Fert / Bio Load Test In Progress.

[MrWaxhead]

I am currently running a test on my 50g tank, I planted it July 11th with clipings from both my planted 29g tanks, and am doing the following and want to know if I am looking at a meltdown hehe.

I started it out with co2 and 3.7 watts per gallon 10 hour light cycle and my normal routine of seachem ferts and light to moderate stocking of critters. And everything ran as per expected decent growth everything working good and steady growth with water parameters at the following levels.

ph 6.4 day for (29.85 ppm c02) 6.5 at night for (23ppm c02). I had to run the following way for those levels, pressurized on timer with my lighting and a pair of diy ladders with champaign yeast and brown sugar running 24/7 with a weekly change of of alternating bottles on my water change day. I found if I left my c02 running my ph went down to about 6.2 overnight and if I just let it shut of, I went up to about 6.8 overnight. So I run this way to keep my ph stable. I will eventually just run my pressurized for a longer period like 15 or 16 hours, but I only have two small bottles one I run and one to swap to while the other is being filled, and they only last about a month, so until I get a bigger bottle, I will use DIY as the night supply.

kh 2.5

gh 3.5

ammonia 0

nitrite 0

nitrate between 5 and 10 mg/l


Since Aug 11 I have done the following I run two mature filters that can each on there own filter my aquarium. I run them at about 70% each and have attached a piece of wood with java moss at one of outflows (this one churned the surface real bad, the other HOB does not) being that they are crappy HOB filters (solely to keep surface aggitation down and still have good flow works extremely well), I have yet to upgrade my filters to what I would like to run on it, I want a canister with spraybar and a wet dry trickle that I am going to build out of one of my old 29g tanks.

Basically I have done the following test that is still in progress, I have lightly overstocked my tank with mainly cardinals, and japonica shrimp, snails and corries. And have pretty much stopped all my ferts completely, I am only dosing iron once a week and trace bi weekly and have changed my weekly tank maintance, I used to pull 10g out of my 50g once a week and lightly clean one of the three filter compartments and rotate which one got cleaned weekly so, two were always loaded and one clean, and each one gets hit once every three weeks. I am now still doing the same rotation but I only pull 5g out weekly to keep more of fish bio mass as a fert. And my water parameters are all exactly the same as they were before of the ones I stated earlier. And my growth has actually improved on this 15 day cycle as compared to my last 15 day cycle with ferts.

What I am wondering is do you think this will work in the long run or am I just getting by on the coat tails of the ferts that were lingering in my tank from the last cycle, and eventually start to starve the plants of nutrients etc.

Here was my tank on Aug 11 last day of ferts added. (the small clup of riccia was a volunteer, I had stopped c02 on the 29g the moss clippings came from (and it melted very fast I thought it was 100% gone to be honest), and in the month from going into this tank and this pic it bounced back.

And here was my tank today. With the following changes made, All the riccia had exploded in growth and was about a 5 inch very dense pillow on the moss, so I clipped it down, took a rock full of caves and tied it down to it in the lower left corner. The entire base system for the moss and riccia is all hollow tunnel laden rocks that my corries spend most of the day in (really neat to watch them putter around from cave to cave under the moss and riccia) The right of my tank is similar, its all wood root system with lace and normal java fern above the root system, and they fish love working around in there too.

And I had removed the sand that had the grass right after the first pic was taken, and put in flora base and replanted the grass. Other then that the rest was just straight forward growth over the last 15 days with as mentioned only a weekly iron shot and a bi weekly trace shot. I am testing to see if my fish can supply all the N and P I need etc.

Basically I am only trying this as I pretty much ran out of ferts, and live in a small town with a pet store that does not stock em, and did not have a chance / time work and kids etc, to drive to the nearest town with better lfs. So I figured hell maybe I could try bio load and upped my fish stock to elevate my levels of bio ferts, and hoped that increasing my filter flow would compensate (when i am running ferts I run each filter at about 50%, and I upped the flow to about 70% on each one while I upped the bio load. I figured it was no harm in trying as I have a 29g that is mature and very lightly stocked if I need to bring my 50g stock back down and start dosing again. Basically I am sick of paying for liquid ferts, and if this little test fails I am going to order some dry ferts and start dosing again.

Please if anyone has tryed this or knows for sure that I am going to crash and burn let me know so I can start altering my stocking and redosing. For the time being I am just watching my tank very close and monitoring my levels and fish behavior very closely. So far so good but as I said earlier I am worried I am just eating up the tail ends of my normal dosing, as 15 days is not a ton of time.

