Hi guys.
My new tank has been running for 3 weeks and I've gotten the classic bad attack of diatom algae. I know chances are they go away on their own when the tank stabilises, but until then I'm worried they may damage or even kill my plants, so I would obviously like to keep them down as much as possible. So my questions are if I should change my fertilizer to only use the one without Nitrate and Phosphate (trace elements only) and if I should lower the light intensity? Or/and light duration? Anything else I can do besides manually removing as much as possible and keeping up water changes?
Thanks
Here's some tank info:
Size: 80 liters
Filtration: Background filter. Don't know the flow rate, but can probably find out. It moves quite a bit of water!
Light: LED. Approximately 5000 Lumen, 7 hours per day.
Time running: 3 weeks exactly
Substrate: Tropica Soil Powder
Water parameters today (measured with liquid test kits): Ammonia 0 mg/L, Nitrite 0.8 mg/L, Nitrate 12.5-25 mg/L Phosphate 0-0.5 mg/L (PO4 measured shortly after large WC and adding fertilizers, the others before, so take that into account).
Fertilizer: Tropica Specialised Nutrition 2 ml/day and Tropica Premium Nutrition 4 ml/day
Water change regiment: So far 30-50% every second day.
CO2: Injected (bubble counter looks blue, it's been 2 hours since CO2 turned on (0.5 hours since light turned on), it's a bit greener than it looks and turns dark green soon. 1.5 bubbles/second.)
There are no inhabitants in the tank yet.
Plants:
My new tank has been running for 3 weeks and I've gotten the classic bad attack of diatom algae. I know chances are they go away on their own when the tank stabilises, but until then I'm worried they may damage or even kill my plants, so I would obviously like to keep them down as much as possible. So my questions are if I should change my fertilizer to only use the one without Nitrate and Phosphate (trace elements only) and if I should lower the light intensity? Or/and light duration? Anything else I can do besides manually removing as much as possible and keeping up water changes?
Thanks
Here's some tank info:
Size: 80 liters
Filtration: Background filter. Don't know the flow rate, but can probably find out. It moves quite a bit of water!
Light: LED. Approximately 5000 Lumen, 7 hours per day.
Time running: 3 weeks exactly
Substrate: Tropica Soil Powder
Water parameters today (measured with liquid test kits): Ammonia 0 mg/L, Nitrite 0.8 mg/L, Nitrate 12.5-25 mg/L Phosphate 0-0.5 mg/L (PO4 measured shortly after large WC and adding fertilizers, the others before, so take that into account).
Fertilizer: Tropica Specialised Nutrition 2 ml/day and Tropica Premium Nutrition 4 ml/day
Water change regiment: So far 30-50% every second day.
CO2: Injected (bubble counter looks blue, it's been 2 hours since CO2 turned on (0.5 hours since light turned on), it's a bit greener than it looks and turns dark green soon. 1.5 bubbles/second.)
There are no inhabitants in the tank yet.
Plants:
- Ludwigia palustris 'Super Red'
- Cryptocoryne parva
- Unknown cryptocoryne sp.
- Limnophila sessiflora
- Limnophila aromatica
- Nymphoides hydrophylla 'Taiwan'
- Unknown Echinodorus sp.
- Staurogyne repens
- Hygrophila corymbosa 'Compact'
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