We have the following setup that has been running since September last year, we did have blue/green algae a few weeks after the initial setup and were advised to carry out a 3 day blackout and reduce the phosphate using Rowaphos (phosphate was at 5). This did work and we had good plant growth and the algae has been under control since.

With everything going well we decided to add some high light plants to replace some of the fast growing initial plants, so we upgraded the 2xT8 40w tubes that came with the tank two weeks ago to 2xT5 (detailed below).
At present the plants do not seem to be growing very fast and we have most forms of algae growing in the tank (e.g. hair, fuzz, brown, green). We have a drop checker using 4 kh solution and this indicates a nice green colour. On the positive side with the new lights the plants are now pearling like mad which they did not do under the T8's.

It appears that something is lacking in the tank and would like some help to try and determine what this may be. Should we be adding iron or potassium as we have read this can sometimes be deficient in water?

Any help much appreciated, thanks.

Tank: Fluval Roma 240
Lights: 2x54w T5 Arcadia Plant pro (lights on for 10 hours with 2 hour break)
Filter: Fluval 305
C02: JBL pressurised at 1 bps (on 1 hour before lights and off 1 hour before lights)
Substrate: Sand/gravel over Tropica Plant Substrate
Fertiliser: 20ml Tropica plant nutrition once a week
Water Change: 10-15% once a week
Nitrate: 7.5
PH: 7
KH: 8
Phosphate: 0.25
Iron: 0.1

This post has been edited by melh1979: May 27 2008, 08:06 PM