losing my war against algae

[JoeQ]

On 5/30/2022 at 5:37 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

I knew what you were saying 😁. But I learned my lesson a while ago. <wink> 

Lmao i was pretty sure you did, and I could smell the scarcasm/irony/joke but with a lot of forums I find you have to word everything perfectly or someone ends up being butt hurt! 🤣

Edited May 30, 2022 by JoeQ

[nabokovfan87]

I know you guys are saying this tank is "hopeless", but I think there is some hope here.  There are issues.  I have had some of these same plants in the same situation as the OP and I can tell you it's frustrating because plants are not cheap. Especially when you're spending what little bit you have for the sake of trying to add more plant load.

I think there's a few things we need to get right here to help out @DrwHem, but we also need to get some clarity and make sure some things said above are making sense.

1. Fertilization being used isn't sufficient.
2. The tank is dirty and needs to be cleaned
3. The lighting may/may not be sufficient or needs adjusted.
4. Some plants may not have specific requirements met and other plants will be easier to grow given this specific tank setup.

I see a few things here I think will help to an immense degree and they also speak to a few systemic issues that need to be fixed.

Exhibit A:  There is a lot of detritus.  This is likely here because you're worried about the plants releasing from the substrate when gravel vacuuming, but the cause of all of this detritus is pointing towards the types of things that let algae (especially BBA) take hold in the tank.


Exhibit B: Your stem plants have a lot of bare stalks and dead areas. I don't see a lot of root growth, which is pointing to the lack of nutrients and/or other things the plant needs to grow.



Exhibit C : Plants that are close to the substrate seem to be struggling pretty hard. This is due to a few factors, namely their location in the tank (indirect light), fertilizer issues, and potentially just a plant struggling to take hold in this water chemistry.



I am not trying to say "do this" and guarantee it will be fixed. As someone mentioned, this isn't something where we can give you a single line of text and fix the issue.  I do however want to say, let's talk this through one by one, and make sure the OP really does know what to do with each situation, how to move forward, and what is causing/contributing to these issues in the tank.

I want to reference something that I didn't have any clue on how to handle when I first started with stem plants. I did not know how to actually care for them, trim them, and keep the bare stems at bay.  Part of this goes down to maintenance and I found a really good video that helped me to understand how to care for them.  I'll link that below.
 

 

Edited May 30, 2022 by nabokovfan87
Clarity

[DrwHem]

So my epic battle continues and its not going well. A lot of the internet info im seeing tells me that the fluval fresh and plant provides high PAR readings at 19 inches, my tank is 22, but i cant image that 3 inches makes a huge difference. Plants seem to do fine for a month or 2 and then slowly get covered in black algae and die off. The 4 otto cats in my tank never attach to leaves only the glass.

I did a fairly large (for me ) plant purchase in spring. I usually do about a 20% water change and glass scraping once a week.

API root tabs 1 per cluster every 3 months

New Plants Late March:

Red tiger Lotus Bulb, still alive and appears fine

Limnophila Aromatica, all of this appeared to be growing quite well and then rapidly died off in the last month

Mermaid Weed, all but one died out in the last month

Rotala Macranda, all died except for 1 or 2 almost bare stems

 

Amazon Swords, are somewhat fine but not thriving

Early May:

Glossostigma, all of this died

Chain Sword Narrow Leaf, most of this has died

 I continue to dose with the 1 cap of Seachem flourish once a week because its all i have at the moment. 

Fluval light settings:

10:00 to 4:30 full daylight

Pink 80%

Blue 5%

Cold White 80%

Pure White 100%

Warm White 80%  

Filter: Marineland Magniflow Canister

Tray 1 Activated Carbon

Tray 2 Crushed coral

Tray 3 Seachem Matrix

Tray 4 Seachem Matrix

Tap Water Reading

 General Hardness 150ppm

chlorine 1.5 ppm

Carbonate Harness 80 ppm

PH 7.2

Aquarium Water Reading

General Hardness 150

Nitrite 0

Nitrate 50

Carbonate Hardness 80

pH 7.2

Also, i currently use Aqua Care pro freshwater test strips but i have problems viewing the exact readings so i may just be reading my settings incorrectly the colors tend to blur together for me. I wish there was a strip that would just give me digital readouts lol.

 

In the fall i was planning on redesigning the tank and adding a lot of stacked rocks and adding in some hygrophilia pinitiffida on top of the rock to help get some plants a few inches closer to my light but i just find it hard to believe my light is considered low light at 22 inches.

 

 

[Patrick_G]

@DrwHem, sorry that this tank has been such a PIA for you! 
 

I like the idea of adding some hardscape. It’s a 4’ tank right? I’d budget at least $200 for a nice bunch of easy plants. Get Java Fern, Anubias, Pogostemon Stellatus Octopus, more crypts of whatever type you want and other easy plants. For now forget about the medium and high difficulty stem plants. The ones I mentioned will  all grow in low light so start at 6 hours at 50% on the Fluval 3.0. A comprehensive fertilizer is probably the easiest. A cleaning crew will be a big help with algae control. Once you have these plants growing you might try slowly increasing the light and adding some more demanding plants. 

Easy Carbon and Seachem Excel are algae control products that can be used sparingly to help a tank get past the initial algae stage or to tackle some stubborn long term algae. 
 

sorry if I duplicated advice already posted, I just skimmed the thread before posting.