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Could I request help from you tank balancing experts?


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1 hour ago, Mitch Norton said:

@Hobbit thank you! That is a great tip to keep the Anubias shaded. I normally keep Water Sprite floating above my Anubias, but with the recent “starving” of the algae it kind of dwindled down to not much. It’s bounced back pretty well, and my circulation keeps the Water Sprite pretty much over the plant. 
 

@Patrick_G I think the lighting is fueling the GSA. I am not sure which of the nutrients are promoting it. I think the other plants dying back was a big factor. I’ve been cleaning plant leaves and wilting plants for more than a couple of weeks now. NEVER try to starve algae. Haha. 

 I’m in complete agreement. It’s amazing what changing one thing can do to a tank’s balance. My wife had grown a large clump of Ludwigia in her 6.8g Betta tank, it was probably 1/3 the plant mass in the tank and she was algae free. I robbed the Ludwigia for my 75g and now she’s got algae again. 

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Alright, so I have some updates. 
I added Pothos a few days ago, and I had to change water on Thursday. Not because anything was out of hand, but I knew I wouldn’t have time to do a water change this weekend. Part of my weekend plans included taking a sample of my water to be digitally tested at one of my local stores. 
 

The results were enlightening. I tested using the Aquarium Co-Op strips before I left. The results matched perfectly. Including nitrites reading just below 1 ppm. So this confirms that the Co-Op strips were more accurate than the API Master Test Kit. The owner of my local store asked me if I did the drops slowly to count them. When I said yea he said that I was probably causing the misread on nitrite. He said he trains his people to drop them very quickly to get a more uniform droplet size. 

Also, my nitrates were reading 5... seriously 5. We had a long conversation about why my nitrates could be tanking. It wasn’t until after I left that I remembered the pothos... could four clippings drop my nitrates from 50 ppm to 5 ppm in a week!? It seems absurd. I came home, fed a little heavy, and dosed Easy Green
 

I did treat the BBA with Seachem Excel when I did the water change. What a wild ride, but it is good to know the strips are extremely accurate!

Edited by Mitch Norton
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  • 3 weeks later...

@Mitch Norton nice video! I enjoyed the voiceover, the aquarium is looking great! Definitely looks like black beard algae to me. I get that a lot on my older plants that grow slower (anubias, crypts, swords, bolbitis, etc) so I feel your pain haha seems to really attach to things that do not move much

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I’ll echo @Isaac M—I really enjoyed the video update!

Ahh so after watching the video I’m realizing I have some of the same issues you do. Bits of green spot algae, but the biggest issue is the fuzzy algae like you have on your swords. I have it on my swords as well, and on the water sprite, the struggling buce, the fern that I think is dead, etc. 

Interestingly, my 55 gallon tank is not very much like yours. My tank is way under stocked, to the point I have trouble keeping any nitrates in the tank at all. I have decently high flow from a power head with a sponge filter intake. My substrate is organic soil with a gravel cap that is NOT thick enough, so that’s a problem. There’s always mulm collecting in the algae and coating the plants and moss in fine brown dust. I can’t keep cherry shrimp or large snails because of my loaches, but I do have three amanos that I added a while back. I also have two plecos, two otos, and an army of Malaysian trumpet snails. I do very infrequent water changes so things don’t change much at all. My lights are also super cheap. The tank’s been running for about a year and a half.

Following this thread, reading the recommended resources, and watching your video, I think our algae problems are caused by different things. I can’t think of anything we have in common that would be likely to cause this algae. 😆 I wonder if my main issue may be too much organic waste floating around. I’m going to try rinsing out the sponge filter more regularly and see if that helps... I think most of my beneficial bacteria are on my plants and substrate so I’m not too worried about the cycle crashing. I should probably put some more gravel in there too... I don’t like my current gravel though, so that’s another can of worms.

As a side note, any stem plants I try to grow just whither and die because of the low nitrate. Yours look great though!!

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@Hobbit I have a 55 gallon very similar to what you are describing. I also recently had green hair algae as well. But I have gained control of that by dosing some easy green to help my stem plants grow faster and compete against the algae.

