Journal Ricky's Evolving 350G

[RickyV]

I've recently become more involved in my 350 gallon planted tank so I thought I'd migrate my old journal to this forum to share my new adventures.

This right here is my old 567 liter (150 gallons) tank. This tank ran for about two years before it stared to leak. I thought this was a great opportunity to get a bigger tank lol.


I ended up getting this 350 gallon tank. This is the tank when first filled. I was really unsure of how to scape such a big tank and was limited to what I had in my previous tank.


Fish in the tank now and a few plants as well. The tank right now is running on pretty low light and no CO2.


A little while after I found a deal on lots of amazon swords and thought they would be a good way to fill in the tank without spending so much money on hardscape. Also gave away the parrot cichlids as they would pick at plants too much and would really limit my choices. Somehow the severum was very picky when it came to what plants he likes to eat. Unfortunately this limits my plant choices but he is everyone's favorite fish so I cant give him away.


Some time later I found an LFS with amazing prices on plants so I was able to fill in my tank a lot more.


A few months later this is what the tank looks like, I neglected the tank a bit before this picture so many of the plants disappeared, or shrunk down and got lots of nutrient deficiencies. However as you can see the plants that really thrived during this period is the giant Vallisneria.


2 months later I did a bit of maintenance and cleaning up of the scape since it was looking a little messy. As you can see the big amazon swords I once had shrunk down to tiny swords you can barely see due to not paying attention to the tank.


Two weeks later I was still a little unhappy with the scape so I trimmed the vals a little more and I added a few more plants to replace the shrunken down unhealthy plants. Little did I know trimming the vals this much would soon cause most of them to melt away. This is maybe one of my favorite versions of the tank, but the scape would not last long.


About 8 months later I decided to add CO2 to my system. Not much happened in these 8 months, plants went through a cycle of shrinking and growing due to my inconsistency. This was the tank on the day I decided to add CO2. This was on June 2022.


After adding CO2 I saw an explosion in plant growth, and I began to dose EI and doing 50% water changes. I became the most consistent I have ever been with the tank ever since adding CO2. The fast change each week in plants made the tank a lot more fun for me, and the success I was finally seeing made me enjoy the tank much more. Here is the tank one month after adding CO2. As you can see the tiger lotus grew to a monstrous size and the tiny amazon swords are much more visible now. Vallisneria also shooting off lots of runners.


About another month later and the tank has turned into a jungle. I have the most plants I have ever had without adding any new plants. The giant tiger lotus was trimmed and moved back.


A little over a month later I decided to clean the scape up a little and I added some rotala rotundifolia to the scape and got rid of most of the vals as some of them were getting up to 8 feet long...


About one month later I decided to upgrade my old cheap amazon LEDs to 3 Chihiro's WRGB II 90 pro. I was in love with how tanks looked underneath these lights so I finally decided to get the lights I've always wanted. This is the tank under the Chihiro's. I want to say this is the point were problems I already had started getting a little worse. Nutrient deficiencies were getting more obvious and I was starting to see an increase in GDA. I guess the lights were making problems I already had happen much faster.


This is the tank another month later, tank isn't doing too bad, but I am getting tired of the GDA. I did a lot of reading on the forums and figured CO2 might be my problem. I increased my CO2 to more proper levels, reduced temp, and reduced light in order to reduce CO2 demand and make sure plants were getting proper CO2. Somehow during this time I was ignoring the obvious sings in my Brazilian pennywort that had new leaves that looked like they were getting bleached. Some with very dark veins while the leaves were almost white.


This is the tank today (11/22/2022). The photo looks a little washed out from all the CO2 bubbles since I increased CO2 injection. My reactors are also very undersized and I plan on getting something much bigger. It was around this time that I made some a post asking about CO2 optimization since I thought CO2 was my main problem. More recently a few days ago I made a thread asking for advice on GDA. It seems the deficiencies in my plants are most likely iron (Fe) and maybe magnesium (Mg). I have relatively hard water so my plants do not have much iron available to them. I plan on adding Fe DTPA since I now know I need a chelator to prevent the iron from immediately precipitating from the water column. I also have a pH meter so I will be working on making sure my CO2 is at optimal and stable levels. I will receive the iron chelator in a few days and I will start dosing magnesium with Epsom salts today. I will soon update with how the plants are affected.

 

[RickyV]

Tank details as of 11/22/2022.

Size
Aquarium is 96 in x 29 in x 29 in. Tank volume is around 350 gallons. The sump has about 55 gallons of water in it.

