My tank from the show :56k:

Great tank Zig! Keep up the good work.

To kind folks to kind, Gavin without your decision a few years back to start stocking Tropica brand plants there would be no planted tank hobby in this town, not for me anyway, before that it was an aquatic plant desert, think Vallis in every store and thats about where we were, so credit to you for that decision, foresight I think its called.

Naw if I can help folks out here, great, once people get beyond the algae stage in this hobby they can do great things for themselves, I will just try and make it a little easier thats all.

Thanks guys

Well put zig. But you do deserve all the respect you are getting. Your tank at the show speaks for it's self.
Face up to it you have green fingers. Maybe you should open up a florist

Face up to it you have green fingers. Maybe you should open up a florist

haha I slap you with my fish and then feed you to my 16500 gallon shark tank, on wheels btw so can visit your house :twisted:

Zig

In the link you gave very early in the thread about the recipe, the site said:

Micro Solution

In 1 liter bottle:
80 grams of CSM+B or equivalent trace element mix

What's this & what do you use?

Zig

In the link you gave very early in the thread about the recipe, the site said:

Micro Solution

In 1 liter bottle:
80 grams of CSM+B or equivalent trace element mix

What's this & what do you use?

Richard, the major nutrients that plants need are NPK, nitrate phosphate potassium, but they also need a supply in small doses (traces) of other elements this we supply together usually in one mix known as a trace mix.

A trace mix will generally contain ingredients something like the following

Boron ( 0.1%
Copper (Cu) 0.25%
Iron (Fe) Chelated by E.D.T.A. 3.3%
Magnesium (MgO) 7.0% (Mg 4.2%)
Manganese (Mn) 3.0%
Molybdenum (Mo) 0.005%
Zinc 1.0%

Most of the store bought liquid ferlilisers for aquariums will usually only be a trace mix of some sort they will not contain NPK.

CSM+B (complete secondary mix+boron) is just a brand of powdered trace mix, we generally use it because of its low copper content. Powdered trace mixes work out very cheap to make and thats why we do it ourselves. A 100ml bottle of store bought trace mix will cost about €7.99 or something like that, I can make the same amount for probably 20-30 cent by doing it myself with powdered fertilisers.

You need to buy CSM in the USA and ship it over here, its not for sale in europe, I bought 500g 2-3 years ago and still have some left so this is what I use for larger tanks as it works out economical, for smaller tanks I would use Tropica Plant Nutrition which is a ready made liquid trace mix, this is expensive but for small tanks its not so bad, it lasts a long time.

Well put zig. But you do deserve all the respect you are getting. Your tank at the show speaks for it's self.

yeah, that was stunning!

Thanks Zig.

I noticed that you can buy a powdered trace mix on Aquaessentials, €5.99 for 100g (that's the small size anyway). Would that be the stuff to use?

Well put zig. But you do deserve all the respect you are getting. Your tank at the show speaks for it's self.

yeah, that was stunning!

Thankyou

@Richard, yes thats the stuff alright, I think 100g will make up about 1.5 litres of stock solution, 29grams per 500ml of solution is the formula as far as I recall, but with most of these type of DIY fertilisers you should only make up what you will use in a reasonable amount of time, so for instance I would only make up 100 or 250ml at a time. The trace fertiliser in particular can get a scum type of buildup if not used within a reasonable amount of time when mixed up, it doesn't do any harm, but can be avioded by making up small amounts only.

I actually did the math & if you bought the smaller quantities of chemicals & had a 20 US gal tank then it would cost about 12.5 UK pence a week. That's some major difference to using off the shelf stuff.

wonderful and and informative post.

Fantastic looking tank congratulations .

Amazing set up and an Amazing post.
Well done.

It really got me thinking about the usage of PPS Pro. I've always been a natural guy (well I do wear pants to mass ) but I will be seriously considering PPS on a future setup as I just think that EI is pure hassle & way to 'skin of the teeth'. I also can't be arsed in spending an hour each day at my plants.

