Planning for a huge reset / re-scape. Could use some advice

[Jellopuddinpop]

Hi Everyone,

I’m planning a huge re-scape in a couple of months, and need to pick some brains on the lighting / fertilizing techniques for a less intense tank than I’m running now.

I have a 125G (72”L x 18”W x 22”H) tank with 3x Chihiros RGB Vivid 2 lights. I’m planning on using either Landen Aquasoil or UNS Controsoil (not sure which yet), and am going to aquascape with a lot of big, dominant driftwood. I run pure 0 dKh RO water, remineralized to 24:8 - Ca:Mg, I front-load Macros and dose micros daily.

In the past, I always designed my tanks with a lot of rock, and have dabbled in both minimalist Iwagumi or colorful stems (or both, which was an abject failure). This time around, my plant list should look something like this:

A lot of Epiphytes like Fava Fern, Bolbitis, Buce, and Anubias
Vallisneria & Hygrophilia Pinnatifida in the background
Staurogyne Repens Foreground
Lower difficulty middleground plants like Hygrophilia Corymbosa Compact, Echinodorus Rainbow, AR mini, Hydrocotyle Tripartita Japan, & Lobelia Cardinalis
Depending on space, I may throw a huge, hungry sword plant or a Madagascar Lace in one of the corners too. Not sure about that one yet =)
Any suggestions for a "Showpiece" plant that wouldn't be too demanding?

With a hardscape dominant tank and mostly easy growing plants, what would you target for your PAR output on lights?

As far as fertilizers, I’m in the full “Roll your Own” team. Would anyone be able to suggest a starting ppm I should shoot for per week for my NPK? On that same note, is there truth in the fact that these high CEC substrates suck PO4 from the water column, and it needs to be dosed really heavy at the start?

I’m sure I’m going to have a lot more questions soon enough, but this is an exciting time and I’m just trying to wrap my brain around a slower growing tank.

Thanks in advance!!

 

[JPog]

With most of my hardscape, epiphyte dominated setups I usually target a PAR of around 70ish and that's a peak maybe 3-4 hrs. Most of the time I have a ramp up / ramp down. One thing I've found with these tanks is I focus on keeping it clean more than anything else, because you don't have the uptake potential of fast growing stems. That means consistent weekly water changes, probably semi-weekly first month and daily first week with AS.

I don't "roll my own" so I'll let someone else chime in, but I dose pretty normal EI levels in these setups and never had a problem with algae. The tricky part is the startup, because not only do you have alot of hardscape, but ferns, anubias take a long time to acclimate and start growing so it's really about maintenance that's why I pull out all the stops, short light cycle, big water changes, AC, kitchen sink.

 

[Jellopuddinpop]

Thanks for the reply. Would it work / help if I went on the leaner side of things? Something like 7 / .7 / 10 NPK, or should I stick to the normal EI 30/3/30?

This is something that's always confused me. Barr style EI obviously works in his setups, but then there's aquarists like Dennis Wong that make <5ppm Nitrate work in his tanks with amazing results. I was thinking that if any faster growing plants are in the substrate, and the slower growing ones weren't, I could get away with a very lean water column.

 

[Art]

Hey, how exciting! I'm going to live vicariously through you as I've got the itch to setup a new tank but can't do it at the moment!

Do you have any inspiration tanks you're using to get a mental picture of what you want?

My suggestion is to get a light that allows you to control output. This will allow you the freedom to ramp light intensity as needed and then adjust it to what your tank needs. Most of these tanks tend to be green dominant so I would also focus on the spectrum being in the 8000 range.

As for fertilizers, I always start light and then ramp it up based observations. With the slower uptake plants, you really want to go slow. I start with 1/3 EI and the go from there. I adjust based on testing and observations.

Yes, soils will soak up PO4. I've never used ControSoil but the AquaSoil will soak up a lot. This is one of the reasons I went back to testing as I couldn't believe how much PO4 the soil was absorbing. I needed to know how much to add weekly until it saturated and stopped the crazy uptake.

Lastly, maintenance, maintenance, maintenance is the key with a successful start with these. I would pre-soak the wood in RO water to get any leaching out and get it to sink as much as possible. If you do, make sure to do it in a dark container to limit growth of any photosynthetic and encourage bacterial growth. I've found that this limits the growth of fungus and algae on the wood.

 

[Art]

Thanks for the reply. Would it work / help if I went on the leaner side of things? Something like 7 / .7 / 10 NPK, or should I stick to the normal EI 30/3/30?

