I wasn't sure in which section to put it in but since I've got both plant and algae problems I'll go here.
So first of all about 2 months ago my tank developed black algae like the BBA but without the fluffy growth, more like charcoal kind of thing on the plants on one of the anubias in my tank on the new leaves, not the old ones. Part of the problem was probably me leaving the lights on for over 12 hours a day. So I reduced the light to 8 hours and started dosing liquid carbon(Easy Carbo) and Easy Life Profito. I dosed daily per the recommended dosage on the bottles.
Then a couple of weeks later I noticed new leaves were kind of twisted, some of the new ones were yellow and smaller than normal and older ones would develop a yellow tip extending towards the bottom, and even the unaffected anubias developed developed a twisted growth. So I started dosing nitrogen(Excel) that contains nitrate, phosphates and pottasium because my nitrAtes were constantly too low(5-10ppm), dosed daily too.
So since then the black algae kind of disappeared, my ottos cleaned the leaves of the affected anubias mostly but instead of black algae, the same anubias and leaves developed green spot algae. Again the old leaves don't have it, just the new ones and the very new few leaves that grew don't have it.
So yesterday I noticed my aponogeton ulvaceus developing defficiency signs it didn't have before, pictures below. I really don't want this plant to get destroyed as well as it was hard enough to grow without being eaten by the clown loaches who used to eat the new leaves. Also, the black dust/charcoal kind of thing seems to have appeared again although not nearly as bad as it was.
I have no idea what is going on in the tank at the moment. It looks like it's either having multiple problems or going through stages of problems. I am tempted to stop all ferts and co2 as I started having more problems than I ever had without them and the only problem I had before was BBA.
The tank is 330 litres has visually good flow, all the leaves of the plants, even the ones at the bottom are moving. The substrate is sand. I have a big pleco also and the sand stays spotless, no dead patches or debris gathering anywhere. It has an external APS filter rated 2000 L/H but according to most sources it provides just about half of that but it does create quite a turbulence at the top which I don't seem to be able to decrease, it destroyed the new floating plants I bought(salvinia minima and amazon frogbit, a few left but not growing and they are not small enough to get into filter). It also has a 2800 L/H hydor koralia pump in the tank and a couple of smaller filters, one hood filter with pump 900L/H and a spare filter I keep at 500 L/H.
Yesterday I received new lights for the tank because the old ones had a very strong green tinge which apparently isn't ideal for plants. Here are a couple of pictures before and after:
Old lights:
New lights from today:
This is the Aponogeton ulvaceus with "melted" patches:
So first of all about 2 months ago my tank developed black algae like the BBA but without the fluffy growth, more like charcoal kind of thing on the plants on one of the anubias in my tank on the new leaves, not the old ones. Part of the problem was probably me leaving the lights on for over 12 hours a day. So I reduced the light to 8 hours and started dosing liquid carbon(Easy Carbo) and Easy Life Profito. I dosed daily per the recommended dosage on the bottles.
Then a couple of weeks later I noticed new leaves were kind of twisted, some of the new ones were yellow and smaller than normal and older ones would develop a yellow tip extending towards the bottom, and even the unaffected anubias developed developed a twisted growth. So I started dosing nitrogen(Excel) that contains nitrate, phosphates and pottasium because my nitrAtes were constantly too low(5-10ppm), dosed daily too.
So since then the black algae kind of disappeared, my ottos cleaned the leaves of the affected anubias mostly but instead of black algae, the same anubias and leaves developed green spot algae. Again the old leaves don't have it, just the new ones and the very new few leaves that grew don't have it.
So yesterday I noticed my aponogeton ulvaceus developing defficiency signs it didn't have before, pictures below. I really don't want this plant to get destroyed as well as it was hard enough to grow without being eaten by the clown loaches who used to eat the new leaves. Also, the black dust/charcoal kind of thing seems to have appeared again although not nearly as bad as it was.
I have no idea what is going on in the tank at the moment. It looks like it's either having multiple problems or going through stages of problems. I am tempted to stop all ferts and co2 as I started having more problems than I ever had without them and the only problem I had before was BBA.
The tank is 330 litres has visually good flow, all the leaves of the plants, even the ones at the bottom are moving. The substrate is sand. I have a big pleco also and the sand stays spotless, no dead patches or debris gathering anywhere. It has an external APS filter rated 2000 L/H but according to most sources it provides just about half of that but it does create quite a turbulence at the top which I don't seem to be able to decrease, it destroyed the new floating plants I bought(salvinia minima and amazon frogbit, a few left but not growing and they are not small enough to get into filter). It also has a 2800 L/H hydor koralia pump in the tank and a couple of smaller filters, one hood filter with pump 900L/H and a spare filter I keep at 500 L/H.
Yesterday I received new lights for the tank because the old ones had a very strong green tinge which apparently isn't ideal for plants. Here are a couple of pictures before and after:
Old lights:
New lights from today:
This is the Aponogeton ulvaceus with "melted" patches:
, hence asking. Are the patches on the aponogeton CO2 related you think? There is no holes as such but dead patches and the one anubias leaf with a hole was very small and twisted while it grew, causing it to tear apart rather than the plants developing holes.
