Finnex 24/7 help

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Aparker2005

Exodon
MFK Member
Oct 21, 2015
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Alright guys, I haven't received much feedback on my last few posts, and every day I look at my tank I'm getting more and more frustrated. I thought I had the planted tank thing down, but this 125 is driving me crazy. I want to be as low tech as possible, no C02.

Am I not changing water enough? Too often? Not enough light? No C02? Fert issue?

I ordered a set of the GLA dry ferts micros and macros. Started off dosing the recommended schedule every day and then do a WC on Sunday.

I've since stopped that as I was melting plants it seemed, my Ludwigia specifically. I'm now down to macros on Monday, micros on Tuesday, nothing until water change on Sunday.

This is a discus mainly tank and they are growing and doing very good despite one large water change per week. I was doing 50% every 2 days but thought that was harming the plants. I've since decided that I also of course care more for the discus than the plants.

Lightning is 2 30" Finnex planted plus 24/7s, on the 24/8 cycle. I am so confused on this as Finnex said this would grow my plants perfectly. Others say the 24/7 cycle doesn't work with plants. I had a regular planted plus before and had algae problems like crazy despite the lush plant growth. So is this the main culprit?

My plants are Java Fern, Anubius, Amazon Sword, Ludwigia, S repens, and Jungle Val.

Most of my plants have brown algae on them. The Ludwigia is all but melted, and the jungle Val is browning and has tons of "hair" coming from the top.

Anubius and Java Fern are growing. My java Fern all turned brown and looked dead when I moved it to this tank. I've now got a ton of baby plants growing out of the old dead plants, so I think they're good.

The S repens pretty much is just getting this brownish algae on them. They've grown some.

Swords are growing, but slowly. Root tabs don't seem to be doing much.

I'm just at a frustrated point. I'll post pictures of my 125 now, and what my 55 looked like when I had one single 48" planted plus.

I'm thinking I'll just get a 48" Single finnex planted plus to add to this tank and leave it on a timer. Do you think that would help?

55 with a regular 48" planted plus, with much better growth obviously. Then the 125 with not much growth all.



20150920_211625.jpg 20160221_190458.jpg

View attachment 20160221_185746.jpg
 
Are you using any sort of root tabs for the root feeding plants? Most algae outbreaks are caused by excess nutrients in the water... Meaning that dosing every day with fertilizers gave the algae something to feed on, and then by cutting down to once a week has started to starve the plants.

When you have a low tech planted tank but your basically following EI classic dosing regime leaves a big amount of nutrient that the plants are using. This is why it's always suggested to plan ahead of setting up a planted tank, such as deciding what type of tank you want like low tech or high tech, what type of substrate for the plants, are any of the plants heavy root feeders like swords vals crypts.

So lets say your tank is mine.... I see there's sand, but I would lay down at least 3" of flourite in the areas I want the plants along with root tabs, then I would add the plants and then cap the flourite with sand. Now I use osmocote plus root tabs and place 3-4 tabs near each of the heavy root feeding plants, then I add new root tabs every 3-4 months to keep the root feeding plants well supplied with nutrients.

Now lets discuss my tank for a minute.... My 30 gallon tank (36"x12"x16") is moderately planted, and here's the way it's setup...

Lighting - 36" T5HO dual bulb (6500k bulb, wavepoint ultra growth wave bulb)
Filtration - SunSun Hw-302 canister filter
Heater - 200 w Eheim Jager submersible heater
Substrate - 3" SeaChem Flourite planted substrate
Co2 - DIY co2 system using yeast
Fertilizers - EI classic dosing regime with osmocote root tabs

Fertilizer schedule
Mon-Weds-Fri - Macros
Tues-Thurs-Sat - Micros
Sun - 50% water change

Now why am I using the selected bulbs... It's very easy, plants have 2 chlorophyll stages, chlorophyll A & chlorophyll B. Each chlorophyll stage has different peaks to them as this picture shows...

absortionchlorophyll.png



The 6500k bulb wavelengths are shown here...
Light_T5_HO_6500_K.jpg


And the WavePoint Ultra Growth Wave bulb wavelengths are shown here...
ultra_growth_wave.jpg



Now when the bulbs wavelengths are compared to the chlorophyll stages peaks they match up, and the result is healthy, fast growing plants. At first my tank had an algae outbreak, but that was until I added 2 True Siamese Algae Eaters to the tank, and they cleared the tank within a day.



Now the Finnex Planted+ 24/7 is relatively new to the market, however it has poor PAR data... The PAR is only around 30 when the light is 12" above the substrate... I would go with a Finnex Planted+ and suspend it 4" above the top of the tank...

But I suggest unfortunately tearing down the tank, and adding 3" of flourite and root tabs in the places you want the plants... Flourite is well known for having a high CEC, Cation Exchange Capacity. What CEC means is that it's able to soak up nutrients from the water, and slowly release them back to the plants over time.
 
Figured I would do a new comment for this lol, since you want a low tech (low light) tank I think you should follow EI low light weekly dosing regime. Basically you dose macro fertilizers lets say Tuesday only, and micro fertilizers say Thursday only, but you want to do a big 30%-50% water change every Sunday this will help to balance out the tank.

What I do because I use dry fertilizers, because they're cheaper and you get alot for half the price of a liquid solution. But I use a digital gram/ounce scale and measure out the amount of each fertilizer, then the macro ferts are put together in the same cup, and the micro ferts CSM+B has it's own cup. I use a fertilizer calculator which tells me how much of each fertilizer the tank needs and how often to dose the tank....

I use this fert calculator - http://rotalabutterfly.com/

I enter the tank size, I select dry dosing (use pre-mixed if using solution), I select my dosing regime which is EI classic (you want EI for low light/weekly), then I select which compound (fertilizer) I'm dosing, and click calculate and it gives me how much I should add to the tank and how often.


Hope this all helps you out....
 
Thank you for that! I plan on leaving the 2 30" 24/7 lights and keeping them on the continuous cycle. Do you guys think adding a 48" Planted+ regular light on a timer for 7 hours a day will be too much light? Or just right to get things going like they should. Still wanting to avoid c02. Thanks
 
Im not an expert, far from it; but I have my lights on for 4.5 hours a day, and even with such a limited period; I can get algae, you may want to consider lowering your light period if this is the case, since plants such as java and anubias compete slowly, it lets algae jump in if you have high light intensity etc
 
Can't lower with the 24/7 mode. I actually don't think I'm getting enough light. None of my stem plants do anything in this tank.

When I move them to the 20g with a lower depth and single t8, they do amazing. So I think the 24/7 cycle just isn't giving them the light they need, hence me wanting to add a 48" Planted+
 
Aparker2005 said:
Can't lower with the 24/7 mode. I actually don't think I'm getting enough light. None of my stem plants do anything in this tank.

When I move them to the 20g with a lower depth and single t8, they do amazing. So I think the 24/7 cycle just isn't giving them the light they need, hence me wanting to add a 48" Planted+
Click to expand...

could be, from the pics it does look like a decent depth; maybe the light is being lost.
 
There's a few simple ways to "lower" the lighting on a tank, suspend the light fixture above the tank, going to walmart, autozone, etc... and picking up some window tint and adding it to glass tops for aquariums. Many people have done this, or something similar like regular mesh window screen to help dim the lighting.
 
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