Pepere

Nitrifying bacteria will grow better with plenty of oxygen, carbonates and somewhat warmer temps… so, an extra airstone, KH of at least 6 degrees, and temp of 78… when I was starting tanks I tried multiple doses of multiple brands of bacteria in a bottle and I was unimpressed with all of them. If you keep houseplants and dont allow the soil to completely dry out between watering, the soil would be a rich source of nitrifying bacteria. Right now, I would suspect you have both types of nitrifying bacteria, but an immature small colony. It will take time for it to grow sufficient to metabolize 2 ppm ammonia challenge dose in 24 hours to 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites. If I could put time and patience in a bottle, I could be a millionaire… even though that isnt nearly what it was when I was growing up in the 70s and you could get a whole meal at McDonalds and get change back on a dollar….

This hobby has an amazing capacity to humble me when I start to think I am getting a handle on things…

It looks like the tank is not cycled yet. unless you seed the tank with filter squeezings from a well cycled tank or media from a well cycled tank it typically takes 6-8 weeks for a fishless cycle to establish itself. At this point I would not worry about the plants by and large and focus on getting through a fish in cycle. This will involve daily water testing for ammonia and nitrites and conducting water changes to try to keep levels of both below 1 ppm. It will likely take a few back to back water changes to initially get below those levels. Is the prior tank still up and running?

Well it is not a lack of nitrates then that is slowing plant growth…

A heavily planted tank with CO2 injection can benefit from nitrates at 30 ppm. You will want to see at what rate the nitrates are dropping and dose accordingly. When you first dose, the plants may well soak up above and beyond what they are capable of utilizing daily. You may wish to frontload nitrates to get levels up and then dose a few pumps every day or every other day or so depending on how levels drop.

Zero nitrates is a problem. The plants are starving.. I am betting the co op light is not the problem. The plants are nutrient limited at zero nitrates. I dose my CO2 tanks to 30 ppm nitrates. I have been doing this with Easy Green till now, but I just bit the bullet and ordered dry salts for ferts… Each pump of Easy Green gives 3 ppm nitrates per 10 gallons of water.. yes, I have been adding 25 pumps of Easy Green to my 29 gallon aquarium after doing a water change on Saturday mornings. I am likely giving a lot more trace elements than the plants can ever use, and it is pretty pricey this way. A bottle doesnt last long when dosing 4 tanks this way. Without question the Twinstar will give you far superior color rendering and contrast and dramatically improve tank aesthetics. I just ordered a Chihiros WRGB2 pro for this tank to replace the two Finnex planted plus ALCs I have been running. I tried a Chihiros on it and was sold so I ordered one..

If you have easy plants, I bet 60% is way over what you need. The Co Op lists their light giving 100 PAR at 20 inches depth. I would knock down the light to 20% for plants such as anubias, java fern, pogo, crypts etc… assuming that 20% is linear on the lamp and it knocks you down to 20 par or so… maybe some floating plants added in too… while height of aquarium is 20 inches being a cube, height from plant is really the key. The plants have some height and presumably there is an inch or two of substrate… With time as the plants adjust to conditions, you they can start to accept more light…

With co2 plants are able to utilize more light and more nutrients. 2 squirts of Easy Green in a 16 gallon tank very well might not cut it. what are your nitrates looking like in the tank? Is that a crypt in the left corner?

It is hard to tell for sure from photograph., but it looks like the val is suffering from a fair number of yellowing leaves. is this accurate in person, or am I mistaken? Lighting effect? Do you have Ph, GH, KH test results?

Your Fluval is already capable of much more than your plants need. What do you do for fertilization?

I noticed my easy flow lift attached to a modified ugf was showing decreased flow. I made a cup of bleach water solution and pulled 4 air collars out. Using a bit of airline tube and a syringe, I attached one after another of them to push, pull bleach solution through the air collar. Then dumped the solution and did same with rinse water… Then rinse water with a couple tablespoons of dechlor added. re installed them and turned on the air. Huge grin on my face astounded at the flow these things put out… I think I am going to simply put doing this into my quarterly service routine. That way the flow will never be noticeably diminished… I am so impressed with these…. I have them fitted to UGF plates with home made adapters and they also friction fit on top of Lee’s medium triple flow box filter… the amount of debris filtered through polyfill in a Lee’s with an easy flow kit attached is nothing short of amazing to me…

Fluval 3.0 48 inch fixture PAR / LUX Depth 545 / 32800 (3″ / 8 cm) 288 / 17120 (6″ / 15 cm) 136 / 9350 (12″ / 30 cm) https://fluvalaquatics.com/us/shop/product/plant-3-0 I am guessing you have been looking at the PAR data for the co op light already. I cant really for see where you would be needing more par than the Fluval light. The Fluval light can be configured to function closer to the co op light.. there is no need to have a bell shaped curve on light ramp up ramp down. You can set it for a straightline ramp up and ramp down over a half hour and simply have photo period at flat power output… If light distribution is an issue, there can be benefit to running one light at the back, and another in the front.. or you can opt to keep lower light plants in the areas that receive less light… If you were going for high end red plants that require CO2 and more difficult plants you would likely be looking for a light with much better color rendering than either of these two lights. you might like this thread where I compared the fluval lights to Finnex Planted Plus ALC to a Chihiros WRGB 2 pro light.

