Thanks VH. You've been a great help. I have done non-C)2 in small scale, 10/20Gs but this is a huge one for me. I am just worried about algae growth, if I don't have enough plant mass. In my smaller tanks, I did my first water change after a year, only did top offs, fed the plants every 2/3 weeks or so, sometimes even adding half a gallon of water from my CO2 planted tank to top off. It did well. And in this tank for the first time, my Anubias never had green spots. In my high lighted CO2 tanks I could never control this. Like you said I can always raise the hood if I see any algae growth.

Thanks again.

Can I use ADA AS II soil in a non-co2 set up?

PLanning to keep it near a window that gets diffused sunlight for 6 hours a day. NO other lighting planed.

Will this work?

thanks

ADA AS II is a very good choice for a non-CO2 tank.

Can't really answer the lighting question, but it would be a cool experiment.

Thanks....the tank was set up two days ago....so far so good...will post an update in a couple of weeks

All,

I have a non-CO2 20 gallon tank. The plants look great (better than my excel tanks per a related post), but the water clarity not so much. I have about Leonardite capped by 2 inches of Onyx Sand. I believe the Leonardite is making the water yellow. I set the tank up about 4 months ago, and stopped doing water changes (which I was doing in an attempt to clear the water) 3 months ago.

I am using a Whisper HOB filter rated for a 60 gallon tank. I am using Zeolite and Activated Carbon. It does not seem to be progressing. There is relatively no algae to speak of (3 Ottos ate whatever was there previously). NH4 tests come up at 0 ppm.

Any ideas? Tips?

http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL416.../334511583.jpg



20 Gallon
About every 3 weeks: 1/4 tsp Potassium Nitrate, 1/16 tsp Mono Potassium Phosphate, 1/8 tsp Potassium Sulfate, 1/2 tsp Calcium Sulfate, 1/4 tsp Magnesium Sulfate.
1x per week: 2.5ml of TMG
Onyx Sand + Leonardite Substrate
36 Watts of PC Lighting + 8 hour photo period

When I used Leonardite the water became very yellow/brown too. Activated carbon would clear it for awhile, but not for long.

What did you end up doing? Did you end up scraping the tank and ditching the Leonardite?

Its going to take time but will never completely disappear. I'm at two years on two similar tanks and although it becomes less noticeable, when a WC is done it is very yellow in the bucket. Also less disturbance of the substrate is advisable.

I ended up dumping the substrate on my flower bed and setting it up again with river silt as a sub-substrate. At least that didn't give me yellow water. I eventually got rid of the 10 gallon tank setup entirely, having run out of ideas I wanted to try out.

Could there be any benifit to a substrate that had a very little amout of black diamond? Say 1-2% on the very bottom of a tank. This might just be enough to get a tank started, but not not enough to constantly colour your water yellow.
Or would it just be negligable then....