Journal Recovering from disaster: My 120P journey.

[Burr740]

Let me add that there's a lot of merit to the other suggestions and input too. And lowering light will definitely slow things down, might be all thats needed. If so who cares if more macros will fix it! Right? lol. Its just that when I look at these pics, even without reading, I dont see plants overpowered by too much light. I see plants that need more macros. Other opinions are valid too however

 

[Unexpected]

Let me add that there's a lot of merit to the other suggestions and input too. And lowering light will definitely slow things down, might be all thats needed. If so who cares if more macros will fix it! Right? lol. Its just that when I look at these pics, even without reading, I dont see plants overpowered by too much light. I see plants that need more macros. Other opinions are valid too however

Man, I did all that. Maybe it was my execution or general messing it up. I had the water nutrients up damn high. I'm actually doing the double single single as of now. I never expected it was caused by micros. The double single single on micros has never changed. My best guess is the new aqua soil, not doing the necessary early and often water changes and pumping light like I had an old well established tank. Boom, the algae comes full throttle with all the extra ammonia and no bacteria in the sub. Then starting over with the BDBS extended the problem. Interesting thing, both tanks just hit the 6 month mark and things are looking good. Yes, I lowered light, but I swear the plants are acting more like I expect to see. But again, I'm a beginner, and this is all speculation from me.

 

[bradquade]

Thanks Joe. I've read this same comment from you on multiple peoples journals/threads and I appreciate the suggestion. I agree with you that the plants have the look of needing more macros. It's just very difficult for me to accept this as the root cause because I've never had to exceed 30 PPM NO3, 7.5 PPM PO4, and 31 PPM K weekly even in densely planted tanks that had BDBS as the substrate. Maybe the tap water in Texas had more macros than I realized or I was doing smaller water changes than I thought and this combination of factors tricked me into thinking the levels I've traditionally dosed are the most that are needed. It's also really tough for me to see the need for more macros because the tank is not super densely planted and at its worst the plants were growing sooooooo slowly that they should not have that high of macro requirements. This all had me arguing with myself that the NPK levels should be sufficient even if the plant behavior says others.

Some of the suggestions that I've received since starting the journal are pretty solid and seem to have helped without an increase in macros. Especially making the switch from tap to RO. I was very skeptical at first and was glad to have made the switch. I'm also going to continue with lower light for some time until the algae is under control. This has the benefit of lowering macro needs and providing less fuel for the algae. I'll also switch to 50% water changes to save myself some work and increase the steady state macro levels. You're right that the levels are much higher when the water change percentage is reduced to 50%. When the tank is back in shape and I'm ready to turn the lights up, don't be surprised if I tag you to revisit the macro levels. I want to have a couple hundred PAR at substrate to bring out the best in all of the plants.

 

[Burr740]

It's just very difficult for me to accept this as the root cause because I've never had to exceed 30 PPM NO3, 7.5 PPM PO4, and 31 PPM K weekly even in densely planted tanks that had BDBS as the substrate.

I totally get that. In fact you have no idea how much I get it. I actually went through a couple of rough years back in the day by always ruling out macros because the numbers were so high already. Two years playing whack a mole with literally everything else. Turns out a little more macros was all that was ever needed.

I dont mean to sound like this is all you ever needed. But now that youve fixed those other things, it might be

One thing to remember is the concentration of macros incl Ca and Mg all have a strong affect on each other with the end result being how easy a plant can get the very few ppm it needs of something. Ie its easier for a plant to get 2-3 ppm NO3 if there's 30 in the water vs only 5. So just because theres 15 ppm of something present doesnt mean the plants can get it

My point here is dont let numbers on a page tell you something is good when the plants are saying that its not. Another thing is after doing 70-80% water changes religiously for 3-4 years, I can say without a doubt that doing 50% works better, and requires a whole lot less ferts

I do understand that all these other things have helped, and and were a big part of it. Just dont be shy about raising macros just because your numbers are already high. Unless youre growing a tank full of Ammania varieties that all hate water column ferts, raising macros even astronomically will hurt absolutely nothing. The worst thing itll do is cause some gda on the glass and even that will go away when the bio population adjusts. It will only help plants. All of them, except Ammania

 

[Sb1415]

Curious to see if you have checked your ammonia level

 

[Phish Tank]

Chihiros did a very good job with this and it's significantly better than the Jebao dosing pump I used back in 2018. Because I got the dosing pump, I decided to settle into a "final" dosing strategy. For macros, I'm going to dose 28NO3-8PO4-36K weekly with half of this front loaded on water change day. The remaining amount will be distributed throughout the week in 2PPM NO3 doses.

What do you like about the Chihiros vs Jebao? I'm still using my cheapskate Jebao doser.

