# Hair Algae - I'm at my wits end!!!



## Pepsi Dave (1 Jul 2020)

Hi guys, I'm having a real problem with hair algae, and I'm really struggling to keep it under control, and have been having issues with it for weeks, and it seems that no matter what I try, I'm not winning the battle.... tank details below, with further info beneath that of current remedial attempts and summary of tank "journey" so far. I've tried to give as much detail as possible, so apologies for post length.

Tank approx 36L (25cm D x 30cm H x 45cm L)
Twinstar 450SA
Pressurised CO2 Injection (Fire Extinguisher) via ceramic diffuser
EI Dosing + Excel
Eheim 2073 Canister Filter (Rated at 1050LPH) set to 50% output.

I have very soft tap water 0KH, PH varies between 6.6-6.8
I use Aquadur to increase KH to 4 and PH to approx 7.4-7.6

Timings
CO2 on @ 15:30
Edit - CO2 off at 22:00
Lighting ramps up from 0% to 60% between 17:30-18:00 and remains at 60% for 4.5 hours
Lighting Ramps down from 22:30-23:00

Tank was set up mid-May, and heavily planted with the following plants.
Eleocharis Acicularis Mini
Lilaeopsis Brasiliensis
Marselia Hirsuta
Hyrophila Pinnatifida
Rotala H'ra
Staurogyne Repens
Bolbitis Heteroclita Difformis
Anubias (Not sure of species)
Anubias Nana Petit
2 x Type of bucephalandra
Flame Moss on Wood
I also have some dragon stone in my tank.
Substrate is Tropica aquarium soil fine.

Tank ran fine for 3 weeks, I was doing daily water changes for week 1, and every other day for weeks 2 and 3.
Week 3, I felt all was stable, and I added 5 CRS and 1 Amano shrimp.
Week 4, and this is where I think I made my mistake, I increased lighting duration by half an hour (to current duration) with a view to increasing it to 6hrs over a number of weeks. I also stepped down water changes to once a week.
I felt this would be OK because my filter was already cycled before using with this tank. (Previous tank sprung a leak, so upgraded this little tank with a view to making a shrimp only tank.) In hindsight, I'd perhaps underestimated how much ammonia the soil leaches after set up.

End of week 4 I had severe melting to my S. Repens, Marselia Hirsuta, Anubias, Buces, and Bolbitis (I lost ALL of my bolbitis ), with yellowing to my foreground grasses in the front left hand corner being present from end of week 2.
I noticed that this yellowing was occurring where there was the highest flow, thought that the flow was too high in that area, so adjusted outlet to change flow, this improved growth of the grasses.

At week 4 I noticed the first signs of algae. I had brown algae on anubis leaves, and on glass. This looks like diatoms, so I'm not overly worried, easy to remove, and seems to take a while to return.

I also noticed Hair Algae on my Bolbitis, Repens, Moss and Carpeting plants which, after reading about Hair Algae, I attributed this to either flow, Lighting or CO2 issues.

I reduced lighting intensity from 100% to 60% and ran for two weeks, with no improvement. I was still only doing a weekly 50% WC at this point!!!

Next I adjusted flow, and managed to increase filter output to 100% without it destroying my scape. I ran this for 2 weeks. This seemed to exacerbate the problem rather than fix it, so I eliminated flow as the problem. I was now also doing 2 x 50% WC per week (Sunday and Weds).

So with no improvement, I uprated CO2, from 3-4 BPS to maybe 6-7BPS. Drop checker was always showing green (ie wouldn't show a PH rise after lights out), but not quite lime green.
Now, another lesson learnt, that was too much, I went shopping and came back to dead CRS and Amano shrimp a few hours later 

My CO2 is now at 5BPS and my drop checker shows lime green-yellow - constantly.
2 weeks since then, I still have hair algae growing quicker than I can remove it!

I still have occasional melting leaves, but cannot detect any ammonia if I test for it, so am I right to rule out ammonia as the cause of melting? Equally, I know that I can only have algae in the presence of ammonia too, so I know must have *some* ammonia present.

The only thing I'm yet to alter is my EI recipe, because from what I've read about hair algae its more likely to be CO2 or flow related. Also, I'm not observing any obvious plant deficiencies that I know of. I also want to keep shrimp, so I'm conscious of Nitrate levels also, I've struggled with shrimp in the past due to high nitrates or so I'v been told.

Other observations that may be note-worthy.
In the past, I've used glass CO2 drop checkers, which have always changed colour during the day, with regularity. ie Blueish in the morning, before CO2, and green-yellow at the time of lights on.

