Journal Joel Armstrong - My journey

Unexpected said:
With the inert substrate you may have to give them a bit more juice. Are they getting enough light as well? I’ll be honest, my 2 month old tank plants look a bit less happy than my mature 120. I chalk it up to tank maturity. Double check the CO2 and maybe consider more juice and light. What are your numbers? I just recently said screw and do 30/10/40 and just try focusing on CO2 and light.
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I appreciate your response.

I'm doing 75% water changes, twice per week.

I dose the changed water to 30-10-40.

So, 22.5 - 7.5 - 30 based on entire tank volume.

I do know my light is 130 PAR at sub using 80% power.
I was using 80% power when I had soil.

Currently using 70% power.

I'm fairly confident I'm using enough CO2, I measure a 1.4 drop in pH.

I may bump up the light, what do you think?

Cheers
 
Joel Armstrong said:
Its been a bit over month using calcium sulphate instead of the damn "clay breaker".. quite embarrassing that was to be honest.
Still a few filamentous diatoms hanging about, which I'm really sick of actually, but it's not as bad as it was.
My ludwigia super red continuously loses its bottom leaves and struggle to grow. I never had an issue with this plant using ADA soil.
I'm not sure if I should have attempted the inert substrate, being somewhat newer to the hobby, or perhaps I'm just impatient.
It's been about 6 months since I swapped to inert substrate. I've seen 'some' improvement in plant growth, but still having issues, like the diatoms and several species just not doing too well.
Do I just need to wait for the substrate to mature further?
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The first part of this post suggests a fellow hobbyist who is struggling a bit and trying to find out what's wrong.

And then comes this ....

1721289506705.png

Uhm .... are we talking about the same tank here? Some great plants here, and who doesn't have a plant or two that are struggling for no obvious reason?

Tank looks great @Joel Armstrong (y)
 
Yugang said:
The first part of this post suggests a fellow hobbyist who is struggling a bit and trying to find out what's wrong.

And then comes this ....

View attachment 5370

Uhm .... are we talking about the same tank here? Some great plants here, and who doesn't have a plant or two that are struggling for no obvious reason?

Tank looks great @Joel Armstrong (y)
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Thank you for your kind words. I appreciate it 🙏
 
I’ve never seemed to notice any correlation with super red mini growth(or any Ludwigia for that matter) and substrate.

You know what completely solved my woes with it. @Burr740 micros.

Also, I did see some improvement after incrementally dosing small amounts of magnesium, so maybe that’s worth something.

Agreed with @Yugang. After looking at the tank, I really just have to take your word on it, because I see no issues here.
 
Joel Armstrong said:
I'm doing 75% water changes, twice per week.

I dose the changed water to 30-10-40.

So, 22.5 - 7.5 - 30 based on entire tank volume.
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First of all the tank looks great man. If you didnt point out and describe the issues youre having nobody would even know you had any.

And yes its common to have a species or two that just seems to suck no matter what we do. But the Lud red dropping lower leaves shouldnt be one of them. Stems dropping bottom leaves is almost always low macros

Multiple big water changes are good if youre having a bba outbreak, or like before when diatoms were taking over. Any major problems its a good thing. But its not a good thing under normal circumstances. There is literally no reason to be doing 2x 75%

Those macro numbers look high on paper but theyre really not with 75% wc and inert substrate. For reference EI NO3 is 22.5/week with 50% wc, which will soon be 40+ in the water column with accumulation, not counting plant uptake. So basically youre dosing half EI for NO3, because 22.5 ppm is the most your water ever has, roughly speaking

Another thing that tells me NO3 is pretty low is the Lud rubin standing straight up. Now thats a very good thing, I wish mine did that!! But it only grows that way when no3 is limited. Higher no3 grows it fatter, and heavier, which makes it lean over

The way yours grow is wonderful, as long as its plenty for everything else. And based on what you say its not, at least not quite

What I would do if it was my tank is go to 50-60% water changes once a week, and dose those same macro numbers (22.5/7.5/30) for whole tank vol. Split the totals into 4 doses. Give it 2 doses after the water change and then 2 more through the week in typical 3x week fashion. Micros can be 3x week at the suggested dose