This is something that's always confused me. Barr style EI obviously works in his setups, but then there's aquarists like Dennis Wong that make <5ppm Nitrate work in his tanks with amazing results. I was thinking that if any faster growing plants are in the substrate, and the slower growing ones weren't, I could get away with a very lean water column.

I would highly recommend that you use the fertilizer template created by @GreggZ to track your fertilizer regimen. Start with something like 1/3 to 1/2 standard EI and then adjust.

There are many people that lean dose for different reasons. Dennis does low nitrate to bring out the red in some plants but that also negatively impacts other plants. Does that matter? Only if you have the other plants in your tank.

I think it's important that we get back to testing key nutrients in our tanks to get some confirmation that what we want to go on is actually going on. How does Dennis know that he has less than 5 ppm NO3 in the water? He tests.

My method is simple but it works for me. I start low and increase every couple of weeks asking the question, "Are the plants doing better or worse?". I keep increasing until the answer is "no", then I go back one increase and level off there.

 

[JPog]

Thanks for the reply. Would it work / help if I went on the leaner side of things? Something like 7 / .7 / 10 NPK, or should I stick to the normal EI 30/3/30?

This is something that's always confused me. Barr style EI obviously works in his setups, but then there's aquarists like Dennis Wong that make <5ppm Nitrate work in his tanks with amazing results. I was thinking that if any faster growing plants are in the substrate, and the slower growing ones weren't, I could get away with a very lean water column.

Yeah, LOL that's the fun part. If you follow ADA dogma most of the goodies are in the substrate and the column is very lean and then you have EI which many times is the opposite, but they both grow plants. I'm sure you can go leaner, I just never did since dry ferts are cheap and I didn't see any downside. I measured my N and P in my old epiphyte dominated tank and it was normally 5 and 50ppm and the tank was completely clean of algae.

I still don't understand why algae would be trigged with 50ppm N and not 10ppm N in the column, so I think the amount setting in the water means very little. I think Wong has very active substrates so, similiar to the ADA approach. I don't even think ADA fert dosing includes P, I think it's all in the substrate.

 

[Jellopuddinpop]

Hey, how exciting! I'm going to live vicariously through you as I've got the itch to setup a new tank but can't do it at the moment!

Do you have any inspiration tanks you're using to get a mental picture of what you want?

My suggestion is to get a light that allows you to control output. This will allow you the freedom to ramp light intensity as needed and then adjust it to what your tank needs. Most of these tanks tend to be green dominant so I would also focus on the spectrum being in the 8000 range.

As for fertilizers, I always start light and then ramp it up based observations. With the slower uptake plants, you really want to go slow. I start with 1/3 EI and the go from there. I adjust based on testing and observations.

Yes, soils will soak up PO4. I've never used ControSoil but the AquaSoil will soak up a lot. This is one of the reasons I went back to testing as I couldn't believe how much PO4 the soil was absorbing. I needed to know how much to add weekly until it saturated and stopped the crazy uptake.

Lastly, maintenance, maintenance, maintenance is the key with a successful start with these. I would pre-soak the wood in RO water to get any leaching out and get it to sink as much as possible. If you do, make sure to do it in a dark container to limit growth of any photosynthetic and encourage bacterial growth. I've found that this limits the growth of fungus and algae on the wood.

Thanks for the reply, Art!

I have the Chihiros RBG Vivid II, which allows for input control including ramping and individual channel controls. I have a buddy near me that has a PAR meter, so I'll borrow that to set it up. I think I'll set up something like this based on @JPog 's suggestion:

30 min ramp 0 -> 30 PAR
1 hour @ 30 PAR
3 hours @ 70 PAR
1 hour @ 30 PAR
30 min ramp 30 -> 0 PAR

I feel dumb, but I didn't even think of the fact that I could just test for PO4. There's no need for guesswork lmao.

For maintenance, I'm excited to be able to show my "behind the scenes" setup. My tank is built into a wall in my foyer, and the backside it completely open for fishroom stuff. I really don't want to post a journal now if everything is changing in a couple of months, but I think I can add a lot to the community with the way I've set things up.

As for soaking, my first 2 big a$$ pieces of wood should be arriving in a couple of days. I should be able to soak those for at least a couple of months. I'll have a lot of smaller stuff coming in a couple of weeks from the same supplier, but they have a BOGO 50% off going on, so I wanted to split up my shipments like a true miser. As I've always done in the past with hardscape, I usually end up buying too much just to make sure I'm not short when I got to set things up. The thing that will be tricky here is splitting time between soaking the wood and setting up a mock 'scape to stare at for a while. I want to let it soak for as long as possible, but I also want to set up some aquascapes to see how they look.

