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Algae and stubstrate question

Joe Rodrigues

Seedling
Joined
19 Feb 2018
Messages
2
Location
Ruthven, Ontario, Canada
I have a 45 Litre tank and I am starting to run into some problems. For a small tank it is heavily planted and I have CO2 and I also give plant fertilizer 2x week, 1 50% water change per week. Not sure what else to do now. I am starting to get basic green algae and BBA. I already pruned back some plants that had it. want my tank to look like it should...pristine and clear with healthy plants. plus I just bought fluval substrate and I was wondering if I would rinse it before putting it in the tank.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

 
I have a 45 Litre tank and I am starting to run into some problems. For a small tank it is heavily planted and I have CO2 and I also give plant fertilizer 2x week, 1 50% water change per week. Not sure what else to do now. I am starting to get basic green algae and BBA. I already pruned back some plants that had it. want my tank to look like it should...pristine and clear with healthy plants. plus I just bought fluval substrate and I was wondering if I would rinse it before putting it in the tank.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Hello,
If possible, it would be a good idea to show a photo of the algae in question. While everyone knows BBA, it is not really clear what "basic green algae" is. It's important to identify the algae with precision because the type of algae tells us what the cause is.

BBA results due to poor CO2 uptake. There is a wide range of causes for poor CO2.
Just because you are adding CO2 it does not mean that it is being added the right way and it does not mean that automatically everything will be fine.
We'll also need more specific information than what you provided:
When was the tank set up?
What kind of lighting and what sort of power level are you using? Beginners invariably use too much light and this is the fundamental cause of algal blooms.
When is the CO2 turned on relative to when the lights are turned on?
Exactly what fertilizer are we talking about and how much is being added?
Exactly how are you adding CO2, i.e. an in-tank diffuser or other device. Again, photos are better than a thousand words. It would be nice if we could see the tank and it's apparatus.
What filtration are you using? How is the filter return nozzle oriented?

regarding the new substrate, of course rinsing removes a lot of debris so it's always a good ides, but adding new substrate is the same as adding new filter media. There is a lot of microbial activity happening in the substrate. If you remove existing substrate that is well on it's way to developing a good microbial community and then add new substrate that is essentially sterile, you will do more harm than good and can easily trigger more algal blooms.

What you can do is to put the new substrate in a bucket, seed it with debris from the existing substrate or from the filter, stir it in the bucket and keep it damp for a month or so before putting it into the tank. That will help the new substrate to generate a microbial community and will be less of a shock to the tank system when you add it.

Cheers,
 
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