so you love aquarium plants but there's a bit of a learning curve and you've got questions i'm
here to help hi my name is irene with girl talks fish and today my wonderful husband is actually
giving me the day off so i decided i would answer some of your questions while I galavant
around town getting some r r first up is a hiking trip with some women from my church
okay our first question is from amber she says i'm struggling to understand the balance of
light and when to add liquid fertilizer i'm starting to get green hair algae in multiple tanks
and so for me i though when i got green hair algae is definitely because
my lights were too strong so i ended up having to decrease the intensity of the light
now i was able to do that digitally because i have a 3.0 sorry a fluval 3.0 but if you can't
do that you can always raise the height of the light you can cover some of the LEDs using tape
like black electrical tape or add floating plants that would have shade in some areas and i would
just keep decreasing the light intensity until uh when i saw the tips of the plants were no longer
immediately getting algae on them and then once i did that then i could adjust
my nutrient levels and water change schedule so that the nitrates stayed around 20 ppm
i am done with the hike back at home and feeling nice and clean after my shower so let's get a
question from classic acid who wants to know how do you successfully convert immersed plants
to their submerged counterparts parts without the need for co2 well i actually do it usually
without co2 so what this person is referring to is most aquarium plants are grown in plant farms
immersed where their leaves are completely out of the water just because they grow bigger and
faster they're not as prone to having algae and pests and diseases on them but then when you take
that plant and you put it in your submerged you basically submerge them completely under water
they usually melt back those big and beautiful leaves and then they start growing smaller maybe
narrower maybe completely different looking submerse grown leaves and uh with low light
plants i which is usually what i have i think it just likes patience and just having enough
light in nutrients but highlight plants i have not tried converting them without co2
um and so maybe some i guess some tips and tricks on how to successfully or more quickly convert
plants into their new form is float them at the top at the surface of the water if you can just
because then they have direct access to co2 they can have much they're much closer to the
aquarium light so that helps with a lot and then of course make sure they have plenty of fertilizer
all right i am done with lunch and i am absolutely exhausted because i stayed up
way too late reading books the past few days so before i'm gonna i think i'm gonna take a little
quick nap but before i do let me answer a question from rodney about based on how your plants
look can you tell specifically what your plant is lacking like nutrients versus light and so there
are lots of plant nutrient deficiency charts out there but i would say in general if your plant is
missing macronutrients like potassium phosphate and nitrogen that they need a lot of the symptoms
kind of are that the leaves start turning yellow then brown the giant holes start forming and then
eventually the whole leaf just melts away and dissolves versus if it's a micronutrient i will
link down in the description a chart that i have made and you can check it out of the specific
symptoms the only problem with those charts is if your plant is missing multiple types of nutrients
at the same time the symptoms can get all kind of jumbled up so you may need to troubleshoot using
plant nutrient water test kits like for potassium or phosphate or whatnot so you can really narrow
down what is the issue now if it's a light lack of light issue i would say the top signs i've seen
would be like non-existent or very very slow growth maybe some yellowing of the leaves
stem plants for example tend to start getting really leggy instead of compact bushy growth and
the leaves on the bottom of the stem that don't get enough light they'll start to fall off then if
you have certain plants like dwarf sagittaria that can sometimes be used as a foreground carpeting
plant they'll start growing really long tall leaves instead and look more like vallisneria
because they're trying to reach the light at the surface so those are the main symptoms i can think
of all right nap time for me oh my goodness it is way later the day i slept three times longer
than i planned but while i do a water top off on this aquarium before i head on out let me answer
a quick question by hawkstar he or she wanted to know kind of i already answered the first part but
about brown diatoms when you're first setting up an aquarium and basically uh brown diatom
algae is a common problem when you have a new or immature aquarium it's really easy to remove but
it's kind of ugly and if you get too much of it it could potentially inhibit photosynthesis for
your plants so they're not getting a polite now i heard this tip from george farmer when he sets up
kind of nutrient-rich substrate tanks he wants to get as much of those excess nutrients out
of the water as possible so he recommends the first week after you set up a new tank
to do daily i think 50 water changes for the first week every other day water changes for week two
water changes every three days for week three and then water changes once a week for week four and
then you just continue those day weekly water change schedule from then and on out some other
tips i want to add are that you should add as many plants as possible when you're setting up
a new aquarium so that they will suck up as much excess nutrients as possible fast growing plants
like floating plants are really great for that and then use some algae eaters to help you out as well
all right now i'm at a bowl tea shop but i don't want to film inside because it's kind of small
in there so let's answer another question by johnny what do you do with the excess
floating plants they've taken over half my surface area that's a good point you don't want too many
floating plants or else it could shade out the other plates plants in your tank as well as
interfere with surface agitation so that not enough oxygen are getting to your fish so what
i like to do with excess floating plants as well as like any stem plants that i prune is either
throw them away sell them give them away compost them feed them to animals they eat plants but
what you don't want to do is just randomly throw them outside because there's the possibility that
i don't know like wildlife could somehow pick them up and then it ends up spreading into
your local ecosystem we definitely don't want a situation with invasive plant species getting out
well that didn't exactly work out to plan i went into the bubble tea store and then
they didn't have dine-in so i ended up going to a new thai restaurant that i'd never tried before
and just worked on my laptop for quite a while did some quiet time that kind of thing but we
have one more question which is from cohen what is the first plant you were able to keep alive
and thrived afterwards um i like that it's a good personal question to end our video on
so anubius i think technically is the first plant that did well for me
despite my inability to keep plants alive it they would just like grow one little leaf every once in
a while and just kept going for me no matter what i did but they did tend to get covered in algae so
i think the first plate that really just you know grew out of control would be amazon frog bit
um it's a very hearty floating plant i have a whole video on it it doesn't require substrate
you just give it lots of nutrients which is great because i've got high bioload tanks
lots of light and you're good to go well i am definitely gonna have to do a part two to answer
more of your questions because there were a lot uh if you can't wait though make sure to watch my
how to balance a planted aquarium because i felt like a lot of the questions that were asked were
answered in that video take time to enjoy your aquariums and i'll see you in the next video