 

[Jellopuddinpop]

Yeah, LOL that's the fun part. If you follow ADA dogma most of the goodies are in the substrate and the column is very lean and then you have EI which many times is the opposite, but they both grow plants. I'm sure you can go leaner, I just never did since dry ferts are cheap and I didn't see any downside. I measured my N and P in my old epiphyte dominated tank and it was normally 5 and 50ppm and the tank was completely clean of algae.

I still don't understand why algae would be trigged with 50ppm N and not 10ppm N in the column, so I think the amount setting in the water means very little. I think Wong has very active substrates so, similiar to the ADA approach. I don't even think ADA fert dosing includes P, I think it's all in the substrate.

That's a fair point about the difference between 10pm and 50ppm for algae.

I suppose what I'm worried about was repeating what happened in my current setup. I haven't been able to reach a happy medium at all, where the stems grow well, but the hardscape doesn't get covered in GDA. I've been in this vicious cycle of getting enough plant mass to kill off the GDA -> starving plants -> increasing NPK -> GDA returns. My plan was to not have the hungry stem plants, so I could cut this cycle off before the plants starve.

 

[Jellopuddinpop]

I would highly recommend that you use the fertilizer template created by @GreggZ to track your fertilizer regimen. Start with something like 1/3 to 1/2 standard EI and then adjust.

There are many people that lean dose for different reasons. Dennis does low nitrate to bring out the red in some plants but that also negatively impacts other plants. Does that matter? Only if you have the other plants in your tank.

I think it's important that we get back to testing key nutrients in our tanks to get some confirmation that what we want to go on is actually going on. How does Dennis know that he has less than 5 ppm NO3 in the water? He tests.

My method is simple but it works for me. I start low and increase every couple of weeks asking the question, "Are the plants doing better or worse?". I keep increasing until the answer is "no", then I go back one increase and level off there.

I'll definitely fill this in and have it in my journal once it's up and going. As a matter of fact, I already have one filled out for my tank as it sits right now from TPT.

 

[Art]

That's a great plan and there is NO doubt this will benefit the community. A show-through tank with a fish room behind it is "life goals" for a lot of people. Happy for you.

On the wood soak, I use garbage cans from Home Depot for that. If you're going that long, I would recommend that you add MicroBacter 7 (or something like that) and a carbon source (I use RedSea's NOPOX) to the water. I dose NOPOX at 1ml per gallon per week. Too much and you'll start to get cyano.

The purpose of this is to stimulate heterotrophic bacterial growth that will populate your wood while you are soaking it. In the end, you wood's surface should be covered in a bacterial film that will help when put into the tank. DO NOT add NOPOX to the final tank. This is only while in the dark garbage tank.

Taking the wood out and working the aquascape is fine. Just keep it moist by spraying it with a water bottle and then put it back into the garbage can at night. Obviously, if you want to keep the aquascape out for more than a day, then some bacterial die off will happen but that's fine.

 

[JPog]

That's a fair point about the difference between 10pm and 50ppm for algae.

I suppose what I'm worried about was repeating what happened in my current setup. I haven't been able to reach a happy medium at all, where the stems grow well, but the hardscape doesn't get covered in GDA. I've been in this vicious cycle of getting enough plant mass to kill off the GDA -> starving plants -> increasing NPK -> GDA returns. My plan was to not have the hungry stem plants, so I could cut this cycle off before the plants starve.

I think you'll be fine with 1/3-1/2 EI as suggested. You're also using an active substrate, so that's a good safety net in the beginning as well. Unless there's a water parameter (high KH, etc) that doesn't work well with heavy ferts I've never seen a downside to it. I've said this before, but even tanks that aren't dose or are fish only get algae. The two things in common with our planted tanks are light and waste, not dosed ferts.

 

[Jellopuddinpop]

That's a great plan and there is NO doubt this will benefit the community. A show-through tank with a fish room behind it is "life goals" for a lot of people. Happy for you.

On the wood soak, I use garbage cans from Home Depot for that. If you're going that long, I would recommend that you add MicroBacter 7 (or something like that) and a carbon source (I use RedSea's NOPOX) to the water. I dose NOPOX at 1ml per gallon per week. Too much and you'll start to get cyano.

The purpose of this is to stimulate heterotrophic bacterial growth that will populate your wood while you are soaking it. In the end, you wood's surface should be covered in a bacterial film that will help when put into the tank. DO NOT add NOPOX to the final tank. This is only while in the dark garbage tank.

