Algae

[Jim T]

I have a 150 gallon fairly heavily planted tank. It is about 2 1/2 months old. I dose with Easy Green twice a week and here is my lighting set up. Is this a normal part of the evaluation of a planted tank? 

[Mmiller2001]

How many lights are on the tank?

[Jim T]

@Mmiller2001 2  36" Fluval 3.0's.

[HH Morant]

I have a fluval 3.0 on my 20 gallon quarantine tank. Hair algae was a major problem. Even moving the peak intensity down to 30% (15% for pink and blue) hasn't completely gotten rid of it. 

Your algae looks like staghorn to me, although I am no expert and I look forward to seeing other opinions. I have never had algae like that.

Reducing light is the first thing I would try.

Good luck! Judging from the photo, your aquarium is going to be great.

[HH Morant]

Well, I watched a couple of Youtube videos about staghorn algae, and they don't mention lighting as an issue. I recommend you watch them.

[FredF]

On 7/22/2021 at 4:40 PM, Jim T said:

I have a 150 gallon fairly heavily planted tank. It is about 2 1/2 months old. I dose with Easy Green twice a week and here is my lighting set up. Is this a normal part of the evaluation of a planted tank? 

I have a heavily planted 75 gallon tank, with the exact same algae that is 6 weeks old.  I am also using a Fluval 3.0 light with settings comparable to  your,  The substrate is fluval stratum behind the rocks.  I concluded my algae was staghorn algae.  It started primarily on my java fern leaves and has spread to some of the Christmas Moss and Alternanthera Reineckii.  Its been leaving my anubias and rotala alone.  Right now I have been manually removing and pulling plants with it.  I started fertilizing more with easy green, because I thought my stems (which have been growing like mad) were outcompeting the slower growing plants, but the algae seems to have gotten a bit worse.  I think the main treatment has to be lower the light more and see how that works.  Without CO2, light is really the only significant variable that can be played with.  I am considering something like easy carbon, but am concerned that will kill my vals.  I already lowered the light percentages and added a lid which naturally reduces some of the light.  I might go down further to 75% and see where that goes.  I think maybe we both started out with too much light in the beginning when starting off while the plants were getting established.  Hopefully as the tanks mature the algae will be less of an issue.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

You can use easy carbon but start low and slow I half dose to start and ease up the dose after weeks. Other idea is to spot dose with a syringe. Manual removal will help the plants to catch up. 
You have a choice to go one of two ways - up dose the ferts, maybe reduce light by a couple hours maybe 10 instead of 12, and use easy carbon is the way I usually do it.  Or scale way back on light 7-8 hours, reduce the ferts and slow things down so the slower growing plants catch up. I usually go more rather than less. The other thing I do is a mid day siesta 2 hours with no light let the co2 rise back up and then go with your second lighting period.