I broke both of the drop checkers I had, trying to fix the suction cups to them. My LFS only had the JBL drop checkers (Like a plastic upside down pear shaped thing) but this just seems to constantly show the same colour, and I'm also not detecting any fluctuations in CO2 with my test kit either. Is this normal?

Final point, at the time of writing this as well, there is a small amount of what I presume to be GSA on my ceramic diffuser, but nothing visible on glass, and nothing obvious on hardscape, that wasn't already there from previous tank (where it was present on hardscape, I scrubbed as much off as I could before placing in this tank).

EI Recipe for Daily Doses (Used Rotala Butterfly and James Planted Tank calculators to tweak recipe).
The below is added to 500ml Water. I dose the below on Sunday (WC Day 1), Tuesday, and Thursday.
KNO3 - 1.5 Tsp
KH2PO4 - 0.25 Tsp
K2SO4 - 1 Tsp
MGSO4 - 5Tsp

I also dose 25ml Trace on Monday, Wednesday (WC Day 2) and Friday.
As well as EI ferts, I dose Excel and double the recommended dose to try and combat the algae.

This recipe should yield approx 25-30ppm Nitrates, 30ppm Potassium, 4ppm Phosphates, and 10ppm Magnesium. If I've got a problem with my recipe, I'm not sure how to identify this, and how therefore how to rectify it.

I hope the above is enough info, I'm at my wits end how to fix my algae issues!

Pics attached also to show tank, and current algae, I've just carried out an extra WC so I've done 2 WCs today and removed a blahblahblahblah load of algae, but as you can see there is still plenty of it still evident!

Thanks in advance for any pointers as to where I'm going wrong, or any advice!


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## Simon Cole (1 Jul 2020)

Hello Dave,
You want to add some more animals to eat the algae.
You probably want to cover your tank at this tie of year too to stop too much ambient light accelerating algal growth.
Floating plants can help.

Dosing recipes need to match your tap water. If you don't have any calcium available to plants, then how can you expect them to facilitate the transport of other nutrients and biological molecules around in the plant. Likewise, if you've put so much magnesium in the tank that this is competing uptake of the calcium. The recommended concentrations for certain nutrients given to aquatic plants really started with Hoagland's Solution (1930s). By the 1960 significant work had been done to develop solutions suitable for aquatic plants, such as the work of _Gerlof_f _and_ _Krombholz_ (1966): 



These authors were also amongst the first to consider plant tissue analysis of elements that were plant nutrients in addition to water chemistry. This gave somewhat of an idea of what proportion of water column nutrients entered into angiosperm plant tissue.
Jump forward 10 years, and _Stephen R. Carpenter and Michael S. Adams _(1977) were measuring the tissue nutrient content of macrophytes within an entire hardwater eutrophic lake in order to plan harvesting regimes. Another 40 years, and Adamec, Lubomír (2010) were using environmental water chemistry in combination with plant tissue analysis to determine the nutrient storage function of turions in a variety of different aquatic plants. The paradigm had clearly shifted since the 1960s, and researchers were using environmental water chemistry, plant evolution and adaptation, and plant tissue nutrient analysis to determine optimal conditions for plant growth, according to each individual species. These are just a few examples I plucked from Google Scholar, but there have been thousands of research papers looking at aquatic plant nutrition. However, I think many people are still of the view that there is just one formula or recipe. If there was, then it probably existed in the table above back in the 1960s. But even the authors back then were just using it as a starting point to get some sort of optimised growth for their experiment - it was only ever a hypothetical assumption - and that meant their research was never going to be totally robust. If you were looking for a starting point, then I would begin there too. I hope that helps.

Melting is usually due to poor photosynthetic control, so you were right to identify your lighting and carbon dioxide gas. but bear in mind that calcium is a critical element in this process too. Too much light and sometimes plants die due to photo-inhibition.

On a side note, I do not recognise what the term EI actually means - a parenthetic view on water changes.


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## rebel (2 Jul 2020)

Dude, just reduce light by 20% and wait.

If you don't have any critters in the tank, you can use a hair algae killer. They usually have Busan77 in them but is very toxic to shrimp. Half life appears to be 48 hours so quickly cleared. For example API algaefix.

OH WAIT: You have CRS, they will die with Algaefix. Ignore.


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## hypnogogia (2 Jul 2020)

From the photos, I also see that your co2 bubbles are rising straight up, so appear not to be dispersed around the tank.  Try putting the diffuser under your filter inlet to allow the water jet to disperse the bubbles.


