Hello All,
I'm relatively new to this site, but VERY happy to have found it!
About three mo. ago my tanks and I moved to Ohio and the fish were most gracious in their decision not to die during the tedious process.
The most pending problem at the moment is agae... Mutant, alien, I'm gonna get you sucka algae. I think we have just about every kind in there with the exception of green water. There is quite a bit of beard algae, blue green, red, black, I think I saw some plaid in there this morning!
When I first set the tank up all the parameters were fine except for the kh which was consistantlly at zero. Odd though, that it comes out of the tap at three. I tried crushed coral and oyster grit in the filter wich only raised the kh to 1. Baking soda has now raised it to four. Does baking soda eventually break down into salt, and is it potentially harmful to keep adding it to a soil tank? What is the ideal level for kh? How can I send this algae back to the planet it came from? I have a bottle of Algae-Fix winking at me from the shelf, but I'm trying to do this the safest way for the fish, they deserve it!
Any/All feedback would be greatly appriciated, this stuff is all over everything! Thanks to everyone involved with this wonderful site!
29 gal. 18h x 30w x 12d
2 20w bulbs- 1 cool wht, 1 sylvania gro-lux (can't wait to get better lighting, but $'s a problem)
ph- was 7, but after addition of baking soda is now 7.5- how can I lower ph without lowering kh?
gh- 9
kh- 4
no 2- <0.3
nh3/nh4- 0
kids- 6 cardinals, a few bleeding hearts, cherry barbs, rasboras, blood fins, red wags, clown lowches, cories, and a pleco
heavily planted- a few amazon sword, hornwort, chain swords, lutea, hygrophila polysperma, bacopa, several (10-15) sag or val types, a lobelia cardinalis and an aechinodorus osiris. Also a small and struggling population of water lettuce and duckweed. | 
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