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hawaiiguy

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Ok, with this being my very first post here, go easy on me, I'm still soft and tender!!! :D

Anyways, although I'm a salt water enthusiast at heart, I'm biding my time with a small 10g fresh water system (being a student, I can't quite afford a SW system yet.... someday....sigh :cry: ) So far the fish have been great. It's stocked with about 5-6 adult guppies and 10-15 juvinile guppies. I also included a couple of clown loaches about 3 months ago to keep the snails under control. I've been trying plants off and on for a while with no success and this is what I need advice about.

Currently I have about 6 plants (Crinum thaianum I believe; tall corkscrew grass-like blades) but they seem to be stunted in growth. When I first added them, they extended to the top of the tank. Now it seems that as soon as the blades get longer than 3 inches, they fall off!!

Also, the LFS guy told me to supplement with Flourish once in a while. After doing that the algae started getting out of control so I stopped. Well, now it seems the algae is here to stay. Scrubbing the glass clears it for a week or so but it always comes back strong. I'm also getting filamentous algae growing from the substrate. Also the detritus on the bottom is horrible! My poor loaches stir up clouds of fish poop when they swim (Should I vacuum the bottom or leave it as nutritious little vittles for the plants?).

The substrate is just regular gravel from Petcetera. I'm filtering the water with a small hang-on-the-back machine. The filter contains a sponge as well as a bag of mixed charcoal and ammonia filter media on top of the sponge. Last year I had an undergravel filter but it lays dormant under the substrate with two uplift tubes (airstones inside) as eyesores. I've aquascaped with rocks from the local river and that's my little 10g in a nutshell!

Any help for this clueless newbie would be much appriciated! Thanks!
 

ozboy22

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hi mate
dont know to much yet
so i can't help you to much i just had a for just over 2 weeks on just plants
all going well so far
so have you check though the forums thier so get tips in here
anyway good luck
 
A

Anonymous

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hawaiiguy":1fxo8l4p said:
Ok, with this being my very first post here, go easy on me, I'm still soft and tender!!! :D

Anyways, although I'm a salt water enthusiast at heart, I'm biding my time with a small 10g fresh water system (being a student, I can't quite afford a SW system yet.... someday....sigh :cry: ) So far the fish have been great. It's stocked with about 5-6 adult guppies and 10-15 juvinile guppies. I also included a couple of clown loaches about 3 months ago to keep the snails under control. I've been trying plants off and on for a while with no success and this is what I need advice about.

Currently I have about 6 plants (Crinum thaianum I believe; tall corkscrew grass-like blades) but they seem to be stunted in growth. When I first added them, they extended to the top of the tank. Now it seems that as soon as the blades get longer than 3 inches, they fall off!!
Also, the LFS guy told me to supplement with Flourish once in a while. After doing that the algae started getting out of control so I stopped. Well, now it seems the algae is here to stay. Scrubbing the glass clears it for a week or so but it always comes back strong. I'm also getting filamentous algae growing from the substrate. Also the detritus on the bottom is horrible! My poor loaches stir up clouds of fish poop when they swim (Should I vacuum the bottom or leave it as nutritious little vittles for the plants?).

The substrate is just regular gravel from Petcetera. I'm filtering the water with a small hang-on-the-back machine. The filter contains a sponge as well as a bag of mixed charcoal and ammonia filter media on top of the sponge. Last year I had an undergravel filter but it lays dormant under the substrate with two uplift tubes (airstones inside) as eyesores. I've aquascaped with rocks from the local river and that's my little 10g in a nutshell!

Any help for this clueless newbie would be much appriciated! Thanks!

crinium is a bulb plant, that develops a VERY extensive root mass

check your carbonate hardness, make sure it's not below 4-5 dKH

keep iron at about .7 ppm

start removing the phosphates, and the algae will go away-it's not an iron issue


detritus should be removed immediately, if possible-it isn't helping your plnts much, and it's doing alot to feed the nuisance algae
you may want to lift the bulbs out of the gravel/sand bed, trim the roots down to about 1" with a SHARP scissors, and make sure the gravel bed in general is nice and clean

oh, and beware any advice beaslebob gives you-most of it is incorrect- and he seems to think that plants are the world's aquarium miracle cure, without really knowing how to take care of them, or how they would do what he claims (and mostly only he) they do.

remove the ammonia chips stuff- plants prefer to get their nitrogen directly from ammonia-you may be starving them to a slow death
 

danmhippo

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Hawaii guy, How much lighting do you have for your system?

Plants gets stunted growth due to insufficient "balanced" nutrients. Nitrogen, Phosphate, Potassium, Light and CO2. Most people kept on adding NPK, but ignored the last two.

Various different algae do not need all 5 nutrients, so that's one of the main reason that if you are lacking on (for example), light and CO2, True aquatic plants' growth become stunted, while micro algae took off like crazy.

There are CO2 testing kits available.

For lighting, I would recommend you have around at least 3 watts per gallon.

Most tanks has plenty of N and P, both comes directly from additives in the food and also fish waste. You might want to get potassium supplements for your tank. Seachem has potassium supplements.

I also agree with what Vitz stated.
 

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