richy

i've begun to have a outbreak of algae. i had green spot algae to begin with when i bought the tank off someone else. now getting fuzz algae (small lil thin green strands) and hair algae (black tentacle looking strands) growing on the leaves of some (if not all) of my plants.

i have one oto and 15 shrimp currently in the tank, and 8 tetras that will be going into the tank after quarantine.

tank info/water parameters:
20G medium planted tank with 55W PC lighting @10hrs/day
pH=6.4-6.6 (peat fibers used in canister filter), about 7.0 otherwise
Nitrites, Nitrates, Ammonia: 0 0 0
CO2 via Hagen Natural Plant system with ladder diffusor
GH/KH: ?? (no test kit for this)

i don't dose w/ ferts, since i am not yet comfortable with it. i've been reading that adding Flourish Excel may help with the problem. is this something i should consider? i'm already reducing lighting to 8hrs/day and also do more regular water changes. what are some other alternatives to battle?

plants, no fast growing stem plants to compete with the algae and would prefer not to introduce any more plants until i figure this out. =)

tia.

rich

Gomer

beter get comfortable with it. With CO2 injection, you NEED to dose. NPK and traces.

With zero'd out nutrients, plants stop growing much and algae takes over.

richy

oOooOOO.. so is this possibly the source of my algae outbreak? The plants seem to do fine with any ferts... the lagarosiphon madagascariensis seems to be growing almost like a weed. how do i determine how much of each of fert i need? do i need to measure GH/KH?

in the short term, should i go out and get a bottle of Flourish Excel? will this help?

edit-- just stumbled onto the Fertilator. will try and make use of it, but a response would still be helpful. thanks.