[Wet Thumb Forum]-Help with water problems

[MikeCZE]

I'm new to this forum and would like some help with a recurrant problem I'm having with cloudiness and green water. I have a 29 gal tank with a 55 watt 6700K bulb running 10 hr/day. There are a dozen tetras and a betta doing quite well and I have added a number of live plants. (Anubias barteri, Bacopa caroliniana, Hygophila polysperma, Lilaeopsis Red Ludwigia and Java Fern) They are in a mixed gravel and laterite substrate and I use a Hagan CO2 generator and Leaf Zone fertilizer. Everything appears pretty healthy but I am finding that the water becomes cloudy and greenish about a week after every water change (4-8 gallons). I've done some water testing and have found the following values pretty consistant:

ph 6.8
KH 40ppm
GH 50ppm
NO2 0ppm
NO3 5ppm
PO4 5-10ppm

I know the phospahte levels are pretty high and I have had little success in getting them lowered. By process of elimination, I've found the laterite to be the source for those levels. I guess my question really is how do I lower the phosphate levels to a point where the water is not as prone to green water algae explosions but the plants still get the benefits from the substrate? Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

[MikeCZE]

I'm new to this forum and would like some help with a recurrant problem I'm having with cloudiness and green water. I have a 29 gal tank with a 55 watt 6700K bulb running 10 hr/day. There are a dozen tetras and a betta doing quite well and I have added a number of live plants. (Anubias barteri, Bacopa caroliniana, Hygophila polysperma, Lilaeopsis Red Ludwigia and Java Fern) They are in a mixed gravel and laterite substrate and I use a Hagan CO2 generator and Leaf Zone fertilizer. Everything appears pretty healthy but I am finding that the water becomes cloudy and greenish about a week after every water change (4-8 gallons). I've done some water testing and have found the following values pretty consistant:

ph 6.8
KH 40ppm
GH 50ppm
NO2 0ppm
NO3 5ppm
PO4 5-10ppm

I know the phospahte levels are pretty high and I have had little success in getting them lowered. By process of elimination, I've found the laterite to be the source for those levels. I guess my question really is how do I lower the phosphate levels to a point where the water is not as prone to green water algae explosions but the plants still get the benefits from the substrate? Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

[djlen]

Did you use phosphate loaded buffers over an extended period of time?
Those numbers are not high....they are off the chart!!

Len

[MikeCZE]

I used to use buffers that had phosphates, but I did a rebuild on the tank and a 100% water change. The gravel was washed and re-used so that could have added some residual phosphate. I did independant testing of all tank chemicals and gravel additives using leftover materials that hadn't been used and found the First Layer Laterite to have put 10ppm or more into the test water. I dont know if the batch I was using was contaminated before it was packaged but I have some phosphate-free Flourite to use as an iron base instead. I havent seen to many people have problems with that, it's just a pain to have to remove all of the old gravel/laterite mix. Still easier than plumming for a UV sterilizer which is what my aquarium store wanted me to try. But thanks for the reads from everyone, nice to know there's help in here for the future.

[Hawkeye]

This has me puzzled. I have never had a tank with number like that. I have had a problem with CO2 and black water extract that I was using to buffer my water. It caused all the parameters in the tank to crash. I had to redo every thing to get it back in balance.

What I would do is stop every thing (ferts + CO2) and start doing water changes at 50% every night to see if I could get the phosphates down before I started back with the ferts and CO2. All so I would cut back on your light to 6 hours.
You have to get these levels down. Some thing is causing this, its just figuring out what. Once you get the levels back down start back with one thing at a time and slowly increase while testing to see if you can find the source of the problem. Keeps us updated.

Hawk

[nino]

Agree with Hawkeye, stop dosing anything into your tank and cut the lighting period. There is someone in another forum has a very similar problem. He got a used tank and substrate from a friend. Somehow the PO4 was stuck in the substrate. Took him a while to get it back to acceptable level.

This is an option, you could use Phoszorb or phosban for a while to take out all PO4. I did that to my tank before when I accidently spilled fleet enema into it. It only took less than a day to get the level back to 0.