# Black type algae stunting growth...advice required.



## MDP91 (26 Feb 2018)

Good afternoon, 

Having moved from a 180litre to a 450litre in July last year I have been having issues with this black type of algae growing on my plant leaves and I am at my wits end trying to find the right balance with everything. I cannot work out what the issue is. My plants appear to grow well but this algae hinders the growth and they dont seem to flourish. 

Please see the photos below.
I am dosing, co2 seems to be good, decent circulation, medium light and so on....
I have tried, as best as I can remember to give details below of my setup, any advice would be appreciated.



 

 

 

 

 

Juwel Vision 450litre
4X 54W T5 iAquatic Bulbs
Peat Moss mixed with planted pond soil, capped with molar clay substrate
2x 1500lph canister filters with skimmers
2x 3000lph wave makers
2kg FE with inline diffuser - 2bps

Co2 on - 1100hrs - Co2 Off - 2000hrs - drop checker a limey green by this stage.
Lights on - 1500hrs - Lights Off - 2100hrs

EI dose from aquariumplantfoods.com, Macro & Micros alternating days with rest day before water change.
50% water change every week.

Many thanks, 
Mark


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## ian_m (26 Feb 2018)

Chronically poor CO2 levels and distribution, especially as your injection rate of the incredibly tiny amount of 2bps for a 450l tank seems way way way way too low (did I say way too low ). Also your CO2 injection time before lights on (4 hours) seems way too long, again symptoms of way too low injection rate. You need green drop checker all over the tank by lights on, typically green in two hours with a decent CO2 injection rate.

See the video here for the kind of bps rate you should be using on one of the two injectors probably necessary for such a large tank.
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/co2-stable-ph-question.52074/#post-512736

How are you injecting your CO2 ?

You are probably gassing off the fairly small amount of CO2 present in your tank using skimmers. Oily scummy fims is usually due to poor plant health (due to lack of CO2 ), using a skimmer does not fix the plants, if not makes the situation worse by wasting CO2.

How is water returned to the tank from the two filters ? Full tank width spray bar ?

Please do pH profile (using pH pen not test kit) and verify you are getting a pH drop of 1 before lights come on. ie measure pH at CO2 on, then every 15 mins after that, until lights come on, you are aiming to get a CO2 injection rate that gets a drop of 1 in say 2 hours.

For such a large tank with two filters you will a setup like below in order to stand any chance of acheiving decent CO2 levels and distribution.





Please read (and ask questions...) on Zeus's 500l tank, linked below, on how he achieved a monster algae free tank. Taking on such a large planted tank is hard, but Zeus did it, probably first go.
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/olympus-is-calling.43046/


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## dw1305 (26 Feb 2018)

Hi all, 





MDP91 said:


> My plants appear to grow well but this algae hinders the growth and they dont seem to flourish.





MDP91 said:


>


Is your tap water very hard?

If it is? Looking at the photo you may need a different chelator for iron (Fe). It may be because of the light from above in the photo, but the new leaves look really pale and chlorotic, which is often a sign of a lack of iron.

Because iron isn't mobile within the plant deficiencies effect new leaves, most other nutrients are mobile so deficiencies effect old leaves first.

Iron availability is dependent upon the pH and hardness of the tap water.

Have a look at <"Ludwigia pale new leaves">.

cheer Darrel


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## Edvet (26 Feb 2018)

We need a whole lot more technical info to judge all the possible problems, and pics of the whole tank and setup will help.
Lights: which, how long, 
filter: which? media?, volume
Waterchanges: how big, how often
ferts: which, how much, micro's : which , how much

Well you see the pattern


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## MDP91 (26 Feb 2018)

Thank you for the replies, I have very hard tap water local in response to that question.

The lights are 54w 1200mm T5's x4, two with reflectors.
Filter, I have one with a mixture of sponges, starting at course and working through to a fine media to polish the water. The other is filled with my bio media, packed with ceramic rings and alfagrog.
I do one 50% water change a week, every Sunday.

I dose as follows:
Macros 500ml Dosing bottle - 4tsp Potassium Nitrate, 1tsp Potassium Phosphate, 6tsp Magnesium Sulphate
Micros 500ml Dosing bottle - 1tsp Chelated trace element mix from aquariumplantfood.

Macros 3x  a week, Micro 3x a week on alternate days. 10ml per 50litres of aquarium water.

