Waterloo Kid
Fish Addict
I have to have a laugh at my current situation. I tried everything to get rid of a bad case of BGA that lasted over a year. I tried CO2, ferts and extra lighting. What I actually ended up doing was to make my plants grow like weeds, along with every type of algae in my tank; then I killed a bunch of my fish with a huge pH crash due to overdoing the CO2.
After that I did a blackout (which actually worked) but stopped doing anything else to the tank. I have been busy lately (new job, moving and finding out I'm about to be a Dad for the first time [twins!]) and haven't done the usual mass cleaning of my tank like I usually do. As a result there has been a slight buildup of detritus in the gravel. Last week I noticed that the plants are all doing very well and there is almost no algae.
The reasons for this turnaround are:
1/ I have removed a large amount of growth from the tank in the form of reducing the amount of vallis. This has freed up nutrients for the other plants. The fishload is very low as I'm going to be moving in a few months and I'm running the tank down. As such my tank is almost certainly running in a nitrate limited mode. Without so much vallis the other plants are able to keep the tank in balance by slowly using the available nitrates.
2/ A few of my plant species (E. Tellinus, Sword, Anubias etc.) are root feeders and as such have benefited from my slightly lax cleaning. Needless to say I'm going to be less obsessive about a bit of waste in the gravel from now on.
All this means that the tank is now finding its own balance. the tank is super low maintenance at the moment which is great! As a super bonus it also looks great. I suppose I should put a pic up but I haven't had time to get around to it recently.
Finally a message to all you people struggling with algae. Stick with it, learn about the causes and most of all have patience. It'll come right (eventually).
WK
After that I did a blackout (which actually worked) but stopped doing anything else to the tank. I have been busy lately (new job, moving and finding out I'm about to be a Dad for the first time [twins!]) and haven't done the usual mass cleaning of my tank like I usually do. As a result there has been a slight buildup of detritus in the gravel. Last week I noticed that the plants are all doing very well and there is almost no algae.
The reasons for this turnaround are:
1/ I have removed a large amount of growth from the tank in the form of reducing the amount of vallis. This has freed up nutrients for the other plants. The fishload is very low as I'm going to be moving in a few months and I'm running the tank down. As such my tank is almost certainly running in a nitrate limited mode. Without so much vallis the other plants are able to keep the tank in balance by slowly using the available nitrates.
2/ A few of my plant species (E. Tellinus, Sword, Anubias etc.) are root feeders and as such have benefited from my slightly lax cleaning. Needless to say I'm going to be less obsessive about a bit of waste in the gravel from now on.
All this means that the tank is now finding its own balance. the tank is super low maintenance at the moment which is great! As a super bonus it also looks great. I suppose I should put a pic up but I haven't had time to get around to it recently.
Finally a message to all you people struggling with algae. Stick with it, learn about the causes and most of all have patience. It'll come right (eventually).
WK
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