I have a brand new tank that's been running a fishless cycle for about 2 weeks. I'm still in the nitrite peak, so there's a while to go before I start adding fish.
I have, however, started adding a couple of plants. And they're not doing well at all. They've been there for a week, and the fern is going brown, and the valisneria is slowly turning transparent. It's a shallow-ish 20 gal long tank, so about 12" deep, with a 24" LED fixture across the top. The fern is perched at the top of some bogwood, about 2" below the surface, directly under the light.
I've been doing some reading about filters and the whole filtering process, and I'm wondering if the issue is that the carbon in my filter cartridges is pulling out the nutrients from the water before the plants get them. I've been adding about 1ml of fertilizers per day (a mix of soluble potassium nitrate, potassium sulfate, epsom salts, and CSM+B.
I'm thinking I may want to cut back on the light (though it's a comparatively low light setup for now), they've been getting easily 14 hours a day. For now I'm focusing on the filter media. It's a newbie type HOB Marina Penguin.
I suppose the only real way to figure out what the plants aren't happy with is to experiment, so I've decided to cut open the filter cartridge and dump out the carbon for now. I'll wait a week and see. If having no carbon causes the plants to perk up some, then I may stop buying filter cartridges altogether, cut out the fuzzy part of my existing filter pad (bacteria live there, I know...) and stuff it in there along with some pot scrubbies or sections of sponge that I can rotate out to act as mechanical filter media. I'll keep a few carbon loaded cartridges around in case I ever have need to remove discoloration or persistent bad smells.
Thoughts?
I have, however, started adding a couple of plants. And they're not doing well at all. They've been there for a week, and the fern is going brown, and the valisneria is slowly turning transparent. It's a shallow-ish 20 gal long tank, so about 12" deep, with a 24" LED fixture across the top. The fern is perched at the top of some bogwood, about 2" below the surface, directly under the light.
I've been doing some reading about filters and the whole filtering process, and I'm wondering if the issue is that the carbon in my filter cartridges is pulling out the nutrients from the water before the plants get them. I've been adding about 1ml of fertilizers per day (a mix of soluble potassium nitrate, potassium sulfate, epsom salts, and CSM+B.
I'm thinking I may want to cut back on the light (though it's a comparatively low light setup for now), they've been getting easily 14 hours a day. For now I'm focusing on the filter media. It's a newbie type HOB Marina Penguin.
I suppose the only real way to figure out what the plants aren't happy with is to experiment, so I've decided to cut open the filter cartridge and dump out the carbon for now. I'll wait a week and see. If having no carbon causes the plants to perk up some, then I may stop buying filter cartridges altogether, cut out the fuzzy part of my existing filter pad (bacteria live there, I know...) and stuff it in there along with some pot scrubbies or sections of sponge that I can rotate out to act as mechanical filter media. I'll keep a few carbon loaded cartridges around in case I ever have need to remove discoloration or persistent bad smells.
Thoughts?
