Just joined the site after finding this post. It's been a few years since I've had an aquarium and I loved my old planted one so decided to start again.
In my marineland 30g half-moon tank I'm using Flourish substrate, an underground filter in part of the tank, Coralife high output quad T5 fixture, and the Nutrafin CO2 activator and stabilizer little canister. Maintaining about a 6.8ph, 6dKH, 38 GH, 0 NO2 & NO3, and never peak beyond 20 NH3. I've been using jugs of drinking water purified by R/O and adding seachem discuss buffer and neutral buffer to maintain pH, and Kent's R/O Right to regain trace elements in the R/O water. First my plants were looking a little rough like they were missing some trace elements:
I was already using Flourish, but decided to add some root tabs. I went with the API tabs, not because of price, but because it appeared each tablet had more of the trace element I thought I was lacking. After inserting 10 tabs for the 30g tank, this is what I woke up to the next morning:
I did a 5 gal water change last night and still no luck. In fact, the above picture was taken this morning. For some reason I thought these were very slow dissolving tablets since they are supposed to last a month, or else I never would have placed them above an underground filter. The tank has been like this going on about 4/5 days now, and worst of all, it doesn't appear the plants are doing any better! Any advice on how I can fix both the water and the plant problem? Should I just stick with Seachem's liquid ferts like Trace, Flourish, and Excel from now on? Thanks
Dale Russell
In my marineland 30g half-moon tank I'm using Flourish substrate, an underground filter in part of the tank, Coralife high output quad T5 fixture, and the Nutrafin CO2 activator and stabilizer little canister. Maintaining about a 6.8ph, 6dKH, 38 GH, 0 NO2 & NO3, and never peak beyond 20 NH3. I've been using jugs of drinking water purified by R/O and adding seachem discuss buffer and neutral buffer to maintain pH, and Kent's R/O Right to regain trace elements in the R/O water. First my plants were looking a little rough like they were missing some trace elements:
I was already using Flourish, but decided to add some root tabs. I went with the API tabs, not because of price, but because it appeared each tablet had more of the trace element I thought I was lacking. After inserting 10 tabs for the 30g tank, this is what I woke up to the next morning:
I did a 5 gal water change last night and still no luck. In fact, the above picture was taken this morning. For some reason I thought these were very slow dissolving tablets since they are supposed to last a month, or else I never would have placed them above an underground filter. The tank has been like this going on about 4/5 days now, and worst of all, it doesn't appear the plants are doing any better! Any advice on how I can fix both the water and the plant problem? Should I just stick with Seachem's liquid ferts like Trace, Flourish, and Excel from now on? Thanks
Dale Russell