BW plants???

[RTR]

I'll disagree w/Neale here - Fish don't read pH, they read TDS/osmolarity. Changing the pH by CO2 injection does not adversely affect any fish, because it has no detectable direct effect on osmolarity. What it will do is speed the solution of the aragonite (solubility is pH dependent), so boost the TDS and alkalinity of the light BW setup in which it is used. That shift is likely to be beneficial to the fish, but on the plants I am unsure.

At those lighting levels you are going to need the full range of supplements, all in balance or you will have algae city.

Biogenic decalcification in the confines of a tank can be an unmitigated disaster. Been there, done that, would be embarrassed to wear the tee. The tank I slowly adapted to light BW for Orange Chromides worked fine and did what I weanted, but after the fun was over it got boring and was under-tended with the obvious result that val became crowded and at some point went to BD and the ph exploded to >pH 10 - it does not crash down, it explodes upward. The tank, the filters, the plants, everything became sandpaper (calcium precipitation), all were trashed. And that was moderate light. Handle high light BW planted semi-closed tanks with great caution with any mass of plants capable of biogenic decalcification.

Excel provides from 1.3 -2/3 the effect of injected COs, depending on who you read. I go with the lower effect group. But I use it routinely in FW with moderate light and it does the job I need there. It was not yet available when I did my chromide tank, so i don't know if it would have affected the outcome of my inadequate care.

[nmonks]

OK. I stand corrected!

I've never had problems with biogenic decalcification. In fact, in the incredibly hard water we have here in Southern England, the most reliable plants are the ones that do it. Provided you're on top of water changes, and you're cropping back the plants, the rate of decalcification just isn't fast enought to cause major problems.

But that's my experience, and under different sets of conditions, things might be different.

My problems are usually the other way, in my soft water tanks. There, plants that like hard water go a bit sad if they have to reply solely on CO2, and algae problems, especially blue-green, becomes more a problem. As a total aside, I've found hornwort to be a superb blue-green algae killer. There's something about what it pumps out to keep its leaves clean that blue-green just doesn't like.

Cheers,

Neale

[RTR]

My water is moderate, the best of all possible worlds for me - i can build it up if needed, and i never do really 'soft' tanks anymore - too lazy. The same actually applies to most CO2 supplement beyond a bit of Excel. I just can't convince myself that I need to make my tanks more work rather than less... I had said before that I will do any amount of work in setting up a tank initially, if it will allow me to not do a lot of routine chores to maintain it beyond partials and plant thinning.

I did save one of the small internal Eheims from the chromide disaster - It sits out on a shelf in the tank roon as my personal reminder of the hazards of slacking off too much. So I guess that there was a learning process involved.

[crazy loaches]

At those lighting levels you are going to need the full range of supplements, all in balance or you will have algae city.

Well, I guess I'll soon find out. I am starting to see a bit of green on my driftwood. I was hoping this project wasnt going to be so difficult as I am also quite lazy from time to time and have paid the price too. I was thinking about getting an Eheim Liquidoser for the Excel if it would prevent me from forgetting to put it in, but I guess I'll have to be on top of the ferts too. I thought the new tank was going to be great, spent the extra money on the nice tank, great lighting. But it seems it would be better if I unplugged one of my lights. Seems kinda odd thinking that I might have to reduce my lighting for a plant tank, and wasted money on my part.

Its been said many times that 'despite common belief, you can grow many plants in brackish water', I am now thinking this has less truth to it and more thinking again that 'it is very difficult to grow many plants in a brackish tank'.

BTW, in my last post Imentioned all the plants I currently have in it. I am open to advice on lighting, co2, and ferts. I have also been thinking about adding some more before I put any more salt in, like moss balls, bacopa, hornwart, crypt ciliata, and maybe a wendtii crypt. But I might just hold on a second until I figure out better what to expect.

[Boxermom]

Algae is a plant, no?

[RTR]

Boxermom - that is a subject for debate, and current thinking is to split algae out. There are too many "algae" and other photosnthetics (BGA for one) that are definitely not algae by any standard, not plants at all.

But I do admit to me that if they are photosynthetic, to me they act as plants, if peculiar ones. Biology is not what it was when I went to school - the multiple Kingdoms really are treated as separate lifeforms more often now, and that is not a bad thing. There are some pretty radical differences around such that find common ancestors would be a real trick.

[crazy loaches]

Algae is a plant, no?

