REAL PLANTS AND GRAVEL?

32 posts • Page 2 of 4

Discuss all topics related to freshwater and planted tanks.


Peterkarig3210
 
Posts: 1980
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:04 am

by Peterkarig3210

I'm coming in kind of late in the thread. All I want to say is that Anubias, my favorite low light plant, will grow in anything as well as on wood. It comes in leaf sizes from the size of a dime to that of a large orange shaped football.

I have mainly gravel, a mix of relatively fine to medium sized, in my 100 gallon planted and Amazon sword, anubias, even vall (a reed like plant) grows pretty well in it. Val requires a bit more light though.

I recently started a planted tank where I chose a mix of Eco-Complete and fluorite because these are considered the best for plants, though you can't use an undergravel filter with these.


Snowboss4492
 
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Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2008 11:24 pm

by Snowboss4492

also - -if i might butt in here . . . .if you've been running those lights 24/7 for 5 months straight ....I'd say you've gotten all the goody out of em.....rule of thumb I use is ...new bulbs every 6 months {and thats running 2 timers on 10K and actinic, different lighting sorry} but the theory is the same on bulb life....after 5-6 months you are loseing your spectrum and not getting much benifiet....especially if your entertaining live plants.....just a thought,

Snowboss


miami754
 
Posts: 373
Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:18 am

by miami754

Nice call, snowboss. That didn't cross my mind, but you are absolutely correct.


Poetic_Irony2267
 
Posts: 297
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:42 pm

by Poetic_Irony2267

SB with the save!! I try to change my bulbe every 4 months though because i am running a higher time level than most, i run roughly 12 hrs on my flora suns, cause they are purple color and simulate more of morning and evening hours, and my spectra max i run six, the spectras are on a timer, for six hours during the midday time of my cycle and the floras on for full 12 my plants and fish could not be happier. the extra light is needed for some of the plants that i have. although i want to get a set of moon light lamps for the night time eventually when my wallet recovers from all the spending i have done in the past three months!!! eventually i want to simulate a full natural light cycle and work with the phases of the moon, more or less an experiment really, i want to follow the tides so to speak, even in a fish tank it's still water and the moon has an effect on water water everywhere. so in this thinking i want to simulate the entire natural cycle and see if this effects my tank and fish in any way shape or form as far as comfort and creating an entire biosphere type environment. as fish keepers we try to mimic natural environments as best as we can so that fish health is at peak at all times, that's kind of where i am coming from with this, what ya think?
these are all just ideas that i thought i would throw out there not to hijack this post but i feel like it's sound thinking and that everyone reading this post could benefit from reading....
Brandon


Peterkarig3210
 
Posts: 1980
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:04 am

by Peterkarig3210

I'm envious of your set up Brandon. Sounds wonderful. My co2 is showing positive results with my plants. I'm working with old light though, and I'm sure it would be better with a $450.00 money dump to get new bulbs.


Poetic_Irony2267
 
Posts: 297
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:42 pm

by Poetic_Irony2267

LOL peter i've lost track of how much money i have into this thing at this point, if i were to guess probably around 2k would be more but the lfs cuts me deals and when they order they call me and see if i need anything special and will usually let me order at their cost because i bring them a ton of business. lets put it this way, you wouldn't want my electric bill.... actually had a call from the electric company about the spike when i started hooking up the lighting system. co2 is a great thing, also, you know how i am always saying no chems, and try to stay chem free, welllllllll, one of my friends who has a 500gal planted discus tank gave me a small bottle of some stuff to add four caps three times a week, i was like well i guess i can do it and watch my lvls and see if this throws me off, i tried it the past week and have seen inches of growth on almost all of my plants one of them not sure what it is but i figure it's in the cabomba fam, grew over a foot in a week. it's called kent freshwater Pro.Plant, it's a freshwater growth accelerator... i doubt i will use it every week or even more than once a month as i am still not so sure i like the idea of stressing my plants out with too much (steroid) type supplements, so i think i will use it sparingly, did bring my ph up .2 but after a r/o water top off it brought me back down to the 6.5 steady that i have been at for what seems like forever. give it a shot and see if it helps your plants at all, if you are working with older lighting it may help to boost them chemically. also i think i am going to start unplugging my co2 units at night instead of turning them down to zero, my turquoise checkerboard was rather light in color this morning when i started the lighting cycle, now he is perfect but i wonder if there are trace amounts of co2 still leaking into the tank over night? wondering what your thoughts are on this? also wanted to get your thoughts on a 110gal i might be buying, it's a custom long tank only 14 inches tall and about fifteen inches deep and somewhere around 8 ft long, i was thinking white sand upfront with a thick layer of the ecocomplete in the back so i can plant swords, then i want to put discus and fresh water rays in it, either that or do a complete brackish river bed system with each end being like the bank, lol a cross section of sorts. which do you think would look better?


