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Help in getting algae in check

I agree with Darrell, RO water is definitely not essential. Nice to play with later on to get ‘better‘ colours and grow a few really hard plants (there are just a few that demand it).

often see people that think they ‘must’ use RO water have more problems than others because they limit the water changes to availability of RO water. It is quite wasteful and slow to make.

Check out AG shop tour to see tanks with very hard East Anglian water

 
I would say you need to change the soil, it is very old now. And add loads of plants. The soil should be covered in tiny plantlets.

concentrate on getting co2 right.

regular maintenance, filter cleaning etc.

start your light at 60% and turn it up over a month or so. 6-8 hours duration.

on such a small tank it’s common to do an 80% water change - 2 on the trot often. Use the turkey baster method.

Temp 23 degree.

Hope that helps.


S.
 
while its nicer to have new soil, I don't think its a major cause of problems in the tank...just make sure you vacuum regularly. if nutrients in the soil are exhausted, there's always root tabs.

the soil in my tank is more than 10 years old and some of it has turned to dust, but my tank is still surviving (it has algae but I wouldn't want to pin the blame on 'old soil')... 😅


dsc00871-cinereum-jpg.jpg
 
I’m not saying depleted soil is the cause of algae. Of course it isn’t. But the healthier the soil, the healthier the plants. It will help them will flourish rather than just survive 😃

The cost of soil for a 45-P isn’t great so why not just do it and tick another box and improve the scape?
 
Thanks again everyone for your input, I appreciate it. I have been planting things back now. The soil isn't cleaned perfectly but for stopping short of taking it out and rinsing it, I think it's nearly the best it can be. There may still be the odd old route and some dust still left but It definitely looks much cleaner and I'm sure it's going to help. Fingers crossed. I have a turkey baster now and a tube that is 8mm ID and the water drains slower to give me a bit more time to go over the substrate. I'll update you with a video as soon as I'm ready. I'll be needing to buy some new plants to fill out the front and may ask for some suggestions. The hardscape positioning or the hardscape, in general, could be better but my main goal is to keep the algae under control as it doesn't matter how strong your hardscape is if you can't keep algae under control.

Interesting about the rainwater Darrel, whichever, I'll continue to do frequent tap water changes, perhaps 25% 3 times a week so to keep turning over the water and at least 50% with my weekly maintenance.
 
I would say you need to change the soil, it is very old now. And add loads of plants. The soil should be covered in tiny plantlets.

concentrate on getting co2 right.

regular maintenance, filter cleaning etc.

start your light at 60% and turn it up over a month or so. 6-8 hours duration.

on such a small tank it’s common to do an 80% water change - 2 on the trot often. Use the turkey baster method.

Temp 23 degree.

Hope that helps.


S.
I've been to AG a couple of times now and I love it. I got my cabinet from there as a cheaper alternative to an ADA cabinet. Of course, there is always hope when it comes to keeping algae in check and using tap water. I'm currently on 35% lighting with my twinstar 450 which I think I will increase to 50% now my tank is much cleaner. I don't want my plants to suffer from too little light but I think 100% at any time is too much for the size of the tank IMO. It's super bright sitting on the sofa looking at the tank too. I'm on 24C and will reduce it to 22 - 23. I'm definitely going to keep the filter nice and clean and the soil still looks pretty good I reckon, I hope there are enough nutrients to help the plants. All that filamentous algae and the days when it got very bad left lots of detritus more than I realised. Fingers crossed all the effort will pay off. Thanks for your input in this.
 
Interesting stuff everyone.

Ok, an update from me, yesterday, I spent a few hours cleaning and making changes. I have replaced the inlet pipe with the surface skimmer and glass inflow that sits nice and close to the substrate to at least help with the ongoing filtration and a better chance at picking up detritus from the area of most accumulation and now sits at the front of the tank moving the outflow to the back. I've cleaned the pre-filter which was needing another clean for sure and inside the canister. Most weren't too bad but the most accumulation was actually on the bottom foam.

