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Green Hair Algae Battle

waters

waters

Member
Joined
18 May 2014
Messages
34
Location
Bangkok, Thailand
Okay - I know, yet another thread on algae, but I've battled with my first planted tank for about 6 months now, and have nearly given up on more than one occasion. That said, there 'have' been moments of real pleasure, and I'm hooked, and so not ready to throw the towel in yet.

Here's a video of the hardscape and planting...



Here are the details:

Tank: 60cm x 30cm x 36cm tank (17 gallons, 60 liters).

Filter: Eheim 2213 - I've switched back from a lily pipe to the factory spray bar for now, good flow, and surface movement from back to front.

Air Pump: I have a small air-stone in the back of the tank - on from midnight to 10am.

Lights - A Chinese copy of the Aquasky 601 called a Chihiro Aquatic Studio - with one important difference - it has 74 LEDS! The Auqasky 601 only has 30. I've literally only just noticed this today - pictures below, and I'm beginning to think this may be the smoking gun (and perhaps my fault for buying cheap). The only lighting schedule I've been able to use to barely control the algae, has been 5 hours, from 4:30pm to 9:30pm. There is ambient light in the room during the day, but no direct sunlight on the tank (and here too I've tried keeping curtains close 1/2 to reduce light).

Substrate - ADA Power Sand base and ADA Amazonia Aqua Soil on top, with additives (the additives were sold in a 'kit' by the LFS, so I didn't need to buy all of these as full bottles) including Bacter 100, Clear Super, Penac P, Penac W, Tourmaline BC - all placed on the bottom of the tank before adding power sand and aqua soil. I've put some Colorado decorative sand in front - as a kind of beach. And I placed one Bacter Ball on top about a week after filling the tank. The Amazonia Aqua Soil provided the ammonia for the initial phase of the cycle (it's fairly well known I think that Aqua Soil has an ammonia spike to it).

CO2: I'd initially tried using just Flourish Excel, and have tried at least once to use a double dose to bring down the algae - most of it turning white, but not coming off the plants. As of just two weeks, I'm now using a C02 kit (tank with an Intense regulator), at 1BPS - with CO2 on from 2pm to 9pm.

Plants (after bleach dipping them all before planting - although the pygmy chain sword probably not long enough). Back: Amazon Sword (Echinodorus amazonicus) x 3. Will probably need to pull one, as these are going to be way too big for the tank. Good growth so far. Eelgrass (Vallisneria spiralis or possibly Vallisneria americana "Mini Twister") on the back right. The Vals melted about a week after planting (apparently quite common for vals). And they melted again after I tried treating the algae with H2O2. I trimmed off the melted leaves, and a new crop of leaves are coming up very nice now. Anubias (on the driftwood) Middle: Hygrophila corymbosa 'Siamensis' , previously. Front: Pygmy Chain Sword (Echinodorus tenellus) - left and right.

The Pygmy Chain Sword was from a planted tank at a specialist planted tank shop, and I'm pretty sure also responsible for my pond snail infestation - which I successfully cleared with Fenbendazole (my complete write-up on how I treated the tank for pond snails is here... http://www.58bits.com/otherblog/2014/03/22/how-to-remove-pond-snails-from-your-aquarium

Stocking: 1 Dwarf Neon Rainbow, 6 Rasbora, 9 Diamond Tetras, 4 Ottos, 5 Amano Shrimp (very healthy and active) and two Guppies.

Water Parameters: NH3/NH4 0, NO3 20ppm, NO2 0, GH 11, KH 4 (maybe 3), PH - 7.5 in the morning before CO2 comes on, 6.8 in the evening after 7 hours of 1BPS CO2.

Ferts: I'd assumed that with a nutrient rich substrate like Aqua Soil - that I wouldn't have had to dose for the first four or five months. I've just started dosing a mixture of 2:1 TPN and TPN+ - with 0.8ml per day (equal to about 5ml per week). Following the recipe described here... http://www.thegreenmachineonline.co...lising-aquatic-plants-tropica-plant-nutrition

Here are a few pictures and notes...

