This is what happens when you overdose phosphate..

[Samala]

Ok, so its not a myth, adding too much phosphate - like I did last week when my roomie knocked me into the tank while holding the phosphate dropper.. - definitely sparks a lovely algae outburst. In less than three days my tank became a lovely green heaven.. or hell.. not sure which. The copepods were very excited I will say.

<img border=1 height=225 width=300 src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v285/slardizabal/grass/algae519a.jpg"><br>
Very yummy.. kinda looks like that tank in the Nemo movie when the fish kill the filter.. Hard to say whats a plant and whats an algae here...

<img border=1 height=225 width=300 src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v285/slardizabal/grass/algae519b.jpg">

And here's today, after I did a slight water change, some scraping, and bumped up the nitrate levels so the plants could suck up some of the excess P. Ahhh nutrients.. I thought the first picture was hysterical so I thought I would share.

>Sarah

 

[kmk2307]

What kind of plants are those? Tank is looking good now.

Kevin

 

[Samala]

I agree Kevin, its much better now.. The low growing green with small leaves is stargrass.. Halophila engelmanni. The tall ribbon like stuff is a mix of manatee grass - Syringodium filiforme and shoal grass.. Halodule wrightii. All of its seagrass. I wish it was growing more densely.. maybe in the new tank it'll fill out.

I cant wait to show everyone how it looks in my twenty gallon now with the turtlegrass and all in the scene. Really cool. Still waiting for some things to clear before I take some pics.. I'm a little vain sometimes.. and of course all this stargrass and shoal/manatee has to be moved into the new tank as well.

Oh yes.. I'll be playing with Fundulus this summer also, you'll just be a few hundred miles up the coast from me. Course, I'll continue to play with Limulus, Danio and Arabidopsis... but the Fundulus should be the most fun.

>Sarah

 

[jimmyray]

He puts the "fun" in Fundulus!

 

[Samala]

If anyone is interested, I also posted a three month update on my seagrass tank to my website. Last update on the tank as it appears in the ten gallon.. and the twenty gallon is looking soooo good. I cant wait to post shots from it.. soon! The turtlegrass in particular is so gorgeous to look at.

Three month update

>Sarah

 

[kmk2307]

LOL! Enjoy the Fundulus. What are you doing with them? We do osmoregulation studies. One of the guys I worked with last year with a "classic" (old) van spray painted "we put the fun in fundulus" on the side of it.

Also, your sea grass tank is lovely. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Samala]

Thanks Kevin! We're looking at their chemoreception capabilities.. I love the van gag! Maybe I can talk my advisor into it, though she's a bit sober for a scientist and will likely just look at me like I've finally lost it. Right now we just have the warning outside the lab for 'flying fundulus zone'... some of them have jumped their tanks. One of the undergrads swears a fish jumped out of the tank to try to attack him! Hopefully I'll get to play with them a lot this summer, but I have several projects, and usually I just help out from the molecular/genomics side of things.

Are ya gonna drag the 75gal with the SPS with you??

>Sarah

 

[billsreef]

Sarah,

Your sea grass tank is looking great!

 

[moosejac]

Sarah, your sea grass tank is beautiful! What did you use for filtration? I checked out your site and would love to do something like that myself. Any idea where someone in Ks could get grass and other plants of that sort?
Thanks
Nathan

 

[Samala]

Hi Nathan.. thanks! I really love this tank. Like you, I feel that corals are.. blah blah blah.. interesting, but nothing like the feeling of exploring a new tangent in this hobby. The grass has been a fun new challenge.

For filtration, really only water movement. I had a single aquaclear powerhead on the tank as a ten gallon, with the twenty gallon there are two of them. Filtration in the real sense is a quickfilter attachment with some fine 100micron filter pads whenever I need to suck some algae out of the tank. I clean about once every two weeks or so.. just a glass scrape and clean some of the non-live surfaces in the tank. I run lots of aeration via a super cheap skimmer just to help out with pH balance. Its not uncommon for me to have high pH readings due to the plants pulling dissolved carbon dioxide out of solution. Aeration takes care of it.

I think aeration and the lights.. about 96W over a ten gallon.. are far more important than just the filtration. As is providing nutrients to the plants, via organic supplementation in the substrate.. and water column dosing of fertilizers while I'm running a fishless tank.

If you run a macroalgae only tank.. a good bit of this can be ignored. Lights for example, may not need to be so intense (though I'm not sure) and I dont know if they pull carbon dioxide from the water.. they may pull their carbon from the alkalinity in the tank instead. I'm not sure, but you may not have such a pH headache. There are others on this board that should be able to give you a much better idea. I've been focused on the grasses needs way more than some of the macro's.