CO2 injection? What are you growing for plants? light to gravel is 20 inches, but, other than carpeting foreground plants most have some height so depth requirements will be less.

What length is your fluval? What length is your tank, what gallonage?

I would not have thought to testing it before topping off the tank myself. If I had the test kit, I would have tested before proceeding to do a water change… But test kit wasnt handy so flushing household lines and doing a water change is a reasonable course of action… as @lefty o mentions a 5 minute flush of lines after a weeks vacation is always a good plan… And as I originally wrote, this hobby has a unique way of humbling ourselves from time to time… It happens to all of us..

Was there any hint of rotten egg odor that you discerned when you filled the container to add? Hydrogen sulfide levels can rise in water that sits in pipes for a period of time, esp with some wells.. flushing the lines clears it out…

I would wait until moved before getting a replacement.

Original Post stated coming home from vacation and topping off around 2 gallons in a 32 gallon tank that precipitated the issue… If I walked in after a vacation and the tank looked fine but a little low and I topped off a bit of water and then saw a big die off occur, I would be running tests on every parameter I had a test for on both tank water and tap water before doing anything else. I would probably get a sample of tap water to send out for more extensive testing to get clarity if there was anything in it, either from low water levels in well, or from sitting unused in house during vacation. I probably would not be consuming it until I got tests back. It may have been due to water sitting in pipes unused for a while and once water was flushed out it is fine now. It may have been from low water levels in the well. I would want to have it tested. Fwiw, I sort of doubt original posters water change schedule or filter maintenance schedule before this unfortunate experience occurred precipitated this incident.

No. It keeps turning on after the tank loses temp. If it was too small for the heat loss the heater would not shut offas the temp would not be reached. I plug my heaters in to Inkbirds and set it for a 2 degree range, it turns the heater on when the tanktemp drops to 74, and back off when it hits 76. you would see your heat cycles drop significantly and have an added failsafe. I set the heater temp setting to77. That way if the Inkbird fails to turn off rhe heater has the ability to save the day… The industry standard is well in excess of what is needed. I run 50watt heaters in 29 gallon tanks. I never see them not keeping up.

I just squeeze out the polyfill underwater like I do with a sponge filter and reuse it. Acter a half dozen uses it starts getting compressed and I replace it… but that is a far sight better than replacing everytime…

First of all, given that it is a loop, there is no end, just a far corner… Second, As pipe is much bigger than air hose, there is precious little velocity of air going down the pipe, hence minimal frictional losses… Third water is dramatically more viscous than air. Consider for example a sailboat. The sails above the water are dramatically larger than the underwater wings, (keel and rudder) the keel and rudder balance the force of the wind on the sails… the fact you are moving air in the pipe vs water greatly reduces the relative losses. as a general rule, a 90 degree bend imposes the same flow restriction as adding 3 feet of pipe 2 45s would impose a bit less flow restriction than a single 90, but iirc, it doesnt cut the restriction in half… I dont think it would be worth the bother…

Swish it in dechlor water and go at the filter floss side with a tootbrush. Pour the water into the new tank…

I remember when I was a kid and set up a tank, there was no word about cycling and ammonia and nitrite. The fish just started mysteriously dying after 3-4 days… And the Neons were always the first to go…. once fish stopped dying we would go get replacements…. so, Neons would not be my first choice…. But then again, your tank is fairly well along in its cycle already…. Iread your other post talking about doing large waterchanges early on multiple times a week. As someone else said if you stock lightly, feed lightly you probably will not have to. I would just test for ammonia and nitrites frequently and be prepared to. you have another tank, right? What do you have for a filter in there? can you clean the media or sponges in some dechlorinated water and dump the water into the new tank? That would likely give your new tank a big boost.

To knock down the algae, I have had more luck with cleaning the filter, sponges, substrate and removing as much algae as I could followed up by a 50% water change to remove as many dislodged fragments and dissolved organics as possible followed by redoing it weekly for a few weeks to knock down amounts… In my experience “cleaner tanks”are more tolerant of the light not being just exactly right…. Ie it gives you a bigger range to play with… As to lights, the Fluval has excellent control to adjust intensity. Rather than going for a bell shaped curve on the program though, I would opt for a simple 30 minute ramp up, ramp down at the end of the photo period. A d then play with the light intensity for that light period. The bell shaped curve to simulate the change of the sun during the day simply imposes too many variables…and since we are aiming for around 6-8 hours of light, as opposed to the 12 to 14 we get in high summer in the northern hemisphere the altering intensity is less important. bear in mind, in addition to varying intensity natural sunlight gives with sun angle, shading comes in to play with clouds and sun direction relative to trees…. The Fluval has excellent control and suitable par and good water resistance but in my opinion lousy color rendering and less than stellar light distribution. Color rendering has little effect on plant and algae growth, (high blue light really is not the algae trigger bit it is claimed). but dramatically effects how the tank looks to human eyes…

Actually ammonia is less toxic at low ph. It converts to ammonium. But the beneficial bacteria grows more readily at the higher ph mentioned…