Ok update time as we are over a month since the last report, I'm still suffering green slime even after less than one day from a clean up, I still have no live stock in the tank and I'm still removing heaps of brown muck from the plants and I still can't seem to get the carpet grass to root properly. I'm starting to get quite stressed out with this, it seems that everything I do makes no difference at all, the floating plants are growing like mad, the plants certainly seem to be growing although I've yet to need to trim any of them.
I reduced the like to 40% and reduced the plant feed by 3ml/day to 6ml/day., water changes are no weekly with RO water plus minerilze and I remove as much of the green slime and brown slime with a variety of methods, the best one is a piece of 10mm glass tubing with fired ends and using it like a pipette - using this means I can get the green or brown muck off each leave if I decide to although this is massively time consuming.
My good lady is getting fed up with the general unhappiness I feel with this tank, I really don't know what else to do, as usual my other tank continuous to be algae free with almost no tech involved.
Any ideas, suggestions or even professional help with a physical visit (from July 4th of course)
Hi Wilsky,
I just wanted to weigh in and share some thoughts. The first is being super stressed when you do not know what induced the issues you are having is normal. My wife also has also said that she will throw out my tank and at times, I have wanted to throw it out - but for some reason we keep trekking. I get it.
Cleaning like nutso crazy not knowing if it will help - I get it.
Reading hundreds of conflicting arguments - I get it.
So you are not alone on these emotions. I hope someone can do a physical visit for you and coach you - as I would pay big money to be coached through the process and have my learning scaffolded instead of trial and error with no understanding of what is happening.
Now for the advice that I will give (and it is more some conceptualizations that I have made);
Lights - on off high low - whatever. The important part of lights it that plants need light to grow - we need to hit the minimal amount - MINIMUM for them. Often, we reduce lights under this pretence that they cause algae. If that was the case, then how come glass algae (GDA, Diatoms, GSA, even BBA), ALWAYS shows up in the bottom first. If we adopt the idea that ferts do not cause algae, then the argument will be poor flow. I can tell you, I do not have poor flow at the substrate, equipped with a spray bar, and even if I did - the PAR at the top of my 24inch tank is WAY higher than that at the bottom - so what does light do?
Light gives energy to the system - so the suggestion to reduce the light is so that you can clean daily and it feels "faster" than if you had higher light. In other words, you can catch up to the system in hopes of stabilizing it.
PS light also increases the nutrient demand of everything. So with lower light, you don't need as many fertilizer either. People dose EI to not have to worry about if they need to look for tell-tale signs of deficiencies.
I recently <
realized > that each plant even in the same area is going to have a different "set up" internally ... In those photos that I attached, you can see the change in the make up in real time. Why I am sharing this is so that you can predict what happened next. Those "dead" leaves are spawning grounds for algae.
So the rebuttal to reducing your nutrient will be that the plants need to be healthy - so if you reduce your feed, then you MAY have unhealthy growth - perpetuating the algae issues. However, the less nutrients in the WC, the less opportunity algae has to eat - compound with a slower moving system with low light and you will have an algae-free system -- This is where those ideologies come from.
Increase the light and everything grows faster - plants use more nutrients - algae spores bloom faster. So in some ways increasing the light is a good idea if you have maximum CO2 and maximum ferts - I mean you are only going to allow everything to grow better and combat algae quicker - remove the dead stuff and your results come quicker <-- I still don't necessarily suggest it because I haven't done it.
If you have no livestock, you can blast that CO2 HIGH - HOWEVER, you will need to reduce this to a "safe" range over months or you will see carbon related deficiencies after you reduce it.
If you limit your nutrients right down, you can limit your CO2 uptake (no clue how - but I am in the process of trying to learn this).
The other suggestion will be start again, scrap the tank, and restart with all of your new knowledge. It's great if we have infinite money and time.
If you want to salvage your tank, you need
1) get CO2 + flow to the optimal level (which it looks like you have)
2) keep your fertilizer consistent
3) you can reduce your lights to slow down the system but then it means the plants will grow slower, so you won't know if they are healthy -- use your floaters as an indicator - though they are a pain for the following:
4) Clean -- I salvaged my <
disaster tank +
this > by doing the above and cleaning. At some point you get to stop cleaning - I stuck my arm in last week maybe 3 times (aside from leaves that floated up). Now, that includes removing all dead matter - flushing the filter. You can add purigen if you want to help remove organics - but it is not a solution ... it slows down how much work you need to do.
@Nick72 suggestion of 1 thing at a time means that this will not fix overnight and THAT is the hardest part - especially when you don't know if what you are doing is working.
It is very easy for me to say do at least 70% water changes daily with intense scrubbing and cleaning and you will stabilize the tank. But it will take some months of consistency and doing it is a pain. But I am telling you - it will work ... because while you provide a healthy environment for the plants to grow, you remove EVERYTHING that messes with them ... it's like being a "
snow-plough parent" lol ... compound that with some learning skills (CO2 + ferts + lights) and voila!
Tanks that are photoready all the time require cleaning and maintenance.
I remember watching this video:
I was thinking - he has algaes - You can see them (why doesn't he care I kept thinking!) ... but he just doesn't care and I think the root is that he knows that if he didn't want algae, he would know what to do - and that is the key. People who know how to obtain algae-free know why it got there and do not stress about it - because they know what they did wrong to induce it.
All this to say, I just wanted to share
🙂.
If that is Green slime, then you need to remove it
@jaypeecee can weigh on green slime - I have used UltraLife Chemiclean before long ago and it worked. But ultimately, it will require cleaning - all the while the plants are going to suffer through all of this and we hope that you are able to salve a few healthy ones to restart and bloom your entire vegetative beautiful landscape.
Josh