For sources of grass in Kansas, there's billsreef, Floridapets and Gulf Coast... though I dont know if I can recommend Gulf Coast right now. (I tried to order a week ago and havent heard diddly from them.. its sad, because they were SO great on previous orders.) Manatee grass is rumored to be the best beginner's grass.. though I've had the most luck with shoal grass so far, and the turtlegrass is settling in very well.

I hope that helps.. any other q's or thoughts just post away!
>Sarah

 

[moosejac]

I saw that you used some different substrates that you were able to collect, and since I obviously don't have that option, can I just use stuff like CaribSea Miracle Mud, or something similar? Also, do you have to supply CO2, like in a freshwater planted tank? Do you use any other additives? Sorry so many q's... I was really getting fired up about doing a macro tank, until I saw your little seagrass tank.
Thanks for your help
Nathan

 

[Samala]

This has come up before.. I think Tom Barr was even suggesting to use a substrate sold for freshwater and brackish planted tanks.. Onyx sand, but its a black substrate. I think you could use the Miracle Mud with some good results, but you would need to supplement with fertilizers most likely if you did go with seagrass. I've been using Jobes fert sticks from places like Home Depot.. the green houseplants ones though.. the flowering version is sky high in phosphates. I covered the mud level with regular aragonite from CaribSea.

I tried DIY yeast CO2 reactor for a week or two, but that was before plant density was really high. I didnt notice a big impact then. With marine, I'm a little nervous about playing too much with pH issues. If I bubble CO2 into the tank there is the danger of creating acidic water. If I bubble just air, it should aerate sufficiently to bring in both CO2 and O2 (and everything else in air) so that it tends towards a natural pH level, (dependent on the alk level in the tank). Seems like less chance of heartbreak from my point of view.

Flourish Excel, a liquid CO2 supplement for freshwater, didnt really have any spectacular effects. Plus, its got some algae-negative qualities, so I dont know if I'd subject macro to it without testing a little bit of macro tissue first.

Any other additives.. water column dosing of fertilizer.. mainly KNO3 for nitrogen and a smidge of KPO4 for phosphate. They do need a little to grow. That was the start of this thread actually.. I overdosed! Only other major contributor is PMDD.. another freshwater planted throwback. Thats to try to cover all my bases with micronutrients - especially magnesium, calcium and iron.

>Sarah

 

[Samala]

Just in case anyone is following this and noticed my comment on Gulf Coast Ecosystems.. I have now heard back from them. They will apparently close the buisness for now to online customers and focus only on locals and some ebay buisness from time to time. I hate to see them go since they've been so great in the past IME. An FYI if anyone was interested.

>Sarah

 

[NFed16]

Samala - How great a depth of substrate do these sea grasses need? Is there any grass that is more suitable to a non-nutrient based substrate such as aragonite? Thanks.

 

[Samala]

The gold standard is about 5-6" of enriched sand.. either by layering sources of super organic mud with aragonite on top.. or using a rather old established DSB. If you go straight aragonite there are ways to supplement the substrate with fertilizer to keep the grass going... IF you want high density of seagrass in the tank. Otherwise, if bioload is high enough, the grass may tough it out in a non-enriched substrate by pulling nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, etc) from the water. Most likely will not grow very quickly or spread much.

Absolute required depth is going to vary immensely with the species of grass however. Turtle grass (Thalassia), the larger seagrasses like Posidonia and manatee grass (Syringodium) are going to want as much depth as possible, shoot for 5-6". The smaller species like shoal grass (Halodule) and the Halophila family, put out much shallower root systems.

Shallow is a relative term here as they still dont exist ectopically on the soil. In my tank, which is geared towards these last two more specifically, I have a 3-4" sloping substrate.. half IRL mud and half aragonite. I also supplement the substrate with fertilizers and the water column. But, again, I'm going for high plant density. Halodule roots extend about 3" into the soil.. Halophila about 2-3". They have an extra inch that they dont really use. However, I cant be sure they wouldnt grow longer roots if, at the 2-3" level, they didnt hit a nutrient rich mud substrate as they do in this tank.

I hope that helps some.. more questions, ask away.

>Sarah

 

[Justjoe]

Any other additives.. water column dosing of fertilizer.. mainly KNO3 for nitrogen >Sarah

Sarah,
What is your stock solution of KNO3 and dosing rates? Have you seen that dosing KNO3 reduces your PO4's?
Thanks,
Joe

 

[Samala]

Oh boy.. my stock solutions for KNO3 and KPO4 are both 1M concentrations.. and I think I was dosing two or three ml's worth every other day, enough to get PO4 to 0.25 mg/L and nitrate to 10mg/L. But dont quote me on that.. you can quote me that the grass was sucking down an average 80mg nitrate and 5mg phosphate per day.

