Ok I am new to the planted tank but not that new. I've tried the yeast co2 and found more algea with it and dead fish. Started to try excel and double dosing and am seeing good groth about half inch to an inch every day. Have been looking at presserized setup and not sure if its worth it from what I've seen from yeast. Is there a diference between yeast and pressuized in the amont of growth? I know co2 levels would be more stable. Just don't know if its really worth $200 if it turns out like yeast. I have a 29 gal tank, 65 watts cf 50/50(I know this isn't the bulb I should be using but thats what the retro kit came with), 2x20 watss flourecent 6500k, ferts from greg watson n-p-k, Iron, plantex, barr's gh booster, 50/50 flourite and gavel, lighting on 11-12 hrs a day. Fish are 1 oto, 1 flying fox,2 dwarf neon rainbows, 3 long finned lepord danio's, 1 glo orarge danio, 1 crown tail beta, 12 ghost shrimp, and 1 wood shrimp. Plants are ludwigia repens, purple cabomba, moneywort, ludwigia peruenis, wisteria, myriophyllum green, myriophyllum red, ruben sword, bacopa caroliniana, narrow leaf ludwigia, rotala indica, dwarf hair grass, rosy hygrophila, and java fern. I would consider it to be very heavily planted as it is hard to find room for any of the cuttings to be planted. filters are 1 elite mini and a 185 gph powerhead with gravelvac filled with 3 sponges. Any advice would be helpful. And thanks in advance for any help.
CO2 ?
- Thread starter tinkerman
- Start date
tinkerman;771870; said:
Start by reading this sticky. I took the liberty of fixing the spelling on several of your plants. Few quick recommendations on plants. For such a small tank, you should consider removing several of them, and concentrating on just a couple different species. The ruben sword should definitely go, as it will grow far too large.
Now as for the co2, there are four ways to make usable carbon available for your plants. 1) Pressurized co2 2) reaction co2 3) liquid carbon 4) chemical reaction co2. Now reaction co2 and pressurized both utilize carbon dioxide. This gas must be properly diffused into the water to be usable. The actual reactor, or diffuser is one of the most important parts to these two systems. Reaction is very difficult, but is good for small tanks. Liquid carbon is decent, but the growth rate using just liquid carbon is dramatically slower than that of reaction or pressurized co2. Chemical reaction co2 costs more than pressurized, and doesn't last long, so I won't try it. For large tanks both liquid carbon and reaction carbon costs more than pressurized. I use excel in my 20 gallon, but that tank is a low tech planted tank. I would recommend you to go back to the reaction style, but use a good reactor, or diffuser. One big issue you may be running into with reaction co2, is how much surface agitation you have.
Are you certain the bacopa you have is caroliniana?
Final thing, you are required to post a picture.
What about this crap that i see all the time?
http://cgi.ebay.com/Fresh-Water-Aqu...101913592QQcategoryZ66794QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/Fresh-Water-Aqu...101913592QQcategoryZ66794QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Those are the chemical reaction types. They are very expensive, for 2 reasons. 1) the bars only last a few weeks, and are only for very small tanks, 35 gallons and smaller. 2) the type of energy needed to run them. Notice that the plug style on most of them is a 220V socket which is what your oven and dryer/washer use. While you will only pay 20 for the single unit, if you have a 70, 100, 140 gallon tank, that is 2, 3, or 4 220 plugs, which would cost a lot to have installed. Also, the carbon plates are generally $50-100 each.
I wouldn't quite call the tank heavily planted. Few things to talk about with the pictures. First, the filters tubing that goes to the surface... it doesn't pull air in through there does it? If it does get rid of the tubing. Next, your bacopa looks more like b. monnieri rather than b. caroliniana. Easily verified, by when you clip the bacopa, pull it out of the water, and smell the severed stem. If it smells very strong like eucalyptus then it is b. caroliniana, if not, it is b. monnieri. Next thing to note, the dwarf hair grass, that is in the front, needs to be removed from its rockwool and basket.
A note with the bacopa. My bacopa caroliniana is in my 135, with my fully setup high-tech setup. I have pressurized co2 at ~60ppm 5-6 bps, run through a diffuser. The bacopa caroliniana I have will grow 6-8" every day. Without the pressurized, but with excel I would get 6-8" in approximately 16-18 days.
A note with the bacopa. My bacopa caroliniana is in my 135, with my fully setup high-tech setup. I have pressurized co2 at ~60ppm 5-6 bps, run through a diffuser. The bacopa caroliniana I have will grow 6-8" every day. Without the pressurized, but with excel I would get 6-8" in approximately 16-18 days.
i have that stuff you have in front of the drift wood.
stuff grows like crazy! i started out with 4-5 strnds of it and it grew to where i had to put it in 4 separate tanks. looks cool planted lengthwise like a runner carpet.
stuff grows like crazy! i started out with 4-5 strnds of it and it grew to where i had to put it in 4 separate tanks. looks cool planted lengthwise like a runner carpet.
The bacopa carolina is in pic 1,2,5. I have bacopa monnieri in pic 2 and 3. there is no tubing in the tank, what I think your seeing is the silacone in the corner from a past malichite green treatment. When I was injecting the yeast co2 it was at about 1 bps which was droping my ph from 7.4 to 6.4-6.2. I also tried adding a air pump at night add still lost fish. So im not sure what i'm doing wrong with the yeast. I've tried putting it in the intake of my powerhead, upsidedown bowl, into the elite mini powerhead, I had the powerhead blowing through the gravelvacand putting the co2 into that withsponge on the bottom so the bubbles couldn't get out, I even have a needle valve in the line or at least a gang valve that works as one and can get me down to 1 bps. I've just gotten extremly fustrated with the whole yeast thing that I'm ready to give up on it unless I can figure it out.
Oh and if this isn't heavily planted then what is?
Oh and if this isn't heavily planted then what is?