My litlle 250L garden.

[LondonDragon]

On a previous post you have the lights on for 8 hours, which is way too much, reduce the lighting by a couple of hours, you need to ensure that you are getting enough CO2 into the tank too, bring the CO2 on an hour earlier and turn it off an hour before lights off, you will save an hour of CO2 anyway.
Like tim mentions, get rid of the algae infested leaves and you could also supplement the tank with Liquid Carbon until you get things under control.

How do you mix your ferts?

 

[thomas.bham]

Thank you Tim and LondonDragon for your reply.
I know that co2 issue is the most common problem in planted tanks but it makes me wonder that the amount of co2 I dose now i exactly the same as I was dosing in a past with a lot more light and massive plant mass.
I had some issues with algaes bud not as bad as now.
I have just ran out with Liquid Carbon and I am waiting for some more after easter.
The algaes I have got now are different to the ones I had in a past.
I even started considering to come back to EI method but I am not sure that with low light and low amount of plants the concentration of nutrition won't be to much?
According to http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm my algaes looks like bluegreen ones, but I am not sure about it as I have never seen any of them before.

Why ceg4048 keeps quiet?

 

[tim]

Hi Thomas bga is a bugger to get rid of I think it's stated excess light causes this algae. I had this a while ago and I carried out excessive substrate cleaning and weekly filter cleans along with a slight increase in nitrate to my all in one mix has resolved the issue ( so far ) from the image it possibly looks like GSA though rather than bga which I think can be triggered by low po4 as well as low co2 so if your sure your co2 is optimum for the light provided maybe increase the po4 content in your all in one mix. Hope this helps mate keep at it you will resolve your issues you could try to pm ceg if you want his opinion on it mate.

 

[thomas.bham]

from the image it possibly looks like GSA though rather than bga

You are probably right about that, it is confusing becouse they are very dark green and layer is quite thick on leaves

My idea was to dose the ferts using PMDD method but large amount of no3 in my tap water breaks everything I think.
20 ml's of my DIY 'all in one' gives 1,4ppm no3, 1,6ppm K, 0.2ppm Mg and 0.4ppm of po4 and this is what I dose daily.
So po4 last was 2,4ppm which is more than enough I think?

 

[thomas.bham]

Hi everyone.
For the last few months I have been trying sort my problem with algaes out but unfortunately without any improvements.
I tried various doses of ferts and less light, maximum of CO2 plus overdosing easycarbo. All your suggestions I tried.
And it simply couldn't notice any positive changes apart of lower electricity bill
I am really desperate now and i have even started consider to give up with planted tanks and switch to Malawi one, so you can imagine how frustrated I am.

Let me remind that before I moved to new house in different area which is covered by different water supplier I didn't have a problem whatsoever, and bear in mind that I had exactly the same light level, filtration and co2
I used EI method and all I had to do was weekly trimming of plants.
You can see tank at the beginning of my topic.

Before I decide to do such a desperate move to switch to Malawi I am going to try two more things.
1. go back to orginal EI method and slowly increase light level
2. buy RO filter ( where I lived tap water was very soft 2 german degrees)

Or maybe you guys know what else i can try.

 

[thomas.bham]

really no one???

 

[Nathaniel Whiteside]

Lower your lighting intensity/ period substantially, not forgetting to wind back co2 aswell.

 

[thomas.bham]

At the beginning I was running 4 t5 with reflectors, at the moment I lowered to the minimum which is 2 tubes without reflectors. I reduced period from 10 to 6 hours.


Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

 

[george dicker]

hi, i was wondering what u keep your co2 at, im in the process of raising mine from 20 to 35 mg/l cause im struggling with plant growth

 

[thomas.bham]

Hi George, I've been keeping co2 always at the highest level possible. But at the same time I make sure that there is plenty of oxygen.
To be honest I changed whole method of running my tank. Simply I can't use EI method because it does't work for me.
The main difference between EI and pmdd method is that in EI you dose standard amount of macro and micro and then you have adjust other things like amount of light, have right amount of plant, have right type of fast growing plants and finally the most difficult thing have suitable tab water for water change.
In PMDD method you have your conditions and then you're adjusting dosage of macro and micro elements.
Few year ago where I used to live I was lucky to have a perfect tab water for EI and luckily I managed to put right amount and type of plants with appropriate power of light. Unfortunately now my tab water is terrible and even with mixing 50/50 with ro water I couldn't cope with it, hence the change....