It’s been a while since I’ve last played aquatic gardener. I’ve been slacking on my water changes, so I finally did one today. I’ve been sort of bad at dosing EI, occasionally missing days. I’ve seen some really strong growth but not the explosion of life that I had been hoping for. I’ve been dosing sparingly but it seems my plants are total nutrient hogs! Looks like I’m going to have to keep up with the dosing schedule. Nearly all of the plants have been doing well except for my foreground. It’s been slowly dying off so today I initiated project R.M.F. (Regrow My Foreground). I spent a few hours today researching plant needs and signs of deficiency and I came up with a short list of upgrades/to-dos…
- Fix the leaky CO2 diffuser. It’s been hissing and I’ve sprayed the piece with windex but I can’t find any bubbling! I’m pretty sure it’s got a leak somewhere. I’ve emailed the ebay seller in Hong Kong. Hopefully he sends me a new one.
- Change the bulb. I’m running a 96w 50/50 which is probably geared a bit towards a saltwater tank. Going to swap over to a full 6700k bulb. Ordered from AHsupply.com!
- Change the cheap Coralife reflector to a MIRO4. Space age material for 94% reflectivity. The engineer in me can’t help but be impressed. Also got it from AHsupply.com!
- Nuke the tank with NO3. Apparently HC is a nitrate hog, so I’m going to try to stick to the regular KNO3 dosing on MWF to see how the HC responds.
I finally figured out why my Blyxa was dying off… Iron deficiency! I doubled up on my Plantex CSM+B dosing and it came back to life! Super green. I was really happy. Also the Staurogyne that I picked up from AquaForest has grown some baby plants. Excited to get that going. I plan on filling the void in the center with a fresh lawn of Staurogyne. All of the cryptocornes are growing strong. Algae at a minimum! I’m happy! Until next update!
