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am I loosing the battle against brown algae?

Regarding the co2 leaks don't forget to check with a soap/water solution and a small brush every single connection but especially the connection between the reg and the bottle... Here the amount of co2 lost can be enormous.
 
I checked for leaks already twice, but will check again...the filter is filled like it is following Clive's advice on this, same about the lights...the spots on the stones indeed look like BBA to me too...al the things happening in my tank point to not enough CO2 but with just a bit more my fish struggled...

I think I've done all I can so I'm open to suggestions
 
@Antoni made many great points.

Your CO2 is too much for this size of tank. Why you have 2 bottles? Where the other one is going?
You basically pumping out the CO2 from the tank with the high spray bar and with this much surrface aggitation.

So would be better to push down the showers like 4-5 cm and turn it a little down.
Also you have very powerful filters and these guys do LOTs of current there, this is one of the reason why the CO2 is running out quickly from your tank.
And also a reason for your Brush algae. Til the carpet is not covered fully, i highly recommend to slow down the filters like 60% of the current one, as you just disturb the bottom area and feed the brush with it.

I would introduce more Otocinclus like 5 more. And 2-4 Neritina snails to help with the decor cleaning.

You burn like 3-4 times more CO2 than you should. Stop doing that :) One atomizer is fine for this tank with one cylinder and around 3 bps in the counter.
 
Hi. Good luck with everything. I really sympathize with you.

I would just say that your light doesn't seem much for a big aquarium. I have a carpet of Micranthemum 'Monte Carlo' but it took over a month to start growing and carpeting. As a last resort I increased the light (CO2 was maxed out) and this seemed to turn things around. Later I did reduce the light again as I was getting GDA on the glass.
 
Martin in China said:
To recap...I should slow down current, pump in less CO2, re fill the filters with noodles, lower the spray bars and turn on more light.....
Somehow I feel like that's how I started, but I'm willing to give it a go. I think plants need to grow now as they are struggling.
Click to expand...

Monte Carlo need a loooots of light to perform great, and this will be the same when you trim it.

You just met with some starter issue. No worry. If the flow, light, CO2, filtration would have been optimal this would look better, but still not late to turn this around.
This is the sweet part of aquascaping. - we would have been punished much better in marine :)
 
A small update on how it's going now....

I put more light on 2X T5 for 6,5 hours per day now, lowered the spray bars to get and aimed them a little more down, lowered the power of the filters, CO2 is still the same (a lot) just to get about 25-30 ppm and 5ml Excel every day.

most plants are doing fairly well, but Monte Carlo is still giving me a headache ....it's either brown or black from algae, not growing or getting yellow brownish leaves and not growing. It just looks like dying.
 
Hi Martin,
I wanted to say that I am totally supporting you on this fight with diatom !!!
I am living the exactly same situation than yours since a year or so. I have done 3 different scape (or more) in two different tank, and all have been ruined by brown algae.
Plants are not growing, diatom all over the tank in 2 days, I was performing huge water change 2 x a week, pumping huuuuge amount of CO2, cleaning the tank, I have been playing with flow to see if there is improvement with this or this position etc ....
I have never won the battle ... Now I am in my second aquascaping blues, I have totally neglected my tank for more than a month now, no CO2, no ferts, and the tank is a mess, GSA, BGA ... but no diatom loooool.
I am in a deep "down mood" now... can you imagine having a NA full set up (that have cost you a lot of $$$$) and you can't perform a nice aquascape since a year ???
For now I don't know what to do, leaving the tank in a messy and algae condition until passion and hope comebacks ??!!

In fact I just wanted to tell you that you are not the only one living this battle, we are two ;) (maybe more lol).
I am living exactly the same as you, all what your are saying I can see it in my tank !!!

cheers mate and keep us update.
I think I need to fight back also[DOUBLEPOST=1400231114][/DOUBLEPOST]Some times I want to cry about having such a nice set up and doing bullsh*t ... :arghh:
 
Brown diatoms in almost all cases are caused by immature filtration not capable of clearing up the ammonia on time or generally not sufficient mature filtration and/or non-mature tanks. In planted tanks, it will be more likely an issue in setups like yours where there's little plant mass and little fast growing plants to help with ammonia consumption. It's trace levels we are talking about, not really harmful to fish or detectable but very beneficial to a happy diatom population.