Well i just finished my first layout doing pure PPS (sort of), it works well for slower growth in highlight tanks but for the last 2 weeks of this layout I went back to using EI to speed up the growth because I needed to finish the layout for a deadline, the growth difference was amazing, I'd say I got about 6 weeks growth from the 2 weeks dosing EI method on that tank, I think a mix of the 2 methods is probably the way forward for me. After the 2 week growth stint I have now reverted back to PPS method to slow growth once again(just do a large water change and start dosing pps again) both methods well IMHO, but I guess you need to define your goals with each one.

It's interesting you say that zig. I'm having growth problems at the moment so maybe a couple of weeks of the EI approach will get the growth going before returning to the PPS.
The growth rate is too slow at the moment. When i say too slow i mean non existent.
I am at the diatom algae stage but yet no plant growth, at all.
When you changed back to PPS did you just do a large water change and carry on as normal with the PPS dosing?

Hello platty252

Darren In a tank with aquasoil I would check other things first of all, you should see decent growth levels just dosing pps in a tank with aquasoil, check the CO2 levels are good and maybe move the light closer to the tank if its some distance above. If the tank has been running for more than a few weeks you should be seeing good growth. But if you think everything is ok you could try dose EI for a while.

A real easy way to do this is to dose a weeks worth of fert in one go with the mix you already have, the mix is made up in the correct proportions already so just dose lots more than normal and this is as good as dosing EI, I would dose a weeks worth tomorrow (7x normal pps amount) and in about 5 days dose the same again, another 5 days do the same again, do this for 2 weeks and you should see a major difference assuming everything else is ok in the tank, I nearly forgot how fast things grow all things being equal dosing pps and EI method.

After 2 weeks just do a large water change and reset the tank (dump out all the excess fertiliser) and just continue to dose PPS as normal and growth will slow back down.

Whats happening here with PPS dosing in a highlight setup is that the phosphate in the pps mix acts as the limiting nutrient, so under normal pps dosing growth will be slow, but if you add more phosphate it is not limiting factor any longer and the plants will immeaditaly increase their uptake of all other nutrients and therefore you get faster growth. Phosphate acts as a limiter on nitrate uptake, have less phosphate and nitrate uptake is low, growth is slow, add more phosphate and nitrate uptake increases so growth is fast, but with a tank with aquasoil the phosphate should not be so limited so I would really check other things first of all.

The tank that I tried this has just ordinary gravel as the substrate so all dosing comes from the water column, aquasoil wasn't a factor here in this tank (to damn expensive for larger tanks)

It took a long time to grow that tank out, 3+months, but like I say It does not have aquasoil, if the tank had aquasoil as the substrate after maybe 5-6 weeks and dosing with PPS it would probably need lots of pruning to keep it in shape.

Anyway hope that helps in some way.

I cant quite put my finger on what is wrong.
I decided to use a different light than i originally planned. The PC was unsightly over the tank and i am now using 2x11w T5 PC,s that are rated at 6700K. This gives me 2.7 WPG and are about 3-4\" above the water.
I was running the Co2 at 1 BPS through a ceramic diffuser and then through the intake of the filter to break it down further. I increased the Co2 to 2 BPS a week ago to see if that makes a difference.
All dosing and water changes are as recommended.

Today i dosed 7x the pps dose and will again in 5 days time. I will try this for 2 weeks to see how i get on.
If i dont notice any change in a week or so i will change the lighting to a slightly higher wattage and higher Kalvin rating.

Could it be a low grade Co2 that is the problem? I dont know what grade Co2 i am using. I should have asked the last time i got a refill.

Darren you need more light over the tank, thats the problem here, you are effectively running a low light tank ATM. If I remember correctly the tank is about 10 US gallons so 2x11watts is very little light because of the small nature of the tank. To give you an idea my small 14 gallon tank has 3x24 Watts so 72 watts T5 over it for 9 hours per day, the minimum I would use on that tank is 48 watts. I'd go back to using the power compact if I were you, I think thats a 55W so that should be fine, and this should see the growth return as normal. If you want to be cautious with the light just higher it a little over the tank until you comfitable and then lower it back down to maybe 4 inches over the tank for normal use.

Your CO2 is fine, CO2 is CO2 no such thing as low grade, not for our purposes anyway.

I'd probably do a water change as well and just dose PPS normally for the moment, no need for EI on that setup atm.

No harm done though.

I suppose you will be posting the pics shortly:P <br><br>Post edited by: zig, at: 2007/08/20 00:36