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Libba's 60P

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I ran into my first algae problems with this tank just recently. Tank had been running for 4-5 months at a guess without any algae issues or anything. I noticed a bit of green hair type algae growing on my Monte Carlo one morning. Within three days it can absolutely covered all of the Monte Carlo and Staurogyne Repens and had started to spread to some of the stems at the back. The rate at which it had completely overtaken the tank scared me so I took dramatic action.

1. Reduced lighting intensity by about 15%
2. 2 x 90% water changes 3 days apart.
3. Adjusted filter outlet position and installed an extra powerhead to improve flow.
4. Heavy dosing of Excel.
5. Completely removed Monte Carlo, trimmed Staurogyne Repens down to substrate level and covered with a fresh layer of aquasoil.

I have a few hypotheses about what might have gone wrong. Given how quickly things went south I expect it was a flow issue and the plants weren't getting access to enough CO2. The flow rate on the Biomaster seems to be down despite regular cleaning and maintenance. I didn't suspect nutrient deficiency so I didn't adjust anything to do with dosing.

One week later and the tank seems to have stabilised very quickly. No traces of algae left. Plant health seems good. Its unfortunate that I will need to regrow my carpet from scratch because otherwise I was getting close to my end goals for the tank. Hopefully I can get it back there in about a month.
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looks like all your other plants are fine. i've read that Monte Carlo carpets are prone to waste build up under the carpet, was there a lot of waste when you removed the carpet?
 
looks like all your other plants are fine. i've read that Monte Carlo carpets are prone to waste build up under the carpet, was there a lot of waste when you removed the carpet?
Not really. I'd been pretty diligent with vacuuming it. They definitely are prone to waste build up though.
 
Hello, very nice and helthy plants !
Could you tell me where did you buy your rotala blood red? And finally, what's your current fert regimen?
Thx
 
Hello, very nice and helthy plants !
Could you tell me where did you buy your rotala blood red? And finally, what's your current fert regimen?
Thx

Blood Red is widely available here in Australia. For ferts I just use APT complete at the recommended dose :)
 
Amazing colours and great tank will have a good read through jurnal when get 5 minutes but looks great 👍
 
The tank is bouncing back well after the aggressive trimming and removal. There has been some persistent green thread (i don't know what type it actually is) hanging around. Since most of my shrimp have jumped out of the tank by now and I only seem to have two left I decided to try out API algaefix. I dose a bit under the recommended dose and it absolutely murdered the last of the algae. It's incredibly effective. The shrimp were visibly agitated but were still alive the next day.

Rotala Florida is really thriving. I've propagated enough that I've been able to sell off a fair bit. I've sold about 50 stems so far and made a nice profit from it.

I'm not happy with the Blood Red at the moment. It's become very orange which seemed strange because I have my lights as high as they will practically go. I'm dosing APT complete which is about 6ppm of nitrate per week so I didn't think it would be nitrates. I finally checked my nitrates and they were at 30ppm despite the low dosing. I've been doing 50% weekly water changes so that seems weird. I have been using ADA root tabs so there must be a lot of nitrogen entering the water column from those. I'm going to start dosing APT zero and try to get those nitrates down below 5ppm and see how the plants go with that.

For livestock I'm down to one Harlequin unfortunately. All have jumped. It seems to happen pretty randomly. Thinking about trying a group of 6 Otos or something. Any recommendations for fish that are less prone to jumping?

I just planted some UG in the space formerly inhabited by Monte Carlo. I took Geoffrey's advice and planted it quite deep so there's not much visible right now. I also received some giant willow moss as a freebie so threw that in to see what it does. I'm half expecting it to die from the daily excel dosing.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how everything is going. Hoping to have a finished scape by the end of the year.

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With so many jumpers, are you perhaps pushing co2 too much or is there something that can startle the livestock around? I've had one jumper shrimp in the past 2 years in a tank full of cherry shrimp and fish with my open tank. Net cover could be a help too, like the red sea reefer cover which can be made to fit any tank really and is not an eyesore. Nice reds!
 
With so many jumpers, are you perhaps pushing co2 too much or is there something that can startle the livestock around? I've had one jumper shrimp in the past 2 years in a tank full of cherry shrimp and fish with my open tank. Net cover could be a help too, like the red sea reefer cover which can be made to fit any tank really and is not an eyesore. Nice reds!

I unfortunately have first hand experience that too much Co2 (due to an accidental knock of the regulator) can cause jumping.....
the alternative is that the shrimp jump to escape predators?
 
With so many jumpers, are you perhaps pushing co2 too much or is there something that can startle the livestock around? I've had one jumper shrimp in the past 2 years in a tank full of cherry shrimp and fish with my open tank. Net cover could be a help too, like the red sea reefer cover which can be made to fit any tank really and is not an eyesore. Nice reds!

Yeah I guess it's possible that it's CO2. I'm waiting on some calibration solution to come in the mail so I can calibrate my pH probe and see what CO2 levels I'm hitting. I like the net cover idea, I'll give it a try!
 
What colour is the dc going? In this picture from 1st October it looks yellow/clear.
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Might be an idea to get the tank and co2 stable before adding any more critters.
 
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