Hope this aides.


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## MDP91 (26 Feb 2018)

Work in progress, wanting to get all the plants growing well before I scape it all properly.


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## Edvet (26 Feb 2018)

MDP91 said:


> The lights are 54w 1200mm T5's x4, two with reflectors.


This puts you in the high light zone, needing optimal and high CO2 levels


MDP91 said:


> Filter, I have one with a mixture of sponges, starting at course and working through to a fine media to polish the water. The other is filled with my bio media, packed with ceramic rings and alfagrog.


In planted tanks the general advice is not to stuff the filter with too much media. You don't need lots of bacterial action in your filter ( plants and soil will do that for you) but you do need about 10 times the tankvolume to flow through the tank each hour in order to distribute ferts and CO2

More info on the CO2 system please


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## MDP91 (26 Feb 2018)

Thank you, I'll probably cut down on the sponges as that will slow the flow down.

My system is a 2kg FE running into an inline diffuser on the outlet of one of my spraybars that is then picked up by one of my 3000lph wavemakers, the bubbles make it throughout the tank and generally have good flow throughout with all the plants swaying slightly.


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## Finn (26 Feb 2018)

I agree with Ian, I think that the CO2 rate is insanely low for your tank size ( perhaps more suitable for a similarly lit 60 litre) and in this regard I fear you've got the situation the wrong way round - the algae isn't restricting your plant growth, rather it's growing because your plants are stressed and dying, giving the algae ample food to flourish. 

What are you doing to monitor CO2 levels? Drop checker? pH pen? profiler? This should be your first port of call.


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## MDP91 (26 Feb 2018)

I'm using a drop checker to monitor co2, generally turns green an hour or so before lights off, just worried id gas the fish out.


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## ceg4048 (26 Feb 2018)

MDP91 said:


> I'm using a drop checker to monitor co2, generally turns green an hour or so before lights off, just worried id gas the fish out.


Poor CO2. By the time the CO2 is good the plants have actually stopped using CO2 for the day. DC needs to be green at least by lights on and with that many lights you would be hard pressed to satisfy them even so.

CO2 is not a button that you press. It is a technique that has to be implemented with creativity.
Distribution can also be an issue depending on where the pump outlets are mounted and depending on their orientation. 
As Edvert mentions we'll need more information about this. Photos will help a great deal.

You might want to disable two of the bulbs to help the plants recover.

Also perform a pH profile from gas on to lights off using a much higher injection rate. Do this on a day off so that you can monitor the tank. That is how to safely increase the gas rate safely.

Cheers,


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## MDP91 (26 Feb 2018)

ceg4048 said:


> Also perform a pH profile from gas on to lights off using a much higher injection rate. Do this on a day off so that you can monitor the tank. That is how to safely increase the gas rate safely.
> 
> Cheers,



Sounds stupid, but not having done one before, who do I complete a PH profile??

Thank you for the info, it would appear the issue is to high lights for the co2 im providing.


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## rebel (27 Feb 2018)

What type of algae is that? BBA??


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## ceg4048 (27 Feb 2018)

rebel said:


> What type of algae is that? BBA??


Looks like GSA, but could be some BBA present. Photos are not sharp enough to tell for sure.



MDP91 said:


> Sounds stupid, but not having done one before, who do I complete a PH profile??


No, it's not a stupid question if you are not familiar with it. Follow the procedure described in https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/echinodorus-quadricostatus.35006/page-2#post-375959
Record the values and list them so that we can see the pH changes throughout the photoperiod.
This is really the only way we have of getting a clue about how the CO2 is behaving.
The goal is to increase the injection rate so that you can depress the pH by 1 full unit within 1 hour ideally, but this is very difficult to do without then continuing to add so much CO2 that it becomes uncomfortable or dangerous to the fauna. There will have to be an adjustment for the fish as they become accustomed to the CO2 levels. It takes about 48 hours for their bodies to acclimate to higher CO2 levels.

The amount of dissolved CO2 is directly related to the change in pH and to measure the values instantaneously over a period of a few hours allows us to see the change in gas saturation.

You can achieve more accurate readings with the use of a pH pen, which everyone should have, really. In that thread I referenced the OP did not have a pen and had to use the bromothymol blue test kit with color charts. Really, quite absurd, but necessary.