1) The killer green hair/brush algae 🙁 Again the only way I can barely mange to keep this under control with with just 5 hours of light a day. It eventually wipes out the Amazon Sword, as well as the Pygmy Chain Sword and completely covers the Anubias. I've tried spot treating with Excel, and H2O2. It also grows on the glass, but not as much on the Hygrophila corymbosa 'Siamensis', and not initially on the Vallisneria spiralis, while growth is good, but if the Vals slow down, they become overrun as well.

hair-algae.jpg

The aquarium - camera phone pic, doesn't look great with the original Eheim pipes, but I was trying pretty much everything and wanted to remove water flow as a possibility (also due a PWC and cleaning today). I've also yet to achieve the foreground growth I was hoping for with the Pygmy Chain Sword - although CO2 and ferts have only been going in for two weeks now. Another clue is that the Pygmy Chain Sword growing 'under' the driftwood, is perfect, with no algae (i.e. growing in the shade).

tank-2014-05-31.jpg

The Chinese copy LED fixture - with 74 LEDS.

chihiro-auatic-studio.jpg

For comparison, the ADA AquaSky with just 30 LEDS (not mine)

aquasky601.jpg

And that's about it. I've not tested my water supply for phosphates, and so can't say if this is a factor or not.

What I think might be happening is that the Chinese copy LED system I'm using, is actually equivalent to the AquaSky 602 (double strip), and that for the plants I've chosen - there is way too much light in the tank. I was aiming for a mid- to low-tech tank with water changes every other week, and relatively low maintenance, hence the plant choice.

The LEDs in the Chinese fixture appear to be serially wired, and so with not much to lose, I was going to get my soldering iron out and remove 1/2 the LEDS (jumpering straight across the terminals).

Thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

Would be very grateful for any help or support. It's been a bumpy 6 months, and yet I feel I'm close to cracking this, having gotten through quite a lot so far for my first planted tank.
 
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if you think you have to much light why not raise them or reduce the photo period or both ?
 
Hi Allan, reduce the photo period to less than 5 hours?

Raising the lights is another option - but the fixture is design to rest on the rim of the tank. I'd need to suspend them to get them any higher. Not sure here.
 
ahh yes see your problem 🙁 ........... just seems a shame to modify such a nice light unit
 
Patches of floating plants like Salvinia or Red Root corralled into the areas above excessive algae growth can do wonders without you having to modify the light unit. They don't have to live in the tank permanently either if used as an algae countermeasure, a sunny windowsill makes a good second home and I find that Red Root goes exceptionally red when exposed to direct sunlight, so I redden it up there first before transferring to the tank if I want some extra colour on the surface. Frogbit is another great floater and I find that copes better when there is a higher surface flow. Seems a shame to hack into such a nice looking lamp.
 
Hi X3NiTH - thanks for the reply. That's an educational list of floating plants. As for hacking the light - well remember it's a Chinese clone of an AquaSky - build quality is so so, and there are in fact 74 LEDS in the unit. I'm going to reduce them by half (fingers crossed).
 
Actually you can get super creative as to how you want to do the shading, little squares wouldn't do it for me, however if you were to use paint or laser/inkjet/photocopy print onto acetate then you can do practically anything. Toner can block a lot of light, I used to use photocopies for quick and dirty negatives for screen printing without having to mess about with film. Google image search leaf shadows for instance and you get an idea of the shaded patterns you could create, after all you do have wood in your tank so hypothetically your tank is a river simulation within a wooded area and therefore would be subject to leaf cover. Maybe!
 
Brainstorming this idea a little further and say we want to introduce a little movement into the shadows we are producing and maybe get a better resolution with the shadow production, then I would go and buy a selection of these fine materials -

http://www.eduard.com/store/tag/Leaves/

I would then suspend these directly below the LED I want to shade by gluing the etch on to a short piece of nylon fishing line next to the LED with a bit of cyanoacrylate. You could then use a small oscillating fan blowing at the suspended leaves to introduce a bit of movement or alternatively make a small sail for the top of the etch so it catches room air movement with no worry of the fan causing evap.
 