Knowing how much detritus I was removing each session I decided to take everything out including uprooting all my plants so I could see all the detritus on the soil and that I could agitate the soil to release more of it initially into the water column then to settle on the top of the substrate vacuuming it out with the hose. I did this at least 3 times. At the same time, I decided to reduce the soil level and have less of an incline mainly to increase the water column amount and to give stem plants at the back more room to grow. A little way in after the aquascape was going I sort of regretted making the soil so deep so I took that opportunity to try something new. I bought a small wire brush to remove as much of the algae from the rocks as possible. At the moment, the water is looking super clean and clear, There's a possibility that I got used to seeing the water less than clean but in my eyes actually looked clean but really it could have been better, like something I got used to and forgetting what really clean water looks like. After maintenance, it did look clean but perhaps not as clean as it could be but not knowing how clean it can really look, it didn't occur to me (I hope you get what I mean lol).

Anyhow, I'm happy with my progress, the next steps that I can think of are...

1, Perhaps taking up those old roots.
2, Re-arranging the hardscape to a better position.
3, Re-planting
4, Good filter maintenance, pre-filter once a week, canister once a month (looking at the tank now, I don't think it's going to need a more intense regime than that, it's looking a lot cleaner)
4a, To decide on the current maintenance regime and water change schedule.
5, Checking the nitrate levels, (any other levels to check?)
6, Keeping an eye on the plants to see what effect my efforts will have on them.
7, Think about a sparing amount of root tabs.

Again thanks to everyone for your support, I really was close to letting all this beat me and you saved me, I may get an interview for a trainee train driver in the future, and one of the questions that may get asked is, tell us a time you solved a difficult problem and this could be a great answer as problems ain't that difficult to overcome at my current work. Anyway, I digress. Hopefully tomorrow I can get more done.View attachment 182697

Going by this attached picture, where do you think the best place to put the dropchecker is so that I know it's likely getting to all the right places?
 
while its nicer to have new soil, I don't think its a major cause of problems in the tank...just make sure you vacuum regularly. if nutrients in the soil are exhausted, there's always root tabs.

the soil in my tank is more than 10 years old and some of it has turned to dust, but my tank is still surviving (it has algae but I wouldn't want to pin the blame on 'old soil')... 😅


dsc00871-cinereum-jpg.jpg
Oh nice, that gives me confidence in my soil and that it should still be ok.
 
Hi guys, just a quick one, does the colour of my drop checker indicator look ok, or should it be a little bit lighter? The pic shows pretty much as it looks in real life.
 

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The first image shows a good target color for the checker, lime green. The second image shows an example of what it looks like when there is too much CO2:


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hoggie
 
Hi guys,

I've got an update of how things are going, below are images that I took after adding the new plants once I got it set up again.

20220227_152527.jpg 20220227_152615.jpg

These are the pictures now after a couple of weeks and the hair algae is growing like crazy again...
20220312_153430.jpg 20220312_153445.jpg 20220312_153453.jpg
Everything seems ok, I've been keeping up with water changes of 25% during the week, my co2 is on a timer and I don't believe it fluctuates causing the algae problem. I haven't added any livestock yet as I wasn't sure if the biological filtration was compromised during the clean up but do I need to add livestock to deal with this algae? Cause I'm not seeing any other way currently.
 

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This is as much jotting down test results as adding extra information. Test results are below...

Phosphate in the tanks water column is = between 2 to 5 ppm
Silicates in the tank water column 4 days after a water change is = 0
Silicates in my tap water = 3ppm
Higher reading with phosphate test kit shows no result.
Nitrates are currently at 40 ppm

I've so far added 2 Amano shrimp on Sunday who are doing fine and 2 horned nerite snails as of yesterday. I plan to get some more Amanos now I know they are doing fine.
To try and slow down the fast pace of the possible filamentous diatom algae I have reduced light to 20% and kept my 6-hour photoperiod. Stopped dosing Tropica specialized after the initial 2ml dose after the water change.
The silicates in my tap water are a little concerning. I've always found no matter how mature my tank is, diatom-like algae on leaves and new leaves get it pretty quickly once they begin to get bigger. No amount of water changes helped it which now, after diving deeper into beating algae, I think my tap water here doesn't help it one bit. I'm not sure how the silicates in my tapwater however are being filtered out when in the tank.

Are my nitrate levels too high? I need to do a test of nitrates on the tapwater next to see how that is but that will be for tomorrow or another day.
 
Hi all,
Are my nitrate levels too high? I need to do a test of nitrates on the tapwater
Just get accurate figures from your water supplier (<"Anglian Water?">). They have an analytical lab. so should be able to give you <"an accurate range of values">.