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## Nick72 (2 Jul 2020)

@Simon Cole  - the Aquadur the OP is adding is basically Ca & Mg, so he should be covered for Calcium.


If you are doing 2 weekly 50% water changes then your ferts are good.  If you are doing 1 weekly 50% water change then your Nitrates will be too high, around 60ppm.

I'd still bet your CO2 is an issue, and you need to do a full CO2 Profile to confirm this one way or another.

I don't see much algae to be honest, and what I do could actually be filament diatoms. 

Can you get a close up of the algae?


Going out on a limb here, but with all those nutrients your plants should be green and not yellow, so I'm going to says your lights are too low, the plants a suffering and the algae (or possibly diatoms) are filling the void.


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## rebel (2 Jul 2020)

rebel said:


> Dude, just reduce light by 20% and wait.
> 
> If you don't have any critters in the tank, you can use a hair algae killer. They usually have Busan77 in them but is very toxic to shrimp. Half life appears to be 48 hours so quickly cleared. For example API algaefix.
> 
> OH WAIT: You have CRS, they will die with Algaefix. Ignore.


I don't know how to delete what I wrote above.

Those pictures show diatoms.  Many critters including otos and shrimp will eat them. I once had massive diatom issues for months in one tank. I put in about 500 cherry shrimp and overnight the diatoms were gone.  Other options include peroxide and glut but may you won't need it. Once last option for persistent diatoms is to blast the light for a while but it can induce other algae.


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## Pepsi Dave (2 Jul 2020)

rebel said:


> Dude, just reduce light by 20% and wait.
> 
> If you don't have any critters in the tank, you can use a hair algae killer. They usually have Busan77 in them but is very toxic to shrimp. Half life appears to be 48 hours so quickly cleared. For example API algaefix.
> 
> OH WAIT: You have CRS, they will die with Algaefix. Ignore.


Hah, I did! I have zero stock in my tank since I gassed them all


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## Pepsi Dave (2 Jul 2020)

rebel said:


> I don't know how to delete what I wrote above.
> 
> Those pictures show diatoms.  Many critters including otos and shrimp will eat them. I once had massive diatom issues for months in one tank. I put in about 500 cherry shrimp and overnight the diatoms were gone.  Other options include peroxide and glut but may you won't need it. Once last option for persistent diatoms is to blast the light for a while but it can induce other algae.


I'm reluctant to get any more livestock until I've addressed the problem. I'd be concerned that at some point I'll try and make a CO2 adjustment and end up gassing all my stock again! I'm planning on waiting until the algae is under control, and stable, before I add any more stock. I'd be worried that if I have to make any CO2 adjustments that I'd end up gassing them all again!


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## Witcher (2 Jul 2020)

Pepsi Dave said:


> The below is added to 500ml Water. I dose the below on Sunday (WC Day 1), Tuesday, and Thursday.
> KNO3 - 1.5 Tsp
> KH2PO4 - 0.25 Tsp
> K2SO4 - 1 Tsp
> ...


Do you dose 25ml of macro each time?


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## cbaum86 (2 Jul 2020)

It's hard to see exactly on your photos but it looks quite similar to my problem. I've managed to make significant progress and don't cry every time I look at the scape now. Hopefully it may provide you with some insight.

Before:




After:


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## Pepsi Dave (2 Jul 2020)

Witcher said:


> Do you dose 25ml of macro each time?


Yup I dose 25ml Macros on Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday, and 25ml Micros on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, along with Excel every day, which I'm double dosing at the moment.


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## Siege (2 Jul 2020)

A few thoughts -


- it is not fert related, you are going down a rabbit hole chasing that.

- water changes - get doing them 70% change and do it 2 or 3 times on the trot. Do it daily if you have time. Get all the waste out.

- you‘ve got no oxygen with no surface movement, invest in some nice glassware that gives you a nice surface ripple.

- co2 diffuser needs a good bleaching to remove the algae. The bubbles are huge. It is blocked and maybe running at too high a psi also.

- flow. Put the outlet and inlet at the front corner going across the tank. Put the co2 at the opposite side. You want the small co2 bubbles being blasted around the tank, it should look like a candle. Your co2 is going straight  up. That’s why you are using so much gas.

- you have a lot of all types of algae pointing towards lots of waste and fluctuating co2 Plus low oxygen. Get on top of the co2 and surface movement. Blast everything with a turkey baster attached to your syphon hose to remove all waste. scrub the hardscape with a small wire brush or toothbrush.
A massive maintenance session. You’ll probably do half a dozen water changes minimum.

