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can you have to much co2 ?

sa80mark

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2 Oct 2007
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Ive got a small amount of what I believe to be hair algae I think this is due to me very stupidly dosing 1ml ferts a day instead of the 3ml I should have been dosing so as ive got no livestock and am running a high dose of co2, bright yellow on the drop checker, ive uped the ferts to 3ml I should have been dosing and have uped water changes to 75% ish a day along with manually removing the algae so I think im getting on top of it now

So I guess my question is could I up the co2 even more to increase the speed of plant growth or should I be continuing with a bright yellow drop checker ?

Can you have to much co2 ?
 
Hello,
First of all, you should realize that hair algae is caused by poor CO2 and has nothing to do with low nutrients. As an aside, lowering the nutrient dosing under conditions of CO2 deficiency can sometimes change the course of events such that a nutrient deficiency can cause the disappearance of the symptoms of CO2 deficiency. All that means though is that you will suffer the symptoms an algae attack due to low nutrients as a substitute headache.

So you need to be sure what algae you are talking about. All types of filamentous algae such as hair or thread are CO2 related. If this is confirmed to be filamentous, then it means that something is wrong with your flow/distribution because the CO2 you are injecting is not reaching the plants. It might also mean that the dropchecker is not yell when the lights go on. If that happens then the fault is being incurred when the lights go on and that having it turn yellow later in the photoperiod cannot erase the faults incurred earlier.

Secondly, the speed of growth of a plant in no way correlates to the overall health of a plant. Plants that grow slowly are often healthier than those growing at a faster rate, because some conditions that generate high growth rates also cause plant damage and encourage algae. You really need to completely obliterate this idea from your thinking, because it will lead you to take the most inappropriate actions 99.99% of the time.

In any case, CO2 is not toxic to plants, so if there are no fish in the tank, there is no limit to how much CO2 you can inject. The limiting factor will be cost of gas replacement.

You should verify the algae type by checking James' Planted Tank - Algae Guide
Note the corrective action listed for the type and take appropriate action. Most of the data on that page is accurate.
Again, I suggest that you review flow and or distribution.
Ensure that you do not have overzealous lighting. If so reduce the light intensity.

Cheers,
 
Thanks for the reply ceg

The tank is a 30l dennerle nano cube and is filtered with an eheim classic 350 rated at around 600lph im using a spray bar but have the filter throttled down slightly, its turned up so every plant is swaying and if I turn it up just slightly more it starts to lift the plants from the substrate, I think my flow is good ? Co2 is running 24 hours 7 days a week ( waiting for fe to use my reg with solinoid, I did have a 4-5 hour period the week before last where my co2 ran out Could this have triggered the algae ?
Co2 is being diffused via a nano glass diffuser, the tank is full of bubbles and I can see there are being pushed all around the tank
Ive looked at james planted tank algue guide and is most similar in looks to his " Hair, Thread, Fuzz, etc" but this is mostly on the rocks and very little on the plants,
Lighting is currently 5 hours a day using an 11 watt dennerle clip on ( came with the tank )

I guess to sum up the only 2 reasons I can think of for the algae are

Dosing ferts to low and the co2 run out

Mark
 
I did have a 4-5 hour period the week before last where my co2 ran out Could this have triggered the algae ?
Well if you ran out of CO2 and didn't turn the lights off then yes, absolutely. Plants that are high on CO2 cannot deal with a cold turkey loss as much as plants that are normally fed smaller amount of CO2, as bizarre as that seems. It's best to think of CO2 as an addiction. The more they get, the more they want, and if you stop giving them what they want they will throw up.

When you run out of CO2 you have to turn the light off until you get CO2.

Cheers,
 
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