ScottyC

hi i've had my tank running for about 7-8 months and i have recently been getting either a really bad case of hair algae or staghorn algae, as well i have green spot algae. I can scrape off the green spot algae but not sure how to get rid of this staghorn algae other than manually. its growing on all of my plants. i have 40 gallon hex tank and i have 2.75 watts per gallon. my plants seem to be doing well but the algae is gross. my stats are

phosphate: 0 mg/l
GH: 120 ppm
KH: 120 ppm
Fe: 0

this is the first time i tested for these things i regularly dose flourish excel in the tank and occasionally dose flourish iron and flourish as well as plant grown NPK. any suggestions what i can do? also i dont know if this matters but i cannot find out my K value becuase my store doesnt have the test. do i need to increase on phosphate and iron if so will that get rid of my algae and how do i increase my phosphate? thanks

trenac

Scotty, welcome to APC

Do you inject C02?... You need to with your wattage. Keep the C02 levels at 30ppm.

The P04 needs to be at 1ppm. You also need to test the N03 levels and keep them at 10ppm.

Remove as much algae by hand as possible, do water changes weekly, keep lights on for only 10 hours daily, add plenty of fast growing plants.

ScottyC

my N03 is at about 5ppm how would i raise that? also how do i raise my P04 levels to 1ppm? i dont add C02 but i do use flourish excel is that not doing that same thing? if not i can add it. thanks

yildirim

Hi,

Excell by itself may not be sufficient for that size and lighting. It is very imp to keep CO2 higher than 30ppm in that tank. For spots you have to increase PO4 via KH2PO4, and for most of the other alg types you have to increase NO3 via KNO3. You have to provide this macros (NPK) along with Fe and micros regularly with a constant CO2. If you have these nutrients in water column and never let anyone of them to crash, you will have good growth and free of algea.

YILDIRIM

trenac

I use "Green Light stump remover" to raise my N03 levels. It can be found at Lowe stores or other hardware stores. For raising P04 I just use Seachem phosphates. Injecting C02 is much better than adding Excel, the benefits will be far greater.

ScottyC

i have 2 C02 little containers but i never bothered to set them up it says they only are good to 10 gallons i thought excel would be good enough, should i set those up or am i better off using a DIY C02 injecter? thanks for all your input guys i really apreciate it.