Enough Wpg To Cause Pearling?

[amagphoto]

Have a 55 gallon fresh, planted tank, cycled, various plants , 1/2 about 1 month old (plants), swords, java fern, moss, crypts, cranium, and few others....2.4 wpg, liquid fertilizer once a week (flourish), 2217 eheim filter with j hook for no water disturbance, ph 6.8 kh 6, co2 pressurized system, running for a week, and I'm just not seeing a big difference in growth yet, and very little pearling so far. Is this just a light issue, is 2.4 wpg just not enough to cause alot of pearling.....do have various fish in the tank....put small airstone on at night but from all my research this airstone at night doesnot disburse CO2 so should not be an issue....I'm thinking it's either a wpg issue OR my water tests show my water is hard, reading about 120ppm, so getting ready to do water change and add distilled water to soften it some.....which do you think is the problem?

 

[George Farmer]

You seem to have plenty of light, assuming it is suitable. What lamps are you using, reflectors etc?

With good CO2 and light you should be seeing plenty of pearling after an hour or two of lighting.

What bubble rate are you running for your CO2? I wonder if you have low CO2, as relying on pH/KH tables can be unreliable.

Your fertilising regime is very lean and I wonder if your plants are not being fed sufficiently. Assuming you have good light and CO2 you need to be adding ferts at least 3x week.

Have you considered the Estimative Index (EI)? http/www.fishforums.net/Jamescand39s-Est...le-t104737.html

Your water is fine, not too hard at all. Your plants will do fine in harder water anyway.

 

[sophos9]

CO2 and nutrients.

Take a sample of water from your tank and leave it 24hrs then test the PH, due to the geeky (log) calculations 1PH drop is the equivalent of 30ppm which should be your target. This is a simple test so your can gauge your levels...

Flourish trace should really be dosed 2 x per week min

What tubes have you got in there, watts, tube type and if you know it, spectrum

HTH

 

[geo7x]

Yeah your plants should pearl in that light, I have 1.5wpg on my planted tank with root tabs and nutrafin yeast based co2 and the plants are always pearling

 

[amagphoto]

You seem to have plenty of light, assuming it is suitable. What lamps are you using, reflectors etc?

With good CO2 and light you should be seeing plenty of pearling after an hour or two of lighting.

What bubble rate are you running for your CO2? I wonder if you have low CO2, as relying on pH/KH tables can be unreliable.

Your fertilising regime is very lean and I wonder if your plants are not being fed sufficiently. Assuming you have good light and CO2 you need to be adding ferts at least 3x week.

Have you considered the Estimative Index (EI)? http/www.fishforums.net/Jamescand39s-Est...le-t104737.html

Your water is fine, not too hard at all. Your plants will do fine in harder water anyway.

George,

Thanks for the reply, the lights are a single tube coralife fixture, using the 65watt lights that it came with new, bubble rate probably 3-4 per second, kind of hard to count. I have a feeling from reading your replies it's might be a fert thing....I was afraid to increase my dosage of flourish in lieu of all the algea problems I see in this forum. Looking into and learning about the EI method...just don't understand sufficiently yet to start....but you do think the 2.4 wpg is definitely sufficient for pearling? That narrows it down to the CO2 levels, which I think are ok to good, or the fert regime...

 

[amagphoto]

Yeah your plants should pearl in that light, I have 1.5wpg on my planted tank with root tabs and nutrafin yeast based co2 and the plants are always pearling

Thanks for your reply, I'll try increasing my fertilizers, and hopefully be into an EI schedule when I have a better understanding of it....