SouthernCross
Fish Addict
Hi,
So I am taking the plunge and planting my tank up again after a long time. In the mean time, my driftwood and one lone anubias which is left in addition to my airline tubing, filter uptake tube have all got quite thick BBA on them.
Now I'm wondeirng what is best - nuke the tank with Flourish Excel and kill it al;BEFORE I add my new plants, or will the new plants be beneficial in terms of out-competing the algae? Issue is I am getting slow growers instead of stem plants as it is a cichlid tanks and stem plants in my experience just get shredded. So I am looking to had vallisneria, crispus, java fern, swords, more anubias, and maybe a tiger lotus and some banana lilies. I have also got some floating frogbit coming soon too.
Also thought the problem might be lighting too. Currently my lights are on 4.5 hours in the morning and 4.5 hours in the evenig with a 5.5 hour break in between. I am just wondering if this is good or bad, and what kind of adjustments should I be making, both to kill the algae first and foremost, and then for the type of plants I want to keep? Also its a two foot deep tank - with standard tubes could I be having issues that the light is not penetrating deep enough? Especially for things on the bottom like swords.
Once things are under control I plan to keep dosing Excel. Should I be dosing something like Trace, too? I am a bit confused when it comes to the fertilisers. I am not wanting to do Co2. Its big tank.
I might be best x-posting this to planted once I have some feedback about the algae issue! But keen to hear from you algae experts especially if its my lighting contributing too.
Thanks
So I am taking the plunge and planting my tank up again after a long time. In the mean time, my driftwood and one lone anubias which is left in addition to my airline tubing, filter uptake tube have all got quite thick BBA on them.
Now I'm wondeirng what is best - nuke the tank with Flourish Excel and kill it al;BEFORE I add my new plants, or will the new plants be beneficial in terms of out-competing the algae? Issue is I am getting slow growers instead of stem plants as it is a cichlid tanks and stem plants in my experience just get shredded. So I am looking to had vallisneria, crispus, java fern, swords, more anubias, and maybe a tiger lotus and some banana lilies. I have also got some floating frogbit coming soon too.
Also thought the problem might be lighting too. Currently my lights are on 4.5 hours in the morning and 4.5 hours in the evenig with a 5.5 hour break in between. I am just wondering if this is good or bad, and what kind of adjustments should I be making, both to kill the algae first and foremost, and then for the type of plants I want to keep? Also its a two foot deep tank - with standard tubes could I be having issues that the light is not penetrating deep enough? Especially for things on the bottom like swords.
Once things are under control I plan to keep dosing Excel. Should I be dosing something like Trace, too? I am a bit confused when it comes to the fertilisers. I am not wanting to do Co2. Its big tank.
I might be best x-posting this to planted once I have some feedback about the algae issue! But keen to hear from you algae experts especially if its my lighting contributing too.
Thanks