Your problems maybe coming from the soil releasing ammonia/fish food/overfeeding possibly, or your filtration is not fully up to scratch yet. Someone else suggested to make sure you have biomedia in the filters, not just floss or you just don't have enough biofiltration fully functional.

I can reproduce brown diatoms by overfeeding and underfiltering in any tank. Hence it's prominent in new start ups which are not cycled yet or in fry tanks when lot's of food/organics is involved, or very overstocked tanks that can hardly keep up. It's nothing to do with CO2. The only thing it has to do with plant health is if your plants are melting for some other reason and contributing to the ammonia levels your bio filtration needs to handle, thus not helping. So it can be two separate issues, though plants covered in any algae can't grow well either.

If the surface of your tank wasn't that turbulent I would have suggested to up the light and cover the surface with floaters for the time being as they will help with the ammonia. Put biomedia in the filters for bacteria to find a friendlier environment and populate more too.
 
sciencefiction said:
Brown diatoms in almost all cases are caused by immature filtration not capable of clearing up the ammonia on time or generally not sufficient mature filtration and/or non-mature tanks. In planted tanks, it will be more likely an issue in setups like yours where there's little plant mass and little fast growing plants to help with ammonia consumption. It's trace levels we are talking about, not really harmful to fish or detectable but very beneficial to a happy diatom population.

Your problems maybe coming from the soil releasing ammonia/fish food/overfeeding possibly, or your filtration is not fully up to scratch yet. Someone else suggested to make sure you have biomedia in the filters, not just floss or you just don't have enough biofiltration fully functional.

I can reproduce brown diatoms by overfeeding and underfiltering in any tank. Hence it's prominent in new start ups which are not cycled yet or in fry tanks when lot's of food/organics is involved, or very overstocked tanks that can hardly keep up. It's nothing to do with CO2. The only thing it has to do with plant health is if your plants are melting for some other reason and contributing to the ammonia levels your bio filtration needs to handle, thus not helping. So it can be two separate issues, though plants covered in any algae can't grow well either.

If the surface of your tank wasn't that turbulent I would have suggested to up the light and cover the surface with floaters for the time being as they will help with the ammonia. Put biomedia in the filters for bacteria to find a friendlier environment and populate more too.
Click to expand...


Hi thanks for your answer,
I will put some bio media in my filter, I only have foam and floss in it. I thought that bacteria could colonized what ever media you put in. I will add some fast growing plants like hygro, swords, valisneria, etc ...
My tank is running since 4 months now or even more ....

thanks for your help
cheers
 
Either better filtration or fast growing plants should help as long as they grow. New filter media/filter would need time to populate so plants are a better alternative as a faster solution.
I normally just add a second filter with mature media if its a non planted setup(and even in a planted setup) and that normally does the trick pretty fast.
I can't be sure which filter media has more surface for bacteria but floss for sure isn't one of them. I don't use floss at all but I use sponges along with other noodles, balls, ceramics, etc..
 
zanguli-ya-zamba said:
Hi Martin,
I wanted to say that I am totally supporting you on this fight with diatom !!!
I am living the exactly same situation than yours since a year or so. I have done 3 different scape (or more) in two different tank, and all have been ruined by brown algae.
Plants are not growing, diatom all over the tank in 2 days, I was performing huge water change 2 x a week, pumping huuuuge amount of CO2, cleaning the tank, I have been playing with flow to see if there is improvement with this or this position etc ....
I have never won the battle ... Now I am in my second aquascaping blues, I have totally neglected my tank for more than a month now, no CO2, no ferts, and the tank is a mess, GSA, BGA ... but no diatom loooool.
I am in a deep "down mood" now... can you imagine having a NA full set up (that have cost you a lot of $$$$) and you can't perform a nice aquascape since a year ???
For now I don't know what to do, leaving the tank in a messy and algae condition until passion and hope comebacks ??!!

