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400 gallon.

BBA started comming back, so i upped the CO2 now (pH now down to 5.5-5.6, coming down from 6.6-6.7) and lowered the lights, going for fast plant growth so i can remove more affected leaves.
The large otocinclus like Hypoptoma gulare are damaging my Echinodorus leaves, so i need lots of new leaves for that too. Have been feeding all kind of veggies, but they seem to ignore them.
BBA is on tthe smaller foreground plants too, I didn't even get the Lileaopsis going. I have some new one on the way.

Warts:
url=https://flic.kr/p/nnAUdA]14027948010_dee10415a8_z.jpg[/url]BBA on Lileaopsis by Edvet, on Flickr

14234736793_6626399c75_z.jpgdamaged Echinodorus leaves, probably Hypoptoma doing this. by 14214571145_1b721bddf5_z.jpgBBA on wood by Edvet, on Flickrs://www.flickr.com/people/101410164@N02/]Edvet[/url], on Flickr
 
Wow, bit of a festival of algae there ED! In your post above you said you're lowering the lights, do you mean lowering them towards the tank?

By the way, the FTS on the previous page looks amazing, I'm very jealous of all your fish. 🙂
 
The BBA on the powerhead looks cool. It looks like velvet 🙂

It's a tough job to battle BBA in such a huge tank. I can't even hazard a very useful guess but I'll follow with interest.

I've got just one suggestion, have you tried oxygenating the tank heavily at night, including near the substrate via some sort of air pumps to help with decomposition of organics and nitrification and then switch then off in the morning before the co2 comes on obviously. BBA is always a sucker for organics and in a big tank you can't really remove them easily unless you spend your day at it at cleaning up. So a bit faster microbial activity may speed up the process, especially that the plants now are half functioning.
If that doesn't help and I am not sure what amount of filtration you are using, but increasing it may help.
 
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Edvet said:
Strangely enough i never had much succes with apisto's in that tank, Always thought it might be to deep.
Was thinking about some Laetacara thayeri, though according to the LFS owner they are a royal pain in the b*tt, very bulying. I've had several dicrossus spp in there (macualatus and filamentosus).
Click to expand...

Too bad! I was thinking about them too...

And about the BBA, extra oxygen at night makes a huge difference for me too!
 
sciencefiction said:
have you tried oxygenating the tank heavily at night
Click to expand...
Wel the way the water goes to the sump means it drops into the overflow app 10 cm, i think this will aerate the water (and drive out CO2). And in the tank the two Koralia alternate for 3 mins, both "hit" the surface with their flowstream. These are on 24/7
Not sure what i could do better. I can add more filtermaterial to the tank, but i have app 3000 lit/hour going through a filtersock, that keeps the water quite clear, there is some dirt between the foregroundplants. I could get rid of that more, but i think that is beneficial for the fish, so i don't want to clean that meticulously ( and it's a lot of work).
The pick shows the drop into the overflow and the surface ripples due to the Koralia:


14037207157_2f626fff05_z.jpgDSC_5267 by Edvet, on Flickr


James D said:
I'm very jealous of all your fish
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Wel it's a fish tank first and a planted tank second, so. And i found a good adres for more special fish. I have ordered the last inhabitants: Biotodoma cupido (6x) With these the tank is "full" (well at least until i find that real special fish😎) Luckily the volume helps me, hard to overstock this tank.
FTS isn't that bad atm, but the plants need some help.
14037205787_39068a35f4_b.jpgFTS 19052014 by Edvet, on Flickr
 
It's impossible to be meticulous with such a big tank, so I am certainly not suggesting you invest 8hrs a day in cleaning it up. 😉
But there will be organics accumulating and there will be algae.
On a smaller scale you'd want a 4000G/H filtration that holds 40G of filter media, or at least that's what I aim at in let's say a 100G tank whether planted or not/low tech or not does not matter. More filtration/less algae.
I am trying hard to figure out from your videos how the flow goes and whether enough is reaching the bottom of the substrate or not, whether the flow is circular or not etc,. If it were a small tank I'd try for a week at least installing a proper bubble storm via a bubble curtain(at night as not to affect the co2 during the day) as stupid and as trivial it sounds. Decomposition gives you extra co2 via the substrate. In a properly working substrate and flow you'll see barely any detritus gathering on top at all even with large pooping fish.
I understand the sump is losing some CO2 during the day but if you get your soil substrate decomposing that detritus that's accumulating then that will help the balance. But you need oxygen, lots of it.
You've got to get the tank working for you, not you working for the tank. Well, at least this is my goal with my tanks as I am lazy and old fashioned.
There are thousands of different opinions so this is just what I would do to combat it, more oxygen, more filtration.
By the way, what does the substrate consist of?
 
In the left side back there is a huge Hygrophylla. I like the size but it needs pruning now. Ideally i would like a plant there that grows app 60 cm and then stops. If the Hydrocleys takes off i could make a large group of those there
I have been contemplating taking all plants out for a major cleanup, especially the Echinodorus group right backside, but i wanna see if more light and more CO2 will give more healthy leaves first, then i can get away with just removing bad leaves (still is a large job of me standing in the tank , probably in swimpants, with all the lights over the tank removed) Taking them all out might be faster.

Btw Pyrrhulina males where showing off between themselves (i love these fish)
14037629799_ba940940aa_b.jpgPyrhullina cf brevis by Edvet, on Flickr
 
Yeah but it's in a spot which is hard to reach, so i like plants i can leave alone a long time. These have been here just as i put the wood in the tank so just over three months.
The Hydrocleys could work beautifully there, there's some flow there but not overly, and i won't mind the leaves shading the wood. Lets hope they will grow.
 
Took out most of the plants yesterday and cleaned the old leaves off. The hypoptoma's tended to damage the leaves too much so i had to take them out, also had some BGA on old leaves still. Made some layout changes too. Pics will follow. With the higher CO2 levels i see a lot of oxygen bubbles being produced, so there is some plantmetabolism going on. There is a lot of BGA on the wood, letting it be there for now, to much to clean.
 
Yup. Got 6. They are cupido's, will shoot a pic tonight of those too.[DOUBLEPOST=1402404456][/DOUBLEPOST]The Hydrocleis took, yippee. Got a few leafs reaching the surface. I have three of them just behind the large wood, they are out of the main flow.
I did rip the most of the Hygrophila tops out last week. Far less plantmass means more CO2 available for the rest. I have gradually removed most non Echinodorus plants. Either i can't work with those, or i should work harder on them,but i can't seem to get on with those in my situation.
 
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