Filtration
My sump starts with a pre-filter basket that has a 50 micron pad (or poly-fil). Water then passes through another 50 micron pad (or poly-fil) and then goes through 100 pot scrubbers and then 10 gallons of static K1 media. It is static because it works well enough and I do not like the noise of a fluidized K1 media bed. Water then goes to the return pump chamber which has a 20,000 LPH (5300 GPH) pump, though I estimate the actual flow is at most half of that.

CO2
I use a 20lb CO2 tank that I go replace around every 6 weeks. The CO2 feeds into two Ista max CO2 reactors that I run in series. The CO2 reactors are fed water through a small pump, and the return from one of the reactors is fed directly into my return pump to the display. The second reactor in series also has an airline to free built up CO2 directly to the return pump. These reactors are pretty undersized for my tank as my tank looks like it is using a diffuser. I will be getting something bigger. CO2 is turned on 2.5 hours before main lights on. And turned off 2 hours before main lights off (there is a lot of left over CO2 in the reactors even after turning off the solenoid).

Lights
I use 3 Chihiro's WRGB II pro 90, and 2 120 cm (4ft) nicrew skyled for the front of the tank since my tank is too wide for the Chihiro's to give proper coverage front to back. I currently run the nicrews the first and last 30 minutes of the photoperiod as they are pretty dim. The main lights are on for 10 hours.

Fertilization

I currently use this DIY EI mix. I dose 80ml 6 times a week, slightly under the suggested dose. I do a 50% water change on the last day of the week.

Water

This is the water report for the tap water I use in water changes. In the GDA thread I learned that the high calcium content makes it hard for iron to stay in the water. So I plan on adding chelated iron. The magnesium in the water report and in my fertilizer is pretty low, so I plan on adding Epsom salt.

Hopefully can fix this GDA algae once the plants start perking up again from the Magnesium and Chelated iron. I also have a pH meter now so I will be measuring the pH throughout the day and find out if there can be any improvement in that area.

 

[RickyV]

In the GDA thread we discovered one problem in my tank was indeed the CO2. Here is my pH profile that I shared on that thread. As you can see I was not getting to a full pH drop until 6.5 hours and my pH did not reach a point of equilibrium, it looked like it would continue to drop in the day.

To solve this I angled my return pumps slightly towards the water surface and I added two wave makers near the surface to increase gas exchange using a lot of surface agitation. I also increased the injection rate so I can reach a 1 pH drop faster than before. In theory these changes would help me reach a 1 pH drop quickly and find some equilibrium where the CO2 is staying stable. Here is a video of what the surface looks like now.


Below are the pH readings from yesterday after making these changes. I got lucky and got increased the injection and agitation just enough that I was at a 1 pH drop right at lights on. As you can see the pH is very stable now.. There is a small dip around 3 PM but it looks like it was going to stabilize. Unfortunately I did not get to collect more data after 6:00PM. I think I will be sticking with how I have my CO2/flow setup for now unless anyone thinks there is still room for improvement.

I did get a chance to add Epsom salts yesterday to increase magnesium (Mg) around 10ppm. My Fe DTPA should be arriving in a few days.

 

[RickyV]

(12/22/22) So a lot has happened in the last month. As suggested I began dosing chelated iron DTPA. I also started dosing iron gluconate. I started front loading all my macros after my water change and the other 6 days I dose my micro solution and each day I'll dose half a teaspoon of gluconate and a pinch of DTPA. I'm honestly not sure If I've seen a significant difference but you can judge for yourself in the video.

Another change in fertilization is that I bought some pottasium chloride which I began to dose on top of my macro solution. I've noticed people dose much higher pottasium than what is in my pre-mixed macro packet. I now dose an extra 20 ppm pottasium.

I was getting tired of looking at the GDA coating my plants so I did something many of you may disagree with. I bought an algaecide. I used API algaefix and within a few days most of the GDA that was on my plants melted away. I now have pretty clean plants with no algae except on a few older leaves. I haven't noticed the GDA return on the plants but time will tell if it comes back. I think the plants look pretty healthy but you guys can tell me if anything looks wrong with them. I am noticing a small film of GDA returning on the glass but I'm just happy it's not on the plants.

I also added an army of snails to help manage any algae that may come back or is still there. I added 200 olive nerite snails, 50 mystery snails, 100 ramshorn snails, and 300 malaysian trumpet snails. I've noticed the malaysian trumpet snail babies are amazing at eating GDA on plants, but they only clean up to the bottom third of the tank. Hopefully that's where the ramshorns come in. The nerites are great at cleaning larger surfaces. The mysteries I am not sure if they are good algae eaters, but they are the most fun to look at.