In fact I just wanted to tell you that you are not the only one living this battle, we are two ;) (maybe more lol).
I am living exactly the same as you, all what your are saying I can see it in my tank !!!

cheers mate and keep us update.
I think I need to fight back also[DOUBLEPOST=1400231114][/DOUBLEPOST]Some times I want to cry about having such a nice set up and doing bullsh*t ... :arghh:
Click to expand...

Don't loose hope mate. I found that it a whole health thing...plants need to be healthy and they need light, CO2 and other stuff....bacteria need te be healthy and in big enough numbers....ASO
I think I am getting there but still have to overcome the algae peek, which I have seen in my small tank dissapeared after everything else was doing good.... My 300 liter tank still has 2 months to go before I am changing it, so now I test this theory
 
I agree with the "trace" ammonia thing.

After major plant fiddling, scaping, replanting, new plants I always get a slight outbreak of brown diatoms almost immediately. However after major work I now dose water with Amquel Plus water conditioner and no longer get diatom outbreaks.

Ottos eat the diatoms, well at least mine do.

I know people who used Amquel Plus daily and put fish straight into uncycled new tank and measured zero ammonia. My mate had a filter failure and tank leak at same time, so had to buy a new tank and filter to put his fish in.
 
sciencefiction said:
Just out of curiosity but how often have you washed your filter media in these tanks and how do you wash it?
I mean at least Martin's tank has very little plant mass so plants alone won't cut it and I was wondering if you are overly attentive to the filter media....
Click to expand...

you are probably right about that, I clean my filters every month with water from the tank though. I think I need to stop this and only clean if they are clocked up ...right?
I did add more (fast growing) plants, which will be more in my next scape, it seems to help
 
Martin in China said:
you are probably right about that, I clean my filters every month with water from the tank though. I think I need to stop this and only clean if they are clocked up ...right?
I did add more (fast growing) plants, which will be more in my next scape, it seems to help
Click to expand...

In a new tank although plenty of people will jump on me in a second, I do not touch the filter media for 6 months exactly for these reasons. You wash the filter media regularly and thouroughly in a non-planted or lightly planted new tank and you can end up with even detectable levels of ammonia in unlucky scenarios if you have a lot of stock. Diatoms follow immediately and later on if not resolved, all type of algae outbreaks. After some months the bacteria seems to establish so well that you can hardly knock it with washing, even in tap water but at the start it appears sensitive so I do not touch "new" filters.

If the tank is messy because of dying plants I'd put temporary cut to size sponges as prefilter and wash only them regularly. Do as much water changes as you like, remove dead leaves as you see them, dead plants, do not overfeed, do not let food and debris sit around.

A mature tank and a stable tank free of algae is not a tank in which plants grow fast but in which the bacterial population supporting nitrification and processes inside the soil have multiplied to a healthy point and are not disturbed by wrong human interaction(algae killing chemicals are what most folks keep using not knowing it kills a ton of other micro-organisms and just make the problems worse) Obviously plants need light/co2 and nutrients to be healthy otherwise they are a contributor to the higher organics, ammonia related issues, etc..

As Ian says, even in mature tanks you can get diatoms, simply by adding too many fish at once for example. So it's certainly ammonia related, whatever the source of it. The diatoms are actually helping consuming the organics/ammonia until the bacteria and/or plants are able to support the new load. Obviously if the diatoms cover the plant leaves it's counteractive as it will block their function, so it can get worse if not fixed by other means but CO2 has nothing to do with diatoms. You get diatoms in non-planted tanks and you resolve by reducing bioload/increasing filtration and flow.

As I mentioned earlier, I almost always end up with diatoms in fry tanks, no matter how old they are. Expanding biofiltration with mature additional filter always solves it. Or once I stop overfeeding and I reduce the bioload it goes away.
 
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