Peterkarig3210
 
Posts: 1980
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:04 am

by Peterkarig3210

I think you should go ahead a buy that other tank if you want. I just saw a 75 gallon salt water tank with 75 pounds live rock, lighting, filters etc and 4 fish in the paper for $100! I WISH I had the money.

As far as co2 at night, i know that is the time plants actually produce co2 so if you leave your system running the level may go up at night. I've asked a number of people about whether this is a good idea and some say turn it off, some say leave it on (to avoid a big pH increace at night), and some say it doesn't matter. I'm leaving mine connected at night now for simplicity.

Chemistry is usually more involved than what I can guess at myself, so I don't know if the pH actually does rise significantly at night if you let the co2 run, or whether there are buffers or the co2 diffuses faster as the % increases.

Anyway, my co2 system has been on for 3 days and I see noticeable growth increace. This is a tank with at least 130 large fry and they're growing fast, and I also have 8 algae eaters that are starting to make an impact on the brush algae in this tank. I assume I have a lot of fertiliser from the fish so I haven't added any recently. Maybe if I test nitrates and they're zero I will add some. I'll look for Pro Plant next time I go to the store.

The Eco-Complete should settle well with sand as the fine grained EC will be similar in size to the sand. I wish I had used only EC for my tank though it still looks OK with fluorite and EC mixed.

I bet your plants are growing to the top by now. I love seeing daily growth.

I think it's Miami who is writing an article on r/o water. What is so good about this stuff? Isn't it devoid of minerals and trace elements like distilled water?


Poetic_irony3872
 
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:34 am

by Poetic_irony3872

Peter, i did a bit of research, the r/o water is good for the tank because it is devoid of nitrite, phosphate, and other chemicles that are in your tap water, for discus it's good because the ph is nuetral, and it allows you to adjust your ph, naturaly (plants and co2 and other elements) along with using chemicle buffers, the driftwood is essentially a naturaly in house buffer for discus tanks and keeps the ph on the lower end of the spectrum. i like to add it because it's pure, there is nothing but h2o in the water and you don't have to worry about uncontrolable tap water ph. am actually thinking about setting up an r/o filter on my big tank on the oposite side as my regular filter as this will mix well and add a little bit more current to the water. i figure if i put the r/o return at the bottom of the tank or the substrate line what this will do is cause the water to mix rapidly as the heavier water with all the trace elements will force the r/o water to the top mixing itself with the water already in the tank, pure h2o should be lighter because the atoms don't have all of the other chems and trace elements attached to it or rather mixed with it. i still need to do a little more research but i feel my thinking is sound on ths one, anyone feel free to correct me if i am wrong, it's better to be told hey dumby you know nothing than it is to go on being a dumby and thinking you know something.... LOL
Brandon


miami754
 
Posts: 373
Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:18 am

by miami754

There are several reasons people don't recommend using pure r/o water. First is because it is devoid of any trace elements, but I guess if you added the elements yourself - that would be fine. Secondly, it can get expensive so mixing it with tap water is a good way to reduce this cost (this also depends on the size of your tank - for smaller tanks, it doesn't really matter, but for larger tanks it will). Lastly, it has zero kH and gH so it has a very difficult time prohibiting large pH swings. I guess you could get around this by adding some buffers to the water like you said, but then you are essentially doing the same thing as adding some tap water. It really is just a personal choice. It sounds like all the things you are thinking of adding to the tank/water are to remedy these problems so they really are one in the same. You can either adjust the r/o water via chemicals/driftwood, and such or you can make up a r/o - tap water mixture that fits your needs. The choice is yours.

In terms of the densities of the two waters, I'm not sure about this thinking. I will have to look around, but I am not so sure that the densities are different enough to matter. Are the trace elements actually chemically bonded to the water molecules? If not then the r/o water and tap water will just mix together and there will be no separation. Like I said, I'm not saying you are wrong as I don't know, but I need to look into it.

Sorry, Peter, I had a large project come up at work so I didn't finish that article yet. I am going to submit it today though so it should be up soon. I'm going to look up this density thing first.
Last edited by miami754 on Sat Apr 12, 2008 6:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.


Peterkarig3210
 
Posts: 1980
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:04 am

by Peterkarig3210

OOps! I didn't scrole to the last post Miami.


Is it essentially distilled water? I know I was suggesting Zambize use spring water regardless of the differences in different "spring" water because I know fish do need some trace elements and I thought it would be easier for him to use that than to try and figure out a proper mix of r/o water and tap water.




About the other "chemistry" thing, I think that weight of water has more to do with temperature than the trace elements it contains.


Spring water, if it's really "spring" water should have been percolating through rock strata imbuing it with trace minerals and salts so depending on the "spring" it comes from it should be appropriate water to use I would think.

REAL PLANTS AND GRAVEL?

32 posts • Page 2 of 4

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