# unbalanced el natural?



## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

Having problems with my current 40 breeder--a slow death. Plants just aren't growing or surviving, in fact vegetation has died off significantly in the last year or so, including all arial plants. I used hyponex brand soil. (There was a lot of plant grown for many months following initially set up.) 

Lighting: using 3 of 4 T5 bulbs at about 6-7 hours per day. (they are 21 Watt 6700k/ each bulb)

My current stock:

4 red tetras
3 blue skirt tetras
5 rummy nose
2 cardinals
1 SAE
9 praecox rainbows
1 gold barb

PH 7.6
Minerals=1400
Not much going on as far as organics according to local fish man

was told by the local fish guy that the PH is way too high which is probably why the plants aren't surviving. He was stumped about why the PH was so high. It is almost as high as the tap water here.

I'm not sure how to resolve the issue and re-balance the tank. Do I need more fish to spur plant growth? Something seems very imbalanced but I'm not sure what it is. I dont have any crushed coral in the soil or anything that would make the PH very high.

Please help!


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## atc84 (May 18, 2013)

my ph 7.8 and my plants are doing fine. your increase in ph could be something in your tank leeching minerals. are you still doing water changes? it appears your water level is pretty low, which means any evaporation, the minerals will stay in your water. if your fish are doing fine, then i wonder if your dirt has run out of nutrients? idk.


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## JKUK (Feb 16, 2007)

Judging from the way all of your fish are huddled together, and the Ambulia is leaning, I wonder if it has something to do with flow. Flow is good, but I've tried those circulation pumps and have found unless you have a really big tank they can be too much.

I wouldn't worry about your pH, the plants you have will be fine at that level. Mine grow fine at a pH of 8.2.

Your lighting seems very high for a Walstad aquarium, the plants you have would do fine with just one of bulb running 12 hours a day.

Are you filtering through carbon?

With so few plants maybe your substrate has gone anaerobic, try pressing a pencil in to the substrate to release any gases that have built up.

I don't actually think the balance of your aquarium is bad, after all it's not growing loads of algae everywhere.


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## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

If you think it is a lack of fertilizer you could simply add fertilizer. Try something like slow release pellets or tablets under the soil. You do not need to add fish. If you want to add more fertilizer via fish, then just add more fish food. Though that seems a waste of fish food, and can encourage fungi.

pH:


> ...pH was so high. It is almost as high as the tap water here.


Did you fill the tank with tap water? 
And now the pH has come down a bit? 
That is not a problem.



> Minerals=1400


Is this from a TDS meter? This is VERY high for a soft water tank. It would be good to see more test results to find out what makes up the TDS. 
GH, KH, NO3, and any other tests you may have. Iron, Phosphate...


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## apctjp (Feb 12, 2012)

Have the CFLs been changed lately.


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

Water level is low because I did a partial water change and then decided not to fill it up all the way. before i took the photo. I was going to add some floating plants. (I had the original water tested before I did the change.)

The picture is taken after I did the water change, which is why the fish are huddled together (a bit spooked). I have a nano power head on it, so not too much of a super flow there. No filter. CFLs have not been changed at all. It's been about a year and a half since installed. There is not much algae but it is ugly since I can't get the plants to grow. I don't have any test kits so I haven't been able to do much testing. But here is a photo of how the tank was upon initial setup. (I did have more fish though) --even all the duckwead died off at this point :Cry:

I will try sticking a pencil in the soil. And maybe fertilizers? I've never used those before 
But I do have java moss in there which also isn't growing much. I've seen java moss grow way faster than this... and it isn't planted anyway, so would I be correct to guess that it may not be a fert problem pertaining to the soil, since the moss doesn't really depend on that anyway?


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

Okay, just poked around in the soil. There were some areas were some bubbles came out but seemed minor.


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## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

Minor bubbles are not enough to worry about. 

Are you adding any source of carbon? Excel or other?


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## myhui (Feb 7, 2008)

What are good sources of carbon?


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## JeffyFunk (Apr 6, 2006)

If you're using T5HO bulbs and do not have them suspended above the tank to reduce the light intensity, then i would guess that the main problem with your tank is that (1) it has too much light and (2) as a result of that, is deficient in CO2. 

I would suggest raising the lights up or add a wire screen to the lights to reduce the light intensity. 

If you want to start adding fertilizers, i would start w/ a carbon supplement like Seachem's Excel. The only other fertilizer i would even consider in a non-CO2 tank would be K. 

I would also suggest vacuuming the gravel. Despite what D. Walstad states, I don't really think a lot of mulm buildup is a good thing. Also, it looks like you have some 'crud' on your substrate. I don't think that's really helping your tank and, if anything, it's hurting you tank by being an organism to compete with your plants for nutrients. 

A 'slow death' sounds like a Carbon deficiency...


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

interesting. I've vacuumed the gravel a bit. I have not added any sources of carbon. The T5's although not suspended, actually sit on top of a glass lid. Shouldn't this help reduce the light intensity?

I will try excel since I do have some around. But wouldn't I have to add this product indefinitely, or are you saying this could help bring it back to normal? Would I be able to stop using excel after a certain point? I heard it usually serves as a temporary solution since you keep having to add the product to sustain results. I will add some though and maybe run only 2 of the light bulbs and see what happens! Thanks


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## Skizhx (Oct 12, 2010)

To be honest, something seems funny here... The pictures you posted only _barely_ resemble the initial setup. You could have said the first pictures were on day 1 of planting, and the second pictures were after 6 months of growth, and that might seem more feasible...

