An update on my 59g planted - it's dying!

[magnosis]

Hi all,

It's been a while! Life is good, we had another little boy in May 2012, he's awesome And... that left me very little time to spend on my tank!

Funny enough, I thought I remembered creating a thread on my 59g planted tank but... I guess I never did. So this would be my first update on this build.[EDIT]charlie found it! I just didn't remember, didn't post updates for a long time![/EDIT] Quite unfortunate, as this tank is now apparently on its last mile  

This used to be a high-tech tank; 60g freshwater, pressurized CO2, EI fertilizing, 4x48W T5HO lighting.  There was a full HC carpet , nice bunches of HM, natural driftwood, a handful of ferns, some grass I can't remember the name of... I was very proud of it. Again, too bad I never got to take & publish pictures  

Then in late 2012 I ran out of CO2. I was too busy to replace it immediately, so I cut down on the fertilizers and it stayed like that for a month and a half.

And guess what.  It was in better shape than ever! I guess I was extremely lucky to hit a fine balance with the rich soil, type & qty of plants, amount of fish and feeding schedule. Man was I happy. I even stopped fertilizing altogether, and did minor maintenance + 50% wc bi-weekly, sometimes every 3 weeks.

--

2 months ago, things started to go south.

I had no time to maintain the HC carpet, and this became a huge problem - as soon as HC gets about thicker than 1/2in, the bottom layer will start to decompose due to having almost no light at all.  Well, I let it grow to 3/4"-1" thick. The top of it remained in ok shape, but when I finally got to clean it up, big patches started to lift up, and I ended up removing about 40% of it.  I followed up with a 50% wc, and another 2 days later to help prevent ammonia spikes.

It did get better.

Green Algae started to settle in. 1 week after I noticed the first couple patches, I did an H2O2 treatment: 3ml/galon two days in a row, followed by two 50% water changes 2 days apart.  It helped, but that lasted only about 10 days. GA reappeared immediately. There was just too much HC dying at this point.  I should have just removed all of it but... I had kind of an emotional attachment to my HC I wasn't about to abandon it.

So I did another H2O2 treatment. Wow was that a huge mistake!

Most of the HC carpet took a major hit and started to brown out within a day or two. And then it just snowballed. It became a paradise for GA.

The result? This is my tank today:







So.
My plan was to move the tank, and this implied emptying at least 70% of the water otherwise it'd be just too heavy to budge. (I need to finish that room, drywall and all, and the tank is against a wall that needs work).

I'm now considering shutting the tank down altogether, and sell all my equipment. It will be another 6-12 months before the room is finished and I can start working on a new planted tank. Actually, I would like to wait a bit more, put some $ aside, and start fresh with a bigger tank, with a fully automated water cycling mecanism, a decent RODI hybrid system (my well water is liquid rock and goes to a softener).

If you think there's a semi-easy (*) way to rescue that tank, I would really appreciate suggestions.

(*) easy - remember I have little to no time, realistically I can spend 3 hours a week on this tank. I can spend a full afternoon for the initial cleanup, but that will be it.  Then I can afford an hour every other night.  The tank absolutely needs to be low-maintenance.

I'm almost convinced this is a dumb question because yeah, I know there's hardly ever any miracle fix.  But there are some options - like remove all of the plants, get rid of all the GA, then add new (low-requirement) plants.. maybe?

What are you thoughts?

--
It's fun to be back here, it's been too long!

[exv152]

If you remove CO2 the next thing to do, other than reduce the ferts, is to also reduce the lighting to half. Then fertilize once a week or every two weeks. But you'll have to say goodbye to the HC, it needs a high tech setup just to survive. What size t5ho's are you using...how long are the bulbs?

[charlie]

Nice to have you back Antoine.
With that amount of BGA, I would be tempted to remove all livestock to  a holding tank & rebuild the tank after zapping the BGA.
My take is that you don`t need to shy away from high tech co 2 tank, just pick your plants carefully & control your light intensity, everything else will be easier to control with good light intensity control.
The time you stated you have available to spend on this tank , 1 hr every other day is quite adequate for a CO 2 high light tank this size. Less than 5 mins each day to feed & fertilize the tank & an hr  one day per week to do water change & general clean up, trim etc.
Errol

[charlie]

Hi all,

It's been a while! Life is good, we had another little boy in May 2012, he's awesome And... that left me very little time to spend on my tank!