Curious if you have checked the calibration of your doser. If you are dosing tiny ml of macros/micros per day, maybe doser accuracy could be playing a part in your algea nightmare.

 

[bradquade]

Curious to see if you have checked your ammonia level

I just gave my very old ammonia test kit a try in the 120P and my low tech shrimp tank. Both showed 0.25 PPM ammonia. I'm a little skeptical of the result because the shrimp tank has a bunch of houseplants growing out of the filtration system and there should be zero ammonia just based on plant mass. I will probably need to get a new test kit to get a conclusive answer. If ammonia is the issue, what would the solution be? The tank has no fish, two large filters, old soil, frequent water changes, and has been setup for nearly 2.5 years.

What do you like about the Chihiros vs Jebao?

The calibration and programming on the Chihiros dosing pump is much more straightforward because you do it through an app and it's just a few button presses to make changes. I also really like that the app tracks how much solution is remaining in your bottle (makes it easy to check if the volume being dosed is consistent with the programming) and it allows easy manual dosing for front loading. The Jebao isn't bad when it's setup, but the setup process is very clunky. I also don't like that programming requires access to the pump itself because my cabinets are usually somewhat messy and its hard sticking my head in there.

Curious if you have checked the calibration of your doser.

The doser has only been setup since Thursday and the dosing volumes so far have been accurate using 5-10 ml doses. I'll have to see how it works long term and will keep an eye on it. Recently I have been dosing by weighing out macros to the tenth of a gram, so I'm certain I am not overdosing or underdosing based on my targets to the point it would cause an algae nightmare. When this issue started I was dry dosing using teaspoons (1 tsp KNO3, 0.5 tsp K2SO4, 0.25 tsp KH2PO4 frontloaded and half this on Wednesday) and that's also fairly solid based on some tests where I checked the weight of the powders in each teaspoon multiple times.

 

[Sb1415]

If ammonia is the issue, what would the solution be

Thanks for checking! I am not sure, I just think it is an interesting observation. I ran into similar issue which you can read about in my journal with lean dosing.

Would you agree though that with such good filtration and an established set up, having ammonia is strange ?

 

[bradquade]

Would you agree though that with such good filtration and an established set up, having ammonia is strange ?

I do agree with that and find it very strange. It makes me want to get a new test kit to see if the results are legit. It just doesn't seem worth it though without a clear path toward eliminating the issue.

 

[bradquade]

I know it's not my normal weekly update time, but I thought this was a fun comparison. The first picture is how the tank has grown in the last two weeks and the second is two week progress in December. Both were after a trim and replant session for the majority of the tank, so they should be reasonable comparisons. It's very clear that the tank is growing much faster now than it was in December and the quality of the growth is much higher even though the only significant change was a switch from tap to RO water. I threw 10 PPM NO3 and 5 PPM PO4 into the tank based on Joe's feedback from over the weekend and hopefully the next 2 weeks show even better progress along with a reduction in algae growth. I also need to trim the tank and make space for a few plant groups.

1/11-1/26

(
12/15-12/28

 

[TRyan]

Wow, big difference in growth. Looking good.

 

[bradquade]

Another weekly water change down and I was unable to water change only 50% since I pulled up some plant groups and had to do some vacuuming. It was great being able to toss a lot of old and algae infested growth and it was encouraging to see that the newest growth is actually fairly clean. It seems like the algae is primarily feeding on old unadapted growth and that's causing the spread of long filaments around the tank that make the tops look so dirty. The fastest growing groups aren't perfect, but they were a lot better looking than I expected after washing them off. So in total this weeks water change was ~60% followed by front loading with 20NO3-6PO4-26K in addition to the daily dosing that adds a total of 14NO3-4PO4-18K every 7 days. It seems crazy to dose 34NO3-10PO4-26K weekly, but maybe higher macros will help the tank get into a good state.


I didn't pull the golden myrio or Staurogyne 'Porto Velho' and both need to be cleaned up. I also need to figure out why a few of the Hygrophila 'Compact' bunches have lost a lot of leaves. It's very unusual because this plant is so easy to keep.

Didiplis diandra and Eriocaulon parkeri are both pretty dirty and need to be pulled up. That'll happen in the next water change.

Penthorum sedoides and Limnophila aromatica mini need to be pulled up and cleaned, but neither is that bad. Penthorum's issue is mostly degradation of old leaves and I've been working on pulling those.


As I was moving things around I noticed the old growth on the Syngonanthus 'Rio Negro Giant' was very yellow while the new growth looks good. It does seem like I was dosing low on Fe during the 2x weekly water change period and I wonder if this contributed to the poor health of a few species noted in the previous update. I'm still dosing 0.06 PPM Fe+micros daily for a weekly total of 0.42 PPM and that should be a reasonable enough target for the tank.