General advice, almost ready to call it a day!

[Andy Pierce]

I don’t use any test kits. I don’t trust any of them and I don’t trust myself with them.

I'm in this camp also. In any type of long-term setup with a reasonably defined maintenance routine, the tank is going to come to an equilibrium on its own. There's not much point in trying to fight whatever that equilibrium is, so it doesn't matter what the test results show. The only test I do every day is a look at the drop checker (dissolved CO2 test) to make sure the injected CO2 is behaving normally.

 

[seedoubleyou]

Probably not. Leave you with a pic and reiterate "who's being sold what by whom"

View attachment 189193

No one’s being sold anything by anyone. It’s a forum full of personal opinion. If people can’t make up their own minds then it’s great to have people like yourself that can provide a little evidence.

Do I still stick to my point of test kits being a load of rubbish, absolutely.
Do they make PH “Probes” (not test kits) for milk, yes they do.
DID I believe a standard PH “probe” wouldn’t work in milk, honestly yeah I did. But I’ve since discovered they do.

Was my argument ever based on the effectiveness or not of a PH Probe, no it wasn’t I was only ever talking about test kits. If it came across as anything else, then that’s my bad.

 

[seedoubleyou]

It is true that comparing colours is not ideal but I'd rather have a ballpark figure than no figure at all.

Yeah I did say in one of my posts that they’re good for at least seeing consistency. Which IMO is for more important than the specific numbers.
Obviously there’s caveats to that.

 

[John q]

Was my argument ever based on the effectiveness or not of a PH Probe, no it wasn’t I was only ever talking about test kits. If it came across as anything else, then that’s my bad.

To be fair I stopped testing a long time ago.. just pulling your leg mate, hence.. who's being led by whom.
Back to the op's issues..

 

[jaypeecee]

Hi Guys,

I just have one thing to add......

Mmmmooooo!

JPC

 

[xZaiox]

Hi @DaveP - I'm just gonna comment on a few of these since @Wookii gave you good advice.

2. What light intensity do you advise I should use? i've dropped to 50% (and some of the fish are out more rather than hiding in the shade), so I go down more than that?

I would probably go 40%. The S series has quite decent PAR ratings, so I think a lower percentage is worthwhile when recovering from algae. I turned mine down to 40% when I had algae issues.

3. Should the CO2 stay at a 1 PH drop regardless of light intensity?

4. Should the ferts drop if light is lower - presumably that will give slower growth?

Going to address these two (3 & 4) together - speaking in metaphors, the light in a planted tank is like a cars gas pedal; it decides how fast everything moves, the higher the lighting, the faster plants intake nutrients and grow. CO2 and nutrients don't decide how fast a plant grows, they decide how healthy it grows. An unhealthy plant will grow slower because it becomes limited for key nutrients. So for example, if we limit nitrate, then the plants will grow slower, but that's because they're stunted, and this will be observable (i.e smaller leaf blades, crippled growth, altered colouring etc).

For this reason, if you ever want to change the 'speed' of your plants in your tank, alter the lighting. Never compromise CO2 or nutrients in an attempt to control growth rates.

5. In the past I've found that flow in some areas suffers when there's more plant mass due to stem plants growing up and taking lots of space (like my rotala is doing now), any advice/insight into this? I think my flow is really good in 70% of the tank, but not sure about the rest.

Going back to the first post you made, it looks like your intake is towards the front of the tank, while your outtake is around the middle? This should generally be reversed, you want the outtake to be at the front side of the glass so that the water hits the glass at the other side and pushes the water down - try swapping the positions of your intake and outtake and see if that helps. This can also generally depend on the tank setup i.e hardscape and planting, so you may just have to experiment to find the best placements.

 

[Easternlethal]

Thanks for everyone who has responded, I'm really impressed with the warmth and helfulness of this community!

I'm going to follow the advice on light, CO2 and Ferts - and of course my maintenance practices, which have been chucking organics everywhere in the tank!

I have a few questions from the advice given:

1. Will the BBA go away after a while of following the new advice, or do I need to take out all the hardscape and nuke it with Hydrogen Peroxide or similar and replace?

2. What light intensity do you advise I should use? i've dropped to 50% (and some of the fish are out more rather than hiding in the shade), so I go down more than that?

3. Should the CO2 stay at a 1 PH drop regardless of light intensity?

4. Should the ferts drop if light is lower - presumably that will give slower growth?

5. In the past I've found that flow in some areas suffers when there's more plant mass due to stem plants growing up and taking lots of space (like my rotala is doing now), any advice/insight into this? I think my flow is really good in 70% of the tank, but not sure about the rest.

Thanks!

These are all questions and the reason why I think approaching algae by tuning ferts co2 and lighting can create more issues than it solves.

If you have a tank with plants which are already growing fine (which you do, and a beautifully composed tank it is) I would not mess with it in the short run and just focus on cleaning and removing. This is important because if you change too many factors you will not get the understanding needed to know how bba is growing. Once you're on top of the bba through cleaning over several weeks you will start to appreciate how fast it is growing relative to your other plants, which spots, and then you can adjust as needed. By then you will have a specific cause for that spot e.g. organics accumulating due to poor flow, dead matter or poor growth which you can tweak. Who knows - you may not even need to adjust anything if you develop a cleaning regime you're comfortable with and plants are outpacing it.

Even when cleaning there are already enough techniques to experiment with which may affect bba growth, fanning, vaccuming, flow based etc. etc.