Taking the wood out and working the aquascape is fine. Just keep it moist by spraying it with a water bottle and then put it back into the garbage can at night. Obviously, if you want to keep the aquascape out for more than a day, then some bacterial die off will happen but that's fine.

Thanks for the tips, I appreciate it. I hadn't thought of jump-starting the bacterial growth in advance, but I like it. I'm going to have to find a different solution than the trash can, though. the shorter of the 2 pieces of wood I have coming in is 36", and the longer one is almost 48" I thiknk I'm going to get one of those watering troughs from Tractor Supply.

As nice as having the tank in the wall is, one of my biggest regrets is not taking @GreggZ 's advice when I first built it. I vividly remember him telling me that only having access to the back of the tank was going to cause me problems, and he was 100% right. My thought at the time was "what the hell does it matter if I'm accessing the tank from the front or the back? Most poeple can only access their tank from one side, so what difference does it make?" Well, there's a difference... The front of the tank is meant to be looked through, so you can see everything that's going on. Mine has a background so you cant look through to my fishroom, which means I can only see the tank from the top when I'm working in there. Besides the challenge of getting a nice, clean trim on plants, it also makes catching fish almost impossible.

 

[GreggZ]

As nice as having the tank in the wall is, one of my biggest regrets is not taking @GreggZ 's advice when I first built it. I vividly remember him telling me that only having access to the back of the tank was going to cause me problems, and he was 100% right.

LOL I remember that conversation too! It's a visual hobby and it's hard to visual the tank from the top looking down.

And in general lot's of good advice in this thread. I don't have much to add to what others have already mentioned.

I'll throw a centerpiece plant out there.....how about Barclaya Longifolia? If so I can save some bulbs for you.

 

[Jellopuddinpop]

LOL I remember that conversation too! It's a visual hobby and it's hard to visual the tank from the top looking down.

And in general lot's of good advice in this thread. I don't have much to add to what others have already mentioned.

I'll throw a centerpiece plant out there.....how about Barclaya Longifolia? If so I can save some bulbs for you.

I actually tried this plant in my current tank. It took off like a rocket, then just dropped all of its leaves for some reason. I wasn't able to nail down the reason before it was just gone.

That might be a great choice, though. There's going to be a lot of green, with the exception of the AR mini and E. Rainbow. A huge purple plant would stick out for sure!

 

[GreggZ]

I actually tried this plant in my current tank. It took off like a rocket, then just dropped all of its leaves for some reason. I wasn't able to nail down the reason before it was just gone.

That might be a great choice, though. There's going to be a lot of green, with the exception of the AR mini and E. Rainbow. A huge purple plant would stick out for sure!

Did you move it? Barclaya does NOT like being moved......at all.

If you do it will drop all of it's leaves and go dormant for a while. But if you leave the bulbs undisturbed it will came back. Just takes time and patience.

 

[Jellopuddinpop]

Did you move it? Barclaya does NOT like being moved......at all.

If you do it will drop all of it's leaves and go dormant for a while. But if you leave the bulbs undisturbed it will came back. Just takes time and patience.

Nope, didn't move it.

I was having a lot of issues in the tank, and I think the substrate was just old and gunky. That's part of the reasoning for just gutting it and starting over.

 

[Dave]

Thanks for the reply. Would it work / help if I went on the leaner side of things? Something like 7 / .7 / 10 NPK, or should I stick to the normal EI 30/3/30?

This is something that's always confused me. Barr style EI obviously works in his setups, but then there's aquarists like Dennis Wong that make <5ppm Nitrate work in his tanks with amazing results. I was thinking that if any faster growing plants are in the substrate, and the slower growing ones weren't, I could get away with a very lean water column.

I dose very lean in my low tech tanks. It was definitely a learning cure to get the dosing right. I dose 5ml of macro,and micro from the EI mix. Seems that's the sweet spot for my tanks. I do dose a bit of extra potassium for the microsorum.

 

[Jellopuddinpop]

I dose very lean in my low tech tanks. It was definitely a learning cure to get the dosing right. I dose 5ml of macro,and micro from the EI mix. Seems that's the sweet spot for my tanks. I do dose a bit of extra potassium for the microsorum.

What is this in ppm of NPK? 5mL is going to be different depending on how it's mixed.

 

[JPog]

Jello this is going to be without co2 injection?

 

[Jellopuddinpop]

Jello this is going to be without co2 injection?

No, it will have CO2