 

[nry]

There should be no issue with the pH swing overnight when the CO2 is off, the change in pH is so gradual there is little or no chance of it affecting the fish. Unless you found it was affecting the fish, but my pH likely swings ~1 when the CO2 is on/off.

Lovely looking layout though, very natural!

 

[MrWaxhead]

Well my issue was a .4 swing nightly as my water is pretty soft. And I noticed my cardinals really came out in colour when I stopped this nightly swing. And it just seemed kinda high to me, so I figured if I could keep the swing from happing why not, as it in the end must be better for the critters not to be going ahh I am acidic, damn I am trying to sleep and I am damn near neutral now every day of there lifes.

 

[MrWaxhead]

I forgot to mention too, I don't if it makes a difference or not but I pretty much only feed my fish frozen foods as well, blood worms and brine shrimp etc.

 

[Underwurlde]

All important question in my mind is: What is the substrate? (sorry if it is mentioned in there).

I looks to me like you are reinventing the wheel a la 'el natural' tank approach to keeping plants. This approach to keeping aquatic plants relys on low lighting, a fish load. The fish crap and wee, this feeds the substrate that in turn over time feeds the plants. With such setups therefore, bio filtration may not be necessary as well as minimal, if no, water changes.

You'll eventually come to this conclusion:
Lower lighting levels (less than 2 to 1.5W per gallon)
Fert dosing is not essential. No CO2 needed.
A Fish load with no or very little filtration, feed the fish well, and hence the plants.
A good fertile substrate.
Fast growing, preferrably emergant plants.
Plant growth will be slow but steady.

Andy

PS, have you read 'ecology of the planted aquarium' by Diana Walstad. This is what this is all about.

 

[MrWaxhead]

Thanks for the reply, I am using plant sand on the left side but its all moss and riccia on rocks. Floura base in the middle where my rooted plants are, and plain gravel and larger rocks on the right under my knotted wood section will all java based ferns tied high on them to leave a mangrovish kinda feeling under them.

And no I have not read her book, I may check it out though. And I kinda went the other way I guess and upped my filtration, but am going to keep my water changes light, and hope its enough to keep harmful toxins down but leave enough nitrate etc for the plants to absorb. Like I said I could be going in a very bad direction but thought I would give it a short term shot hehe.

 

[Underwurlde]

It's a change of approach really to now consider your plants as the filters. They will readily take up ammonia / ammonium / nitrite / nitrate. The trick is to support the plants, buffer so to speak, with a good substrate and to have enough plants. Fast growers / emergent ariel plants will keep the algae at bay which is most people's biggest bug bear.

If you go >2.0W / gal then you're wanting to add ferts to support the better growth now expected. Add huge amounts of light and we're back into EI dosing territory. What you've stumbled across is a kind of 'El Natural' / EI hybrid. This is not unheard of (it's what I do with great success and for me minimal effort - the effort, time and expense is what put me off pure EI).

Your substrate is not good enough for pure 'El Natural' and you've found that because for your slightly higher lighting you've found you've had to dose.

I mix my own NPK ferts using KNO3 and KH2PO4. I order these in pure powder form from www.gardendirect.co.uk. For trace I use SeaChem Flourish. (If you do not have emergent plants, get CO2 in there and consider using Excel). I dose directly into my tank as I found premixing PMDD a pain in the butt.

Andy

 

[MrWaxhead]

Well shouldn't my substrate be fine as the natural areas, meaning the unfertile areas all have plants that don't even go into the ground they all water feed. And any of my areas that have plants that root feed have redsea flourabase as nutrients (which draws nutrients into itself from the waste and water) . I did it that was so only areas that needed fertile ground have substrate that would basically pull nutrients out of the water to feed those areas, and plain substrate on areas that in no way needed them. I kinda figured that way I would be leaving as much as possible in the water and only drawn nutrients into the soil for areas that needed them, and not draw them out of the water for areas that did not. Basically I added one full bag of floura bag enough for about 10 gallons, so about 20% of my base is fertile, but then again, only that much of my tank is technically planted, the rest is all water feeder, java moss and ferns, anubis etc.

And yes as I stated, I am still dosing iron weekly and seachum flourish trace bi weekly but that is it atm. And I am already running c02 and as far as dosing, yes I had to dose due to the fact I have decent light and c02 so the plants are in high gear and wanted nurtients. But that is what I am currently trying to see if I can lessen my fert dosing in exchange for bio mass fish waste dosing. And so far my plants have grown more in the 15 days of excess bio mass dosing, then they did in the month before when I was full on seachem dosing. But like I said, I may be on the coat tails of my old dosing as well as the bio mass, and things may deplete alot over the next few weeks. I guess I will soon see.

