Well it's been a while since I last posted as I've been pretty busy with on thing or another and have been in America for a couple of weeks.
Anyway Before I went away I had been doing what I thought was right, changing the water regularary, one 11w light on 6 hours a day, good co2 injection and ferts every other day tnp+. One thing I still haven't sorted though is the filter. A eheim ecco 200 should be here by Friday ( gives me time to order my lily pipes so that's alright 🙂
Now this is what I don't understand!!!
How come that when I was doing everything right or thought I was the plants never really grew, algae got all over the glass/rocks, I had hair- algae in my HC which looked terrible. After coming back from holiday after 14 days the plants have gone wild, hc looks very heathy and is pearling which I have never seen it do, hair grass is nearly 30cm long, the riccia which was turning yellow before I went and covered in algae, now looks amazing. The one thing that is bad is the water... Looks like a pond, it's so green I can't see the back of my tank, fish or shrimp🙁 I've done a 50% water change today and it's still looks like Shrek has melted in there!
I'll probably do a couple more water changes over the week and maybe a 4 day black if that doesn't work.
What the hell is going on can anyone explain how this has happened? A few things I'm confused about are these.
1/ co2 circulation is poor, filter is really weak and hardy moving the water, also the ceramic diffuser is producing large bubbles not mist. Drop checker is almost blue not the usual yellow.... Why is my hc still alive?
2/ i haven't been adding ferts - how come plants haven't suffered and seem to be heathy?
3/ if the water clarity is so poor how is the hc pearling I would have thought it would have blocked at least 50% of the light reaching the bottom?
This hobby continues to baffle me 🙁 I knew I should have just got a hamster!