Also we need to know what your KH is. if you have medium alkalinity such as between 4-9 the target pH drop is about 1 unit by lights on. If the KH test kit measures higher then you don't need to drop it as much. If the KH is lower then you'll probably need a larger drop.

As I mentioned, play with the injection rate. For a nearly 500 liter tank, you should not be able to even count the bubble rate. That is a lot of water to saturate with gas.

Cheers,


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## MDP91 (27 Feb 2018)

ceg4048 said:


> Looks like GSA, but could be some BBA present. Photos are not sharp enough to tell for sure.
> 
> 
> No, it's not a stupid question if you are not familiar with it. Follow the procedure described in https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/echinodorus-quadricostatus.35006/page-2#post-375959
> ...



Thank you very much for the reply, appreciated and quite informing. 
It's just all quite new to me on this size tank, I ran a 180 litre for three years and I found the sweet spot with everything and had amazing growth no issues with algae etc. I was offered this monster as next to nothing but is taking alot more effort to achieve what I want with the tank being so massive.
 I'll have a read into that link, dig out my pH pen and work forward from there.
I'll increase the co2 flow today 


Thanks again


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## Edvet (27 Feb 2018)

I did high CO2 on my 400 gallon for a while, stopped after a few months
I did do it as a supplement on it ( low 24/7 CO2) that worked well.


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## MDP91 (27 Feb 2018)

So whacked it up today, was green at lights on. However fish started to gasp about 1600hrs, only a couple of hours after lights on?
What I'm struggling to understand is how I would achieve a high level of Co2 without gassing my fish when I need to achieve a green drop checker for lights on?


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## Danny (27 Feb 2018)

I have approx 4bps on 60L, I set my co2 as high as I could purely by watching the fishes reaction to increases. Once they started gasping at the surface I then decreased it a tad at a time until they were fine, on a tank that volume I would definitely expect it to be impossible to even see any bubbles in the counter just a constant stream let alone count them.


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## Edvet (27 Feb 2018)

MDP91 said:


> What I'm struggling to understand is how I would achieve a high level of Co2 without gassing my fish when I need to achieve a green drop checker for lights on?


By lowering the light levels you reduce the need for high CO2, thus giving the fish the chance to get acclimated to the increasing CO2 levels. 
Baby steps, baby steps.


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## MDP91 (27 Feb 2018)

Edvet said:


> By lowering the light levels you reduce the need for high CO2, thus giving the fish the chance to get acclimated to the increasing CO2 levels.
> Baby steps, baby steps.


I see, so would I after time just increase it slightly, more and more and then add in the extra lights?? I'm fortunate that they run two bulbs per switch, but like the extra lighting so was hoping to adjust my co2 to allow use of all my lights.
Like you said though, baby steps.


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## Edvet (27 Feb 2018)




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## MDP91 (27 Feb 2018)

On a slight side note I didn't think 216watts of light for a 450lire aquarium was classed as high light?


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## ceg4048 (28 Feb 2018)

MDP91 said:


> On a slight side note I didn't think 216watts of light for a 450lire aquarium was classed as high light?



Hi,
    As discussed in many threads here, the traditional way of assessing low, medium and high light is completely flawed. It was OK way back when the only type of lights available were the much lower output T8, however, with the advent of higher output T5 it was discovered that the watts per gallon method does not work.

Additionally, as we often mention, many hobbyists fret over the fact that their light may not penetrate to the lower parts of the tank, when in fact the plants do not really care about that. What they care about is gas exchange. They need a good supply of CO2 in order to produce the food they need to live. They also need Oxygen to burn the food they manage to produce. These commodities are always in short supply in large tanks.

Plants use the visible spectrum to generate the electricity necessary to strip CO2 of Carbon so that Carbohydrates can be manufactured.
The energy of the light is referred to as Photosynthetically Active Radiation, or PAR.
This energy, supplied in an amount commensurate with the available supply of CO2, is summarized on this chart.
You can see how much margin of error is built into the much lower T8 bulbs. 
The key to determining  Low, Medium and High is the distance the leaf is from the bulb. Generally, we use the distance the substrate is from the bulb as a standard reference. Using multiple bulbs, as indicated on the charts magnifies the PAR.

If you consistently operate in the high pink to yellow zone without having excellent CO2 you will usually incur algal blooms.
Even if you are in the blue zone, if your CO2 techniques are particularly poor this can result in blooms.





