After reading Tom's articles on plant growth i am a bit confused on what lighting is best to achieve maximum growth rates. I currently run 4x65watts PC’s for 14hrs a day. Is this bad? Should i cycle two sets of lights at a time? Limit my overall lights on time?

Thanks!

Try 10 hours, that's plenty.
You likely have plenty of light to grow anything you want at a good clip.

Regards,
Tom Barr

are there any negative effects for 10+ hours on? Also what does a good clip it mean?

Plants will not grow more and algae will.
Fast rate of growth, if you drive at a good clip, you are driving at a good rate of speed.

Regards,
tom Barr

i picked up some Hemianthus callitrichoides a week or two ago and with my conditions which i believe are good. Getting green on the inidcator, no3 at 10ppm, nitrates .5ppm, dosed trace 3x weekly per EI method. Its not really growing at all the and darn fish keep pecking at it. Any reason why its not doing better?

I have had my tank for over a year now and have never added any fertilizer specifically to the gravel bed? Do any of you? Is it necessary to put fert tabs in?

I haven't used substrate fertilizer for at least the past 3 years. I'm convinced that water column fertilizing is all that is necessary. However, for over a year I have been using river silt as a bottom layer under my SMS substrate, and that does provide some nutrients. My plant growth with that substrate mix has been the best I have ever had, so I believe a nutritient rich substrate does have a lot of value.

well alge is starting to grow again, even with high light, good co2, and ferts. I can only guess its due to the low plant load i currently have, as i just replanted the entire tank and must have stried up some alge spores.

HC can be slow to start up. Usually it takes some weeks to really get started and develope good roots.

thanks for the heads up, i put a fert tab under it and a few pebbles to keep it ancored as the large placo likes to suck on it.

Probably ought to put a label on every bit of HC sold stating this.


Regards,
Tom Barr