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Potassium Nitrate help

joanne

Member
Joined
31 Jan 2008
Messages
46
Location
Nottingham
I have had a bad case of BGA. I tried to remove it all by hand and added potassium nitrate did a blackout for 4 days. Did a 50% water change. I went to test my nitrate after adding potassium nitrate and it's still at 5 on my nutrafin chart. Do I need to get this up to 20 to stop BGA. My tank is very small 40 litres and is low light but the plants grow very well. I do add CO2 by a hagen nutrafin C02 fermentor.

I worked out the potassium nitrate by adding 5 teaspoons to 250ml of water and then added 20ml to the tank. Worked this out by using the aqua essentials way. Did I do this wrong as I would really like to get my level up to 20.

Thanks Joanne
 
Joanne

Add some easycarbo, using a pippet squirt the easycarbo onto the algea and it will be gone in 24 hours I was advised to do this by the green machine, also have a look at the following: new user on the front page of the forum you will see james c click on his name scroll down the page until you see James Planted tank - this shows all the different types of algea and possable causes and what to do, this may help you.

Regards
Paul.
 
Rely on your dosing calcuations rather than the test kits. Nitrate tests kits especially can give all sorts of inaccurate readings as every stage of the process needs to be done in almost laboratory conditions to get an accurate reading!

Also bear in mind that as you add nitrate your plants are using it up too!

Excel or EasyCarbo doesn't always effect BGA as it isn't an algae at all but a cyanobacteria that exists in a slimy, mucous film. Best to syphon it off whenever you see it and make sure your tank is as clean as possible as high organic load seems to trigger it. Syphon out as much as you can while doing a 50% water change and a good clean of the filter (don't replace the media though or was it in tap water as you may destroy all the filter bacteria!). You then need to do further water changes when you see the BGA coming back (and it will for a few weeks, almost overnight) and this will reduce it over time. Make sure you keep up your dosing as very low nitrates may trigger BGA too.

If all that doesn't work then you can do a blackout which can be very effective, but I'd try and resolve the causes first rather than.
 
Thanks for all your help the BGA seems to be not as bad now, Will also try the EasyCarbo.

Thanks again Joanne
 
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