Good morning,
Thank you for reading my post, I am a new member in need of help as I start losing interest in the hobby because of an issue I can't seem to get rid of.
I have a 60L (~13 gal) planted tank with a low bio load. The tank is around 8 months old and fully cycled.
However, in the first 5-6 months, it was not heavily planted. I had a few fast and slow growing plants, but nothing crazy. I started to have algae issues, which I tried to resolve with lowering the intensity of the light and shortening the light period from 10 to 8 hours a day. That did not help at all, in fact just made the algae issue worse.
In the last 2 months, I decided to get more plants and plant more heavily in hope of solving the algae issue. I bought mostly fast growing plants to soak up nutrients in the water column, hence starving the algae. I also invested in a pressurized CO2 system, injecting 1 bubble per second during the light period (that seems to keep the CO2 levels stable and the fluid usually nice and green) and increased the light intensity back where it was. I also started adding in more TNC Complete and TNC Trace fertilizer. The plants loved it, especially the fast growers. I thought that's it, the problem will be solved from now.
Well, not exactly. While I am getting less algae now, it is still more than ideal. Plant leaves are still getting covered in algae, but that's probably because the tank is not perfectly balanced, I can try fertilize less or lower light intensity etc...
What I can't really solve is the small white particles that seem to cover everything in my fish tank. It is more visible after water change and then it gets a bit less visible, but never disappears completely. At this point, this issue bothers me more than the algae, although these white particles seem to be more visible where algae is present as well. I have no idea what it is and how to solve the issue. I have never had this in the first 5-6 months while it wasn't planted heavily. It became so bad, I had to cut all my stem plants back to almost gravel level as they were white all the way to the top... I am hopeless and disappointed.
I took photos of how it looks, please check link below.
4 new items by Gergő Kovács
Please, if you have any suggestions on what it is and how to get rid of this let me know. Thank you in advance.
Sorry for the long post.
Best regards.
Thank you for reading my post, I am a new member in need of help as I start losing interest in the hobby because of an issue I can't seem to get rid of.
I have a 60L (~13 gal) planted tank with a low bio load. The tank is around 8 months old and fully cycled.
However, in the first 5-6 months, it was not heavily planted. I had a few fast and slow growing plants, but nothing crazy. I started to have algae issues, which I tried to resolve with lowering the intensity of the light and shortening the light period from 10 to 8 hours a day. That did not help at all, in fact just made the algae issue worse.
In the last 2 months, I decided to get more plants and plant more heavily in hope of solving the algae issue. I bought mostly fast growing plants to soak up nutrients in the water column, hence starving the algae. I also invested in a pressurized CO2 system, injecting 1 bubble per second during the light period (that seems to keep the CO2 levels stable and the fluid usually nice and green) and increased the light intensity back where it was. I also started adding in more TNC Complete and TNC Trace fertilizer. The plants loved it, especially the fast growers. I thought that's it, the problem will be solved from now.
Well, not exactly. While I am getting less algae now, it is still more than ideal. Plant leaves are still getting covered in algae, but that's probably because the tank is not perfectly balanced, I can try fertilize less or lower light intensity etc...
What I can't really solve is the small white particles that seem to cover everything in my fish tank. It is more visible after water change and then it gets a bit less visible, but never disappears completely. At this point, this issue bothers me more than the algae, although these white particles seem to be more visible where algae is present as well. I have no idea what it is and how to solve the issue. I have never had this in the first 5-6 months while it wasn't planted heavily. It became so bad, I had to cut all my stem plants back to almost gravel level as they were white all the way to the top... I am hopeless and disappointed.
I took photos of how it looks, please check link below.
4 new items by Gergő Kovács
Please, if you have any suggestions on what it is and how to get rid of this let me know. Thank you in advance.
Sorry for the long post.
Best regards.