Funny enough, I thought I remembered creating a thread on my 60g planted tank but... I guess I never did. So this would be my first update on this build. Quite unfortunate, as this tank is now apparently on its last mile 

Is this the thread?
http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=46618.0

[magnosis]

Is this the thread?
http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=46618.0

Ahaha that's awesome. Yes!!
I've been searching my own posts for "60g"...

[magnosis]

[...] the HC, it needs a high tech setup just to survive.

Yeah... not sure I'm ready to agree 100% with that based on own experiences. But that's generally true, yes. 

reduce the lighting to half

control your light intensity, everything else will be easier to control with good light intensity control.

That's too obvious it puts me to shame aha   That's one mistake I made.  I only reduced the photoperiod by 1h and kept the same light intensity after the I ran out of CO2.

I'm currently running 3 48" T5HO Glo bulbs, 54w each, 162w total (2 Life-Glo and 1x Power-Glo). The bulbs are 2-3" above the surface, and ON from 12 to 9pm.

Maybe reduce the photoperiod from 9h to 7h ?

remove all livestock to  a holding tank & rebuild the tank after zapping the BGA.

I no longer have a holding tank >_<
Well, there's that one, but it's been shut off for at least 5 months.  No light, no filtration, no movement.. and there's still moss & pond snails living in it aha.
Could I clean this up? Lots of permanganate then rinse then 5x Prime dose or something like that?  Or maybe just a thorough rinse would be okay - I mean, there was healthy fish in it until the day I unplugged it.  No foreign object added since then, only dust settling from the ambient air.


Or, maybe I could leave the fish where they are, and try a blackout first? Okay blackout second - I would first remove any bit of decomposing matter, most if not all HC.. and other plants that aren't doing well, syphon up all the algae possible then blackout 3-5 days.

Whichever plant doesn't make it will have to go. that's okay - I have a huge emotional bond with my HC lol, took me so long to grow that lush carpet and maintain it! Time to move on    


So I have these questions.  But most importantly, need to decide if now is the right time to shut down the whole operation.
Option 1: sell the tank + most of my equipment, build the room, and start again (with a bigger tank!).
Option 2: cure this mess, empty as much as possible & move the tank, build the room and move the tank again.

I plan 3-4 months to build the room. Drywall dust and paint could be major enemy to the tank. There is no other room I can move it to during the build.

The stands weight 100-150 lbs.  59g of water weights ~490 lbs, plus 105 lbs of soil = roughly 700-750 lbs.  If I remove 80% of the water that would still be ~300 lbs.. Yeah, probably move-able with the help of a friend & roller bars under it.

It's not an easy decision 

[magnosis]

Scratch the blackout idea.
I will try an erythromycin treatment to remove the bulk of it, then address the problem at its source, which is likely a combination of high lights, low co2, low nitrates.  Time to get my test kit out of the box

[magnosis]

I've manually and tediously cleaned up as much BGA as I could. It was pretty much one big slab that covered the entire tank.

In the process, most of my HC carpet has found a new 'home' in my compost bin. I lost almost all of my HM as well. Right there, that's 60% of my tank area that is now one bare substrate. Ugh.

I started an Erythromycin treatment and hope to erradicate all BGA by the end of the week.  I'm hoping to get lucky this week and find the plants I need to re-boot this tank.

I'm going after something like this:

http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2012/show56.html


http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2012/show288.html


Simple, easy growing plants, low-maintenance (pruning-wise, at least).

And for that, I am now on a quest to find Narrow Leaf Java Ferns (lots and lots!) as well as African Water Ferrns, Pogostemon Helferi and also try my hand at Glosso.   PS: Sorry this build thread is split and a little bit all over the place, it's confusing. Rebuild of this tank will be documented where it started.