- you want the tank looking spotless, clean the filter, suction cups,tubing everything. start a reset.


So basically lack of oxygen(surface movement), set up on flow is an issue impacting co2, all combined with lack of maintenance.

It may be too far gone but if you give it a good whack you may just pull it back (You May have to cut the stem plants to the minimum plant and cut of all leave showing BBA). Give it a good go, you’ll learn loads more about your tank than it all going smoothly 

Hope that helps!

ps. Temp at 22-23 degrees!


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## Siege (2 Jul 2020)

This may help - 






your issue is you have far less water to play with so when it goes out of balance it goes quick if that makes sense.

it makes maintenance and multiple water changes on the trot so much more important! 👍


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## Siege (2 Jul 2020)

Pepsi Dave said:


> Yup I dose 25ml Macros on Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday, and 25ml Micros on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, along with Excel every day, which I'm double dosing at the moment.



why So much ei?

Don’t stop dosing it just seems a lot, is this because the recipe is a weak solution.?

For example I’d dose TNC Complete or the Aquascaper ferts at 2.5ml a day on your tank.


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## jaypeecee (2 Jul 2020)

Hi @Pepsi Dave 

I don't think you have mentioned this above but how often are you cleaning the filtration media?

JPC


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## Conort2 (2 Jul 2020)

I’d up the water changes to three times a week as mentioned. Also another thing to do is mix up the amount of liquid carbon dosage you require for your tank size in a spray bottle with some water and then spray over the plants and hardscape once you’ve removed the water for your water change. Leave for ten minutes and then fill up. Be careful though, my bolbitis didn’t like it too much And a few leaves melted.

cheers

Conor


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## Siege (2 Jul 2020)

After a massive session - Daily water changes. 3 times each time, as big as you can go.

Add more plants if you need to.
you’ll find a massive improvement i think after a couple of weeks.

just keep up the improved maintenance


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## rebel (3 Jul 2020)

What is fascinating here is the range of differing opinions! I feel sorry for the OP having to choose the right one.


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## Simon Cole (3 Jul 2020)

Nick72 said:


> @Simon Cole - the Aquadur the OP is adding is basically Ca & Mg, so he should be covered for Calcium.



@Nick72 - No I don't think so. I was talking about plant nutrient availability within plant tissue (competition between mineral ions). It seems quite likely that having magnesium levels this high would result in melting plants if calcium concentrations did not correlate to these levels. I am unsure why such a high level of epsom salt is required at this stage.  Can anybody explain this?

I accept there are lots of views. I think the easy place to start is to get magnesium levels back down or they will flood new tissue and make growth fairly difficult.

@rebel  Lots of views. Probably a good thing - liked the oxygen idea. I would opt for more oxygen too, but it's not easy juggling all options at once. I think the whole tank is being pushed a bit hard or those poor shrimp and plants would still be alive.


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## rebel (3 Jul 2020)

Simon Cole said:


> Lots of views. Probably a good thing


I disagree.  How does the OP choose the right one? We can't all be right. Maybe we are all wrong? How doth one know?


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## Nick72 (3 Jul 2020)

Simon Cole said:


> @Nick72 - No I don't think so. I was talking about plant nutrient availability within plant tissue (competition between mineral ions). It seems quite likely that having magnesium levels this high would result in melting plants if calcium concentrations did not correlate to these levels. I am unsure why such a high level of epsom salt is required at this stage.  Can anybody explain this?
> 
> I accept there are lots of views. I think the easy place to start is to get magnesium levels back down or they will flood new tissue and make growth fairly difficult.
> 
> @rebel  Lots of views. Probably a good thing - liked the oxygen idea. I would opt for more oxygen too, but it's not easy juggling all options at once. I think the whole tank is being pushed a bit hard or those poor shrimp and plants would still be alive.



Absolutely agree there is no need for such large quantities of Mg.

Although referring to Mulder's Chart Mg dose not inhibit other salts.

Still OP is getting enough Mg from Aquadur and should not add additional Mg.  

Even without Aquadur he is adding about 5 times too much Mg.

Dave, please stop adding Epsom Salts while using Aquadur.


