no one has a clue either
3. It’s such a disaster, no one wants to deal with it.

I still don't know you well Ben, but I like you.
I read your previous post but I'm not yet knowledgeable enough about water parameters and fert dosing to offer much help. I'm still just winging it on my tanks and have been very fortunate that things are going ok.

 

[Koan]

24-48 hours of getting the heater, the water was back to looking like champagne.

Haha nice!!

Talk about a question you never think to ask..

 

[Phish Tank]

That’s really awesome that you figured it out. Now that you mention it, I remembered reading Diana Walstad’s article on low tech Shrimp Bowls. She mentioned that she had to add a heater in winter or the plants wouldn’t grow.

 

[BenB]

Thanks everyone. Many of us here try to help new people. I'm not that good at it, but I'm going to repeat my last line.

It's not always the NO3, light, or CO2.