 

[MrWaxhead]

Kinda curious, as to others thoughts, is this going to be a recipe for disaster. And if so, what would you suggest to as far as tweeking towards a low key approach to working off bio load to lesson my tanks dependence on ferts with its current level of light and c02 etc?

 

[MrWaxhead]

There has only been 3 days since the last pic but things are still moving along well.

Aug 11, Last day of ferts. One month of being planted

Aug 26, 15 days later

Aug 29, 3 more days

Growth still going strong, no signs of old leaves dying to feed the new ones.

3 more days and a crap pic was right after lights on and there is pearling etc going on this early in the morn, but it has been exactly 3 weeks to the day since I upped my stock and pretty much stopped my ferts. And I was desperate for a chop down day today, things are getting to bushy so I am gonna buck some stuff down today.
Sept 1, 3 weeks from first pic

 

[MrWaxhead]

Its been 3 weeks now (since last fert dosing) and things still seem to be going strong. I am going to do a pretty hard chop today, I wanted to wait a month but things are getting to the point of covering the light on certain areas to much.

 

[MrWaxhead]

Its now 4 weeks since ending my fert routine and my plants have gone from.
Aug,11

To here Sept,7

With several sizable trims along the way.

 

[MrWaxhead]

I am now 6 weeks into this with only dosing iron and trace, I have not put any npk etc in since aug 11. I have chopped down the riccia several times as its growing much faster then it ever has in the past. I decided to make a fan out of it and grow it vertically up behind the other patches, rather then turf it.

 

[plantbrain]

What is your tap water?
Also, generally you will run out of PO4 before NO3 if you use fish food only.

Less light will slow things down some and allow more from fish waste.
After 1 month or so, the plant's reserves are now gone if things where lean.

The thing is, the nutrients need to be coming in from somewhere and calibrated test kits, tap water etc are possible issues here.
The fish load is not particularly large either.


Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[MrWaxhead]

My tap water comes out at 6.8 ph with a kh of about .5 degrees, for some odd reason it buffers to about 7.4ph and about 2.8kh in my tank (not entirely sure why, the only thing I can think of is the snails due to their calcium carbonate shells, all my tanks do this raise in ph and kh), and I have been driving it back down with peat and c02 for a ph of 6.4 and a kh of 2.5

It always holds pretty steady at that level now.

My fish load is as follows,
18 cardinals
10 neons
6 glowlights
4 peppered corries
3 Pearl Gouramis, 1m 2f
1 SAE
7 Japonica Shrimp
8 zebra danios (I am going to trade those out to my sons tank and replace with 8 more cardinals, I was trying to encourage action in the upper levels of the tank)
3 columbian blue reds, that will be traded out to a tank with more of their own kind.
2 White Skirts, that will be traded out as well to a tank with more of their own kind.
In a 50g, so you think that is on the lean side? Also my feeding is twice a day, once with decent flake, the other is small feed of live brine shrimp, or frozen bloodworm or brine shrimp, and bi daily I drop in a tablet for my bottom feeders (one day a spirulina algae, the next time I drop a freeze dried tablet)

As far as nitrates and phosphates so, far I am not seeing any signs of deficiency, to be honest though, I have only ever checked for nitrates and was under the impression keeping phosphates low was good do to algae (granted you have a heap more knowledge on these matters then I, P.S your work and tanks are stunning)

I did noticed you meantioned reserves and that was one of my fears that my plants were thriving on tail ends of ferts and reserves. But I have not seen any signs of my plants canabalising them selves as of yet, all my old growth still seems very healty.

And from reading other things you have said, I do kinda understand that what I am doing is not technically well the safest way, as the ammonia etc still has to be present at some point before my bacteria converts it and my plants start to consume it. I have been testing daily for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. And my test always seem to come up 0, 0, and about 5 to 15 nitrate. And my fish seem very healthy and happy.

But basically you do foresee this method eventually crashing? and if so, what would you change to this (should I be giving a light p04 dose every once in a while etc, or ditch this attempt completely and go back to either EI or a truer natural approach). I am basically trying to see, if I can stay highish light and c02, but lessen my fert load. I was pretty much doing a EI dosing on all my tanks with large water changes, and I am looking to lower my ferts and lesson water changes.