Dr Gibbon's Jungle (pic heavy)

[Dr Gibbon]

Hi All,
I've recently set up a planted tank after the death of my axolotyl. I got some plant friendly substrate and jumped straight in. I bought a wide variety of plants without doing any real research and just wacked em in. Here's the result;

Then I came across this site . After soaking up loads of knowledge, inspiration and ideas I realised I' gone about this in perhaps a little foolhardy a way. Note to self, "do the flipping research first!". Over the next few weeks I tweaked the tank a fair bit, added another light. Stopped using the undergravel filter and got another internal filter. Added some more hardscaping in the form of the wood, got some mosses and attached them to the wood. Set up a DIY CO2 reactor out of a 2 litre, then 2 x 2 litre bottles entering the tank via an airstone just under the impeller of the left filter to chop the bubbles up more. Here's the tank just after I installed the CO2

The cucumber was for the Otto's ther didn;t seem to be enough algae for em and they love cucumber(mine do at least).
Everything was going really well, the plants were growing in nicely, real burst of growth since the CO2 was added. I put in a moss wall at the back of the tank, here's a pic

Here's a run down of the setup
TANK: 24x12x12, 15UK Gallons/57ltrs
LIGHTS: 2x18watt T8 lights, 1 AQUA-GLO and 1 LIFE-GLOW. 8 hrs per day lightcycle.
SUBSTRATE: JBL mando (this stuff is really light, I should have capped it)
FILTERS: 1 Interpet PF2 500lph/110gph, 1 small non branded internal filter 300lph(this one has the CO2 going into it).
FISH: 3 guppys, 8 neons, 4 Otto's and 3 bumble bee gobies. The guy in the LFS assured me they were entirley freshwater however all my research says they massively benefit from brackish water? I'm definately going to set up a brackish tank for them when I get the oppertunity. Seems a shame to keep such a caracterful fish in a less than ideal situation.
Inverts: Loads of small and baby orange ramshorns I had 4 adults initially then had a real outbreak early as I must have been feeding the fish too much :? , a lot of mts's no idea how many again started with a couple and now seem to have tons. 5 assasin snails excessive for a tank this size I agree but then I really did have a major, major snail outbreak early on. I don't intend to keep this many snails long term as the bioload must be huge. If anyone wants an assasin or some baby orange ramshorns PM me. Also I have noticed some tiny pondsnails, these must have hitched in.
Everything was running well for about 4 weeks, all levels were pretty stable, I'm doing a 10% water change every week. Over the last fortnight however it's all gone a little bit wrong. I've had a major outbreak of thread/filament algae, here's a pic of the moss to show you the problem

and the pennywort

I've also noticed that a few of the plants have developed loads of small holes in the leaves, here's some on the rotala and on one of the Tiger lotus leaves
.
So here are my questions for all you planted tank guru's;
1 what's goin on with the holes? Are the snails doin this or is it co2 related?
2 from my understanding of it thread/filament algae thrives in flucuating CO2 levels? Should I abandon the DIY CO2 and go properly lowtech? As I understand it the plant growth will slow down a lot but the whole system will be more stable?
Any and all advice appreciated. I'll post a plant list tomorrow and the ferts as well can't remember what they are right now...

 

[ceg4048]

Hello,
Filamentous algae is caused by poor CO2 or poor CO2 distribution. Unless caused by predation, holes are caused by the same fault. You can supplement the CO2 by the daily addition of Excel/EasyCarbo or other equivalent products. A CO2 pressurized cylinder is a much better application of CO2 however.

Your water changes should be much greater than 10%. You should aim for at least a 50% weekly change in CO2 injected tanks.

It is your choice whether to delete the CO2. Typically, non-CO2 tanks are more stable, have slower growth and less maintenance requirements. This does not imply that non-CO2 tanks do not get algae.

Cheers,