Good Plant Growth (Surprised At How Quick It Is!) But Algae..

[nurglespuss]

Hi guys,

The last time i tried a 'low tech' planted aquarium, I gave up due to the constant algae battle...

Well, as you may know I have a 15L 'hi tech' nano going.. everything os growing great after a very short time, but, the first algae has also made an appearance...

Is it because of the diffuser shading the area underneath?

Also, the drop checker (thanks StandbySetting for the help) is still 'blue' but (as you can see from the phot) there is plenty of CO2! (the buble rate is 3-4 p/sec through glycerol, and the bubbles are swirled allround the tank by the spray bar return (with water level high enough to prevent excessive surface disturbance).

I'm going to be replacing the glass diffuser with an inline version ASAP... which I hope will help!

I can't introduce anything to the tank to eat the algae yet (I think) because of the ammonia release from the substrate (waiting a month, then will test water).

Anyway... I don't want to be battling algae too much, any advice?

 

[StandbySetting]

Are you using 4DKH water? I heard you were thinking about making your own up, how much CaCO[sub]3[/sub] did you add to the distilled water? My DC is like that also, but it is on the inside, just run your finger over it to see if it's on the inside or not.

 

[nurglespuss]

Thanks standby,

Yes I was going to make my own up in the lab, but we already had stock solution, so its commercial stuff... perhaps I added too much of the checker fluid?

I shall take it back out and have a look (pH of the 4DKH water was 8).

Cheers

 

[StandbySetting]

Any way of measuring the KH of the 4DKH liquid? If I were you I'd just make some up, I don't have time to calculate the quantity of NaHCO3 required but I think there is a guide in the PARC.

The quantity of fluid you added doesn't really matter, that will just affect the colour saturation.

Also, the algae on the carpet plant looks like it could be a flow/ammonia issue.

 

[nurglespuss]

Hmmmm so I might need a powerhead? or should turn up the flow on the filter?

Cheers!

 

[StandbySetting]

Turn up the flow in the filter, it wont hurt, do you know that the solution you used was pure 4dkh water?

 

[nurglespuss]

Yeah its ordered in bulk from our supplier.

(used in some extractions).

Filter flow turned up!

 

[ian]

extra water changes as well. That to me doesn't look like algae. It looks like that snotty stuff (i don't know the actual name of it), that appears in newly set up tanks.

 

[nurglespuss]

Ahhh... thank you

Mainly I've been topping up, as evporation is fairly rapid (about a cm/day)...

I'll start with some water changes...

Thanks!

 

[Ps3Steveo]

Yeah I don't think it's algae, had some of that in my pico but the snails hoovered it up a day later, get the hose for your water change and syphon it out, can spread rapidly.

 

[nurglespuss]

OK Cheers...

Hmm if I syphon it, it'll take the plant with it.... maybe I'll just have to sacrifice that bit of the plant?

I'm using Florabase complete (which I know gives off ammonia) if I introduced a snail to munch it, would it kill the snail?

I have plenty of ramshorns... (but would they also just munch my plants?)...

Cheers!

 

[Ps3Steveo]

Use a bit of airline to syphon it off so it's not powerful enough to pull out the hc.

Funny cos I have a gsp tank with drift wood and roots covered in moss and today I woke up to find that in there lol time to get my hose out too.

 

[nurglespuss]

ahhh cool