evitagen22

My 45 gallon tank is about 4 weeks old and I've been dosing PPS-Pro for about 2 weeks now. When I started dosing, the plants looked great and started pearling. However, now I'm faced with an algae bloom. I'm about to start a 4 day blackout, but I want to make sure the balance is right so the algae bloom won't return. I think the problem is that I'm over dosing for the number of plants I have. I plan on cutting the PPS-Pro solution back to 2 ml per day and using pressurized co2 to get the co2 up to about 15 ppm (just arrived).

Tank: 45 Gallon: 3' x 1' x 2' tall
Substrate: Eco-Complete
Lightning: 96 Watt Ah Supply
Filter: Fluval 203
Ferts: PPS-Pro, 4 ml per day + Flourish once a week
C02: 1 cap of Excel per day, switching to pressurized co2 shortly

Tank readings:
pH: 8.3?!?!
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 20
GH:7 dH
KH:4 dH

Not sure why the pH is so high, my normal tap water is about 7.5, and my other tanks seem to be around there. What would cause the pH to rise?

I'm going to do a 50% water change before the blackout. Is there anything else I should do prior? I heard overdosing excel helps with an algae bloom.

Here is a picture of the tank:

Edward

Hi
Blackouts don’t solve anything, except weakening your plants. You need to do water changes because your substrate is leaking GH, KH, PO4 and other useless elements. Then you need some fish, cheap fast growing plants, lighting period 9 hours a day, CO2 at ~15 ppm and some mulm and dirt to seed the substrate with microorganism. Little peat moss could help. So monitor your NO3, PO4 and KH, do water changes to maintain stable levels and dose daily full amount of fertilizer. It takes time to break-in new aquariums.



Thank you
Edward