Hi guys after upping my dosage of fertiliser im using TNC complete, tropica premium and flourish excel with some dry potassium powder, some of my plants are still struggling
my lights are on 6-7 hours a day, very good flow in the tank I’m not using c02
LOts of questions that will aid helping:
Could you report on water parameters?
PH and TDS?
RO or Tap?
Carbon Filtering?
Do you have several species of plant that have reached the "melt" point and need to be removed so the other species can thrive?
Water changes? How often and how much?
Do you lights just go on or do they ramp up?
Do we know the lights PAR rating?
Planting Medium? Stratum? Sand?
ASIDE from all that, this is MY GO TO method from any tank problems:
Get that PH as close to 7 as possible so I am in a neutral state, and know I am not harming plants or animals.
Again everyone has their favorite filter media, I am a believer in Seachem Purigen. I always have a bag running in my Fluval 107 filters, but it works in any HOB or Canister Situation. Usually replaces the carbon bag in any filter situation.
If you have carbon running in your filter, remove it. While being an excellent porous cheap medium for filtering, it also removes nutrients from the water your plants need.
I also always have a few new bags of it around if I see a tank getting gunky.
Do a 30% water change, and when you do really insepct your plants to see if some of them have reached the point of no return and need to be removed.
More light is not always the best when you are trying to heal your plants. To be honest after I switched to lights that ramp up and down, my plants do even better. They get 20% light for the first hour, then 50% for the next hour, ramps up to 100% for only 3 hours of the day and then begins to ramp down.
If some of the plants also thrive above the water level you can expose part of tyhe plant to open air, giving it a much easier resource to pull nitrients from. Be sure not to burn the leaves! I sometimes achieve this "amazon rainforest effect" by using a simply home cool mist machine, blowing cold humid air into the tank with the water level lowered.
Hope this is helpful. A million ways to be a farmer ~ this is mine.
3 Gallon Shrimp/Planted/Monte Carlo Carpet/CO2/Fluval 107 Canister/One Flat Nano Plus/Continous PH Monitoring 6.4-7/ Temp 74.5/TDS 245/5 species shrimp/14 species plant/RO Water/Salty Shrimp
6 Gallon ADA (with the above setup)
