It's been 3 years now with planted tanks, and it is getting exhausting and frustrating. My discus, frontosa, cichlid tanks, and my koi ponds are all doing great, but this planted stuff is more difficult than saltwater, in my opinion. I used to think discus were hard, now they are easy once I get a certain routine down. So I've got a 75 gallon with two HOB filters and a primary sunsun 704b, a 20 lb co2 from airgas with a good quality regulator plus two bubble counters. Right now I am not running the co2 since all i get is bba with it, so I assume the plants are not health and not growing. I've got my main light as a giesmann super flora with red and blue, and a finnex fugeray. I only run the t5 right now. My amazon swords show very little growth, staurogyne repens just rot, amania just rot, java ferns have no growth whatsoever, and the only thing growing are my anubias nana, nancons, and my tiger lily seems to be doing great. I get a new anubias leaf every two days, but two days later I have to chop it because it grows nothing but BBA on it. I also have a giant bag of peat moss in own of my hob filters, but it does absolutely nothing in terms of lowering the PH. I live in a chicagoland suburb, and our water has so many buffers in it that the only way I can lower the ph in this tank is by injecting the co2. Not even discus buffer or seachem acid buffer does anything, it doesn't do a single dent in the ph!! I'm not concerned about the ph, I just want a stable tank with healthy plants, so far, non of them are growing healthy, except for the tiger lily, vals, and thats about it. I can't even get the lucky bamboo or the pothos in the hob to grow, the bamboo simply dried out and turned into balsa wood. I've got very little green hair, no cyno, but from the photos, you can see I have a bba problem. There are about 19 fish in there, 5 angels, 7 bosmani rainbows, two gouramis, and about 6 or so Siamese algae eaters. Obviously I have some sort of deficiency or abundance of nutrients, and just can't get the balance and lighting right. If I turn on both the gisemann t5 and the finnex, the tank turns into a bba buffet. It's been 3 years of research, reading, and trying different co2 bubble counts, diff fert regimes, diff light fixtures and bulbs, diff fixture heights over the tank. I honestly don't understand how my friends grow beautiful amazon swords without doing anything and even adding fertilizers, all my do is collect crap on em and rot away.
This is what I dose as of right now:
30% water change every weekend
seachem iron twice a week, at 5ml
Nilocg thrive at 5 ml, twice a week
excel twice a week
liquid amazonia tannin extract once a week, which in my opinion does nothing and clears up the next day
I also have fine powder phosphate, potassium sulfate, and potassium nitrate in bags which i currently don't use
Water parameters are pretty much the same every week
PH 7.5 with co2 off, straight tape water ph
79 degrees
KH buffer at 4 to 6 degrees, or around 80 to 120ppm
GH at about 180 ppm
nitrate and ammonia always zero, nitrates at around 20 ppm
This is what I dose as of right now:
30% water change every weekend
seachem iron twice a week, at 5ml
Nilocg thrive at 5 ml, twice a week
excel twice a week
liquid amazonia tannin extract once a week, which in my opinion does nothing and clears up the next day
I also have fine powder phosphate, potassium sulfate, and potassium nitrate in bags which i currently don't use
Water parameters are pretty much the same every week
PH 7.5 with co2 off, straight tape water ph
79 degrees
KH buffer at 4 to 6 degrees, or around 80 to 120ppm
GH at about 180 ppm
nitrate and ammonia always zero, nitrates at around 20 ppm