# Tank falling from grace.



## Dillinger (10 May 2017)

Hello,

My tank was going in the right direction but over the last 5 months it's spiralling out of control. I've been battling for months to try and rectify it back to its former glory. I'm not running CO2 and has been a low tank from day one. 

Cyano is a cruel beast and I just can't get rid of it. It's mostly forming from the substrate and spreading where it likes. I've been doing all the reading I could and actioned with the below. No types algae are growing, just the cyano bacteria. 

• every other day dosing of TNC complete. 
Started with 1.5ml every other day. Then went on to 3ml every other day after 2 weeks. No joy. I'm now starting 5ml every other day this week. 

• ditched sponge in my filter, kept the ceramic media and have just topped that off with seachem matrix. This has given me diatoms but I guess bacteria is growing on new media. I ditched the sponge as it seemed to be holding a lot of detritus and I don't need that right now. 

• weekly 50% wc each week with a good siphon of the substrate. Removed the ramshorn snails from tank, they produced a lot of waste. 

• added some more fast growing stems. As I cut back my other stems to get fresh growth from them I needed to bulk up numbers. 

• dose TNC carbon at 1.5ml. 

• cut light to 6hr photoperiod

The cyano is growing but not as fast as it had been. It's not a massive reduction but gives me a few more days grace. 

The tank only holds one Betta and a handful of shrimp. Filter is from a Fluval edge and the moves the plants nicely, even at the substrate level. Light is an a zoo flexi mini M. 
Tank is not heated but ambient room temp of aprox 22c. Substrate is a mixture of tropica plant growth topped with denerle scalper soil, all in all about 1yr old. 

If anyone has some idea of where I can turn to next that would be great, I've tried a blackout which was one step forward and 3 back. Not very successful. I don't wish to add any potions really either, if I can solve this naturally then I'd be happy. 

Thanks for reading!


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## Kezzab (10 May 2017)

Other things you might try:

you don't say how big the tank is, but that light is quite bright (I have one). Try dimming it a bit. I used baking paper.

Add a LOT more plants.

That sounds like a lot of fertiliser for a small low tech tank with fairly low plant mass. Maybe try stopping fertilizer and liquid co2 altogether in combination with dimming the light. Be proper low tech.

That's just some thoughts, I've had bad cyano as well, but in proper high tech. Eventually I rescaped and it just went. Couldn't say why!


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## Dillinger (11 May 2017)

The is 28l so quite small. I've seen other people with this light and with mixed reviews. Mostly came in at medium light range. Having a look around many non co2 users were looking good with it. 

I'll try to diffuse the light by screening it, however I don't have any other algae growing so can it be light intensity? I'd would see other algaes making use of it?

The problems kicked in when I relocated the tank. In the car with little water the tank did take a hammering and a rescape was needed. The substrate is over year old and I know perhaps some nasties came out during the move. Shortly after the rescape several of my plants died off and the tank looked sparse. I also think I slacked off the weekly cleaning at this point due to other things. 

Now I'm guess it was my slackness that caused the bga bloom, however I did add some floating plants around this time and some were carrying bga. I removed as much as I could but perhaps missed some?

Is the problem my substrate degrading and too old now? Harbouring too much detritus? It's dennerle scaper soil which is supposed to not degrade? Under this is tropica plant substrate which is essentially spagham moss and clay. 

Should I restart the tank a fresh?!


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## roadmaster (11 May 2017)

In my view,the substrate should be left alone,add more plant's as mentioned.
Keep lighting at six hours for next three week's,dose nutrient's once a week at suggested range's for your size tank.
Remove what cyno you can manually and maybe right before each weekly water change,, use small syringe and squirt some 3 % peroxide on remaining algae.
Let it work for a few minutes (10 ) and then perform the normal weekly water change.
Tank is small ,so liquid carbon supplement  would no be too expensive to use daily or every other day (consistently).
You can swap out the substrate for new if you like ,but I would rather have an old soil substrate over new that might need to go through whole mineralization process .
My tank's are all low tech and dirt capped with sand or fine gravel.
They are a couple year's running without replacing substrates.
I dose the water with nutrient's once a week or every other week.(maybe 1/3 estimative index values.


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## swackett (11 May 2017)

It seems to me that you had a problem and assumed it was lack of nutrients and so kept upping the dosage to try and solve the issue.   I'm guessing I'm right in saying that did not work which is why you have created this thread?  As already said it seems a lot of ferts for a small tank with little plant life.