I believe you will see immediate improvement, and the rubin might even stay vertical. If it doesnt, once things have leveled out and everything is well fed, then you can inch no3 down a little bit and see what happens. There's a sweet spot somewhere to be found but right now I think youre a little under it
 
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Burr740 said:
What I would do if it was my tank is go to 50-60% water changes once a week, and dose those same macro numbers (22.5/7.5/30) for whole tank vol. Split the totals into 4 doses. Give it 2 doses after the water change and then 2 more through the week in typical 3x week fashion. Micros can be 3x week at the suggested dose

I believe you will see immediate improvement, and the rubin might even stay vertical. If it doesnt, once things have leveled out and everything is well fed, then you can inch no3 down a little bit and see what happens. There's a sweet spot somewhere to be found but right now I think youre a little under it
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@Burr740 you are quickly becoming my go-to sage for planted aquarium guidance. This is probably one of the best pieces of advice I have seen in a long time. Thank you, my friend. I'm going to use it.

@Joel Armstrong your tank is looking fantastic. My humble and respectful advice to you is to step back, look at what you have created and really feel it. Enjoy it. The plants are rewarding you and thanking you for how healthy they are.

Now it's just tweaking things to continue to push in the right direction. Sometimes, a plant will just not do well in our set up. It happens to all of us.

Keep posting the eye candy!
 
Burr740 said:
First of all the tank looks great man. If you didnt point out and describe the issues youre having nobody would even know you had any.

And yes its common to have a species or two that just seems to suck no matter what we do. But the Lud red dropping lower leaves shouldnt be one of them. Stems dropping bottom leaves is almost always low macros

Multiple big water changes are good if youre having a bba outbreak, or like before when diatoms were taking over. Any major problems its a good thing. But its not a good thing under normal circumstances. There is literally no reason to be doing 2x 75%

Those macro numbers look high on paper but theyre really not with 75% wc and inert substrate. For reference EI NO3 is 22.5/week with 50% wc, which will soon be 40+ in the water column with accumulation, not counting plant uptake. So basically youre dosing half EI for NO3, because 22.5 ppm is the most your water ever has

Another thing that tells me NO3 is pretty low is the Lud rubin standing straight up. Now thats a very good thing, I wish mine did that!! But it only grows that way when no3 is limited. Higher no3 grows it fatter, and heavier, which makes it lean over

The way yours grow is wonderful, as long as its plenty for everything else. And based on what you say its not, at least not quite

What I would do if it was my tank is go to 50-60% water changes once a week, and dose those same macro numbers (22.5/7.5/30) for whole tank vol. Split the totals into 4 doses. Give it 2 doses after the water change and then 2 more through the week in typical 3x week fashion. Micros can be 3x week at the suggested dose

I believe you will see immediate improvement, and the rubin might even stay vertical. If it doesnt, once things have leveled out and everything is well fed, then you can inch no3 down a little bit and see what happens. There's a sweet spot somewhere to be found but right now I think youre a little under it
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Thank you so much Joe, I really appreciate your valuable response.

I'll take on your advice and do as you've suggested.

I'll update again in a couple weeks.

Thanks again!
 
Art said:
@Burr740 you are quickly becoming my go-to sage for planted aquarium guidance. This is probably one of the best pieces of advice I have seen in a long time. Thank you, my friend. I'm going to use it.

@Joel Armstrong your tank is looking fantastic. My humble and respectful advice to you is to step back, look at what you have created and really feel it. Enjoy it. The plants are rewarding you and thanking you for how healthy they are.

Now it's just tweaking things to continue to push in the right direction. Sometimes, a plant will just not do well in our set up. It happens to all of us.

Keep posting the eye candy!
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Thanks Art! I appreciate your encouraging response.

And yes, how lucky are we at ScapeCrunch to receive valuable guidance like this, just gold!
 
Tank isn't going well at the moment. I uprooted maybe 75% of the tank at once.. too much at one time I guess.

I'm at 7 month's with the inert substrate. I read a few people saying that with inert sub, it takes about 8-9 months until the tank really improves. I hope so, cos I'm a bit over crappy plant growth. Some plants do well all the time, some of I've had trouble with are now growing, and a few I haven't had trouble with are rubbish..

I'm still getting some filamentous diatoms, generally worse after any uprooting.

