confusion
Fishaholic
Here's my situation: I have a 30G moderately planted tank. I have an 80W current USA unit on it, and the 18W light that came with the tank, which gives me ~3wpg.
The location of the tank puts it in direct sunlight for about 1.5 hours per day. I have a sheer curtain on the window, but it doesn't block much of the sun. I also live in Atlanta, so 95% of the days are very sunny.
As you might expect, I have one heck of an algae problem. BBA to be specific.
I've recently started getting into CO2 supplementing. I started by using the cheap upside-down box with the fizzy tabs, and the ph siwngs killed ALL of my gouramis. I bought a hardness test kit, and my KH out of the tap is about 30.
So a few days ago, I bought the nutrafin ladder unit. Coincidentally, I put the ladder at the very bottom of the tank under the upside-down box unit referred to earlier. When I got up the next day, CO2 was coming through the ladder and filling up the box. The box never gets completely full - it seems like it's being dissolved at about the same rate that it's being produced. If not for the box, I would imagine I'd be losing a TON of CO2. Anyhow, I also have a red sea real-time CO2 measure deal (currently completely covered in algae) that is showing that I'm STILL low. Though when I got up this morning (after 3 days of running like this), the indicator was finally green (meaning "good"), but I'm skeptical that it'll be that way when I get home.
I'm a firm believer in not adding chemicals to muck with water chemistry, but I did start dosing with the seachem alkaline buffer, and got my KH to about 100, in hopes to better stablize my PH, because I have very little KH naturally.
So, I've read that when things are going well, particularly in high-light environments, that the plants would "pearl" with O2 bubbles. I was quite disappointed that I didn't see any of that. I have also recently put in a piece of wood. One thing I noticed that seemed odd and interesting is that I had a substantial amount of small bubbles coming seemingly coming out of the end of the wood. I've had the wood soaking in water for over a month, so it would be suprising if it was natural outgassing. Just wondering if the wood is doing something to pull the CO2 back out of the water. Seems unlikely, but then I've been suprised before.
Any advice on what I should be doing? Am I on the right track?
The location of the tank puts it in direct sunlight for about 1.5 hours per day. I have a sheer curtain on the window, but it doesn't block much of the sun. I also live in Atlanta, so 95% of the days are very sunny.
As you might expect, I have one heck of an algae problem. BBA to be specific.
I've recently started getting into CO2 supplementing. I started by using the cheap upside-down box with the fizzy tabs, and the ph siwngs killed ALL of my gouramis. I bought a hardness test kit, and my KH out of the tap is about 30.
So a few days ago, I bought the nutrafin ladder unit. Coincidentally, I put the ladder at the very bottom of the tank under the upside-down box unit referred to earlier. When I got up the next day, CO2 was coming through the ladder and filling up the box. The box never gets completely full - it seems like it's being dissolved at about the same rate that it's being produced. If not for the box, I would imagine I'd be losing a TON of CO2. Anyhow, I also have a red sea real-time CO2 measure deal (currently completely covered in algae) that is showing that I'm STILL low. Though when I got up this morning (after 3 days of running like this), the indicator was finally green (meaning "good"), but I'm skeptical that it'll be that way when I get home.
I'm a firm believer in not adding chemicals to muck with water chemistry, but I did start dosing with the seachem alkaline buffer, and got my KH to about 100, in hopes to better stablize my PH, because I have very little KH naturally.
So, I've read that when things are going well, particularly in high-light environments, that the plants would "pearl" with O2 bubbles. I was quite disappointed that I didn't see any of that. I have also recently put in a piece of wood. One thing I noticed that seemed odd and interesting is that I had a substantial amount of small bubbles coming seemingly coming out of the end of the wood. I've had the wood soaking in water for over a month, so it would be suprising if it was natural outgassing. Just wondering if the wood is doing something to pull the CO2 back out of the water. Seems unlikely, but then I've been suprised before.
Any advice on what I should be doing? Am I on the right track?