If the filter sponge worked up to now then why did you change that?  Those sponges get detritus in them but also have a massive surface area for your bacteria, so just rinse the sponge in old tank water when doing a WC.

I'd leave the substrate alone as you seem to have already changed lots of things to fix this.

One question I have is have you looked at what you were doing before all this happened and compared it to what you are doing now, so you can see how far you have deviated from your healthy tank maintenance regime?


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## Dillinger (11 May 2017)

Thanks for your replies and advise guys. 

Due to a move I resized to this tank, all plants and filter media were carried over from a 4ft that was healthy and worry free. 

As this tank was setup with healthy media and plants that were established it had no issues till it was moved, mentioned in previous posts. 

My original filter setup was with 100% eheim media balls, taken from the previous tank. Occasionally filter floss was added. This again made for a happy tank. After I was convinced I needed a sponge I added one and halved the media. This didn't cause any issue. It was not till BGA started to pop up I questioned the sponge. 

Reading around BGA was caused by a dirty tank/filter, on inspection of the sponge it seemed to be full of detritus. If I removed it that was one less thing on the list. The original media was kept and I topped back up with matrix. So half mature half new. 100% media again, no sponge. 

BGA has also been tagged to low or zero nitrates hence the frantic dosing of ferts. BGA can appear in a volume of water without nitrogen as it fixes it from the atmosphere. One article I read users were stating how there massive dosing regime killed it off in x amount of days. This is why I too started to up my dose. 

Following the above I have ordered some more plants so that's another thing to be ticked off. 

It just seems BGA has no real hard proof to how to overcome it. I've read pages and pages online of various methods but not one has given any sound results. 

I have flow, nitrates are high, low bioload, carbon sorce, large water changes and husbandry, reduced lighting and plant mass coming soon. Surely with this I should see some reduction?


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## roadmaster (11 May 2017)

Plant's will need a little of all nutrient's macro's and micro's which they might get from soil based substrates but eventually,,the plant's will draw from the soil to the point where water column dosing is needed.(nutrient's in soil are finite without large fish population and food's and waste created by same fishes and food's /fish waste.= nutrient source
I do not believe soil based tanks ever really run out of the nutrient's for fish food's and fish waste will accumulate on/in substrate, but maybe not in enough concentration after a few month's or a year.(seldom see tank's set up this long)
Is why I choose to dose the water column along with what the substrate might provide.
Weekly water change prevents nutrient's from building too much.
Pulling up plant's for a move or substrate swap,can result in organic matter =(ammonia) that was once deep in the substrate to be released into the water column and this along with too much light ,low CO2,can trigger algae.
Some plant's also take a while to rebound after moving them and will settle in after a few week's assuming condition's are favorable.


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## Dominik_K (14 May 2017)

In my opinion, your problem has a pretty easy reason as already mentioned. Your light is on the low side. And you do not have any CO2.
The recommended dose for TNC Complete is between 1 and 3 mills per week and 10 liters tank water. Since your tank has about 20 - 25 Liters of water in it, thats between 2 and 7.5 ml per week, you were dosing 9. And even 7.5 ml is for tanks with really high light. I would try to go for 2 - 3 ml per week and not more. 

Further you need to add a lot of more plants. Sadly a lot of your plants are lost. I would try to replace them completly. Thatway you get healthy plants, growing fast. Try to get them from well established tanks with little to no time for delivery. Local Aquarium Clubs are a great place for that.


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## Ben C (5 Feb 2018)

Dillinger - any update on this? I'm currently going through the same and for the first time ever. Never had BGA before  
Any learnings would be gratefully received.


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## ian_m (6 Feb 2018)

After returning from holiday this summer, where tank was not touched for 5 weeks in "holiday mode" (reduced light, reduced ferts etc), after returning to non holiday mode, I got BBA and slight BGA appearing, classic case of too much light too quickly  I should know better.

So spot dosing with liquid carbon (TNC liquid carbon, 2% gluteraldehyde) at water change time got rid of most of it on hardscape, but still remained on some plants.

So after water change, hit the big boy x5 dosing liquid carbon. In my case about 25ml in 180litres. Bang job done. After a day or two all BGA disappeared, and BBA turned pink/red and was scoffed by the fish. For last couple of months tank is fine, no sign of BGA and BBA at all.

So excess liquid carbon will kill algae but you need to be careful as can be dangerous to fish and especially shrimp.


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