Journal 20 Gal + 15 Gal Bucephalandra Recovery Tanks [Very high light, high co2]

[snowballs99 11]

Sample tank 1:


Non co2.
Using ugf filter plate.
18 watt grow light on top.
Very high par.
Only dosing seachem equilibrium.
Testing to see if shrimp waste can supply nutrients for slow growing buce.
Gh around 5-7.
Kh 0.


Sample tank 2.
Identical parameters, but ugf filter is in a box.
Substrate only 1cm on bottom.
Uses co2 injection.
0.5 ph drop.
Heated to 75 degrees as some buces were melting back a bit and I wanted to speed up the recovery.

 

[snowballs99 11]

Testing on both tank set ups for a month:
1/2 teaspoon of apt feast added to each tank per week as a slow release ammonia source.

I dosed apt thrive+ for a 2 months and kept getting melting buce for some reason. I'm not sure if it's the high iron content per dose? Think thrive+ was 0.45ppm per dose. Gonna lower it to 1/4 dose twice per week. So 0.22ppm of iron added per week.

The reason I think this is the tank with the best bucephalandra growth and no melting was the tank with some fish in it. I fed that tank more so under dosed thrive+ a lot. That tank had basically no melting and a decent algae green wall.

I also added 1/2 teaspoon of apt feast to a 2 liter jug to test ammonia content after 1-2 days.

 

[snowballs99 11]

After 24 hours.
Result was 0.5-1ppm of ammonia via API test kit after 24 hours.

Half teaspoon of soil in 2 liters of water lol.
If you add this into a 10 gallon tank, roughly (assume 1ppm of ammonia reading for caution, assume 9 gallons of actual water in tank).

0.055ppm of ammonia
Or
0.24 ppm of nitrates after conversion.

Tds change: 5 tds to 7 tds after 24 hours.

Safe to say this should be safe even in a caridina tank. Matter of fact I might do a full teaspoon of apt feast.

At least I found a use for the insane amount of slow release ammonia in this soil. Hopefully dennis doesn't randomly change ammonia formulations to suite hobbyists who want to add fish the first day. Godspeed to them.