CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.

[Mmiller2001]

On 4/22/2022 at 10:59 AM, Minanora said:

Nope. Just plants. Lots of plants.

I've had two people that I've talked to in person (that plant guru and a saltwater fanatic) tell me to get a UV sterilizer... I feel like that would be bad for the good microbes and microfauna though.

I have one, best addition I've added to my tank to be honest.

On 4/22/2022 at 11:09 AM, Minanora said:

I ask about the water changes because of the melt from the new plants converting.

That darn thread algae popping up has me on edge. Especially after reading the 2hr article on green algae.

Should I shorten or lower the intensity of the photoperiod as well? I'm running that short dual siesta. The peak of my photoperiods intensity is 50%. I'm seeing my Nymphoides hydrophylla start to reach for light a bit now.

Ah, okay. I would try manual removal but water changes are always beneficial.

You could try spot dosing H202 as well. 

[KrazyJohn]

On 4/22/2022 at 12:59 PM, Minanora said:

Nope. Just plants. Lots of plants.

I've had two people that I've talked to in person (that plant guru and a saltwater fanatic) tell me to get a UV sterilizer... I feel like that would be bad for the good microbes and microfauna though.

I was actually reading an interesting article about U.V sterilizer and it made a lot of sense imo.

The article was saying that those U.V. sterilizer don't affect your bacteria's noticeably. Reason being that your bacteria's don't live in the water column. The live on surface of all the things you have in your aquarium, on the plants, woods, rocks, decorations, windows of the aquarium and most importantly in your filter media.

Was saying that the reason it was so efficient to avoid algae spread, was because those algae spore travel in the water column. So using U.V. will kill all the spores and the fish virus that travel through the water column. And wont affect the bacteria that are good for the aquarium.

 

[Minanora]

Tested nitrates today. Still under 5ppm! The first set of plants are settling in! Wooooo. And the fish are happy. So I'm happy.

[Minanora]

As the battle with hair algae settles down... Tiny groupings of bba are trying to take hold on the wood. 🤣 It never ends.

But the nitrates were still at 5ppm yesterday so things are looking up. I'm going to change water today. Manually remove some algae. Spot treat the bba and some of the hair algae, and do a half dose of easy green.

I upped the light intensity for one section of the photoperiod and upped the CO2 a tiny bit. My plants are reaching too much for light and the red ludwigia is getting green growth.

 

[gjcarew]

On 4/24/2022 at 8:29 AM, Minanora said:

As the battle with hair algae settles down... Tiny groupings of bba are trying to take hold on the wood. 🤣 It never ends.

But the nitrates were still at 5ppm yesterday so things are looking up. I'm going to change water today. Manually remove some algae. Spot treat the bba and some of the hair algae, and do a half dose of easy green.

I upped the light intensity for one section of the photoperiod and upped the CO2 a tiny bit. My plants are reaching too much for light and the red ludwigia is getting green growth.

 

This has been a remarkable recovery for such a short amount of time!

[Minanora]

On 4/24/2022 at 10:05 AM, gjcarew said:

This has been a remarkable recovery for such a short amount of time!

With the help of some bright minds! I wouldn't have gotten this far by only reading articles and watching videos. Truly grateful that we have such a great community.

Bummed that I'm going to be gone for two weeks during the battle. Hopeful that it won't be too bad. I set up an auto feeder so my house sitter won't be over feeding. Feeding is actually going to be a bit light.

[Minanora]

Below: After the water change today. The new plants are melting hard. Should I increase CO2 at all to help speed up the conversion?

[Minanora]

Still fighting tiny wafts of string algae. I had dosed a full 7 pumps of easy green yesterday. I did that without checking nitrates. Today I tested and nitrates were at around 30ppm. I did a 65% water change so I could spot treat with h2o2 and easy carbon. Killer combo. I did this on Sunday as also. Great news is that my buce has steady new growth and the algae on the buce was wiped out with the h2o2 dip! Woohoo!

[Minanora]

Okay so while I was on vacation I adjusted my photoperiods. Made everything shorter and less intense. There's now nearly 0 algae of any kind. But.... my pearlweed and giant babytears are pretty much gone. 😞

There's new growth on my anubius minima, but it's yellow. The deficiencies I was seeing on the java fern is worse on the old growth.

I did a 60% water change today. Nitrates were at 40ppm before the change.

Below is an overview of my vacation light schedule. How quickly should I go back to the original "pre-vacation" schedule? Many of my plants were reaching for light. Should I keep the schedule the same, but up the intensity? I don't want to have a resurgence of the algae.

The tank before trimming today.