During this time period my tank came under attack from ick. I think I somehow cross-contaminated from my aunts fish tank that had ick. I treated the tank with API ick super cure. Weirdly only the plecos, severum, loaches, and live bearers where affected by the ich. The angelfish did not get a single speck and acted completely normal. I unfortunately lost a few baby plecos and my three clown loaches. But as of now all the fish look healthy and recovered.

I tested my GH and KH and this is what I have. GH: 15 KH: 8. After adjusting my CO2 to reach the proper level and increasing surface agitation I am now going through 5lbs of CO2 per week. I am curious how much does everyone pay for CO2 around the world? I'm currently paying $30 to exchange my 20lb tank. I considered getting a 50lb tank which has $60 refills. But I am not sure if It'll be too heavy to be practical.

Here is what the tank currently looks like, I will be trimming my rotala bushes sometime this week. I'm also planning on replacing a bush or two with rotala blood red and ludwigia super red. I have some on the way so I may consolidate two of the rotala bushes into one.

Here is a video of the tank so you guys can get a better idea of how the plants are doing.

 

[RickyV]

I just did a big trim on the plants. I felt so guilty cutting away all that pretty growth. But here is the tank now.

I combined the right and left rotala bushes into one super bush. On the left of the center rotala bush will be a big ludwigia super red bush. I also need to find a shorter version of the jungle val to replace the vals I have in the middle. The empty right part of the tank is where the rotala blood red bush will be going. Here are all the emmersed plants.

 

[RickyV]

(1/15/2023)
The past few days I've been noticing that my tank has been getting cloudy and it wasn't until today that I looked through the side of the tank and noticed it had a green tint. I have green water This is my first time with this algae in a fish tank.

I am not entirely sure what triggered it. About a week and a half ago I dosed a blue green slime remover because I was starting to see cyano growing in some places. I've since increased my macro dosing to the entire 500 ml bottle once a week. I maybe killed my beneficial bacteria and this created room for the algae to bloom. Also made worse by the fact that I'm dosing more ferts.

Another factor is I haven't been super consistent with my iron/micro dosing. I plan on adding my iron/micro powders to an auto feeder to auto dose a few times every day. Hopefully this helps the few struggling plants. For the most part plants are doing fine, except for the rotala blood red, amazon sword and the ludwigia super red. I can't imagine CO2 still being an issue since I have so much flow and inject so much but I do need to do another CO2 profile just to be sure.

The pictures aren't great since green water but these are the rotala blood red with lots of stunted tips.

Another possible problem is too much light. I unfortunately don't have a PAR meter to see how much I have. But what do you guys think of these settings? I have 3 chihiros WRGB II 90 pro.

The lights are 5 cm (2 in) above the water. I also have glass lids under the lights. The water depth from top of substrate to the top of the water line is 64 cm (25 in). I also have 2 120 cm nicrew skyled to light the front portion of the tank since my tank is so wide.

I would prefer not to get a UV sterilizer since I don't want to add more heat to the tank since the pumps already add a bit of heat. I also hear a UV sterilizer may make my problems with micros worse. But my main concern is adding more heat.

I hope plant health improves with adding iron/miros consistently and frequently. Perhaps I also need to reduce light to improve plant health. Would reducing nitrates help? I think my current dose is around 15 ppm weekly. But I am sure I have a lot more nitrates coming from the fish. My thinking is that it would reduce CO2 demand? Or am I wrong?

 

[RickyV]

(1/27/23)
I ended up getting a UV sterilizer... This is the tank right before installing the UV sterilizer.

This is the tank just one day later. Already much clearer. The filter sock clogged fast and was very green.

This is the tank one week later. It is now very crystal clear. It is also about time to trim again.

I have been running the UV 24/7 the last week but I may reduce it now. The temperature increase from the UV was at most 0.5 C (1 F). I would like to run it for as long as possible each day but not sure how significant of an impact it has on reducing the availability of the iron for my plants. Although I no longer have GDA on my plants I am still struggling from iron deficiency. This is very frustrating. I am thinking of doubling or tripling the weekly iron dosage from the gluconate and the DTPA, hopefully that will fix it. The pictures don't show the chlorosis very accurately but it is there.

As you can see in the pictures I am also struggling with a lot of stunting on the rotala blood red, Anyone have any ideas as to why that may be? The ammania senegalensis also struggles with stunting. These are the only two plants with this problem. My CO2 is pretty stable at a 1- 1.1 pH drop by lights on till 2 hours before lights off. I also have plenty of flow. Could it be related to the iron deficiency? Even the moss has some chlorosis.

 

[RickyV]

(11/23/23) Not a lot has happened since I have been neglecting the tank a bit this year, but I am working on restarting the tank.