The black beard algae I just leave alone however. I find that it often attacks things that do not move much, anubias leaves, bolbitis, driftwood, rocks, filters, etc. All the research points towards carbon dioxide levels though, I have multiple co2 systems I dont use so I dont know, I may eventually experiment with it and see if it does anything haha 

I would try adding some easy green and more fast growing plants to your aquarium though and see if it helps clear things up. Maybe some additional amanos would help as well. 

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@Isaac M thanks for the ideas! I’m dosing 1.5 doses (7 pumps) of Easy Green twice a week right now, and I hesitate to do more because I don’t want to create a situation where I have so many plants that the tank becomes dependent on me adding tons of fertilizer... I’m not sure I can avoid that situation though because my plants keep growing anyway! 😄 I think I would have to dose a full 5 pumps of Easy Green every day to support stem plants because my swords just slurp up everything. Unless I test right after I dose, my nitrates read 0. I have water sprite in there, but it struggles unless I let it float. I have some conflicting priorities in this tank. 😆

I would not be sad to get more amanos.They’re fun little creatures. They zip right into the middle of the loaches’ and plecos’ feeding frenzy to nab a pellet and then swim away with it.

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If you are looking for a plant to help you get rid of nitrate spikes fast, Hornwort, and most floaters come to mind. Although they aren't the kind I'd want permanently because you'd be pruning Hornwort, and fishing out floaters at least every other day, and duckweed, for example once introduced is there to stay.

Also I just looked at your video and the algae, though visible isn't that bad. After many years of hard edged warfare against algae in all forms. I've come to the conclusion that a bit of algae is acceptable as long as it's under control, and is just a sign of a healthy aquarium. However it still remains a balance between acceptable, and irking the living daylights out of me when it sometimes gets to show up in what I consider the wrong place. In any case life gets a lot easier once one comes to terms with the fact that there are no 100% algae free aquariums.

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Interesting thread! 

I purchased new lights a few months ago and have struggled with algae  ever since.  I am still working on the balance of lighting versus nutrients. When i test for the phosphate, it is so low it looks yellow. What do you add to raise the PO  I have been adding the liquid nutrient 

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@Acara Mom I have high phosphates so I’ve never looked into how to raise them. I’ve tried bringing them down with more Brenda cleaning and light feeding. 
 

I believe raising phosphates can be done with heavy feeding, but phosphate test kits only test for inorganic phosphates. So you may have phosphates and possibly even raise them without seeing it. I believe you can raise them by over feeding and leaving dung plants in the tank. 
 

 I am currently trying to remove plant debris as soon as I see it. 
 

Do your plants show phosphate deficiencies? This would be indicated by yellowing leaves with soggy brown patches. 
 

 

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Thank you for the reply. 
In the oldest tank I have observed leaf decay that points to low PO. I’ve been adding PO liquid to the larger tanks a couple times a week at least. I’ve been struggling to balance the nutrients with new lighting. I have a 75 gallon with the Fluval Aquasky, one 40 breeder with Fluval 3.0, and one 40 with Finnex that I started with. Strangely the Finnex light plants are doing the best at the moment. The other two tanks I have been fighting algae since I had the lighting and nutrients wrong...so I got algae in both of them! I’ve been fighting that for over a month and seem to have possibly at least slowed the speed of the algae. But I have now some spot algae in the 40 gallon with the 3.0. I have read that low PO can possibly contribute to this particular allergy. Knowing that the other tank had been showing some decay and that I had already been dosing PO I was hoping that I was on the right road. But my PO continues to stay low. I decided to increase the dosage after reading a few peoples comments. My plant growth is moderate since I turn down the lights. Frustrating because I spent a lot of money on aquariums, lights and plants And of course my fish. I guess part of the “fun” of the hobby is trying to get things to be perfect. I’ve decided only God is able to do that!😊

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For sure. It seems to be a learning curve that gets easier with time. 
 

If I read that right you have your lights turned down in intensity? I also tried that. It did get rid of the green spot algae, but it also contributed to starving my stem plants. The Fluval 3.0 is too high for low light plants. You are probably doing it right, but you might try asking on this forum for setup recommendations (assuming you haven’t before). 
 

It sounds like you are grasping the issues, and only need some tweaks to get it where you want it. Like others have said in this thread, we can’t eradicate algae. Inhad read that Green Spot Algae can be cause by too many phosphates. That is why I am watching the decay plant situation closely. 

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