DPAZ101
Seedling
Hi
New tank now running for 6 months .From about week 6 onwards the plants started to turn black in addition to BGA on a small amount of cosmetic sand i have. The black algae is extremely difficult or impossible to remove from leaves and although it doesn't have any of the long fluffy strands i'm guessing its BBA ?
This was my initial set up:
Tank: Aqua One 620. 90 Litres. 620 mm x 430 mm x 390 mm ( water to substrate 380 mm)
Filtration: Eheim eccopro 300. 750/ litres/h. coarse foam pre-filter plus medium/fine foams.
Media: Aprrox 1.5 kg biohome
LIghting: 1 x 24 w Aquaray Grobeam 600. 6500 K. PAR at 400 mm in air 61 uEinsteins/sec/m2. Total luminous flux 1029 lumens . Initially set at 6 hrs.
Heater: Eheim 100 w
Substrate: ADA Amazonia approx 7 litres , 1 litre ADA powersand , small amount of cosmetic sand.
Water: Tapwater + API water conditioner ( Northumbrian water which i believe to be hard)
No CO2.
Plants:A Pangolino , A petite, Crypto Petchii, Rotala Rotundifolia,Echinodorus Magdalensis, A Reineckii mini, Buceph sp Red, Eleocharis Acicularis
livestock: 6 ember tetra, 6 golden barbs, 1 panda loach, (from week 5), 8 cardinal tetra (week 12) plus a zebra snail
Given this set up i considered it to be a low energy tank and proceeded to maintain as such:
Water Chemistry.
First 2 weeks 90% water changes twice a week.
Weeks 3-4 approximately 60% changes twice a week
week 5 onwards 60 % minimum weekly
Temperature 21-22 C
Ammonia was 0 ppm by week 3 and at its highest in first week at 4 ppm
Nitrite was 0 ppm by week 4 and at its highest in week 3 at 5 ppm
Nitrate at 5-10 ppm by week 20 . in the first 5 months averaged around 20-40 ppm and was highest at 60 ppm around week 4-5.
PH started at 6.9 and is currently at 7.2 ,highest reading 7.4
Dosing - Initially 2ml Aquascaper complete per day dropped to 1 ml once algae appeared
Flourish excel from around week 16, 2.5 ml a day
At around week 16 when the algae was really taking over i switched lights off for one week while on holiday. My son also started dosing 2.5ml of flourish excel each day. When i came back from holiday there had been a marginal improvement however plants wont live forever without light so i decided to change to a lower watt light.
Im now using a 10W aquael leddy slim 'sunny' 6500k. 6-7 hours.
Plant growth in the first 4 weeks was good but thereafter is slow.
To increase plant mass ive stuck in an extra 3 pots of S. repens and a pot of B Compact.
It feels like an exercise in throwing good money after bad and although im seeing a small improvement all my plants are affected with even the new S Repens beginning to show signs of a darkening on the leaf edges.
I would appreciate any comments of where im obviously going wrong or any suggestions of what might improve the situation ?
Phew ! sorry for the length of the post but i was trying to give as much info as possible
Many thanks
David
New tank now running for 6 months .From about week 6 onwards the plants started to turn black in addition to BGA on a small amount of cosmetic sand i have. The black algae is extremely difficult or impossible to remove from leaves and although it doesn't have any of the long fluffy strands i'm guessing its BBA ?
This was my initial set up:
Tank: Aqua One 620. 90 Litres. 620 mm x 430 mm x 390 mm ( water to substrate 380 mm)
Filtration: Eheim eccopro 300. 750/ litres/h. coarse foam pre-filter plus medium/fine foams.
Media: Aprrox 1.5 kg biohome
LIghting: 1 x 24 w Aquaray Grobeam 600. 6500 K. PAR at 400 mm in air 61 uEinsteins/sec/m2. Total luminous flux 1029 lumens . Initially set at 6 hrs.
Heater: Eheim 100 w
Substrate: ADA Amazonia approx 7 litres , 1 litre ADA powersand , small amount of cosmetic sand.
Water: Tapwater + API water conditioner ( Northumbrian water which i believe to be hard)
No CO2.
Plants:A Pangolino , A petite, Crypto Petchii, Rotala Rotundifolia,Echinodorus Magdalensis, A Reineckii mini, Buceph sp Red, Eleocharis Acicularis
livestock: 6 ember tetra, 6 golden barbs, 1 panda loach, (from week 5), 8 cardinal tetra (week 12) plus a zebra snail
Given this set up i considered it to be a low energy tank and proceeded to maintain as such:
Water Chemistry.
First 2 weeks 90% water changes twice a week.
Weeks 3-4 approximately 60% changes twice a week
week 5 onwards 60 % minimum weekly
Temperature 21-22 C
Ammonia was 0 ppm by week 3 and at its highest in first week at 4 ppm
Nitrite was 0 ppm by week 4 and at its highest in week 3 at 5 ppm
Nitrate at 5-10 ppm by week 20 . in the first 5 months averaged around 20-40 ppm and was highest at 60 ppm around week 4-5.
PH started at 6.9 and is currently at 7.2 ,highest reading 7.4
Dosing - Initially 2ml Aquascaper complete per day dropped to 1 ml once algae appeared
Flourish excel from around week 16, 2.5 ml a day
At around week 16 when the algae was really taking over i switched lights off for one week while on holiday. My son also started dosing 2.5ml of flourish excel each day. When i came back from holiday there had been a marginal improvement however plants wont live forever without light so i decided to change to a lower watt light.
Im now using a 10W aquael leddy slim 'sunny' 6500k. 6-7 hours.
Plant growth in the first 4 weeks was good but thereafter is slow.
To increase plant mass ive stuck in an extra 3 pots of S. repens and a pot of B Compact.
It feels like an exercise in throwing good money after bad and although im seeing a small improvement all my plants are affected with even the new S Repens beginning to show signs of a darkening on the leaf edges.
I would appreciate any comments of where im obviously going wrong or any suggestions of what might improve the situation ?
Phew ! sorry for the length of the post but i was trying to give as much info as possible
Many thanks
David