Well folks, I think it might be time for a Full Monty 'system reboot'
It has been a few days since I last posted any updates. First of all I have to say something is not quite right and I can't put my finger on the culprit, but it is one of the usual suspects not necessarily in this order:
- Too much light and not enough fertilisers, minerals and/or Co2
- Not enough light and too much fertilisers, minerals and or Co2
- Not enough flow around the tank to distribute the fertilisers, minerals and Co2
- A combination of all three above
The reason I say this is because despite the huge filtration provided by the two Eheim filters, changing all four of the tubes to Aqua Flora and Fresh Plant Gro, injected C02 with two drop checkers on lime green, fertilsers and CSM+ going in on alternate days, and 50% water changes once a week...several forms of algae are starting to present themselves in different places. I have left the lights off for the last two days and switched off the Co2 until I work out what is going on.
I have got a lot of brown algae starting to appear on the blades of the dwarf hair grass, green algae appearing on the rocks and some of the hornwood, stag horn algae appearing on the Altananthera Reineckii mini, holes appearing in the leaves on my staurgyrene, and leaves falling off the large leaf plant to the right of the tank.
http://www.aquahobby.com/articles/img/freshwater_algae_13.jpg
On top of this it seems that almost overnight at least 10 of my Amano shrimp have completely vanished without trace, no dead ones found, no carcasses, no exoskeletons nothing, vanished, disappeared..its a mystery
😕
The fish are all doing fine and feeding well, I have not lost a single one since I put them in, but something is not right with the water parameters. I know Clive will do his nut,

but I have tested for everything, Nitrite - zero, Ammonia - zero, PH 7.0 temperature 28 degrees, the only thing that is high is the Nitrate which is down to the dry fertilsers. One thing that might be part on the problem is that the GH is zero and the KH is only 1 or two at best. I have tried buffering it with liquid calcium and Sera Mineral salts but so far no change.
So system reboot, I think, stop everything, one quarter water changes every day until everything is removed from the water column and then start adding things back one at a time starting with Co2. I have already added a T-Bar to the outlet on the filter with the C02 going in to the tank so that the Co2 enriched water is going to both ends of the tank.
In the meantime if any one can identify any glaring mistakes in my regime, or has any brilliant inspirational ideas on what might be the cause of these algae outbreaks, I will be only too pleased to hear them.
Updates to follow.
Cheers,
Steve.