I only say this to emphasize that something isn't right (so don't think I'm not believing you).

My first suspicion is your soil. You say you used Hyponex brand soil... I'm finding a lot of complaints about the quality of their potting soil from container gardeners, and all their advertisement seems to emphasize that this is a "dark, rich" topsoil.

I'm not going to pin the blame on anything in particular (cause honestly there's a lot of possibilities), but the substrate seems a little fishy, and the pictures you provided suggest that something is fundamentally wrong with the tank (not merely a nutrient imbalance, since 1) you don't have aggressive algae and 2) you aren't growing anything that's unusually demanding in terms of nutrients).

Your pH is fine. My tap water used to be 7.6 and it grew just about any of the common pet-trade plants I threw at it, as well as some of the less-common (but still common).

My 2 cents.

For curiosity sake I would ALMOST consider mineralizing this soil, sprinkling in about 5-10% pure peat moss, and trying that in a jar setup to experiment... At least, that's what I would personally do.


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

Yes it is fishy... setup was probably about a year and a half ago. Actually the only thing that happened was that I transported the tank to another location so I had to take the water and livestock out. I then added the same water back in, along with the fish that same night. I think some of the plants didn't like the move, some got too dried out in the process maybe. I did add new water (same city--so no water difference) to the existing water, but it may have been about a quarter of the tank or less to fill. It seemed like things were never the same from that point on. But I did not make any changes to the soil or anything else. It just slowly started dying off. I think the timing was just a coincidence. 

Why use the jar experiment? What would I be looking for/testing out?


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## Skizhx (Oct 12, 2010)

Was the substrate exposed to air during the move?

The jar idea was more me forgetting that this is happening after more than a year.


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

*Re: update*

Update:

Okay so I've been adding flourish excel. It's helped growth a bit in most plants, but I have to keep adding it continuously to maintain growth, and this doesn't seem like el natural to me and it's been quite a few months time now. The tank looks slightly better now but still nowhere near what it used to be.

At this point should I consider re-doing the whole tank with a different substrate? If I start on fertilizer tabs will i have to fertilize continuously as well?

I woudl hate to go through the hastle of breaking down the tank but im not sure what other choice I have. However, I'm not sure if this would be too much of a sudden shock for the livestock. Any further advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

*Re: substrate problems*

Not sure if it's still relevant at this point but it is possible that the substrate was exposed to air during the move, although there was still water in there, since I couldn't really suck it out of the gravel.,..what effect would this have?


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## JeffyFunk (Apr 6, 2006)

The Glass lid will only reduce the lighting of your T5HO's by around 5-10%. As i said previously, you have too much light for running a tank without additional CO2 fertilization. The fact that the addition of Excel improved the growth of your plants confirms my suspicion. 

El Natural planted aquariums sometimes peter out after a year or two because the organic content in the soil is exhausted and then the plants become carbon limited. The rate of carbon use is mainly controlled by the amount of light you have: The more light you have, the more carbon you need. 

Resetting up your tank is not going to solve the underlying problem of having too much light.


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

When you say minerals = 1400 what does that mean exactly. Sounds like you gh is off the scale and the ph is fine.


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

I have long since cut down to using two T5HO bulbs @ 6-7 hours per day. What would you suggest as far as lighting time frames and how many bulbs I should be using in this case?

I'm not really sure exactly what it means, I was told by the LFS that minerals=1400.

:hail:


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## JeffyFunk (Apr 6, 2006)

That lighting schedule seems a lot more reasonable for a tank w/out CO2 fertilization. I would suggest the following: 

(1) Continue w/ the Excel dosing since carbon is often times the limiting nutrient. 
(2) Take your source water and your aquarium water to a local fish store and have them test it. Let us know what they find so we can help you figure out what's wrong. 
(3) Post pictures of your tank! It's so much easier to diagnose w/ pictures and nutrient values. 

I'll be the first to admit that setting up and tearing down a soil based planted aquarium sucks but is often times worth it in the end. That said, i'd hate to have you do that only to have to redo it in another year because you haven't fixed the underlying problem.


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## JKUK (Feb 16, 2007)

Until recently I had a couple of Walstad tanks that looked and performed very much like yours, I couldn’t figure out why they were so poor. Especially as I had other tanks set up the same way that were going great. I then realised that the only difference was the photo period , 7 hours against 12 hours. Subsequently I increased the photo period to 12 hours…it was like turning on an on switch, the tanks burst in to life again. I think it’s worth remembering that Walstad tanks are very different to high tech tanks, what works for one may not be appropriate for the other.

I would go for one T5, slowly increase the photo period to 10-12 hours, plus lots of floating plants.

James


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## nickmcmechan (Mar 23, 2014)

At 1 1/2 years old I'm guessing the nutrients from the soil have expired

From the pic in your first post you have way too little plants to act as filtration.

You have a couple of options. One would be to start again with new soil. 

In any case, you need way more plants.

For the method to be effective you need heavy root feeders, stem plants and floating plants, all totalling a significant plant mass. The 'duckweed index' will tell you if you have enough ferts in the water column.

Tbh I would add a small filter with sponge media for flow rather than a powerhead


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