Growth on driftwood

[CassCats]

No they won't melt from the bubbles vals come from lakes and rivers with high flow and are exposed to that often.

 

[Joybutlookslikedelusion]

No they won't melt from the bubbles vals come from lakes and rivers with high flow and are exposed to that often.

Oh that's good to hear. I'll be updating if I remember to come back lol. Wish me luck ! Hopefully I took action soon enough better than never

 

[Joybutlookslikedelusion]

High parameters can also contribute to it.

It's difficult because you've got nitrates in your tap already, but you have a couple options.


More plants, especially fast growing ones like hornwort, floating plants, water sprite, brazilian pennywort, elodea, etc. Vals and crypts are slower growers so won't use as much nitrates as quickly as you'd need them to.

So, you have 3 options and you can even do a combo of them:

1) quadruple the amount of plants in that tank. You can out compete algae ironically by often adding way more plants.

2) create a separate reservoir of water with a light and airstone, say a tote bin or a big old rain barrel. A week before your water change, fill it with water from your tap. Have it full of duckweed or water lettuce to eat up the nitrates in the tap water. Use that water then to refill your tank during water change.

3) get an RODI system, it will strip your water of nearly everything in it. They're expensive, but sometimes necessary. Again, you'd be looking at a reservoir system with this potentially if you got larger tanks at all, but this water can be further adjusted with GH, KH, and pH to where you need it to be for your fish.

So I'm back the update is the reservoir is up for almost a month now with baby water lettuces, water Sprite and wisteria but still it reads high nitrates but I guess the plants are still young and I dose fert's in there but only once a week after a water change mainly macros and micros (I know I shouldn't be adding more nitrate, but the plants need k and p too, if I am not mistaken?)

Added more stems to my tank as well 2 weeks ago

 

[Colin_T]

You don't normally add NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus & potassium) to an aquarium. Aquarium plants get their nitrogen from fish food and waste in the water (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate).
Phosphorus is normally used for root growth in terrestrial plants and will encourage algae in tanks. Most aquatic plants take in nutrients via their leaves, not roots.
Potassium is used to promote fruit and flowers on plants. Most aquatic plants don't flower or produce fruit and adding potassium to an aquarium is a waste of time.

If you have a heavily planted aquarium with no fish in then you can add NPK, but in a normal aquarium there really isn't any need for it.

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If the surface on the water container is covered in plants and they are getting good light, they should remove any nitrates within a week, maybe sooner. Plants can have the light on for up to 16 hours per day. If you get lots of algae in the tank then reduce the light. Since you are trying to grow floating plants to remove nitrates, I would increase lighting periods to 16 hours a day for a few weeks and see how the water quality goes.

 

[Joybutlookslikedelusion]

You don't normally add NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus & potassium) to an aquarium. Aquarium plants get their nitrogen from fish food and waste in the water (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate).
Phosphorus is normally used for root growth in terrestrial plants and will encourage algae in tanks. Most aquatic plants take in nutrients via their leaves, not roots.
Potassium is used to promote fruit and flowers on plants. Most aquatic plants don't flower or produce fruit and adding potassium to an aquarium is a waste of time.

If you have a heavily planted aquarium with no fish in then you can add NPK, but in a normal aquarium there really isn't any need for it.

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If the surface on the water container is covered in plants and they are getting good light, they should remove any nitrates within a week, maybe sooner. Plants can have the light on for up to 16 hours per day. If you get lots of algae in the tank then reduce the light. Since you are trying to grow floating plants to remove nitrates, I would increase lighting periods to 16 hours a day for a few weeks and see how the water quality goes.

Oh, no, I don't add macros to my "fish-ed" tank just micros and one macro, being the potassium per week except for the reservoir outside which is fishless so it gets all the macros. The only ferts that have npk that I purposely put in there are root tabs for the crypts cause in my situation they really perk up when they get their root candies lol.

And I raised the water level of the reservoir to lessen the shade from the container because it's a bit deep and make it more closer to the sunlight. Hopefully the plants start eating the nitrates up soon.

Also, are these diatoms still? Thanks again!