lighting for planted tanl

[toughtimes]

I have a 90 gal planted tank and i was wondering if a setup of 2 t5s and 2 cfs totaling 270 watts is sufficiant to reach the bottom. The leaves on my plants are yellowing and dieing and i have a soil and florite substrate so i dnt think its lack of iron but lights. I currently only have around 105 watts with t5s and was thinking of adding the cfs.

[Scribbles]

How deep is your tank and what plants do you have? Do you add any ferts?

Chris

[toughtimes]

No fertilizers yet because the books i've read say that with a potting soil base you dnt need to for the first 6 mnths to a year.
I have anubias barteri, charlie, bacopa, jungle vale, java fern two diffrent hybrid species of sword. I have duckweed on top and that is growing insanely crazy leading me to thing there is plenty of nutrients but the rest of the plants are turning yellow very slowly then dieing. and the tank is 24"

[Scribbles]

You seem to have mostly low light plants. Is your duckweed blocking the light to the plants below? Also, do you have co2 injection or do you add a carbon supplement such as Excell?

Chris

[toughtimes]

i try to keep most of the duckweed out. and i use florite]

[Scribbles]

Sounds like an iron deficiancy to me or a lack of carbon so that the plants can't utilize the iron in the flourite. Are all of your plants effected? We need someone with more experiance to chime in here.

Chris

[cyberhog05]

270 watts will require co2. period. or you will have algae. are the leaves getting holes and then dying/rotting? you have a nutrient deficiency. k2so4 possibly mgso4. thats my guess. go to rex griggs site.there is an answer for every possible question you could have.

[toughtimes]

thanks do you have his link?

[rich815]

www.rexgrigg.com

[nickmcmechan]

thats quite a lot of light

more light means the plants then demand more co2, think of them like an athlete, more light means they excercise more i.e. do more planty stuff, so they need more co2 like an athlete would need carbs, if they're not added at all the plant will die, the sprinter can't sprint

then you need all the nutrientsm the athlete needs nutrients to perform well, fluorite is only part of the story, with that amount of light and co2 then you need to add NPK and Micros

[toughtimes]

Wow, even on a tall tank like mine? 24 inches? right now i have about 105 maybe i should look towards the excel?

[nickmcmechan]

Wow, even on a tall tank like mine? 24 inches? right now i have about 105 maybe i should look towards the excel?

yep!

excel will provide carbon as an alternative to pressurised co2. for the size of tank you have it will cost you less in the long term to use pressurised but excel is a good start; I know you will being a Discus keeper but make sure you keep up with water changes when using that stuff, it gets toxic if you let it build up (and remember its toxic to humans so wash your hands after dosing)

you still need micro and macro ferts in addition:

http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/EI.htm

[toughtimes]

For right now do you think i could get away with using excel and flourish?

[Scribbles]

You have jungle val in your tank and I have read that it doesn't do well with Excel. Anyone know if this is correct?

Chris

[nickmcmechan]

You have jungle val in your tank and I have read that it doesn't do well with Excel. Anyone know if this is correct?

Chris

theres as many opinions on this as there are about correct water changes frequency on discus tanks

my opinion would be that i've never had vals do as well with excel as with pressurised co2....

guy on aquaria central did a month long experiment on it in a tank with BBA, dosing double dose excel daily and containing vals

the vals didn't grow in the month and the bba went away...when he returned to normal dosing of excel the vals started growing (slowly) again

[Scribbles]

Thanks!:) I've always been curious about vals and Excel.

Chris

[GrillMaster]

I have melted my vals in the past with dosing flourish excel Chris. I was overdosing to get rid of BBA. The vals hated every second of it! :(

Pretty much the same scenario nick mentioned...With c02 they just grow insanely fast!

[daboo]

toughtimes,
Look at my signature. I keep only two 4 foot HO T5 lights on most of the time (10 hours / day). That gives plenty of light to reach the bottom - my tank looks bright. My plants don't need a lot of light and they have been doing fine. I did have a Ludwigia that kept losing leaves so I just discarded that plant. Right now I've got two types of Criniums, amazon sword, 2 kinds of anubias, jungle val, java fern, and 2 x of some dark green plant I can't remember the name of. All have been holding out OK with very little algae growth.

You can also notice I have a good number of fish so the CO2 and waste they make seem to suffice for these plants.

[rich815]

You have jungle val in your tank and I have read that it doesn't do well with Excel. Anyone know if this is correct?

Chris

Most people, myself included, watch their vals melt severely if we "over" dose excel to deal with BBA.

Frankly I'd rather start over with my vals than continue to have BBA.

[zn394]

I had the algae problem and did the double dose of Excel thing too. I had 4 species of vals that had just taken hold and were speading like crazy (no CO2). One day after the Excel dose, they were gone - completely melted. I managed to save a dozen or so roots of one of the species and it is just now, 4 months later, starting to flourish again.

I love the vals, so no more Excel for me.

[daboo]

Can someone tell me what Excel is? It sounds like some additive to inhibit algae??? I'm hesitant to try such things when fish are involved to. I prefer going it natural as much as possible.

I had an algae bloom a month ago because the bottle of Discus Buffer I bought did not indicate it was phosphate based. The starting concentration they give you on the bottle puts you at over 150 ppm phosphate!!!! So once the algae started coming and I had to find out what was going wrong I started lowering the phosphate through water changes and phosphate remover. Now I monitor phosphate and keep it no more than 2 ppm. I have no problem with algae of any kind, just a slight green film in some places that doesn't get any bigger.

[star rider]

Can someone tell me what Excel is? It sounds like some additive to inhibit algae??? I'm hesitant to try such things when fish are involved to. I prefer going it natural as much as possible.

I had an algae bloom a month ago because the bottle of Discus Buffer I bought did not indicate it was phosphate based. The starting concentration they give you on the bottle puts you at over 150 ppm phosphate!!!! So once the algae started coming and I had to find out what was going wrong I started lowering the phosphate through water changes and phosphate remover. Now I monitor phosphate and keep it no more than 2 ppm. I have no problem with algae of any kind, just a slight green film in some places that doesn't get any bigger.


here ya go

http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/FlourishExcel.html