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16 Posts
Hi all! Well as per the title I'm a newbie that has just recently set up a planted aquarium and I seem to be having problems. To start with I had a 75 gal tank that I removed all of the substrate and replaced with: base layer of pure Laterite, Flourite, Volcanit, and Eco Complete along with 1" of "cooked" topsoil (not in this order). I have a cable heater and two filters (1 Canister, 1 Power filter) and about 65 fish. I dose regularly with all of the Excel products except phosphorus because my tap water runs about 1.5 ppm. I have quite a few plants that I bought from the LFS (2 swords, multiple water sprites, and a few others I can't remember the cards are at home). I am dosing at half of the recommended since I don't think that I am at the full requirement of plants. I run a Nova Extreme T-5 light with a total of 216 watts. I have changed the Actinic lamps to 6700 degree lamps and kept the original 10000 K lamps.
Now after all of that dribble the problems. I have always had a little algae prior to nuking the tank and starting over to grow plants. I now have some type of brown junk that gathers on the bottom and around the plants as well as some long green algae that I assume is hair algae. The hair algae attaches to everything including the plants, especially the swords. Most of it is easily removed with a brush except what attaches to the edges of the sword leaves. I also had an outbreak of some small clumps of furry algae that is a nightmare to remove. You can scrape all you want and very little will come off. At first the water sprite was growing new chutes almost daily, but they never got very high and then would turn yellowish. Some of the other plants show some growth, but not like it should. A friend of mine has a very nice planted tank that is growing so fast he can almost prune weekly.
My water parameters are: Ph 6.8, Temp 79, Ammonia 0, Nitrites 0, Nitrates 10 - 20 ppm. Weekly water change of a minimum of 14 gallons.
I am so frustrated after watching my friends tank at work grow like it's on steroids and mine just barely grows with the exception of the algae. I was gone this past weekend so I covered the sides of the tank so no light with the exception of the provided light gets in to see if that helps.
HELP!!!! What am I doing wrong????
Now after all of that dribble the problems. I have always had a little algae prior to nuking the tank and starting over to grow plants. I now have some type of brown junk that gathers on the bottom and around the plants as well as some long green algae that I assume is hair algae. The hair algae attaches to everything including the plants, especially the swords. Most of it is easily removed with a brush except what attaches to the edges of the sword leaves. I also had an outbreak of some small clumps of furry algae that is a nightmare to remove. You can scrape all you want and very little will come off. At first the water sprite was growing new chutes almost daily, but they never got very high and then would turn yellowish. Some of the other plants show some growth, but not like it should. A friend of mine has a very nice planted tank that is growing so fast he can almost prune weekly.
My water parameters are: Ph 6.8, Temp 79, Ammonia 0, Nitrites 0, Nitrates 10 - 20 ppm. Weekly water change of a minimum of 14 gallons.
I am so frustrated after watching my friends tank at work grow like it's on steroids and mine just barely grows with the exception of the algae. I was gone this past weekend so I covered the sides of the tank so no light with the exception of the provided light gets in to see if that helps.
HELP!!!! What am I doing wrong????