Is the idea not to disturb the sub at all while it's maturing?

Feels like 2 steps forward then 4 steps back for me lately.

How do you guys with inert substrate make it look so easy?
Any tips??

Perhaps I need more patience 😔
 
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Joel Armstrong said:
Tank isn't going well at the moment. I uprooted maybe 75% of the tank at once.. too much at one time I guess.

I'm at 7 month's with the inert substrate. I read a few people saying that with inert sub, it takes about 8-9 months until the tank really improves. I hope so, cos I'm a bit over crappy plant growth. Some plants do well all the time, some of I've had trouble with are now growing, and a few I haven't had trouble with are rubbish..

I'm still getting some filamentous diatoms, generally worse after any uprooting.

Is the idea not to disturb the sub at all while it's maturing?

Feels like 2 steps forward then 4 steps back for me lately.

How do you guys with inert substrate make it look so easy?
Any tips??

Perhaps I need more patience 😔
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Sorry to hear that your tank does not meet your expectations @Joel Armstrong , but again as last time, we have not seen reason for concern from any of the FTS that you have posted so far. It may help if you post a couple of pics, plus an as complete as possible summary of your dosing, maintenance, filtration, CO2 etcetera. Some really experienced friends here on the forum who will give suggestions.

Don't let @GreggZ @Burr740 @Unexpected and other tanks discourage you, most of them needed a couple of decades to get where they are.
 
During the time since my last full tank shot, the plants, well most of them, had grown a lot, to the point of some overcrowding. So I uprooted and replanted quite a lot of the tank. I still had some poor growth, so I though it may be best to lower the light intensity a bit to 70%.

I had been running the lights at 80%, and from when I had my lights tested, that was around 128 PAR, 90% was 165 PAR and 100% was 209 PAR. I don't know the PAR reading at 70%.

As from previous conversations, I get an air pocket in my reactor, so I fiddled with CO2 a bit, 'trying' to optimise. I am upgrading to a reactor with a 20 inch housing, so hopefully that will help with optimising CO2. Peak pH drop is currently 5.85. I'm not so confident on testing my degassed pH. I get slightly different readings when I test the same sample. 7.3 - 7.5.

Dosing, I've recently followed Joe's advice, of doing 50% water changes, adding 2 doses at water change and 2 more single doses throughout the week. But when I uprooted, I did 2 x 90% water changes and dosed the whole tank, so I haven't been consistent.

Writing this, I think I just answered my recent issues. Too many changes, all over a short time frame really.

Filtration is 3 x aquael 1500 ultramax filters. 3 spray bars at the rear, CO2 comes out of the middle spray bar. I use a skimmer, and air stone comes on each hour for 10 minutes, then on for an hour when lights turn off.

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Wow, so much nice pearling and really not a bad tank at all. There seems a lot good going on, some really nice growing and pearling plants.

I know that several other members are in a better position to recommend improvements, but if it were my tank I would consider a bit more substrate maintenance (I blow a water jet with a turkey blaster, and siphon off dirt), and more pruning of old plant material to reduce waste organics while replanting the healthy top of stems.
 
Yugang said:
Wow, so much nice pearling and really not a bad tank at all. There seems a lot good going on, some really nice growing and pearling plants.

I know that several other members are in a better position to recommend improvements, but if it were my tank I would consider a bit more substrate maintenance (I blow a water jet with a turkey blaster, and siphon off dirt), and more pruning of old plant material to reduce waste organics while replanting the healthy top of stems.
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I do use a Turkey baster and syphon off debris also..
And I have been trimming and replanting healthy tops, I think I just did too much in one session
 
Diatoms coming from the sub are persistent, I'd like some advice to minimise this.
I've been syphoning it away during water change, but should I leave it to do its thing, or attack it during water change?
Is it a good idea to do a deeper vacuum in small spots occasionally to get rid of it?
Sometimes when I've uprooted, and lightly vacuumed a small area, it doesn't seem to come back, but some spots, it consistently returns.
 
I’ll be honest, I rarely vacuum. Unless I see a need to and that’s only when I see debris on the substrate. Last week, I decided to do a semi deep vacuum on the 120 and it was pointless. Almost no gunk was present.

The photos above. How deep is the substrate I’m seeing?
 
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