Aquatopia - 6x2x2 Low-Med Light, High Tech Nature Aquarium

[MattW]

I do need to test my water, to be honest. The tank in question would be considered "overstocked" but I do have a high plant load and a filter that can run tanks twice the size. I have also increased the water change percentage to around 45-50% (weekly) now, compared to 30%.

Your tank is a lot higher tech than mine! I can only adjust the intensity and not the colouration, sadly, and I don't run Co2 apart from the liquid carbon dosing.

 

[Aquatopia]

I do need to test my water, to be honest. The tank in question would be considered "overstocked" but I do have a high plant load and a filter that can run tanks twice the size. I have also increased the water change percentage to around 45-50% (weekly) now, compared to 30%.

Your tank is a lot higher tech than mine! I can only adjust the intensity and not the colouration, sadly, and I don't run Co2 apart from the liquid carbon dosing.

How much liquid carbon are you dosing?

 

[MattW]

How much liquid carbon are you dosing?

I believe it's around 6ml every couple of days. I only started the dosing 2 weeks back, so there hasn't been much noticeable difference apart from a couple of plants getting a reddish hue.

 

[Aquatopia]

I actually just realised that the lighting level when using an adjustable RGB LED light, like the Fluval Plant 4.0's that I use, is more complex to work out than I first thought earlier.

The reason being that the number of LEDs per colour varies, so the total light strength is not equally shared across the colours.

In the Fluval Plant 4.0 46w, which are what I have, the LEDs are as follows:

56 Warm white
21 Daylight
133 Cool white
30 Blue
12 Pink

Giving a total of 252 LEDs.

This means that each of the colours is only responsible for these percentages of the total amount of light:

22.2% Warm white
8.3% Daylight
52.8% Cool white
11.9% Blue
4.8% Pink

My lighting % in the app was set to:

0% Warm white
40% Daylight
100% Cool white
100% Blue
100% Pink

Which brings my percentage of the total amount of light under each colour to:

0% Warm white
3.3% Daylight
52.8% Cool white
11.9% Blue
4.8% Pink

Which gives me a total of 72.8% of the total amount of light possible.

I have now reduced the lighting in the app to:

0% Warm white
40% Daylight
60% Cool white
60% Blue
60% Pink

Which brings my percentage of the total amount of light under each colour to:

0% Warm white
3.3% Daylight
31.7% Cool white
7.1% Blue
2.9% Pink

Which now gives me a total of 45.0% of the total amount of light possible.

So it turns out I actually turned the lights down from 72.8% to 45.0%.

 

[Aquatopia]

After trying to clean the algae off the wood/plants today I'm convinced it's not hair algae. It's thick and fibrous and grey and it does not come off with brushing and you can't pull it off with a toothbrush. The only way I could get it off the wood was to grab it between my fingers and pull it off and when I did that I could feel the strands in my fingers (hair algae just feels slimy). I pulled some of it off the wood but I couldn't off the leaves as it would pull the leaves off or pull the plants off the wood. I don't have the energy to pull it all off the wood so I had to leave a lot of it. I may end up having to replace plants that are covered in it.

I'm now pretty sure it's Staghorn algae. The filters are pretty clean, the majority of the detritus is caught by the prefilter with 45 ppi sponges, which is cleaned every week. The flow in the tank is about as high as the fish can cope with, so it's definitely not low flow. There are no dead spots, food and detritus doesn't get to stay anywhere, it all gets lifted with the high flow. You can see it when you feed daphnia or other small food, the snowstorm of food in the tank lets you see exactly what's happening with your flow and the flow in the tank is everywhere.

Ammonia has gone, so has Nitrite, Nitrates are only about 5.

I have noticed it is only in the top half of the tank and doesn't go right to the sides, so it is not growing where the light and flow are less. Which suggests to me it is either light and/or high flow which is enabling it to grow. I'm not even sure that it is still growing any more. It may well be dead now.

I see some people say Staghorn algae turns white when it's dead and others saying it turns red when it's dead. It is a grey/white so not sure. I'll have to see what happens this week, see if it comes back more/spreads.

Low/fluctuating CO2 could be a possible cause in my case. I've had it low and have been slowly increasing it. I started at 4 bps and am now at 10 bps.

After further discussions elsewhere I've decided to go ahead and dose liquid carbon (Glutaraldehyde) as it's one more way to probaby get rid of the algae and we're running out of options.

I've just ordered some and another dosing pump.