I have now switched to using Seachem Fluorish Nitrogen.. originally made for freshwater planted tanks.. and dose 5ml every other day. That's enough to get to about 4.5mg/L nitrate and the plants blow through that in two to three days.. so, actually, if I do the math, the bed of grass has started to consume even more nitrate.. around 95 mg each day. Phosphate is also using a Seachem Fluorish mix.. and has also come up, about 6 mg each day.

Dosing nitrate definitely does reduce phosphates. If the plants have nitrate available then they are able to uptake the phosphates in the system via growth. No nitrate, no growth, no phosphate uptake.. they've gotta have it. In fact, if I let my nitrates fall to zero, I get nuisance algae outbreaks usually. I got my tank to recover from this phosphate OD by doing only a little scraping of the front glass, a slight water change to remove some of the excess phosphates, and bumping up the nitrate levels pretty high to about 30 mg/L. I could do that safely at the time as I only had some grass shrimp for livestock. More nitrate, more growth, less evil phosphate.

>Sarah

 

[Plantbrain]

Well, you learned the overdosing lesson present in SW, but not in FW.

I got a lot of diatoms, some small greens.
I was able to clean it up with a water change etc in a week or two.

The rates sound about right, but do not assume the weeds are removing all the NO3 or PO4. Some is preciptated, some is denitrified perhaps.

You can remove the weeds and test the reduction of NO3 to see how much is responsible from the weeds vs the bacteria. While not perfect, it'll give you a relatively good idea at the rate of plant NO3 removal.

Adding NO3 has seemed like some horrid thing to many reef folks but they want to limit TWO things, algae will be much more limited by PO4 in general and this effects plant growth to a lesser degree.

Do not use Jobe's sticks or anything with NH4.

No need for mud etc, use plain old potting soil that's been soaked for 2-3 weeks or boiled for 10 minutes.

Cap this layer(say 1/2 to 1") with 4" of aragonite.
There are a number of things you can add if you wish for organic matter that are good nutrient sources.

I keep mainly macro algae, but my uptake rates where slightly higher using a colorimeter for testing(NO3 to 0.1ppm with the high range and 10ppb for SRP PO4).

I have not dosed NH4 and measured it.

Once you learn how to grow a weed, you need to learn how to aquascape with it to promote the hobby using weeds.

Weeds are not that hard to grow folks. I think too many are scared about using KNO3 like they were a decade ago in FW planted tanks.

The needs are pretty much the same.

The two main areas that need to be worked out are the NH4 and PO4 relationships with respect to macroalgae and plants.

I'd still like to approach CO2 dosing again.
We may not need 30ppm of CO2, we may only need a stable 10ppm to do well/better and thus not lowwer the pH dramatically.

You can also dose the CO2 only when you need it, during the day, this will pulse the pH down for only a portion of the 24 h day rather than a chronic high level except during the day when the plants are using it.

Of course , you can come to nature and see the weeds, test and decide for yourself what they need. I recommend that!

Come to the plant fest, happens every year and is cheap and fun.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Triterium]

Sarah, that looks a lot like my tank a couple weeks ago. I had a ton of brown diatoms covering everything. I hooked up a skimmer to the tank and its clearing up nicely. Hopefully i wont need the skimmer much in the future. Looking good BTW

 

[Samala]

Plantbrain says
The rates sound about right, but do not assume the weeds are removing all the NO3 or PO4. Some is preciptated, some is denitrified perhaps.

That is an excellent point I had not considered..

Do not use Jobe's sticks or anything with NH4.

Your argument is that NH4 will cause algae issues as it does in FW, yes? I certainly would understand that. However, I've not had a problem using them in freshwater, and since others have mentioned them for saltwater, I gave them a shot. They are very very slowly dissolved, even after four months there were still appreciable bits in my bed. What substrate fert tab's would you recommend in place of them? Fluorish tabs?

Once you learn how to grow a weed, you need to learn how to aquascape with it to promote the hobby using weeds.

Yeah.. I know its not much to look at from an aquascapers point of view at the moment. Coming along slowly. I actually just emailed the AGA about the annual aquascaping contest as it bars marine tanks.. even in the biotope category. I had wanted to share the eventual layout and grass garden through the contest, but the website is good enough for now.

I'd still like to approach CO2 dosing again.
We may not need 30ppm of CO2, we may only need a stable 10ppm to do well/better and thus not lowwer the pH dramatically.

I also want to try this again when the tank is back to high density. I had a reactor on the tank in the early stages when it wasnt overly productive and saw no impact on growth. So, I thought I would just try it again and see. Cant hurt, right? Still no fish to imperil at the moment.

Thanks for the thoughts Tom!
>Sarah