When ada hires staff they start them off cleaning tanks before allowing them to do wcs or adjusting anything and I believe it really helps to gain the understanding needed for parameter tweaking later.

In my view this looks like a tank which just isn't cleaned properly.

 

[Matti]

Thanks for everyone who has responded, I'm really impressed with the warmth and helfulness of this community!

I'm going to follow the advice on light, CO2 and Ferts - and of course my maintenance practices, which have been chucking organics everywhere in the tank!

I have a few questions from the advice given:

1. Will the BBA go away after a while of following the new advice, or do I need to take out all the hardscape and nuke it with Hydrogen Peroxide or similar and replace?

2. What light intensity do you advise I should use? i've dropped to 50% (and some of the fish are out more rather than hiding in the shade), so I go down more than that?

3. Should the CO2 stay at a 1 PH drop regardless of light intensity?

4. Should the ferts drop if light is lower - presumably that will give slower growth?

5. In the past I've found that flow in some areas suffers when there's more plant mass due to stem plants growing up and taking lots of space (like my rotala is doing now), any advice/insight into this? I think my flow is really good in 70% of the tank, but not sure about the rest.

Thanks!

Hi,
if you get the basics right: weekly water changes, light, ferts and CO2, BBA will stop growing. And with right CO2 levels I mean levels around 30ppm. If you have levels somewhere 10-15 BBA will just keep growing.
It's bit tricky to get the levels right, for me it took couple of weeks of measuring KH/PH levels and adjusting the drops/second, the time when the co2 is turned on, and the amount of light. I have now CO2 on 2,5 hours before the lights. The amount of light also affects the CO2-levels, more light=less CO2 and vice versa.
Once you have the basics, you have the get rid of the existing BBA. Shrimps and SAE won't eat it, and it won't disappear by itself.
Time to bring in the big guns! Drain as much water as possible, take away your face and spray the affected areas with glutardehyde and water mixture 1/3. Wait for 5 minutes and fill the tank. Do a 50% water change right after. The BBA is gone in a week. Caution! BBA will certainly die, but it can melt your plants. So try it first on a smaller area.
A safer way is to spray the tank with 3% hydrogen peroxide, but test this too before spraying the whole tank!
Third way is to use bleach. Remove the plants, dip them in 1/ 3 bleach/water for 30 seconds and right after rinse them in water with dechlorinator, like Tetra aqua safe. The bba is gone immediately.

PS, health plants are resistant to almost any algae, and besides CO2 pay attention to ferts, especially sufficent nitrogen and potassium levels. In my humble experience they are the most likely cause to a deficiency , even if you dose your fert of choice according to instructions. And the third one to monitor in magnesium, especially if you have Anubis that start growing new leaves that look somehow twisted and pale.

Matti

 

[DaveP]

An update for interest. I really appreciated all the help and suggestions! I have followed the advice I got in the thread. I've had success in getting rid of the algae and it hasn't returned, so that's great.
However, I didn't properly follow the advice on testing before using the glutaraldehyde solution on the plants and I lost everything I sprayed (most of them)! I should have been more cautious. So the tank is very bare and needs replanting fully. And unfortunately I lost a big Amano and the German RAM - I'm not sure, but I either used too much glutaraldehyde or too much Prime as I did quite a few water changes during the process and was anxious about the chlorine, so I used a few capfuls over the process.
My conclusions from the whole thing are that the main cause of such bad algae was that I wasn't cleaning properly and the light intensity was just too high for my regime (it's at 40% right now and seems fine and some of the fish are hiding less). I haven't changed CO2 (I tested and it was a 1PH drop) or ferts, I think they were both high enough. I have also switched the intake and outtake locations and the flow is better, so that didn't help.
Anyway, thanks for all the help, I now have a tank which needs some work replanting, but I've decided that I just don't have enough time to keep a healthy planted tank like this one at the moment. So I'm going to sell it and come back to it again when I retire in a few years! I guess I could list it in the for sale, or try Facebook marketplace?
Again, the help is really appreciated and I'll stay on the forum and get ready for a new project when I have the time to do it properly and do it justice.

 

[Andy Pierce]

Actually, now that you've got the parameters figured out your maintenance requirements will go way down, to essentially ferts, feeding and a weekly water change, which isn't that different from what you'd do with a non-planted tank. Why not keep on with it for a few more months to see whether this is the kind of thing you could keep on with for you? Seems a pity to bail right after getting past the hard part!

 

[DaveP]

Actually, now that you've got the parameters figured out your maintenance requirements will go way down, to essentially ferts, feeding and a weekly water change, which isn't that different from what you'd do with a non-planted tank. Why not keep on with it for a few more months to see whether this is the kind of thing you could keep on with for you? Seems a pity to bail right after getting past the hard part!

Yes, that's definitely been going through my mind! But once it gets all planted up again, I'll still have to spend a considerable time each week keeping on top of it. I am sorely tempted, but I also know I need to reduce my time pressure...

 

[_Maq_]

@DaveP am I right in thinking that you're draining the tanks water from one location, and relying on the detritus being suspended in the water column in order to remove it? I don't remove waste in my tank in this manner, so I can't really comment on whether or not that's okay, but it does make me wonder if that might just be kicking up a bunch of organics into the water column and it settling on plants. You aren't doing 100% water changes, so not all of that organic material is being removed. Typically, just siphoning above the substrate to pull up anything light will do the job.

One of the biggest causes of algae in general is ammonia, which obviously comes from decaying organic matter in our tanks.

No. Not the ammonia, it's the detritus spread everywhere.