Need advice on lowering pH in SA tanks

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
probassfisher010 said:
I would probably do half and half... all plant bulbs would make your tank more yellow, or daylight t8s which gives a nice white, but your plants would suffer. Half and half makes a nice shade in the middle, but if you compare one side of the tank to the other, you'll notice the difference in bulbs.


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Pyramid brought up a point that has me thinking. Is my plants dying due to lighting or nutrients? If I change the bulbs to something better, will it solve the dying off problem? If its nutrients, I can change that around if need be.


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It isn't nutrients because you are dosing those, but your lighting is very weak, definitely could be the cause. Pyramid is talking more co2 then nutrients. If you want to set up a co2 system before you upgrade your lighting, be my guest, but in my opinion the lights are holding you back.


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To be honest almost all plants can be grown with low lights they just grow slower. Plants dying could be either they are new and going through shock or infertile substrate, or some missing nutrients. They could have also been in bad shape to begin with. CO2 accelerates growth but the plants need to have nutrients available. IMO, having lower lights is probably better because it allows you room to make errors as well as less demand for nutrients by plants. Post a pic up of your plants.
 
Been there done that with t8s, not worth it IMO. Substrate is also huge, but I don't use anything special, just a fine grain sand and my plants do all right. My red flame sword would probably be better in a thicker substrate though..


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Pyramid_Party said:
To be honest almost all plants can be grown with low lights they just grow slower. Plants dying could be either they are new and going through shock or infertile substrate, or some missing nutrients. They could have also been in bad shape to begin with. CO2 accelerates growth but the plants need to have nutrients available. IMO, having lower lights is probably better because it allows you room to make errors as well as less demand for nutrients by plants. Post a pic up of your plants.
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This app will only get me take a pic with my ipad, but its not working. I have been having a few issues with the app. I will see if I can get pics loaded through my computer later tonight when I get home from work. Here are a few descriptions.

Java fern: These are pretty green with a few leaves having a little bit of brown on the top of the leaf. Otherwise they look good.

Moneywort: One of them has been stripped clean of leaves. I have witnessed everyone eating on the torn leaves, but I think my sevs were the ones destroying them in the first place. The other one has not been touched and looks good. All green with some unusual yellow/white root looking things growing from the plant side above the sediment. It almost looks like it is growing roots to take nutrients from the water.

Oriental swords: These are the ones not looking good. Not a single leaf is a lush green color. The best looking leaves are a yellowish green. The bad leaves turned yellow and started to develop wholes in the leaves (I think this is courtesy of my SAE). There is one leaf that looked like it was new, growing from the center of the plant, that has turned red and yellow. I have no way to explain that one. It's the only one in the tank like that.

I use a small sized gravel in a tank that has been running without issue for over 6 months. I suction the gravel at least once a week. Sometimes twice if I feel the water gets cloudy. I also have algae growing on the glass of my aquarium. Is it possible the algae is out competing the plants for nutrients? My SAE is always munching on the algae, but I think it's growing too fast for him to handle. I scrub the sides of the tank once a week when I do my water changes. Water temp is 81 degrees constantly. pH is currently about 7.3.

If you need any further info, I'm happy to give it.


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Your low to moderate light plants are doing fine, but you oriental sword which is moderate to high light, and also requires fertilizers with co2 being recommended(did a quick search). So if I were you I'd stick to some of the less demanding plants and toss the oriental swords.


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probassfisher010 said:
Your low to moderate light plants are doing fine, but you oriental sword which is moderate to high light, and also requires fertilizers with co2 being recommended(did a quick search). So if I were you I'd stick to some of the less demanding plants and toss the oriental swords.


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Okay. I might just do that. The poor swords don't seem to like my setup. Glad they were only $5 each. Can you recommend some good low resource requiring plants? I know of java ferns and anubis, but nothing else. My moneywort does well, so I might get some more of those.

I have half and half with java ferns. Half are actually inside holes in my driftwood and half are in the gravel. Now that you mention it, my java ferns in the driftwood have done very well and grown quite a bit compared to my gravel java ferns. I will replant them in the driftwood holes still available.

Obviously I don't want to have only driftwood plants. Can you recommend some low resource plants that I can successfully plant in the gravel?


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