Fluval Bio - Stratum - Absorbing PO4 ?

[dw1305]

Hi all,
@AquariusPeter, honestly you need to concentrate on plant growth. Plants need light, it is their fundamental requirement.

Just think of it like triage, you are worried about the cut on your patients finger, while they are bleeding to death from a severed artery.

Cheers Darrel

 

[Connswater]

Hard water, I'd add sequestered iron regularly, several times a week.
Trim infected stems/vacuum out all blue green algae religiously.
Whack up the light intensity but don't illuminate the tank for more than 8 hours, as an experiment.
Add loads of floating plants, lots of different species.
Add a yeast and sugar 24 hour CO2 system.
Forget about macro nutrients until you get good growth, and ignore light elimination, it damages plants as much as algae, just give plants the basics, light, CO2 and in hard water, iron.
Only advice, each to their own.

 

[AquariusPeter]

Hi all,

Hi all,
@AquariusPeter, honestly you need to concentrate on plant growth. Plants need light, it is their fundamental requirement.

Just think of it like triage, you are worried about the cut on your patients finger, while they are bleeding to death from a severed artery.

Cheers Darrel

Whatever I try I am ending up with more algae than plants growth. I was dosing Iron with TNC Complete it was bad. I was trying TNC Lite with Iron it was bad. I was increasing light it was bad with algae. I reduced Light it was bad too. All over the year I am trying figure it out what is so wrong with my tap water. That is why I started collecting rainwater.

Hard water, I'd add sequestered iron regularly, several times a week.
Trim infected stems/vacuum out all blue green algae religiously.
Whack up the light intensity but don't illuminate the tank for more than 8 hours, as an experiment.
Add loads of floating plants, lots of different species.
Add a yeast and sugar 24 hour CO2 system.
Forget about macro nutrients until you get good growth, and ignore light elimination, it damages plants as much as algae, just give plants the basics, light, CO2 and in hard water, iron.
Only advice, each to their own.

After 1 ml Sequesterd Iron does on next day usually on my cryptocoryne appears fluffy hairs and dots on their leaves. All over the year I am trimming infected stems and vacuuming out different types of algae.

Like I say, I was dosing TNC Complete with TNC Iron or Sequestered Iron, I increased the light many times and ending up with algae...

I run CO2 system as well.

So at the moment I set both lights on 30%. I added today approx. 2ml of Sequestered Iron and Water is slightly pink-ish. Yesterday I added 10ml TNC Complete.

Tomorrow I hope, it will be rainy day so I could have a water on Sunday, as I usually every Sunday do WC.

I don't know what else I could do ... I am battling with algae all the time. For the moment my tank looks like below as I made photo while ago.

But this is propably for the moment because after one week will not be looking like that... I bet will be a lot of algae...

Kind Regards,

Thank you all,

Pete

 

[Connswater]

I bet will be a lot of algae

I feel your pain and I hadn't realised you were using CO2. Apologies for giving unhelpful advice. Honestly don't know why you are having such a tough time, your photo looks much better than earlier ones, leaves on the lower stems, no blue green, though the tank is quite sparsely planted. I've quite a bit of green algae at the moment, a reflection I think of low CO2, I was away from home for a week and reduced the bubble count. I think I would be tempted to let the hygrophila dominate the tank to get stability and then try to encourage other plants. Plants look adequately lit, but I have always found low light for anything but shade plants causes more problems that it solves. I personally only have had blue green problems with high Phosphate levels, others tell me that is not the issue, so I'll keep an open mind. Good luck and keep us informed, if you find a change makes a good difference and let us know, we are all wiser.

 

[Nuno da Silva]

Hi Pete,

Your tank looks OK, don't despair!

Turn your lights up, small increments every week, ideally until you reach 50% on both. Reduce photoperiod to 7h if algae is winning. Make sure you have some blue spectrum dialled in.

Increase the CO2 input if you can, install a drop checker, make sure is green all the time.

TNC complete is not really complete. You still need to add Mg and Ca specially if you use rain water. Remineralise your rain water. If you use tap water, you probably only need to add Mg.

Good luck

 

[AquariusPeter]

Hi all,

I feel your pain and I hadn't realised you were using CO2. Apologies for giving unhelpful advice. Honestly don't know why you are having such a tough time, your photo looks much better than earlier ones, leaves on the lower stems, no blue green, though the tank is quite sparsely planted. I've quite a bit of green algae at the moment, a reflection I think of low CO2, I was away from home for a week and reduced the bubble count. I think I would be tempted to let the hygrophila dominate the tank to get stability and then try to encourage other plants. Plants look adequately lit, but I have always found low light for anything but shade plants causes more problems that it solves. I personally only have had blue green problems with high Phosphate levels, others tell me that is not the issue, so I'll keep an open mind. Good luck and keep us informed, if you find a change makes a good difference and let us know, we are all wiser.

Yes. I am using CO2, but source of refilling bottle is uncertain. So any moment I might not have CO2 anymore. But for the moment I have still gas in bottle. I started dosing 22.10.2024. So I hope It will be still enough to make my tank more greener than is now.
My tap water is very high in PO4. And is hard. That is why I was looking a solution for collect rainwater.

Thank you for all suggestions. They are always nice to read anyway.

Hi Pete,

Your tank looks OK, don't despair!

Turn your lights up, small increments every week, ideally until you reach 50% on both. Reduce photoperiod to 7h if algae is winning. Make sure you have some blue spectrum dialled in.

Increase the CO2 input if you can, install a drop checker, make sure is green all the time.

TNC complete is not really complete. You still need to add Mg and Ca specially if you use rain water. Remineralise your rain water. If you use tap water, you probably only need to add Mg.

Good luck

Yes. Like I say above my CO2 source of refilling bottle is uncertain. But for the moment I have CO2 in bottle and dosing 1b/s. As you can see on photo I installed addition usb pump to better spread CO2(on the right side)

Looking on TNC Complete Label it says it has Mg in its composition.

And I am going to mix rainwater with my Tapwater which is Hard and high in NO3 and PO4. Too high...

I tested my rain water with TDS and it is between 42- 65.

I tested Ph by JBL 3-10 and it showed me 7.
Kh is 3 and Gh was 7-8.
I have MgSO4 just in case to refill it into the tank in case Mg shortages.
I have also Iron from TNC Lite, TNC Complete, TNC IRON AT(DTPA) and also EDDHA Iron diluted in RO water.

And my phitoperiod is from 1400-2100(sorry I gave it slightly wrong info in earlier posts I think by mistake I gave it to 2200).

From 14 - 1430 is sunrise set and 2030 - 2100 sunset is set. After that there is no any night light(blue spectrum). I just turned it off.

Thank you all

Kind Regards,

Peter