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## Simon Cole (3 Jul 2020)

@Nick72  - Cheers for your post. I have always wondered why so many EI strategies contain relatively high levels of epsom salts. Generally plant stomata are filled with gases and it would seem that the main thrust getting nutrients into plant tissue is through ectodesmata in the leaves (and stem), or through the root membrane. The ectodesmata are thought to be a negatively charged lining that attracts cations, especially divalent cations like Mg++ and Ca++. Traditional crop observations noted that there was an ideal ratio for root uptake balanced in favour of calcium (e.g. 3:1). This ratio belief is now largely unproven in terrestrial fertilisation. But there is still a heavily dependent relationship, and Michigan State University advise:_  "Adding Ca to alter the Ca:Mg ratio is not necessary unless Mg equals or exceeds Ca on meq basis".  _So the ideal situation is something like calcium concentration </= magnesium concentration. As a post-note... I am not entirely sure why calcium nitrate, magnesium nitrate and potassium sulphate are not used in place of epsom salts for relatively soft water planted aquariums.


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## Simon Cole (3 Jul 2020)

rebel said:


> I disagree.  How does the OP choose the right one? We can't all be right. Maybe we are all wrong? How doth one know?



I think "we" can all be right. Most of the factors are dependent or interdependent variables. Planted tanks have always been complex systems. Perhaps the place to start is to get those algae eaters thriving and to build up plant mass. Simples


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## Witcher (3 Jul 2020)

@Nick72 @Simon Cole you may find this quite interesting:
Aquatic toxicity of magnesium sulfate, and the influence of calcium, in very low ionic concentration water


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## Nick72 (3 Jul 2020)

Witcher said:


> @Nick72 @Simon Cole you may find this quite interesting:
> Aquatic toxicity of magnesium sulfate, and the influence of calcium, in very low ionic concentration water



That was interesting, although I only skim read it.

I find scientific reports either induce narcolepsy or a banging headache.

What I took from it was that very low Ca can be dangerous for aquatic life, particularly in the presence of Mg (even at levels as low as 4ppm Mg).

Looks like you need a fairly extreme Ca deficiency or a ratio of 9Mg / 1Ca before the Mg becomes toxic to aquatic life.

Therefore it's important to know you have at least a little Ca in your aquarium.


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## Siege (3 Jul 2020)

rebel said:


> I disagree.  How does the OP choose the right one? We can't all be right. Maybe we are all wrong? How doth one know?



I am right of course..........

Havent seen @Pepsi Dave since you guys got your science books out! 😂

Im currently hunting out my grade 2 swimming badge, that’ll impress yer!


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## Simon Cole (3 Jul 2020)

Great article. Toxicology was measured as lethal concentration (LC) - but not for higher plants per se, and not in terms of growth inhibition. The actual findings were quite amazing. Lesser duckweed _lemna aequinoctialis_ stopped growing at 1 ppm Mg in the absence of calcium. The LC10 (96hr) was 1.9 ppm Mg and LC50 was 4.4 ppm Mg at background calcium levels of >0.8 ppm Ca.  At 9:1 Mg to Ca this shot up to 36 ppm Mg and 629 ppm Mg, respectively. I was expecting some correlation but that is amazing. My guess is that larger plants have even more difficulty accumulating and moving enough calcium so I would expect the ratio to be a little bit lower still. But bear in mind we are talking about growth inhibition (even just additional stress) that could have made these plants more susceptible.
@Witcher - Awesome, thank you for sharing!

@Nick72  You're bang on.

@Siege  You are definitely right. I think we have gone a bit off piste with nutrients, but worthwhile talking about.


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## Pepsi Dave (5 Jul 2020)

Siege said:


> A few thoughts -
> 
> 
> - it is not fert related, you are going down a rabbit hole chasing that.
> ...



Thanks for the response, lack of oxygen would make sense, I was struggling with surface film for a few weeks until I adjusted the filter outlet to add more surface agitation.

Noted about the water changes, I'm already resigned to hugely increasing frequency until I get on top of the problem.

I've just come back from a weekend visiting family, last dosed tank on Friday, with Saturday being a normal rest day (no excel added though). Came home today to a tank with huge amounts of filamentous/thread algae. Did large water change, large trimming session and tried to remove as much of the algae as possible. I've adjusted filter outlet position again, to try and spread the CO2 bubbles around the tank more.

The CO2 bubbles and them being blown around the tank confuses me somewhat though because my drop checker still reacts to the CO2 being present, when I change the reagent fluid for example. Would this not indicate that CO2 is being absorbed by the water column sufficiently?

Will update as and when I can do, but I really appreciate the help so far! Thank you!