Interesting thread. I ave a similar tank but I have the original Aquasky 601. As far as the number of LEDs go I wouldn't be surprised if both lights are about equal, the Chinese version just using double numbers of lesser intensity LEDs. In my experience the Aquasky is overkill as well. Having a miniature sun above a small tank and dosing EI was not a good mix 🙁 Had a photo period of 6 hours and was having massive green hair algae and black brush algae blooms, followed by staghorn algae. After a chat with Yo-Han he told me ADA ferts use a MUCH lower concentration of nutrients because the light is so strong.
I've put a lenght of toiletpaper under the light to dim it somewhat and reduced ferts to 10% EI quantities. For now this seems to be working well. Algae have stopped spreading and green hair algae is almost completely gone. If the staghorn finally recedes I'll start going full light again and see where to go from there with ferts.
Hope this helps you!
 
Hi All - thanks very much for the replies - Tim, Tam, X3NiTH. I'll try to cover the lights to reduce the output.

Arne - can you elaborate a little on what you mean by...

Arne said:
After a chat with Yo-Han he told me ADA ferts use a MUCH lower concentration of nutrients because the light is so strong.
Click to expand...
[DOUBLEPOST=1401555219][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh and X3NiTH - nice ideas! 🙂
 
from what I understand the difference is this:
The "triangle of plant growth" (CO2, light and fertilizers) is approached differently. With the Estimative Index you make sure there are plenty of nutrients and CO2 in the water and you balance the lighting to make it work.
With the "ADA" method you start with ton of light and enough CO2 and balance the nutrients, as I'm sure Takashi Amano has done with his Brighty Green 1, 2 & 3 line.
Yo-Han told me in the ADA 60p setup with the Aquasky and the Brighty Green fertilizers you get about 0.3 or 0.4 ppm max of phosphates, compared to about 3 with EI dosing. I'll do more reading into the rest of the concentrations of the other fertilizers but this was a good step in the right direction for me.
 
Hi Arne, okay - thanks got it - you're comparing the "ADA" method to EI. I'm going to try an stick to the TPN ferts and the recipe I posted above under the Ferts section, but with much lower light - and ideally a 7 or so hour photo period. Fingers crossed - since again, I was aiming for a lower-tech tank with PWCs every two weeks or less.
 
Okay - well, just to cross at least one other variable off the list, I've temporarily switched to a standard T5 fixture, with two 24W T5 tubes - Giesemann Middday 6000K http://www.giesemann.de/585,2,POWERCHROME midday,.html. The Chinese LED system was indeed blasting it out, as there's about 1/2 the light in the aquarium now. I cleaned the tank, scrapped the algae out, and removed plants that were already overrun. I moved all the 'good' Pygmy Chain Sword out from the shaded areas, and into the foreground, and planted some new Hygrophila corymbosa 'Siamensis, along with some Ludwigia SP. Will increase the photoperiod to 6 hours initially - aiming for 7 or 8, with 2BPS CO2, and the TPN ferts. Will see how it goes over the next few weeks.
 
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I'm running a 200l tank on 1 x 24w t5 ( 1&1/2 hours AM and 5 hours PM ) at the moment and I'm still getting some Green Hair Algae on anything near the surface . You may find reducing further and using a slightly longer photoperiod works !


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Thanks Richard. Is your fixture on top of the tank, or above it? Mine is in an Odyssea fixture - and the tubes are about 4 inches above a 12 inch water column.

One of the reasons I switched to the 24W T5 tubes (for now at least), was because there seems to be a lot more data available on T5 grow lamps (vs LEDs) - like the two tables below (apologies for not citing these - having trouble finding the links). I can at least measure the amount of light I have now, and I can measure CO2, which leaves fertilization as the only other lever to pull.

The first table suggest 2-3 24 watt lamps, while the second table does in fact suggest just a single lamp for my scenario (although they don't give wattage), and so I may follow your advice.

light-table-01.jpg

light-table-02.jpg
 
It's an Arcadia fitting and us 5" above an 18" water column . Plant growth is slow , which I'm OK with - did toy with adding CO2 and upping the lights , but with holidays etc rearing their head I'm sticking with Lo-tech for now .


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