Nautilus143
Member
Hi all, my tank has now been running for almost 2 months (set up on 9th February) and I seem to have had nearly every type of algae during this time. I am a total beginner to aquascaping and I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong.
My tank is an Oase StyleLine85, which has a volume of 75L. I am using the internal filter (Bioplus Thermo 100) and lights (Highline 125 I think) that it came with. No CO2. I used Tropica aquarium soil powder as substrate and my plants are:
Bacopa caroliniana
Water sprite*
Staurogyne repens
Anubias petite*
Monte carlo
*added about 3 weeks after other plants, which went in at the start
I cycled it using fish food and it took 4.5 weeks to complete the cycle. The tank has now had livestock in it for just over 2 weeks (6 Endlers livebearers and 3 Amano shrimp). I started fertilising the tank using Tropica premium nutrition last week and so far I have just done two pumps per week (three pumps in all). The bottle recommends 5 pumps/week for a 100L tank. I feed my livestock once a day using crushed up flake food. In the first week after adding livestock I did 2 x 25% water changes and last week I did 1 x 15% WC and 1 x 33% water change. My nitrates tend to sit around 30ppm now but during cycling they got as high as 80ppm.
During cycling, my tank suffered horribly from stringy green algae (not hair algae, possibly green filamentous algae?). This is now mostly gone but then I started to get brown diatoms and cyanobacteria. Weirdly, my Endlers ate almost all the diatoms (I'm still fighting off the cyanobacteria). Then today, I noticed green tufts of algae on my glass and on my B. caroliniana. Upon closer inspection it seems to be on the S. repens and my rocks as well. I attached a photo of the B. caroliniana leaves that I cut off the plant. Can anyone please suggest what type of algae it is, and how I may possibly tackle it? The photo isn't great but basically it looks like green BBA. My lighting is already pretty low - I am only leaving it on for 6h total, with both bulbs on for just 2 out of those 6h (my fish seem a bit skittish when both bulbs are on).
Massive thanks in advance
My tank is an Oase StyleLine85, which has a volume of 75L. I am using the internal filter (Bioplus Thermo 100) and lights (Highline 125 I think) that it came with. No CO2. I used Tropica aquarium soil powder as substrate and my plants are:
Bacopa caroliniana
Water sprite*
Staurogyne repens
Anubias petite*
Monte carlo
*added about 3 weeks after other plants, which went in at the start
I cycled it using fish food and it took 4.5 weeks to complete the cycle. The tank has now had livestock in it for just over 2 weeks (6 Endlers livebearers and 3 Amano shrimp). I started fertilising the tank using Tropica premium nutrition last week and so far I have just done two pumps per week (three pumps in all). The bottle recommends 5 pumps/week for a 100L tank. I feed my livestock once a day using crushed up flake food. In the first week after adding livestock I did 2 x 25% water changes and last week I did 1 x 15% WC and 1 x 33% water change. My nitrates tend to sit around 30ppm now but during cycling they got as high as 80ppm.
During cycling, my tank suffered horribly from stringy green algae (not hair algae, possibly green filamentous algae?). This is now mostly gone but then I started to get brown diatoms and cyanobacteria. Weirdly, my Endlers ate almost all the diatoms (I'm still fighting off the cyanobacteria). Then today, I noticed green tufts of algae on my glass and on my B. caroliniana. Upon closer inspection it seems to be on the S. repens and my rocks as well. I attached a photo of the B. caroliniana leaves that I cut off the plant. Can anyone please suggest what type of algae it is, and how I may possibly tackle it? The photo isn't great but basically it looks like green BBA. My lighting is already pretty low - I am only leaving it on for 6h total, with both bulbs on for just 2 out of those 6h (my fish seem a bit skittish when both bulbs are on).
Massive thanks in advance