Having said that I wouldn't worry about nitrate levels, <"NO3- isn't toxic to fish"> until you get to high levels <"and plants will actively deplete it">
The silicates in my tap water are a little concerning. I've always found no matter how mature my tank is, diatom-like algae on leaves and new leaves get it pretty quickly once they begin to get bigger. No amount of water changes helped it which now, after diving deeper into beating algae, I think my tap water here doesn't help it one bit.
I'd <"ignore silica as well">.

cheers Darrel
 
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Hi guys,

Time for an update. Well things are going a lot better. I dimmed the lights to 20% and barely dosed ferts. Amazing how much easier it is to maintain. I even left it at least two weeks before even touching it, and no algae. I had added two-horned nerite snails and 2 Amano shrimp. Unfortunately, one of them must have died because it disappeared, but the other is still alive and kicking. I will get him some friends at some point. The rocks haven't had any algae build-up, and Anubis leaves are looking much better. I'm glad I got crypts, and easy plants because I have definitely learned how much easier it is to maintain with low energy. I wouldn't do away with co2 though, regardless. The only plant that just doesn't seem to grow healthy is the Alternanthera Reineckii ''Mini'. Even when I grew it with higher light, the leaves would still get algae and diatom-looking algae. I'm thinking about replacing it with something else. Does anyone know an excellent low-energy red stem plant that I could replace it with and would fit in with the Rotala H'ra? I don't feel like I want to increase the light yet, but I wonder if the Monte Carlo will suffer cause of it. As it stands now, I'm much happier with the maintenance level. I can cope much better.

The biggest bonus of all is that the brown filamentous algae are nearly all gone, and I didn't even have to remove them. It just slowly disappeared. I noticed it wasn't growing much once I lean dosed and practically stopped water changing. Below is the picture before I removed the Monte Carlo to tidy it up with the floating plants and the second is after I completed the aforementioned job. I didn't have time to clean the pipes and that will be done on Tuesday.
20220424_103225.jpg
20220424_182155.jpg


Feels nice to be on top of the algae finally and I'd like to thank everyone who helped me to get there, very much appreciated. Hopefully, now I can enjoy the hobby again. So, for anyone else going through a similar situation I went through, in summary, what I did was...

1, reduced the lighting a lot, down to 20% (stuck with a 6-hour photoperiod)
2a, get rid of as much detritus and debris as possible (in my case I removed all the plants and hardscape to do it as it was so bad)
2b, an introduction to a stem plant that helps with detritus and filtering light when floating, thanks to DHNelson for sending me some over, very grateful.
3, checked nitrate and phosphate levels to see if I needed to dose with or without them. Keeping a base level in the tank.
4, Very rarely dosed any ferts being sure the plants still looked healthy and the nitrate and phosphate levels were present enough and not depleted.
5, Only added new water or performed a water change if I felt it needed it, just in case my tap water was not helping with this particular algae. Water changing was surprisingly rare. in fact, mostly the evaporation was the main reason I ended up adding new water.
6, A regular filter maintenance regime.
7, Adding 2 nerite snails and 2 Amano shrimp which ended up becoming 1 shrimp as the other disappeared early on.

I still get some brown algae on the some leaves but it's not as bad as I've had it in the past. I don't know how to get rid of this completely but I'm much happier now.
 
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Hi
That's good news, your winning the battle.
What you could also do also is add a piece of black card to cover the back of the tank to stop a lot of reflection off the white wall.
 
Hi
That's good news, your winning the battle.
What you could also do also is add a piece of black card to cover the back of the tank to stop a lot of reflection off the white wall.

That's a good idea, I'll look to do that, it would be nice to increase the light a little bit to be sure that the demand from all the plants is met. I added 2 more to the list which I forgot, good filter maintenance regime and the use of the floating stem plants that you sent me :) thanks for all your help, UKAPs has saved me for sure.
 
The only plant that just doesn't seem to grow healthy is the Alternanthera Reineckii ''Mini'. Even when I grew it with higher light, the leaves would still get algae and diatom-looking algae.
You could try and give ARM a chance before you chuck it. If it is rooted properly, you can cut it at the substrate and it will grow back - it's quite a hardy plant like that.
 
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