Cheers,


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## MDP91 (28 Feb 2018)

Thank you again for the reply, although I'm struggling to work out my light par based on my setup using that chart


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## ceg4048 (28 Feb 2018)

MDP91 said:


> Thank you again for the reply, although I'm struggling to work out my light par based on my setup using that chart


Well, we know the number of T5 bulbs you are using, to that tells us which curve to use and what multiplier to apply, but you haven't actually told us what the distance is from the bulb to the substrate so we cannot determine where the curve-to-distance intersection is.

Cheers,


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## MDP91 (5 Mar 2018)

My lights are about 20inches from the substrate.


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## Edvet (5 Mar 2018)

According the chart: 1 x T5 HO at 20 inches 60-70 par, times 4 is 240-280 par  (one is already medium light)
That qualifies as  (ultra) high ( megaton) light


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## MDP91 (5 Mar 2018)

I've seen people running more lights than I have only smaller tanks though and not had issues?
Hmmmmm, if I ran only one light the tank would be very dim


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## Edvet (5 Mar 2018)

Wel the plants disagree sadly. Can you alter the height, doubling it will lower the amounts by 4x


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## MDP91 (5 Mar 2018)

Thank you, I think I'll keep my newly increased Co2 and knock two bulbs off. They work on a two bulb per plug system as its an iquatic juwel replacement system.


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## ceg4048 (6 Mar 2018)

Hi
   It's always a mistake to isolate any single element of your tank and compare it to other tanks having that same element. Plant health is a derivative of many variables in a tank. Suppose that other person had better CO2 than you do? That would easily explain their success and your failure. CO2 is much easier to implement in a smaller tank. Other variables such as flow and distribution play a role, as does the ability of the plants to adapt to higher levels of stress as the tank matures and as the plants develop, so you could be comparing someone's mature and developed tank to your lesser developed tank.

At some point high stress levels and high growth rates will be achievable, but you have to be able to get there from here. For every person that insists that they use so many megawatts and achieve success there will be a hundred who tried the same and vaporized their plants into oblivion. Each element has to be assessed within the context of the whole.

Cheers,


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## MDP91 (7 Mar 2018)

Thank you, that makes perfect sense. Lots to learn.

I have knocked off two of my 54W T5 Bulbs and increased my CO2 for the time being to see if that will gradually bring my plants back to health.


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## ceg4048 (8 Mar 2018)

MDP91 said:


> Thank you, that makes perfect sense. Lots to learn.
> 
> I have knocked off two of my 54W T5 Bulbs and increased my CO2 for the time being to see if that will gradually bring my plants back to health.


Hi,
    Yes, reducing the light will reduce the stress considerably.
Also, to reiterate what the other posters have mentioned, the way in which you distribute your flow is very important. I think you had asked how is it is that in order to get your DC green your fish were experiencing hypercapnia. That is an early indication that your distribution methods of CO2 are suspect. When fish suffer hypercapnia at the same time that the plants suffer CO2 deficiency this means that the CO2 is dissolves in an area where the fish are, but does not have a significant presence where the plants are located. This is a very common occurrence and is fixed by paying more attention to the placement and orientation of your filter return outlets. If you can provide a photo of the plumbing in the tank whcih shows the filter oputlets and whioch shows the injection method, we might be able to help you fine tune them.

Cheers,


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## MDP91 (15 Mar 2018)

ceg4048 said:


> Hi,
> Yes, reducing the light will reduce the stress considerably.
> Also, to reiterate what the other posters have mentioned, the way in which you distribute your flow is very important. I think you had asked how is it is that in order to get your DC green your fish were experiencing hypercapnia. That is an early indication that your distribution methods of CO2 are suspect. When fish suffer hypercapnia at the same time that the plants suffer CO2 deficiency this means that the CO2 is dissolves in an area where the fish are, but does not have a significant presence where the plants are located. This is a very common occurrence and is fixed by paying more attention to the placement and orientation of your filter return outlets. If you can provide a photo of the plumbing in the tank whcih shows the filter oputlets and whioch shows the injection method, we might be able to help you fine tune them.
> 
> Cheers,


Thank you, I seem to have solved this issue , I have adjusted my circulation pump and filter outflows and now get a nice circular motion through the tank. DC is a lime green on lights on and remains for the photoperiod.
Only have the one HO T5 running over the tank to let all the plants recover.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk


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