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## Pepsi Dave (5 Jul 2020)

Siege said:


> why So much ei?
> 
> Don’t stop dosing it just seems a lot, is this because the recipe is a weak solution.?
> 
> For example I’d dose TNC Complete or the Aquascaper ferts at 2.5ml a day on your tank.


I think when I first started with EI I used the standard recipe thats supplied with the Starter Kit from APF. I'm sure this recipe was for a 50ml dose every day.
The bottles that  I have, have 25ml reservoirs. I adjusted the recipe to suit 25ml dosing instead of 50ml dosing, and adjusted quantities to suit tank size etc. I suspect the TNC Complete you use may be much more concentrated?


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## Pepsi Dave (5 Jul 2020)

jaypeecee said:


> Hi @Pepsi Dave
> 
> I don't think you have mentioned this above but how often are you cleaning the filtration media?
> 
> JPC


To be honest, I've cleaned it once since setup, and once just before set up.

I usually clean my media (in tank water) every couple of months or so, or as and when required if I've disturbed substrate and thrown a load of detritus into the water column.

My ceramics are usually pretty clean to be fair, it's normally my floss and sponge that are really heavily soiled.


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## Pepsi Dave (5 Jul 2020)

rebel said:


> What is fascinating here is the range of differing opinions! I feel sorry for the OP having to choose the right one.



I have had this thought myself. I'm trying to use the knowledge that I already have (or THINK I have haha) and adapt the advice being given!

It will all help me learn, and that's the important part of this lesson in Algae!

Don't get me wrong, I've had algae before, and usually been able to address it, but this time I'm really struggling!


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## Pepsi Dave (5 Jul 2020)

Nick72 said:


> Absolutely agree there is no need for such large quantities of Mg.
> 
> Although referring to Mulder's Chart Mg dose not inhibit other salts.
> 
> ...



This is interesting, and I think the most radical thing I've read in terms of what I'm already doing.

I add so much magnesium simply because that's what the EI recipe caluclator tells me to put in.
However, after finding my Aquadur instruction booklet tonight, I can see that I'm already adding in plenty of magnesium with the Aquadur.

Whilst I don't know the quants I'm adding, I can see that the Aquadur mixture is 45% Calcium, 32% Sodium, 13% Potassium and 10% Magnesium.

This is going to be really rudimentary, but I add approx 1/2 a measuring spoon of Aquadur per bucket that I use to re-fill my tank. It takes approx 3 buckets to fill it from empty.

With the above in mind, I presume I can vastly reduce the amount of Epsom salts I'm adding to my ferts. Also, can you point out how or why you've arrived at me adding about 5 times too much? I'm not challenging you, I'm just trying to understand why the amounts I'm adding are wildly over and above what you're saying they should be.


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## Pepsi Dave (5 Jul 2020)

Thanks for all your help so far guys, I'm hugely appreciative of the response so far, and I'm sure with all your help I'll eventually get there!

Just to update a touch, I've just been away visiting family for the weekend. After a couple of days away my tank was completely overrun with algae upon return. This time, I've taken a few pics before WC and algae removal, if it helps further clarify the problem.

Another interesting observation tonight, is that a couple of leaves appeared to have small pin holes in them. Anubias Nana Petit and S. Repens were the only plants that seemed to be affected with this.

For full disclosure, I went away on Friday and dosed as normal before I left.
Saturday is my EI "rest day" but I would normally dose excel, which I didn't do yesterday.
Came back today, at about 8pm, ie after CO2 and Lights came on, so no dosing today prior to that.


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## Nick72 (6 Jul 2020)

Pepsi Dave said:


> This is interesting, and I think the most radical thing I've read in terms of what I'm already doing.
> 
> I add so much magnesium simply because that's what the EI recipe caluclator tells me to put in.
> However, after finding my Aquadur instruction booklet tonight, I can see that I'm already adding in plenty of magnesium with the Aquadur.
> ...



Hi Dave,

I might not fully understand the doses you are using.

You said :

"The below is added to 500ml Water. I dose the below on Sunday (WC Day 1), Tuesday, and Thursday.
KNO3 - 1.5 Tsp
KH2PO4 - 0.25 Tsp
K2SO4 - 1 Tsp
MGSO4 - 5Tsp"

So that's 15 tsp per week.  

For EI dosing you need to add 15 ppm Mg / week.  In your 37 liter tank that's 2.5 tsp per week.

So 15 tsp per week is actually 6 times what is needed.

In any case you don't need to add any Mg as you are already dosing Aquadur.


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