This was the tank a few months ago, you can't really see it but plants were suffering a bit from not getting fertilizer or CO2 for a while. During this time I decided I wanted to rescape the tank. I bought some black lava rock and a few weeks later I bought the UNS controsoil and the driftwood in the picture below.

This was the first scape I came up with. I thought it looked nice, but I wasnt competely hapy with It and decided to try rescaping it again. I bought some UNS controsoil and the large driftwood pieces for the 2nd rescape.

This is the in construction new scape. I lost a lot of the plants due neglecting the tank and not dosing ferts/CO2/water changes. But I am ready to spend more time on this tank again. I have a bunch of plants on the way and I will be completing this scape soon and I am very excited to plant this.

 

[Hufsa]

Forgive me for skim reading a bit but if adding additional iron (DTPA, gluc) hasnt helped, you should probably look at Manganese. Mn deficiency can look very similar to iron def, especially in certain plants. I have some personal experience with this issue Pulled my hair out trying to figure out why I couldn't get Iron working
Iron and Manganese must be in a certain relationship to each other too, too much or too little of one will impact the other. The ratio that will work is not set in stone, it appears different people find success with different ratios of Fe:Mn. I suspect type of chelation matters for the ratio, in addition to all the system parameters like water hardness, existing levels in tap etc. So its best to try it out to find the sweet spot for your own tank.

 

[RickyV]

11/23/23
Added some more plants to the scape.

4/23/24
Not a lot happened after the previous picture because I neglected the tank a bit again... The tank went through periods of consistent WC/CO2/ferts and periods of nothing. Here was a the tank right before my next period of consistency. It grew in very well despite the lack of consistency, likely thanks to the aquasoil. However I did grow a lot of green hair algae.

(4/26/24) I was still unhappy with my hardscape so I decided to change it again.. I found these really cool obsidian stones at a rock yard. I wish I could have grabbed bigger ones but even these are super heavy and I was afraid of smashing the tank.

(7/4/24) I ran the tank low tech for a few months because I figured that was better than my cycles of consistency and inconsistency. Not much changed because I did not spend much time with the tank. But at least it wasn't an algae mess like before.

(7/18/24)
Plants grew a little, some got uprooted. I started filling the cracks in my rock barrier so I can get cosmetic sand in the future. As you can see In the picture below I learned about ISO lol.

8/15/24
I was unhappy with the wood placement so I decided to change it to what is in the pic below. I started injecting CO2 again around this time, but this time with a much lower rate. Not sure how much though, I just know my pH is still above 7. The scape still has a lot of work to do but I am much happier. I need to get cosmetic sand, paint the white return, plant floaters, and figure out better plant placements. I will update with more current details soon.

 

[RickyV]

Iron and Manganese must be in a certain relationship to each other too, too much or too little of one will impact the other. The ratio that will work is not set in stone, it appears different people find success with different ratios of Fe:Mn. I suspect type of chelation matters for the ratio, in addition to all the system parameters like water hardness, existing levels in tap etc. So its best to try it out to find the sweet spot for your own tank.

I have definitely noticed the effect of this ratio on my other tank. I tried increasing the Mn and to my surprise the chlorosis got worse! Brought it back down and it got better. More recently I am experimenting with reducing the Mn even more to see where the sweet spot is. It is something I will need to figure out for this tank. According to last years water quality report the tap here has between 0.0068 – 0.158 ppm Mn. So this may be very different than my other tank that uses RO.

 

[SingAlongWithTsing]

Wait you're not using a horizontal reactor on your 350 gallon?

 

[RickyV]

Wait you're not using a horizontal reactor on your 350 gallon?

Oh no I did start using a horizontal reactor on this tank. I just need to clean up under my cabinet and I will share some pictures and more details. This tanks reactor was the prototype I tested before building the big one for the 1000 gallon.

 

[Burr740]

(1/15/2023)
I hope plant health improves with adding iron/miros consistently and frequently. Perhaps I also need to reduce light to improve plant health. Would reducing nitrates help? I think my current dose is around 15 ppm weekly. But I am sure I have a lot more nitrates coming from the fish. My thinking is that it would reduce CO2 demand? Or am I wrong?

I would not reduce no3 with the inert sub, in fact 15/week may not be enough, especially if doing more than 50-60% water changes. That could explain the stunted Rotala. Thats what they do in mine if no3/macros are too low. The only plants that like a lean water column with inert sub is ammania varieties. Period. Rotalas thrive in rich water, with inert sub they need it

It could also be inconsistent micros stunting the tips. Id fix that and if it doesnt immediately improve things go to about 20 no3