The word send shivers up my spine

Here is another idea (probably dumb one) my tank was originally intended for marine since it had a 12,000k and a blue bulb (which I replaced w a 6700k). What if I left the 6700K in there for the plants but swapped the 12,000k back for the blue one? Its been said that the blue ones dont do much for plants or algae so it would reduce my overall photosynthesizing lighting but give my tank a nice glow and make me feel like I didnt wast the money on it? lol

[RTR]

Plants and algae have accessory pigments they can generate to use to capture non-preferred light spectra. It may take a few day or more before they can use any of it outside their preferred range, but they are adaptable. It will not be as efficient as in-range light, but it will be used to some extent.

The blue-end spectra are specific to photosynthetic algae pigments - are you sure you want to encourage those?

[crazy loaches]

Not at all. It has just been mentioned a few times that contrary to popular belief that actinic bulbs don't promote excessive algae, at least in freshwater tanks. I have no idea of the poster knew what they were talking about or not. I have never used these blue bulbs before and haven't much looked into them.

But to look at it a different way, plants would use more blue-to-violet light than they can green, except for say cyanobacteria and red algae which contain the two most common green-utilizing accessory 'phycobilin' pigments. So therefore the 'daylight' and 'full spectrum' bulbs that most people use instead of plant bulbs typically have their highest peak in green, which is good for algae and bad for plants. Now the thing I do not know is how much more algae feeds off the blue light than would in a daylight lamp.

[puffermama]

I like to know that any tank of mine can cope with a reasonable amount of neglect on my part and while the freshwater tank is able to, I have to say the same cannot be said of the brackish tank.

I have tried different levels of lighting, planting, CO2, scrubbing off the algae ... all to no avail.

My next line of attack is to follow the advice always given on this forum, i.e. water changes.

Instead of seeing water changes as a weekly maintenance job, I'm going to put them in the same category as feeding and see where I get with that ...

[crazy loaches]

So basically your saying algae is almost impossible to avoid on a BW tank? I plan on doing the weekly 50% changes, and definately heavy doses of excel, but if I start having algae problems, lighting will probably be the next thing I will play with, more than likely removing on of the bulbs.

[puffermama]

Well, as it's been six days since your first post on this thread you should know by now. If you don't have algae already, just count your blessings and don't change anything!

[nmonks]

In my experience, the amount of algae is inversely proportional to the rate of plant growth. If you have stuff that grows very rapidly -- like vallis and hornwort -- you can have virtually algae-free tanks regardless of the amount of nitrate in the water. I've had (frankly) overstocked community tanks with 100 mg/l nitrate and zero algae except on dead leaves. On the flip side, I've had small tanks with a few baby fish and only slow-growing plants like Java fern, and surprise, lots of algae.

I know this doesn't work for everyone, but I'm a convert to this approach: install something fast growing and watch the algae vanish. If you SG is 1.005 or less, definitely consider using fast-growing plants. By "lots of plants", I mean such that you're cropping handfuls out every couple of weeks. This easily happens with vallis, cabomba, hornwort, hygrophila, and the like.

Cheers,

Neale

So basically your saying algae is almost impossible to avoid on a BW tank?

[crazy loaches]

Well, as it's been six days since your first post on this thread you should know by now. If you don't have algae already, just count your blessings and don't change anything!

Well, on my 75G when I first set it up for plants I didnt get my big algae outbreak for about 1-2mo. Anyhow, I do have some brownish algea that turns my nice white 'rift rock' dingy brown, although a toothbrush seems to get most of it, and it also forms a brownish layer on the surface of my arogonite substrate. Nothing terribly bad, but enough to make me pull the plug on the one bulb to see if the tank will be better of with just a single 6700K 65W bulb. Although I am still really unsure of nutrient dosing since what I do on my 75 is the estimative index dosing, but that is best used with pressurized co2 and high light.

[puffermama]

Yeah, the problem with pulling the plug on the light as you say, is if you want your plants to stand any chance at all of surviving the irritation they have to put up with from the salt.

I want plants, so I've decided to do everything to try to keep them 'happy', knowing full well this will also encourage the algae. Sorry if that's no help but I can't see any other way around the problem than medication (if you want plants).

I'm trying that at the moment and the result so far is something that would make even Superman afraid, but hopefully ... in time ...

I don't know what you mean by estimative dosing, I would not change the amount of food I gave for any reason other than the fishes requirements.