FireMedic's hydroponics idea - success fail stories

[Just Toby]

Speaking of algae, does any1 know if plants, or pothos precisely helps reduce or eliminate algae? I wander bc my big tank has no signs of algae and its been close to 3months running and close to 8weeks since the pothos have been introduced.... just curious

Normally algae would take a few months to build up anyway. I do not doubt that the pothos will compete though.

If nitrates get too low then other algae can proliferate.

GOOD NEWS: my pothos has finally started to acclimatise, in the last week I have gone from no activity to the plants standing up and moving towards light, 3 inches of new leaf growth and about 2 inches o multiple new White roots.

The sub soil roots seem to have adapted to water and are sprouting new without rotting.

The weekend water test may tell the tale of nitrate changes but I doubt the growth has been aggressive enough yet.

 

[Just Toby]

Ok so my pothos has grown 3 new leaves and masses of roots this week, the nitrate has still not budged from 20-25ppm and I have tested every weekend.


My guess is that in water close to 100ppm nitrate maybe the pothos make good use of it but I have not seen any change yet. Would be interested to hear from more people with a higher nitrate issue.

 

[ajsmith235]

i just checked mine, as i am doing my water change tomorrow... my nitrates after 3weeks is at 30... it used to be before pothos like 120! the pothos are going nuts in my ceramic ring chamber!!!

 

[gangster]

i just checked mine, as i am doing my water change tomorrow... my nitrates after 3weeks is at 30... it used to be before pothos like 120! the pothos are going nuts in my ceramic ring chamber!!!

Lets see some pics. Are they growing directly into the ceramics?

 

[Just Toby]

i just checked mine, as i am doing my water change tomorrow... my nitrates after 3weeks is at 30... it used to be before pothos like 120! the pothos are going nuts in my ceramic ring chamber!!!

It does seem that they take off in high nitrate and absorb a lot, it's not surprising since farmers use nitrate to grow crops, I wonder why 20-30 ppm seems to be the resulting level? Maybe they just slow down in lower levels?

 

[ajsmith235]

thats def. possible. either way, its alot better than 100+ nitrate lol.

 

[scalesandfins]

im planning on having a few pothos and hyacynth and duck weed on my 240. it will be next to 3 windows so it should have good light and i need somethin to slow the algea down

 

[mike_sema]

This has worked for me like a champ my nitrate is in the 15-20ppm range now that my pathos plants are starting to go nuts in my sump, I was doing 2 water changes a week now I do one water change every Saturday plus adding water from evap, a few pics they started off looking like the 1st pic now I have to start trimming them

 

[spotfin]

This has worked for me like a champ my nitrate is in the 15-20ppm range now that my pathos plants are starting to go nuts in my sump, I was doing 2 water changes a week now I do one water change every Saturday plus adding water from evap, a few pics they started off looking like the 1st pic now I have to start trimming them

What was the nitrate reading before adding the plants? And how are the bamboo plants doing? They look like they are growing well.

 

[mike_sema]

My tank was stuck in the 60-80ppm no matter how many water changes I was doing, the bamboos are doing great they have grown really well in the sump,they will not be down their for very long I am moving them to the top of the tank right now along with some more pathos and maybe some wandering Jews or grape ivy,the idea is to get a very colorfully assortment of plants growing out of the back top of my tank