I can't seem to grow plants with my Ray II. I have three 33g tanks setup the same, (similar type plants, substrate, fert and wc schedule) and set them up within 2 weeks of eachother. They each house a pair of angelfish only.
They each have about 1 inch of MGOPS capped with an inch to an inch and a half of pea gravel, with exception to the tank at the top right which has a deeper dirt bed. I admit, I'm being a stingy with the liquid ferts because the tank with the problems also has cyanobacteria and I'm trying hard to eradicate it without using antibiotics. I stopped dosing in that problem tank, but recently added a few root tabs under the swords.
The tank on the bottom left has two t8's for lighting. The tank on the top right has a mix of CFL 65k and LED 5000k. The tank at the bottom right is the problem tank, with the Finnex Ray II.
The plants in that problem tank just don't grow. They grow so slowly and stunted. The diameter of the stem plants are tiny and plant leaves grow bushy, small and short. My hygo rosanervig and amazon swords just melted, I've never seen anything like that! I can't hardly even grow floating brazillian pennywort. The one sword that is doing well is planted in a pot and was well established before I added it.
My feelings are that the light emmited from the Finnex is too bright, and/or in the wrong spectrum for what I prefer and am used to. I don't want to use pressurized co2 and I find dosing with Excel to be too costly (I have 11 planted tanks!)
I posted two other pics of the problem tank, one is a crop from the pic of all the tanks, and the other is from November 2015 when I first added the Finnex. Honestly, it seems the tank became worse after I switched to a glass top from the molded black plastic one. The opening for the light in the plastic lid was 1 foot smaller than the fixture, so 6" of the fixture was blacked out on both ends.
Anyone else have ideas? Or had similar experiences?
Here are the pics:
1) The three tanks together
2) The problem tank November 3, 2015
3) The problem tank April 19, 2016
They each have about 1 inch of MGOPS capped with an inch to an inch and a half of pea gravel, with exception to the tank at the top right which has a deeper dirt bed. I admit, I'm being a stingy with the liquid ferts because the tank with the problems also has cyanobacteria and I'm trying hard to eradicate it without using antibiotics. I stopped dosing in that problem tank, but recently added a few root tabs under the swords.
The tank on the bottom left has two t8's for lighting. The tank on the top right has a mix of CFL 65k and LED 5000k. The tank at the bottom right is the problem tank, with the Finnex Ray II.
The plants in that problem tank just don't grow. They grow so slowly and stunted. The diameter of the stem plants are tiny and plant leaves grow bushy, small and short. My hygo rosanervig and amazon swords just melted, I've never seen anything like that! I can't hardly even grow floating brazillian pennywort. The one sword that is doing well is planted in a pot and was well established before I added it.
My feelings are that the light emmited from the Finnex is too bright, and/or in the wrong spectrum for what I prefer and am used to. I don't want to use pressurized co2 and I find dosing with Excel to be too costly (I have 11 planted tanks!)
I posted two other pics of the problem tank, one is a crop from the pic of all the tanks, and the other is from November 2015 when I first added the Finnex. Honestly, it seems the tank became worse after I switched to a glass top from the molded black plastic one. The opening for the light in the plastic lid was 1 foot smaller than the fixture, so 6" of the fixture was blacked out on both ends.
Anyone else have ideas? Or had similar experiences?
Here are the pics:
1) The three tanks together
2) The problem tank November 3, 2015
3) The problem tank April 19, 2016