After trimming/water change:

[Seattle_Aquarist]

Hi @Minanora

Welcome back, I hope you had a great vacation.  You can return to the normal photoperiod now no need for transition or delay. -Roy

[Minanora]

I think I finally beat the algae! There is still tiny bits of thread algae trying to grow now that I ramped the light back up a bit, but the shrimp and snails seem to be working on it pretty well.

Here are some photos from this morning.

[Minanora]

The battle continues! I don't know what to call this grouping but it's like, bba and staghorn and hair algae alllllllll together in an epic "surprise".

I haven't taken the parameters yet but I'll get around to dealing with it soon... I hope. Sigh. I need more free time.

[Minanora]

I just purchased a truck load more plants as well. Hopefully they come in well and help soak up nutrients other than potassium.... My love of Java Ferns has eaten all of my dosing of potassium. 😂

[nabokovfan87]

On 5/19/2022 at 3:10 PM, Minanora said:

Here are some photos from this morning.

If it's any consolation to the ongoing battles, the tank is breathtakingly awesome.  If you wish to "feel better" about it, I recorded a video in my last post in my journal for my tank showing everything attempting to fight off the horde of BBA/Staghorn.

Slowly but surely.... I'll get there, but I'm really hoping my tank ends up remotely close to where you're at. 

Power for the 29G in the front of the house should be installed tomorrow, which means I can move fish and start to "fix" that tank as well.  It's going to be only anubias, but hopefully I can save the few rhizomes and plants I do have from my original 75G.

From this:


To this:



It looks like your dosing and regime is a lot more detailed than mine.  I just wanted to ask if you had any specific tips that might help the average "my tank is broken with algae".  The main one I think most of us use is to turn the algae down and/or plant a lot more to increase the plant load in the tank.  Is there something "behind the scenes" that you experienced with your project that turned things around?

I have the CO2 tank on standby ready to go into my tank.  I feel like that's going to either push off the algae for good or will increase back to it's former strength.  😕

[Minanora]

On 5/31/2022 at 10:27 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

If it's any consolation to the ongoing battles, the tank is breathtakingly awesome.  If you wish to "feel better" about it, I recorded a video in my last post in my journal for my tank showing everything attempting to fight off the horde of BBA/Staghorn.

Slowly but surely.... I'll get there, but I'm really hoping my tank ends up remotely close to where you're at. 

Power for the 29G in the front of the house should be installed tomorrow, which means I can move fish and start to "fix" that tank as well.  It's going to be only anubias, but hopefully I can save the few rhizomes and plants I do have from my original 75G.

From this:


To this:



It looks like your dosing and regime is a lot more detailed than mine.  I just wanted to ask if you had any specific tips that might help the average "my tank is broken with algae".  The main one I think most of us use is to turn the algae down and/or plant a lot more to increase the plant load in the tank.  Is there something "behind the scenes" that you experienced with your project that turned things around?

I have the CO2 tank on standby ready to go into my tank.  I feel like that's going to either push off the algae for good or will increase back to it's former strength.  😕

I would say the biggest thing for dealing with the bba is spot dosing it with h2o2. For staghorn, I've been manually removing it with plant tweezers. So far that is kind of working. I get rid of it in one spot only to have it return nearby. It likes my rocks.

I think your progress indicates that you're on the right track. Stay consistent and maybe spot treat to accelerate.

 

I have only had CO2 running for the last two months, I attribute that to helping me immensely by lowering the tank pH without having to use RO water. More than the actual CO2 concentration for the plants to use.

Frequent large water changes played a huge roll as well. But that was mostly to fight the hair algae. I definitely feel that keeping nitrates below 30ppm slows algae growth considerably.

I also feel that adding more plants and following the advice of "70% plant coverage while looking down onto the tank" has helped me.

Consistency is another huge factor, along with patience.

I also feel that shrimp are essential for me. They work hard to clean every surface.

Aside from all of that, my fertilizing is only the way it is because of the high bio-load in my tank. My nitrates go up even with all the plants I have. Then I have so many Java Ferns that I need a lot more potassium and iron. So I target those instead of raising all three macros with an all-in-one. I generally dose every other day with potassium, iron, and micros. I use the seachem stuff for now. I hate their packaging and concentration differences. But it works for now.

When plants die or melt they increase the nutrients in the water so I'm careful to make sure I do large water changes every other day when I add a lot of new plants.

When I do water changes on my tanks, I always do 50% now. Sometimes 60% on the 75. It's a reset button. Makes sure I don't have excess of nutrients. I hope to move to lesser sized changes slowly.

 

Lastly, my success is 100% a result from the advice of our plant gurus. Documenting, and asking allll the questions, no matter how stupid I think they may be! 🤣