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Permalink Reply by Peter on October 26, 2012 at 2:26am

ok i need more info on your tank. But for the info u gave i can tell u this, at first when you dirt a tank and u dont mineralize the soil first and just go ahead and use it right away in your tank, alot of plants get shocked from this at times and just die off, its mostly stem plants and such. Also wen u dirt the whole tank you need to add tons of plants like u did at first but after they died u should have gotten more. Dirt releases TONS of nutrients and if u have little plants algae uses up the rest which then makes green water. also for lights wat type of light t8, t5? ho, no, vho?  how long do u have them running and how many bulbs is each light? and what is the color spectrum of it?

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Permalink Reply by LED on October 26, 2012 at 2:57pm

First of all you put too much dirt.  In most cases 1.5 inches of dirt is the MAX you should ever go.  If you put more than that, you will have green water issues, a huge ammonia spike which could potentially kill all the fish and plants, and youll have other algae issues along with very tea colored water.  

Since you have a huge tank and a lot of square inches to illuminate, provided you cover the entire surface with plants then you would need to light the whole tank as opposed to groups of plants with spot lighting, but since i believe you want the whole tank illuminated to plant everywhere, then you would need a minimum amount of light so the plants wont die.  

I'm going to assume the bulk of your plants turned brown if they survived the huge ammonia spike for the first month or months.  If that is true then you do not have enough light.  I would say you do not have enough light given that your anubias are doing fine.  The Sword plant i dont know which one you have so i assume its also a low light plant.  (btw if your plants roots turned black then that means they were burned by the ammonia and huge amount of nutrients)

Given the information that you have 2 x 48" shop lights I'm going to assume you have t12 lights.  I'm going to also assume you have 34 watt tubes.   That would mean you have 5600 Lumens max output.  I'm assuming you have a 72x20x24 inch tank which would equate to 149 gallons close to 150.  With your lights, assuming you have have daylight tubes that are 5000K to 6500K color temperature lights, you are getting 2.8L/in^2.  I factored in possible bad reflectors from your shop light and red light being absorbed by the water and the depth of the tank assuming its 24 inches deep.    Thats just enough light to let algae grow.  any plants that are on the surface of the substrate is not getting enough light to grow hence some of your plants only having stems.  Think of your light as food.  You're giving your plants just enough food to grow as think as a stem, but it will eventually die.  the anubias are able to survive VERY low light but they will never flourish.  The other plants you had in the tank died because they need more light than you provided. 

Here's a guide to show you how much light would be needed in terms of Lumens/ square inch of bottom surface.

http://www.rexgrigg.com/mlt.html

if you want to grow a decent amount of plants but not high light nor most medium light plants then you need  at least 12L/in^2.  That would equate to you needing 17,280 Lumens over your 1440square inches of substrate.  You will need three to four 4foot 54 Watt T5 with decent reflectors.  If you dont get ones with decent reflectors then you will need more lights to compensate for that (maybe 5 lights).  Do notice i did not include T5 high output in this reply.  I dont have values for HO bulbs available to me so i can only infer what their values may be.

 

In conclusion, you have far too little light disregarding the fact that you put too much dirt in your tank.  If you choose to get more light, then i would suggest you get the lights AND the plants and install at the same time.  if you get more lights first and wait a few weeks to get plants you will have the biggest algae bloom you have ever seen.  If you get plants first then get the lights, your plants will most likely die again because of lack of light.

Hope all ends well with this tank

ps( if you're going to use turface brown but with no dirt, then you will need to fertilize the water column because turface brown is an inert substrate which provides little to no nutrients)

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